Highlights for me include:
- Console-like consistency of experience, but PC-like customizability. You can google how a game performs, and it will be that way for you, no unique hardware quirks to consider.
- Valve have done some magic with the proton layer. They even fixed a stuttering issue on Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 that has annoyed me for years on my Modern Desktop. [1]
- It's Linux! Fromsoft never integrated steam cloud saves to Dark Souls 3, so I whipped up some bash scripts to sync over SSH.
- The community looks to be rallying with projects like emudeck.com.
- This thing is an emulation beast, and with 0 configuration, you can emulate pretty much any console up to PS3/360, without having to invest time setting it all up.
It's still very much a beta, early adopter product. Negatives would include bugs and battery life.
But Valve are iterating the software so fast, you can see the momentum swinging - this could be something special.
As a technical, Linux-enthusiast audience, I am particularly interested in HN's own experiences
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1HuX2_Hhss
I had extremely high hopes for this little thing, and they have been surpassed.
As a guy who manages a lot of linux boxes and daily drives them too, I have decided not to fiddle with it and just consider it a gaming appliance with HUNDREDS of verified games from my library already (long time humble choice user, who has always been better at buying games than actually playing them...)..
So tldr: if you need a on-the-road gaming fix with actually fun games (my Switch has less than 20 hours of use) the Steam Deck is a no brainer.
Also, I think it is going to change pc gaming forever (bringing in the console like optimisations and proving that proton works fine - hence hopefully breaking the windows/gaming cycle...)