Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
When the Steam Deck first launched , I was a sceptic . I loved the mind of Valve ’s handheld personal computer , but think that its low electric battery animation andfrequent bugswould limit how much I used it . Since then , the gadget has only gotten better ( especially thanks to asignificantly ameliorate OLED modelling ) and it has eaten a bigger clump of my gaming time since then .
But I did n’t realise just how much it was outright replacing my cabinet .
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
That Book of Revelation began last week when I power on my PlayStation 5 to downloadThe First Descendant . It ’s a husky freebooter hired gun built with online play in mind , so it ’s not the kind of thing I ’d want to turn tail on a portable car . When I turned my PS5 on , I was momently mazed . It said that the most recent game I had played wasStellar Blade . That could n’t have been veracious . The last fourth dimension I touched that was in the first calendar week of May . Surely I must have played something on the console table in the past two months ?
I had n’t , and I started to realize that the same was lawful of some of my other equipment . I had n’t really used my Xbox Series X to play a game sinceHauntiiin May ( I ’d also playedStill Wakes the Deep , but totally via swarm cyclosis through mySamsung TV ’s Game Pass app ) . Even my PC was demand a smash , I realized . away from playing a preview builds ofDustbornandCygni : All Guns Blazinglast month , I had n’t played a game at my computer sinceCryptmasterin early May . concord to my own personal record keeping , I ’ve played around 100 games in 2024 ( not including preview ) . Only around 23 of those have been play on PS5 , Xbox Series X , or PC combined .
The only gadget that ’s hold strong is my Nintendo Switch , which still gets uniform use thanks to the steady stream of exclusives that Sony and Microsoft lack . Even then , no individual gimmick is flummox nearly the gambol clock time that my Steam Deck is . I ’ve played 15 games on Nintendo Switch this year , my second most work platform . By comparison , I ’ve played 52 on my Steam Deck OLED . Nothing even comes closely .
So , why is the Steam Deck winning out even when my other pricey consoles could start the games on it better ? There are two main factors . The first is portability , which has shift the way I bet on exclusively . Before the Nintendo Switch liberate in 2017 , I was big on the traditional cabinet experience . I want to scrunch down in one place and play everything from abode . My habit have changed importantly since game have become more elastic . Now I ’d rather have the choice to take something I ’m playing anywhere I go , whether that ’s on a body of work trip-up or just a casual commute . Even if I be after to fiddle something entirely at home , I usually end up start it on Steam Deck just in lawsuit .
The Steam Deck is n’t the only equipment that has profit from that . I tend to spend a fair amount of fourth dimension with other portable machine , from myRazer Edgefor mobile games and even my PlayStation Portal occasionally . If there ’s a way of life I can play something more flexibly , I ’m call for that option more and more . And I could take that even further , too . I ’ve yet toinstall Xbox Game Passon my Steam Deck simply because I do n’t wish dealing with Linux , but game likeHauntiihave charm me more and more . I would n’t be surprised if I make that leap by this fourth dimension next class .
That ’s only half the equation . My move to Steam Deck more broadly usher just how much Valve ’s handheld has improved since launch . I was fantastically frustrated with my Steam Deck in my first class with it . Its battery died in an instant , the silver screen was too washed out , not enough games were optimise for it , and the hardware had tons of bugs . Almost all of that has changed for the better . The OLED model totally define those first two job , even if its still unpredictable when it comes to germ .
More crucially , developers have totally embraced it . The fact that I could even toy 52 young release on it without a hitch speaks to how planted it is in the hardware scene now . Naturally , I ’m still playing the majority of my big - budget AAA game on other platforms , but that work up a astonishingly lowly slice of the game I play , it turns out . For someone who plays a lot of modest - scale game and indies , the Steam Deck has blossom into a very reliable companion compared to where it was at launching .
That ’s not to say that I ’m ready to throw off my consoles aside . I still love using both my PS5 and Xbox Series X to trifle first - party exclusives . I look both to get more maneuver in the back one-half of the year thanks toConcord , Astro Bot , Avowed , and more . The reality is just that I ’m less likely to play much between those tentpole games . The mass of my playtime now belongs to the Steam Deck and I do n’t think it ’ll be unseated until Valve discharge a new model .
