Steam Deck, hardwarewise, doesn't even really matter that much to Valve anyway. It's all about the universal deployment of Steam through Linux and Windows and the amount of money that will potentially rake in.
Right now Microsoft, through the Xbox Play Anywhere strategy, and Sony, to a certain degree*, but especially Microsoft is _exactly_ doing what Valve wants and supporting Valve in what they want: get Steam deployed in as many households as possible in as many form factors as possible.
It never was about the hardware, but all about the service. You'll see.
*) By allowing previously Playstation exclusives onto Steam, which means that when you have a Steam compatible device you can play all the Xbox, Playstation and PC games you want. As an example, Stellar Blade -one of the best selling Playstation exclusives last year- will be released on Steam in a few days.
Article don't even mention SteamDeck's amazing touchpads, which no one replicated yet. These small squares enable a lot of old-ish games and whole genres what don't work with gamepads well
Indeed. As far as I'm concerned, the touchpads have been the killer feature of the Steam Deck. Emulating a mouse using a stick or the gyros doesn't click for me. The touchpads are just so much better when you need both speed and precision, be it for games (specially shooters and strategy games), or desktop mode (for navigation and web browsing). Plus, it works pretty well for typing text with the virtual keyboard.
I don't understand why none of the other manufacturers implemented those. I wish the Steam Deck had just a little bit of extra power, but I'm not willing to part with those pads. I'm eagerly waiting for the Steam Deck 2.
You can pretty much say the same thing about version 2 of anything. Version 1 is revolutionary and defines the market, version 2 is evolutionary and launched into a field full of competitors.
this conclusion i think is the point of the article. valve successfully created a new category of devices. the feelings shared in the article are evidence of that success.
Steam Deck, hardwarewise, doesn't even really matter that much to Valve anyway. It's all about the universal deployment of Steam through Linux and Windows and the amount of money that will potentially rake in.
Right now Microsoft, through the Xbox Play Anywhere strategy, and Sony, to a certain degree*, but especially Microsoft is _exactly_ doing what Valve wants and supporting Valve in what they want: get Steam deployed in as many households as possible in as many form factors as possible.
It never was about the hardware, but all about the service. You'll see.
*) By allowing previously Playstation exclusives onto Steam, which means that when you have a Steam compatible device you can play all the Xbox, Playstation and PC games you want. As an example, Stellar Blade -one of the best selling Playstation exclusives last year- will be released on Steam in a few days.
Article don't even mention SteamDeck's amazing touchpads, which no one replicated yet. These small squares enable a lot of old-ish games and whole genres what don't work with gamepads well
Indeed. As far as I'm concerned, the touchpads have been the killer feature of the Steam Deck. Emulating a mouse using a stick or the gyros doesn't click for me. The touchpads are just so much better when you need both speed and precision, be it for games (specially shooters and strategy games), or desktop mode (for navigation and web browsing). Plus, it works pretty well for typing text with the virtual keyboard.
I don't understand why none of the other manufacturers implemented those. I wish the Steam Deck had just a little bit of extra power, but I'm not willing to part with those pads. I'm eagerly waiting for the Steam Deck 2.
You can pretty much say the same thing about version 2 of anything. Version 1 is revolutionary and defines the market, version 2 is evolutionary and launched into a field full of competitors.
this conclusion i think is the point of the article. valve successfully created a new category of devices. the feelings shared in the article are evidence of that success.