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The Steam Deck's budget price tag is the reason I still rate it nearly two years on
(www.pcgamer.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Steam Deck
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64GB eMMC LCD
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256GB NVMe LCD
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512GB NVMe LCD
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- 40Whr battery; 2-8 hours of gameplay (content-dependent)
- 45W Power supply with 1.5m cable
- Carrying case
- Steam profile bundle
512GB NVMe OLED
- 512GB NVMe SSD
- 1280 x 800 HDR OLED display
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- up to 90Hz refresh rate
- 6 nm APU
- Wi-Fi 6E
- 50Whr battery; 3-12 hours of gameplay (content-dependent)
- 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
- Carrying case
- Steam profile bundle
1TB NVMe OLED
- 1TB NVMe SSD
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- 7.4" Diagonal display size
- up to 90Hz refresh rate
- 6 nm APU
- Wi-Fi 6E
- 50Whr battery; 3-12 hours of gameplay (content-dependent)
- 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
- Carrying case
- Steam profile bundle
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Budget? It's $600 for a device that's already worse off then a console power wise. You can't use discs and do pay more games. In what world is this a budget device?
If you want to game on a budget gamepass+ gamefly + Xbox is the cheapest way to game hands down.
A. It's not $600.
B. Games on PC are far less than used discs are.
C. Gamepass is not and does not in any way resemble a budget option. The budget option is owning games so you don't routinely have new expenses to be able to play games all. Renting is and always has been an obscenely expensive way to play games.
A. Yeah $400 for 64gb, real value. But whatever I'm sure that one is real popular.
B. No, not if you sell them back or rent them.
C. I payed $70 for 3 years of game pass. I have since played well over 40 games.
The math on renting is easy so I'll spell it out to you.
Gamepass + game fly == 30+ 205 = $235 for the year. Let's say you are a light gamer and only play through 5 games a year. That's 70*5 == $350, you have already broke even unless you include hardware, then you lost a whole ago.
I personally play more like 30 so I'm saving well over 2k USD a year.
PC gamers spite their wallets so they can play a stream game once and be proud they own it
A. Yes, that version is extremely popular.
B. It's not remotely close. Selling back physical games is still terrible value compared to discounts on Pc
C. Gamepass gave itself away for a while as a promotional gimmick. That's not what it costs. The literal only possible explanation for habitually renting games is that you're terrible with money. It's by far the worst budget option by a huge margin. It's not a legitimate choice for someone with limited funds. The day you stop paying, your library disappears.
Reselling I was getting about 80% back via Amazon within 2 days. There are other options than GameStop.
And I guess we're done since math is too hard. I already showed the value proposition. I'm not sure if you don't know math, but you're going to need to show me what quantum formula you are using that shows in not saving thousands of dollars.
Every number you gave was a lie with no basis in reality. The steam deck isn't $600. Game pass isn't $70 for 1 year, let alone 3. Abusing promos that no longer exist doesn't support your case, even ignoring that the library is terrible.
Then you're comparing it to full retail price ignoring that the entire discussion was that PC games are available heavily discounted with regularity. And again, the fact that as soon as you can't pay $30/month for GameFly and Gamepass, your "library" is gone.
You can go buy 3 years of gold and convert it into 3 years of GPU for $70. Even without the discount you are taking about $250. The math still easily works out.
It doesn't work that way anymore
Okay. So you have to play 6 games instead of 5. Seems like the majority here are focusing in on details that don't have a large effect on the math.
It could be $500 and it's 7 games to break even.
How many times do you need to be told, you don't buy games on PC for full price when on a budget you wait for sales that will frequently get you down to 60% of the price if not even lower for a couple year old game. Go for more indie titles and you have an exponentially larger pool of games to pick from than on game pass. Then you are not having your library pulled out from under you when Microsoft decides not to support a title anymore.
I’m a major advocate for GPU, and I’m currently subscribed, but even I wouldn’t say it’s a better cost ratio than Steam games.
You’d be winning more people to your argument if you at least admitted and apologized for the things you got blatantly wrong.
That math is so wrong on so many reasons. Let's compare it
This means that I have 390.87 to spend in games before we break even. Let's see how many games I can buy with that, to do that in a way that's as impartial as possible I'll look at the top most played games to try to not put my bias for games I prefer and add their lowest recorded price (since steam sales are common place) on steam until I reach the 390 I have to spend. This gets me to number 33 on the top 100 most played games. It's worth noting that if I add emulators, free games, and the fact that I personally prefer to buy a lot of indie games than spend 120 into two football manager games, I can easily make those 390 get me a LOT more games. But here's the biggest kicker, if one month I'm short on cash I can play any of the hundreds games I have, you unfortunately if you don't pay gamepass are out of games. Also in a few years when you need to buy a new console you'll lose all your games except the ones Microsoft allows you to keep playing, so in the long run you get to where I'am, i.e. having a large curated list of games that you like and can play without having to pay.
