The omission of the thumb touchpad the Deck has is a huge blow. A lot of PC games aren’t built for gamepads, and being restricted only to things that are (or to using an analog stick as a pointing device) is really limiting.
Also, that price point, holy shit. That’s like, high-end desktop PC price range. I guess there’s got to be people who are looking for this, but it’s like… the crowd who would be choosing between a $1500 gaming laptop or this; that’s not really the demographic I’d expect to be in the market for a handheld, but maybe I’m just wrong on that.
The touchpads, virtual menus, layers / action sets, and overall control customizability really make the Steam Deck shine. PC Games with complicated keyboard-centric control schemes can be adapted to the Steam Deck so easily.
A handheld without that is going to be a hard sell for me no matter how well it performs.
As a secondary device to a Gaming PC with a strong internet connection, cloud gaming makes my Deck handle whatever I can throw at it.
The omission of the thumb touchpad the Deck has is a huge blow. A lot of PC games aren’t built for gamepads, and being restricted only to things that are (or to using an analog stick as a pointing device) is really limiting.
Also, that price point, holy shit. That’s like, high-end desktop PC price range. I guess there’s got to be people who are looking for this, but it’s like… the crowd who would be choosing between a $1500 gaming laptop or this; that’s not really the demographic I’d expect to be in the market for a handheld, but maybe I’m just wrong on that.
The touchpads, virtual menus, layers / action sets, and overall control customizability really make the Steam Deck shine. PC Games with complicated keyboard-centric control schemes can be adapted to the Steam Deck so easily.
A handheld without that is going to be a hard sell for me no matter how well it performs. As a secondary device to a Gaming PC with a strong internet connection, cloud gaming makes my Deck handle whatever I can throw at it.