There's a lot of rambling here but your points are centred around battery life so I'll hit that.
The Steam Deck's battery life isn't amazing.
The most I've seen is Stardew Valley running for 5 hours.
There's two sides to this; the Steam Deck's power consumption settings and how long you actually want to spend playing.
The Deck allows you to control how much power a game is allowed to consume. I'm playing Fallen Order atm and that game would probably run for 2-3 hours of continuous play. I'm playing on mostly medium settings with textures on high.
There are certain other games that will utterly drink battery life, like Baldur's Gate 3. I would personally argue that you shouldn't be attempting it as a regular mode of playbut I tried it myself and it doesn't look terrible. But you have to go in understanding that BG3 is a graphically intensive game and the Steam Deck isn't exactly built for it.
On the second point, I personally can't spend more than 2 hours of continuous play. After a while, I get tired of holding the device. I live in the UK so our travel times aren't long. I also don't travel very often either. My time on the Deck is usually just before going to sleep. The way the device is, I'm not sure that you could be playing one game for that long. Sure, you can play Titanfall 2 but that's a very fast-paced game and it's probably not going to translate well to the Deck. It's better if you plug in KBM but then you're having to carry those around as well. At that point, you may as well be on a laptop or PC.
There are certain games I've decided that I'll play on the Deck like Fallen Order or No Man's Sky. I've also got emulators loaded if I ever want to play those games. If you want a Steam Deck, you should be getting it because it allows you to play a huge breadth of games, not the latest ones at high graphical settings. If you want that, get a PC, you'll be happier with that than the sacrifices you'll have to make on the Deck just to get the game to run well.
Thanks for writing out how your experience is. It’s how I imagined it. I would need to have more battery life to make it worth it to me to buy it. For example, a long trip without any way to plug it in. I definitely wouldn’t expect it to run AAA titles.
It is possible to get a USB power station. The Deck can charge at up to 45W.
I wish that power stations acted more like "external batteries" (would automtically be flipped on by devices when their internal batteries get low, will be charged after their internal batteries are charged), but even as things are, they do let one extend battery life on portable devices dramatically.
Steam controller is in its own league, but hell, even the PS and Nintendo controllers have supported gyro control through steam for quite awhile. The Xbox controller is finally advancing past 2003, and into the modern era.
I’m more talking about API level. There isn’t a proper standard operating-system-level interface in Windows for gyro, so 3rd party controllers don’t have it, so it’s not really a thing in Windows/Xbox-first games.
This will raise the floor so every gamepad will be expected to have gyro.
At least it would be TRYING to have more reach to consumers.
Nintendo’s strategy of only appealing to kids and only sometimes caring about it’s actual, much larger fanbase isn’t really economically estrategic if you think about it.
Because they sell their products at overpriced numbers and their current console is built on 8 year old hardware that even it’s chip makers said it was “outdated” back in 2015.
Yeah, and it's sold more units than the PS5 and all iterations of the current XBox combined, at a profit on every unit. Nobody's out there holding a gun to people's heads to buy the Switch, but they sell FAR more than either of their competitors in both hardware AND software. It sounds to me like you're not actually angry at Nintendo, but angry at the majority of customers in the game industry that don't share your disdain for less powerful hardware.
The hardware is weak, but the market has spoken and to them at least, it doesn't matter. If it DID matter, people wouldn't buy them. Why would Nintendo spend the extra money when consumers have already decided they're going to buy it in droves anyway? So they can spend more on manufacturing and make less profit? Yes, they wanted easy cash. What responsible company doesn't? It doesn't make any sense to spend a dime more on producing a product than what your customers demand. The limitations of the Switch are the fault of consumers who buy it, not Nintendo's. If Microsoft could sell the same number of units Nintendo can by making a game system that cost $50 to manufacture and ran on 386, you can be damn sure they would too. I completely understand your anger - I've had to spend the last 20 years watching flocks of people buy inferior, overpriced Apple products and rave about how great they are. But like Nintendo, Apple only does it because the consumers let them get away with it. Your complaint is misdirected when it should be targeted at the customer base. But good luck teaching happy people who don't know any better that the thing they like is bad. It's not a great use of your time.
All of your other problems are perfectly reasonable, but if you think Microsoft's plan if they buy Nintendo is to drop everything and start porting old titles or working on a new Starfox game, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Like Disney buying Star Wars, get ready for annual, mediocre entries in your favorite series cranked out by a revolving door of existing teams to maximize output. After a couple years of half-baked Mario and Zelda games, they'll stop selling in the numbers Microsoft wants, and after the golden goose is dead, they'll dissolve any remaining Nintendo assets into their larger acquisitions structure, lay off a bunch, and put the name in the vault while they look for something else to cannibalize.
So like the vast majority of PCs still run on 1060 instead of whatever the latest shit is? Sounds pretty reasonable, especially if you want mobile gaming.
Haptic feedback has everyone. How does it differ in any form from other controllers.
Pretty sure only the Switch and PS5 Controllers have something unique to vibration motors
Gyro is imo a bit of a gimmick.
Same as the adaptive triggers from the PS5 and the HD rumble from the switch and the Kinect from the Xbox 360/One.
They are all pretty cool but how many devs will actually implement it?
HD rumble: Sure, there are party games but those are 1st party (usually) and what purpose do they offer besides the few haptic feedbacks?
Adaptive trigger: I see two options. Racing or Archery. Maybe the odd platformer.
Kinect: Basically a Wiimote and a WiiFit - the scale. It had a few neat titles but basically useless unless you like the swish around in the dashboard.
So what purpose does the gyro serves outside of more expensive hardware the majority of devs will not utilize. Am I really missing out on something?
Those are exactly the types of games that most benefit from gyro controls. You still use the right joystick to look around like normal, but then you also have gyro to make fine adjustments on top of that.
It would be amazing if it went well and smartphones were finally taken seriously because they have so much unused potential for videogames. I know the A17 Pro should be perfectly capable of running these games in theory, but with the crap cooling of the iPhone we’ll have to see
The world has potential. I assume they would want to use a cat as the protagonist, so if it isn’t a retelling or Sequel/Prequel, I’m not sure how it wouldn’t feel forced. But I’m certainly curious.
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