To add insult to injury, I get to play my games on the go, and the suspend/resume midgame feature means I'm back in my game within seconds, not having to wait until my Xbox finished playing the Call of Duty ad
Sources:
Look, I agree with you but let's not cherry pick the Xbox numbers just because we don't like it. Series S is cheaper than that. With Xbox you also bring your 360(some, digital), xbo library with you. Subscription is optional and emulator support is available with dev mode - Microsoft didn't lock it out and it's a very viable emulator machine.
Imo Deck is still better value but if you have your history on Xbox, a series s isn't a that far off if you are on a budget - gamepass or not.
It's hard to compare them anyway. One is a console and one a portable PC. Really different use cases and markets.
Yes (to de series S), but he specifically mentioned buying used discs, and the series S is digital only, so it's not viable for what he's proposing. Also yes (for the 360 games), but it's only some and only the games you bought digitally, so his arguments of buying cheap used games also moots this point. Subscription is not optional if you want to play online, which granted I personally don't care, but his argument was Xbox+gamepass+used games was a better cost benefit than Steam Deck, so he's including gamepass in his budged for Xbox so to remove it it would be a different point from what he was making.
Did not know about the emulator, glad to hear that, I thought because it was a console it would have been a lot more closed than that. In any case the emulator didn't factor in the price of anything, it's just because I like to play a lot of old games on my deck so that gives me hours of fun for free, glad to know people with Xbox are also able to enjoy it.
Here in Germany I can get it certified refurbished for 340€ (64gb), 440€ (256gb) or 540€ (540€). You can go for the cheapest and upgrade the storage. Seems affordable to me.
First of all why are we comparing a handheld to a console? That just doesn't make any sense.
And since when are games for consoles cheaper anyways? Seems like PC games go on sales much faster.
For any PC gamer with an existing library (or any pirate) you already have plenty of games to play on the steam deck. No need to buy anything new.
Also don't some games on the playstation for example need a subscription for online play?
That said you are right that if you want access to a large variety of games then game pass+Xbox is a solid option. But look at streaming services and mark my words: this won't last forever. They WILL enshittfy it eventually.
Why am I comparing a console to a handheld? I'm not. The deck was presented as a budget option. I agree mobile devices typically aren't budget friendly and I'm providing an alternative.
As for cheaper games it's because the console still has a rental and resale community. Unless you are actually buying 3 games a year and putting hundreds of hours into them; it's far cheaper to rent or buy and sell on Amazon. I played well over 30 games last year and spent about $250. Had I purchased them it would be well past $2000 a year. Even if I wait 3 years for every single title to hit $5 (which never happens in practice for many games) I've still spent $200 on those discounted titties.
I'm very sure most people don't buy a new game every month. I don't even know how you would find the time to finish them that fast.
Edit: I just noticed 30 games a year means more than 2 new games a month. Are you speedrunning them or something?!
Not at all. The vast majority of games are doable in 30-40 hours or so. Yeah there are a few long ones but the short ones even out. I'll usually get 2 hours after the kid is in bed, maybe an hour before they get up if I'm lucky, and then probably 10 over the weekend.
I'm not saying I'm casual in anyway, most folks will be about at 10 I'd guess. And the math still works out.
Are we really comparing this thing to a console? Because that's a whole other conversation of the economics of PC vs. console in general.
Compare it to any other handheld and even the maximum price of $600 looks very appealing.
But you can buy the $400 one, spend another $50 and get a 1TB SSD to swap in. Yes, this does require some special knowledge but not super hard and worth noting regardless.
That's without getting into the variety of hardware and software features this thing has that none of those other ones do.
What are you even on about?
Fairly trivial and well known concepts. I'm not even sure what you could possibly be confused about 🤷♂️
How tf is a disc supposed to fit in a handheld? It would have so many downsides and people haven't been buying discs for pc games for years now
You've never seen a PSP?
Oh for a handheld, whatever move to a cartridge, that's some pedantic shit right there.
And yes, valve did fuck up and trick PC gamers into accepting games you can't resell. And yes, that's why it's cheaper to play on consoles and rent. That was very much the point.
I'm pretty sure there are no cartridges for PC games at all
Yas. ThatsThePoint.txt. No discs. No cartridges. No resale. DRM single license only.
No portability, either, though that's kinda irrelevant if you're using a steam deck in the first place.
More importantly, no ownership. Steam, or any other digital media outlet, can just invalidate the licence, change the terms of the license, invalidate the account it's under, etc.
