Just because they are popular games it doesn't mean they are well suited to a handheld, nor does it mean that the audience that is buying these types of devices are demanding the ability to play them. How is it that the Switch has done so well then?
These were the most played games on the deck last year:
- Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Dave the Diver
- Elden Ring
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Half-Life
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Resident Evil 4
- Starfield
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Vampire Survivors
Not seeing much there that is similar to COD, Destiny, or even FIFA. Maybe, just maybe, the demographic and the audience for these devices is a bit different to what you and the OP are assuming?
Hard to determine if those games would show up there since they don’t work on the Deck. Not sure how you’re expecting to find something similar to FIFA when it’s pretty much the only viable football game on PC.
Does this list invalidate your comments about the trackpads, since pretty much all of them can be played quite comfortably with joysticks?
Regarding the trackpad, the nature of the windows OS makes it a necessity for ease of navigation in the OS to even get to your games/launcher. The trackpad is also useful for games that don't have controller support. By default, SteamOS is set up in a way that most people will never even need to use a trackpad but they are included.
the Windows handhelds boot directly to the Games library overlay, though. Or at least that’s how they’re supposed to work. So the likes of Armor Crate and Legion Space which are controller friendly alternatives to Big Picture, and which have all the alternative launchers built in.
For Windows Desktop use, joysticks can be a drag. I haven’t used any of the Windows handhelds yet, only dualbooted my old LCD deck into a painful Windows 10 experience but that’s not comparable since I never fully set it up properly.
The windows devices tend to be poorly thought out, especially from a user experience perspective, and many of them are jumping on the bandwagon and attempting to capitalise on the popularity of the Steam Deck rather than offering anything meaningful in the way of innovation.
Really? Every Windows handheld has shipped with their own take on Big Picture, and between the Legion Go and the Ally there’s clearly a lot of thought put into hardware differentiation.
The moment SteamOS is fully available for devices other than the deck it's pretty likely we will stop seeing these devices shipping with Windows. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I’m not sure how an assumed scenario that hasn’t played out yet is supposed to tell me everything I need to know. The chatter was that Proton would see a meaningful change in Linux share of Steam gamers on Desktop, but most of the growth to the current 2% seems driven by Steamdeck.
The ideal would be for every device to support dualboot between both OSes, including SteamDeck. Let consumers make the informed choice themselves. Still waiting for Valve to make good on their promises in that regard.
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