If classified by usage scenario, the game market can be roughly divided into three genres: PC games have the best picture quality and a huge game library; Console games are easy to use, and there are also many exclusive games, mainly occupying the living room; Mobile games are the most portable, as long as there is electricity and signal, you can play anywhere. It seems that each of the three parties occupies a life scene, and the well water does not violate the river water.
But there are always people who are not willing to occupy only one corner and want to extend their tentacles into the larger market of mobile games. First, the old Renjia's Switch achieved all-eating in the living room and mobile scenes with a handheld-like form, and then a number of start-ups rose up and made a handheld-like portable electric (youxi) brain (ji), which actually got good market feedback. Under such circumstances, the entry of Valve, which holds Steam as a game sales channel and has many years of experience in game software and hardware development, has undoubtedly set off another wave of climax. Steam Deck, born with a golden spoon, has gained a lot of attention since its release, and many players have chosen to buy it, and I am one of them.
Steam Deck
But unlike the ideal "play anywhere" scenario I imagined, I barely played a game with the Steam Deck in the week I got it, and the constant hardware and software failures made me return it, and here's what I experienced with the Steam Deck this week and why it was destined to be niche.
01 What happened to me from happy to sad return in the title of the sub-section?
In early February, JD International's self-operated Steam Deck package price once came to less than 3,000 yuan, which is undoubtedly a huge temptation for me who has coveted Steam Deck for a long time. In the end, I bought the 64GB version of the Steam Deck on JD.com for 2969 yuan. In hindsight, buying from JD.com was undoubtedly the right decision, but here we don't press the table first.
Steam Deck is divided into three models according to the capacity of the hard disk, 64GB, 256GB, 512GB. The 64GB hard drive is eMMC, and the remaining two models are NVMe format. In addition, the three models are consistent in their main specifications, all using AMD's custom APU with 16GB of memory. Considering the large price difference between different models and the Steam Deck's rather easy-to-remove design, I naturally chose the combination of 64GB version plus a hard drive like most users.
After the machine arrived, it was natural to start activating and starting to use, but I got stuck in this first step. Due to the limitations of the domestic network environment, my Steam Deck was stuck in the steps of checking the system update at startup, and I had to spend half an hour checking the network environment at home.
After entering the system, the current SteamOS has improved a lot compared to the semi-finished state in the first review. In addition to occasional stuttering, it can already be operated smoothly. The home page shows the games you've been playing recently, and you can check out the games in your Steam library on the library page or shop for games on the store page.
In the store, V provides a special area for Steam Deck to display games that can fully support Steam Deck, and when searching for a game in the store, it will also show whether the game is fully supported (green check), partially supported (yellow exclamation mark), not supported (gray bar), or not yet tested (gray question mark).
Compatibility notes on the game page
Some friends may be curious about why Steam Deck has compatibility problems, because V Society did not let Steam Deck carry mainstream Windows systems, but in Debian, a non-commercial Linux distribution deeply customized, V officially called SteamOS.
SteamOS
Considering that the vast majority of games sold in the Steam Store are only available in Windows, V has customized its own game compatibility layer Proton based on the popular Wine on Linux, so that these games can run on Steam Deck, but because this compatibility layer does not provide full WIndows support, some games that use special anti-piracy technology often have incompatibility problems.
But for me, things simply didn't get to this point. From the day after I got the Steam Deck, it had a very us-impacting issue – the screen froze. At first, it appeared when it just woke up after sleep, and then gradually appeared in daily use, and can only be solved by force restart.
A photo taken after a splash screen
I suspected that I replaced the hard drive, but the problem remained the same after replacing the original hard drive; A system problem was suspected, but reflashing the system did not solve the problem. In the end, I can only think that I encountered a quality control problem in hardware this time, and I "won".
As a Haitao product that does not provide warranty in China, the advantages of buying Steam Deck on JD.com are reflected at this time. When I applied for after-sales, JD.com quickly gave the return processing result within two days, and the overall experience was very smooth.
02 Why is Steam Deck only a niche product?
After a few days of using Steam Deck that can be considered "grudgingly", I did have a deeper understanding of its existence and why it is so popular that it is difficult to see around me.
In my opinion, the reasons why Steam Deck is not popular are mainly in the following ways.
First, Steam Deck isn't an "out-of-the-box" product. To get a great gaming experience on the Steam Deck, you have too many things to toss. To open the game, you may need to download the launcher of the corresponding manufacturer; For a better operation experience, you need to put more thought into key mapping; To make Steam Deck last longer, you'll need to figure out the power limits in your game. Indeed, Steam Deck is far more open on the system than traditional consoles, which can undoubtedly satisfy those users who love tossing, but the deep problem is that V Society is powerless in ecology.
Steam Deck's trackpad
As a game sales channel, Steam has little binding force on developers, and it is naturally difficult to promote developers to optimize new hardware devices. As a result, V Club has to adapt Steam Deck to the existing game ecology, for example, Steam Deck provides three sets of hardware in terms of controller, trackpad, and touch screen, and provides different adaptation solutions for different design games.
But such a large amount of work, for such a lightweight enterprise as V Company, it is obviously impossible to complete it quickly. Not only that, but this also brings a side effect - frequent bugs. During my week of using Steam Deck, I encountered a series of problems such as desktop stuck, SD card not recognized, unable to enter USB boot, game random crash retreat, etc., which is too expensive for mass users.
03 Write at the end
The ideal of Steam Deck is really full, with one of the world's largest game libraries on hand, waking up quickly when you want to play, and syncing your saves to your computer at any time when you go home. But for a small business like V Company, this project is too big for it to complete on its own. So Steam Deck can only bring a set of excellent hardware design and almost completely open software to attract veteran users who are willing and able to toss. It's good, but only for those who understand it.