IMO that's more of a problem with the industry not really caring to support lower specs, or generally not seeing the deck as a real console or platform to target. People still make Switch games and the damn thing was already outdated at launch and they even underclocked it for good measures.

At 800p you've got to start thinking, is most of the detail those games compute even actually visible the on screen? How many PCs does that make obsolete? If the deck can't run it at 800p, even at 1080p you're gonna need what, an RTX 2060 for the lowest settings on a PC?

Some of the example titles don't even sound like they're the kind of titles that are made to showcase what your 4090 can do, which logically you'd want as many people as possible to be able to play it.

They never pretended it was going to run literally everything. It's a handheld.

The fact that there are still very few games it can't run (excluding the publishers actively blocking Linux) is impressive, but it was always expected that some games would leave it behind.

Hell, the whole reason for "deck verified" is because their default assumption is that a game won't work.

Easy solution - I just wont be buying games the deck cant run.

Optimise your games for lower end hardware. Problem solved.

Just taking a look at Steam Deck Top 100 tells me 2025 won't be a problem lmao

Lol this is an article about how shit optimization has been for the last several AAA game releases. Even quite capable desktops often have performance issues with the mentioned games, because the PC ports weren't optimized enough and/or tested on a wide enough range of hardware. It's a real shame, many of them don't even look significantly better than the last generation or two. It's just graphical bloat as devs get lazier and lazier the beefier the GPUs get.

Still the only handheld PC that doesn't come with a dogshit OS and an abysmal battery life. The deck doesn't do well despite its low specs and alternative OS, it does well because of them.

It seems like the writing is leaning on being negative.

"These 2 games don't work, even with FSR"

Okay, legitimate issue.

"This game doesn't without FSR"

That's what FSR is for, and now you don't want to use it. This isn't an issue.

Oh, go figure. I thought a Steam Deck was a handheld device running off of a battery. Yeah, if you've got a desktop computer with a high-wattage GPU you'd expect better performance on the latest AAA graphics, huh? Weird. Cannot possibly be worthwhile to own, I guess.

OMG two games don't work! How many others do? O yea that's right, thousands...the library for the deck is magnitudes larger than pretty much every console out there...hell I'll say it, every console released has smaller libraries than the deck.

Ok but outlaws sucks so who gives a fuck about that and not everyone wants to play big AAA games like these.

If you got a deck and expected it to run the latest AAA titles, you are an idiot.

Personally, I just don't have time or energy to play big AAA games for the most part. I very much prefer smaller indie games nowadays, and Steam Deck has those in spades. I would wager a lot of older gamers are in the same boat.

In 2027 the current iteration won't be legally able to be sold in the EU, since the EU will require portable devices to have easily replaceable batteries. (Which the Steam does not qualify for due to needing a heat gun). So an upgrade is almost certainly planned by then.

I don't own a Steam Deck. I am a Linux gamer, and I appreciate that it exists.

Internally it's basically a laptop using its AMD integrated graphics, yeah? No discrete GPU? Which makes it actually pretty impressive at what it does.

The only thing cooler than a living miracle of portable computing is an undead miracle of portable computing that I'd still be playing games on come 2025 🧛

I do think it's about time for a successor. But that didn't mean the current Steam deck isn't viable any more. There are still thousands of games it will happily play. And the others can probably be made to run with some TLC from the developers.

Do they care to explain the pathetically underpowered, slow, and clunky Switch? We'll wait.

I mostly use the Deck for indie games and emulation so a CPU/GPU upgrade isn't something of interest for me. A larger, 16:9 screen or better ergonomics on the other hand...

🤷 I've mostly used it for MAME anyway.

Yeah well my steam deck will survive 2025 unless I break it. It's a proper nifty little machine, so glad I bought it. I've not done any gaming since i had a PS2 so there's loads of games to catch up on. Recently finished bioshock, wow. I've got a long list of older games, but I've tried a couple of newer things. It plays doom 2016 just fine, same with deathloop and beam ng drive

Will the switch 2 outperform the steam deck? Because if not, games will continue to be made to run on lower hardware.

I don’t understand how Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky were the ones that “burned” you, they’re both great games? GOTY material even?