In case you haven’t already, preload your Steam Wallet and make sure to account for any tax. As someone who got my Steam Deck order in the first 15 minutes it dropped, payment processing was the biggest barrier then. They might have fixed it since, but they also might not have. Good luck!
Yeah, I definitely think how much you value this controller is directly proportional to how much of the full Steam Deck control scheme you use. As a heavy user of the Deck’s touchpads to the point I’ll never consider another handheld without them, this is still a day one purchase for me even at $99, but I’m not going to recommend it to anyone without huge caveats.
I definitely think graphical fidelity is “good enough” now, but there’s still quite a bit of advancement available in other areas still drawing on the CPU and GPU, VR and local AI being a couple. I’ve been all in on VR since the Vive, and while I reject corporate AI as much as most people here, I do run local models occasionally and would like to have NPCs using the tech.
Well, anachronism most literally means “misplaced in time.” You can go two directions with that, something being more at home in the future or more at home in the past. The former obviously doesn’t apply here, and I would consider my wording identical to the latter. A reduction in belonging implies a reduction in commonness.
I’m not worried about the tech going away so much as the market percentage dropping to make enthusiast hardware more niche. Among other things, it makes enshittification in the space harder to fight.
Except even among most current PC gamers, the threshold isn’t that high. 4K is still less than 5% of the market.
Also, I’d argue “anachronism” isn’t the same as “pointless.” It’s just claiming that something that was once more common will become less common.
I don’t think the greater power of larger devices is being questioned. There just happens to be a threshold where a technically inferior but more accessible solution becomes “good enough” for most people that they never consider moving up.
Just look at mobile devices. Of everyone who accesses the internet, 75% do so via smartphone only. As someone who doesn’t even like desktops losing ground to laptops, that statistic scares me.
If you have meat or dairy items in your fridge, those can become unsafe to eat after only 2 hours. Since the cold air is more dense, it spills out the bottom of the fridge and gets replaced by room temperature air rather quickly. I’ve definitely eaten my fair share of questionable foods going past this, but the calculus changes if you’re giving that food to other people.
As for the main point, agreed. I’m definitely not a luddite, but if I had kids who weren’t yet responsible enough to not leave a fridge open for hours, I think I’d just put child locks on the fridge and make sure they had access to something else.
They’re not stock, but both GIMP and Krita have had generative AI plugins for a couple years now. I don’t know how well they match up to the Adobe stuff, but they seemed quite powerful and well-integrated the last time I looked.
Dang. I guess I’m more disconnected from the average consumer than I thought. My 48" has felt like plenty for even a good size living room for a while, and I’m used to 32" monitors and 7" phones, so it’s not like I prefer smaller screens. I had to go and fact check that 65" being the most popular. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have thought 55" was pushing it.
In case you’re not being hyperbolic (or for anyone else legitimately thinking this because I’ve heard it multiple times), I think Valve really did the best thing they could. I know Valve feels huge, but MasterCard and Visa together are over a hundred times bigger, and any payment processing system Valve could make would definitely be a pushover.
Also, never underestimate the casual normie population. If Valve lost Visa and MasterCard support, I’m pretty sure that would mean losing two-thirds of their playerbase if not more. Those people would either prop up alternative stores like Epic or Microslop’s or just pull away from PC gaming altogether.
Anyway, it’s a bit like the people saying Valve should make their own DRAM to combat the shortage. It doesn’t acknowledge how entrenched the existing manufacturers are and how far away Valve actually is from that level of manufacturing.
A few notes:
First-party support for Steam Input’s deep configuration is a big selling point for a lot of people, myself included. It also means the lack of some of the extra buttons you mentioned present on other premium controllers doesn’t hurt so much, because there’s already so many options for layering in more inputs. Not wanting to mess with most of that doesn’t mean the controller is “not for you,” but it does mean it’s going to align less with what you value.
I absolutely love the Deck’s touchpads. I consider them non-negotiable inclusions for any future PC handheld or controller I buy. I will agree though that they aren’t ideal if your main use case for them was typing any more than a couple words at a time.
Citation needed on no one using grip-enabled gyro. It’s not something you need a game to support to make use of. Also, touch-enabled gyro was awesome on the original Steam Controller, and grip sensing on the Index controllers enabled some cool functionality.
I don’t think lack of console support or color customization are going to register as negatives for most people in the market for this. I can’t even remember the last time I used a console.
Valve has a pretty good track record with ergonomics, so I doubt accidentally activating the touchpads will be a common problem. Even if you find yourself in that spot though, you can have Steam Input disable a pad under certain conditions like when its thumb is on a stick.
Symmetrical sticks being a downside is extremely subjective.