While physical media has risks of its own, you are as much in control of those risks as you want to be. You only really have to worry about theft and catastrophic damage to the media, as those tend to be beyond complete individual control. With proper care, even discs can last a lifetime at least. Cartridges can last longer in theory.
We haven't run into it yet problems with it, but what about inheritance? There are people today that inherited games and consoles. That's not an exaggeration, there were adults around for the first gen consoles that bought them, and have died in the last ten years. Their kids or grandkids now have them.
There's zero way to prevent inheritance of physical media. But licenses? Once some of the accounts get old enough, I guarantee that there's going to be a wave of those accounts being shut down for bullshit reasons that are just an excuse to prevent anyone from passing the games down (and I'm as confident that, unless legislation occurs, Google and apple and whatever other companies use digital sales will find a way to ban inheritance of digital media).
I'm not saying I object to the lack of physical media in every case, and a portable unit is a reasonable thing to not add the extra ports to (unlike a larger console, imo). There's a use case for that. But the attempt to kill physical media sure as hell isn't a good thing, it's driven by what benefits the companies, not what's best for customers.
Yes I'm sure there are dozens and dozens of users looking to give their msdos games to their 50 year old kids. For the rest of the folks, most don't even finish the game. Fewer replay the games beyond a ng+. The vast majority buy the game in the first few weeks, and demand drops over a 5 year period.
If ownership that's important to you, then by all means purchase it. But that's not the feature most people care about.
In my opinion, if valve and publishers respected first sale doctrine you'd see large game libraries shrink quite a bit. Most people would rather play and pay for the remake 15 years later. I think sales numbers, steam achievements, peak online stream numbers pretty clearly mirror my opinion.
I haven't had a device with the ability to read discs in over 10 years. The last portable gaming device that could read optical discs was the PSP, as far as I can recall. Which came out in 2011.
Again, what are you on about with the steam deck not being able to read discs as a criticism? It's outlandish. To the point where I'm not even sure you know what a steam deck is.
Disc, cartridge, same shit. You are focusing on the media because the lot of you don't understand what it is to be able to resell it rent games.
The simple fact remains I play more games that I want than you for cheaper by renting them. And this pisses people off here. I haven't even brought up $400 GPUs into the equation 🤣.
Your criticism was specifically with the fact that it didn't have the capability to read discs. Something concerning the medium by which you can get to a game. I commented on that. If you want to talk about the latter than I place more value on owning my games and I'd rather not rent. Also, it's not worth the effort for me to try to sell a physical copy of a game.
Why would that piss anyone off? Why would anyone even care? The way we consume media is personal and different for everyone. You seem to place a lot of value on the amount of games you've played over the course of a year. Other people, shockingly, might not.
Yet the comments here calling me a liar and people telling me I've been tricked.
You're just dumb as fuck, every single comment you've made here has made that more and more obvious. It really looks like you're consciously trying to be wrong and fail basic comprehension.
👌👍 yet all attacks and no maths
You've done a very good job of talking past me. Perhaps learning how to converse with others before engaging might be beneficial for you
Whatever you say 🤷♂️
$400 GPUs for what? What exactly do those have to do with the Steam Deck?
Damn get a load of this guy listing physical discs as if it's a good thing in 2023. The experience of owning a game on Steam is so seamless and convenient I couldn't even handle the frustration of SD cards on the switch let alone a full on disc!
Of course the situation would be different if you live somewhere with a poor internet connection and you play mostly AAA games, then I understand the appeal of having physical media.
EDIT: Also have to add, $600 for a device that can play literally every game I've purchased for the last 20 years anywhere I go is a damn bargain. Consoles have their place and their own advantages but there's really no other device that can do that.
That's fine if you value that experience.
That's an expensive trait to value. I'm happy to rent games, wait a day for them to arrive, and enjoy much lower running costs.
Not sure why people here are all arguing about why you would want to use discs, rather than the fact that the Steam Deck is a PC, of course you can absolutely used discs. All you need to do is plug in a USB disc drive, and it's ready to go. I've installed a bunch of my older PC games from CD/DVD that way, and it works great. Even under Linux, applications like Lutris make installing Windows game discs pretty easy, and once they're installed, you're ready to go.
Yeah I guess that's true if you only play 20 year old games. Fair enough.
The value lies in its flexibility. And it's mainly targeted for existing PC players. I can play my whole 150+ games steam library on it. I can easily emulate my favourite childhood games. Also, the smallest version with like a 256 or 512 GB SD card is perfectly fine and a lot cheaper than 600$.
There are use cases where a traditional console is cheaper of course, but you can't get AAA handheld gaming for less money.