this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Steam Deck

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The Steam Deck's budget price tag is the reason I still rate it nearly two years on (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That math is so wrong on so many reasons. Let's compare it

Device Steam Deck Xbox
Cheapest official price 339 549.99
Subscription fee 0 14.99/month
Initial games all of your steam library (800+ games for me) 0
Emulator support Yes No
Base cost after a year 339 729.87

This means that I have 390.87 to spend in games before we break even. Let's see how many games I can buy with that, to do that in a way that's as impartial as possible I'll look at the top most played games to try to not put my bias for games I prefer and add their lowest recorded price (since steam sales are common place) on steam until I reach the 390 I have to spend. This gets me to number 33 on the top 100 most played games. It's worth noting that if I add emulators, free games, and the fact that I personally prefer to buy a lot of indie games than spend 120 into two football manager games, I can easily make those 390 get me a LOT more games. But here's the biggest kicker, if one month I'm short on cash I can play any of the hundreds games I have, you unfortunately if you don't pay gamepass are out of games. Also in a few years when you need to buy a new console you'll lose all your games except the ones Microsoft allows you to keep playing, so in the long run you get to where I'am, i.e. having a large curated list of games that you like and can play without having to pay.

To add insult to injury, I get to play my games on the go, and the suspend/resume midgame feature means I'm back in my game within seconds, not having to wait until my Xbox finished playing the Call of Duty ad

Sources:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Look, I agree with you but let's not cherry pick the Xbox numbers just because we don't like it. Series S is cheaper than that. With Xbox you also bring your 360(some, digital), xbo library with you. Subscription is optional and emulator support is available with dev mode - Microsoft didn't lock it out and it's a very viable emulator machine.

Imo Deck is still better value but if you have your history on Xbox, a series s isn't a that far off if you are on a budget - gamepass or not.

It's hard to compare them anyway. One is a console and one a portable PC. Really different use cases and markets.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yes (to de series S), but he specifically mentioned buying used discs, and the series S is digital only, so it's not viable for what he's proposing. Also yes (for the 360 games), but it's only some and only the games you bought digitally, so his arguments of buying cheap used games also moots this point. Subscription is not optional if you want to play online, which granted I personally don't care, but his argument was Xbox+gamepass+used games was a better cost benefit than Steam Deck, so he's including gamepass in his budged for Xbox so to remove it it would be a different point from what he was making.

Did not know about the emulator, glad to hear that, I thought because it was a console it would have been a lot more closed than that. In any case the emulator didn't factor in the price of anything, it's just because I like to play a lot of old games on my deck so that gives me hours of fun for free, glad to know people with Xbox are also able to enjoy it.