Supposed Steam Deck killers are missing the point
There are plenty of supposed Steam Deck killers available in the portable gaming space, from the Asus ROG Ally to the Lenovo Legion Go and all the Ayaneo and ONEXPLAYER devices in between. But none of them have managed to outright slay the dragon that is the mighty Steam Deck yet.
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It's rather interesting to me how nobody puts any value on the Deck trackpads in comparisons like these, and yet they are basically essential if you want the device to be able to play anything but console-optimized games / games that are built for gamepads first.
Playing something like Skyrim on one of the alternative portables can certainly be done, but being able to comfortably play games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc is where the Deck really shines and where all the "alternatives" fall completely flat.
Edit: Not to mention that trying to run Windows without any kind of direct mouse input is really painful, and all the "alternatives" keep doing exactly that.
I don't care that much gameplay wise. I don't play much without a controller.
Windows even with the trackpad is brutal, though. Without? Oof.
It's baffling especially because all of the other handhelds ship with a desktop operating system by default.
Yeah, it's weird they all ship with windows instead of SteamOS. It's not like Valve would've said no to anyone trying to use it, they've been trying to find partners for ages.
Yeah but they're already spending so much on hardware just to edge the Deck on performance alone. They're ignoring all the other stuff that makes the Deck great which is decent performance but fantastic flexibility.
Honestly no idea why Valve isn't partnering with these companies or why these companies (presumably) aren't reaching out to Valve.
They work together. Asus and Lenovo sell hardware. Steam maintains software and sells games. Consumers get a sick handheld. Everyone wins.
Maybe Valve just wants to have a limited hardware target for game devs.
games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc
Note that none of those games are "Steam Deck Verified". They are at most "Playable", and often the controls is not the only issue Valve warns about (many also have small text that's hard to read). So playing them, while technically possible, is not really that great of an experience.
The issue is that not everyone wants to fiddle with controller settings, and sadly there's very few games that do take advantage of the trackpad and actually have proper first-class support for the Deck, with seamless idiot-proof integration.
And I say that despite being a Steam Controller owner (and I'd love a SC 2). The experience with "Verified" titles is much more seamless than having to check your controller mappings to understand what you need to press (or having convoluted layers / combinations for the more keyboard heavy ones... like say, ToME).
It's a bit sad that the trackpad is not getting much love from game devs. I'd have hoped that at least some games started allowing simultaneous input for gamepad and mouse, just so that they can earn a "Verified" badge. But that's still a problem, though some engines handle it better than others.
Eh I don't think being verified means all that much because in my experience there are games that are verified that just don't play well on a deck because the game doesn't lend itself well to deck controls and there are others where the control factors keeping them from being verified are trivial but not addressable given valves strict definitions of 'verified'. Example: Noita sucks on the deck and it's verified. It's like 10x more difficult to aim on the deck relative to a M+K setup and makes it feel clumsy as hell. Meanwhile, Against the Storm, Soulstone Survivors, Dwarf Fortress, and Civilization all have great experiences on the deck and I've happily played multiple hours of each chilling on my couch without a thought about the controls and none are verified.
Something similar occurred with the Steam Controller, which I loved. I'd show it to people, and they'd be like "OnLy OnE aNaLoG sTiCk, WhAt ThE hEcK?" and completely miss the point of the trackpads.
I can play strategy games with a freaking controller from the couch. That was always the appeal. You aren't gonna be able to do that with a DualSense.
Also, the virtual trackball haptic on the Deck was developed for the Steam Controller. It's surprisingly intuitive feeling.
I've got a Steam Controller as well, was absolutely amazing sitting and playing Civ in my couch when I got it.
I'm hoping that Valve will release an updated version at some point, because there's still not a single competing product available.
I've literally never used the trackpads outside the desktop interface.
I know there are cool custom ways to implement but I'm not a software developer.
