I hope they struggle the company underground.
The unwashed console plebs can join the gamers with the Steam Machine/Deck and see what gaming is supposed to be like.
There’s still shitty stuff happening, but you’re a lot less beholden to specific companies over here.
Exactly this. If it’s already fun, and especially if the early access price is good, then buying a somewhat janky game that will get better seems fine.
I played mostly Rocket League (again, 10 consecutive wins for time played lol).
But my computer was down done Christmas Eve last year and just got out working again on Halloween. So most of my games this year were solely on the Deck. So the Deck gets an MVP award for being there when I needed it.
That said, the only game I own that doesn’t really work on the Deck is Helldivers 2.
I cannot drop down and play literally anything in 30fps. I already have to deal with the 60Hz screen on the Deck, I cannot use anything less (that hasn’t been literally designed for it- anything that can run at a higher fps should be. 60 is the absolute rock bottom I will tolerate.
Anyway, I also played a lot of Balatro, Slay the Spire, and REPO. Getting it working satisfactorily would have been impossible on some handhelds, but the grip buttons made it just enough to have access to all inventory slots, sprinting and tumbling. Had to use voice activation without an easy way to use push to talk, but that didn’t really bother me.
Tried PEAK, but it doesn’t really grab me personally. I still wanna try it on PC tho now that I have it running again, to give it a fair shake. I feel really off balance trying controllers with games meant to be kb/m. Repo felt awkward but playable. And I liked the choir game design enough anyway. But playing Peak while being awkward didn’t feel as rewarding. But I wanna give it a go with kb/m.
I played some Hades as well. Still haven’t beaten it yet (I’ve only gotten to the Hades fight twice). That game I actually like better on the Deck or on controller better. Which is kinda what I expected, but it definitely belongs on a controller.
I played through It Takes Two, which was beautiful. Haven’t finished Split Fiction yet because my brother keeps being unavailable. I try to tell him to “come be a lesbian with me”. Haven’t quite finished it yet, but there’s no way those 2 don’t hook up, right?
Didn’t play a lot of anything else, haven’t gotten back to work after my last couple years of surgeries so my budget was basically zero.(Supplemented by Steam gifties from real ones) Soon to change this coming year I hope, but given my disability, the depression of being stuck for medical reasons back in a house I had escaped from, the general everything, being poor, and not even having access to my main platform to game on at all, I think I did ok.
If you’ll pardon me I gotta go grind some more Rocket League.
Right, but again, you have choices in almost every piece of hardware.
Consoles lock you down a lot harder in this respect. You either but their hardware and possibly software, or you miss out on the whole thing.
And a lot of people, like a sibling of mine is just getting to the point of maturity where you figure out the brand you like is the bad guy and you don’t want to give them money anymore, but you sorely miss the product itself.
Given how hard they’re locked in, it’s really hard for them to jump to a new platform. Not quite as bad as switching from Android to or from iPhone, but not super far off.
Personally I jumped out completely before I got invested in a digital console store, so I didn’t have that problem. But the point is that they gotta completely start a new collection and paradigm.
Whereas if you one day have a huge problem with let’s say, Steam, you can just opt to never buy from them again without losing access to your library, no matter what hardware you’re running it on.
You can choose to never buy an Acer monitor, CoolerMaster PSU, or (insert other random examples) while still having a computer.
I mean it’s impossible to really find “good” companies, but you can at least pick your lines in the sand with a lot more granularity than just consoles.
It’s not perfect, but is still better than the big 3.
Plus no matter where you land with your choices, you will still have the same library.