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The Steam Deck's budget price tag is the reason I still rate it nearly two years on
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this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Steam Deck
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64GB eMMC LCD
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256GB NVMe LCD
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512GB NVMe LCD
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- 45W Power supply with 1.5m cable
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512GB NVMe OLED
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- 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
- Carrying case
- Steam profile bundle
1TB NVMe OLED
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- up to 90Hz refresh rate
- 6 nm APU
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- 50Whr battery; 3-12 hours of gameplay (content-dependent)
- 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
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A. It's not $600.
B. Games on PC are far less than used discs are.
C. Gamepass is not and does not in any way resemble a budget option. The budget option is owning games so you don't routinely have new expenses to be able to play games all. Renting is and always has been an obscenely expensive way to play games.
A. Yeah $400 for 64gb, real value. But whatever I'm sure that one is real popular.
B. No, not if you sell them back or rent them.
C. I payed $70 for 3 years of game pass. I have since played well over 40 games.
The math on renting is easy so I'll spell it out to you.
Gamepass + game fly == 30+ 205 = $235 for the year. Let's say you are a light gamer and only play through 5 games a year. That's 70*5 == $350, you have already broke even unless you include hardware, then you lost a whole ago.
I personally play more like 30 so I'm saving well over 2k USD a year.
PC gamers spite their wallets so they can play a stream game once and be proud they own it
A. Yes, that version is extremely popular.
B. It's not remotely close. Selling back physical games is still terrible value compared to discounts on Pc
C. Gamepass gave itself away for a while as a promotional gimmick. That's not what it costs. The literal only possible explanation for habitually renting games is that you're terrible with money. It's by far the worst budget option by a huge margin. It's not a legitimate choice for someone with limited funds. The day you stop paying, your library disappears.
Reselling I was getting about 80% back via Amazon within 2 days. There are other options than GameStop.
And I guess we're done since math is too hard. I already showed the value proposition. I'm not sure if you don't know math, but you're going to need to show me what quantum formula you are using that shows in not saving thousands of dollars.
Every number you gave was a lie with no basis in reality. The steam deck isn't $600. Game pass isn't $70 for 1 year, let alone 3. Abusing promos that no longer exist doesn't support your case, even ignoring that the library is terrible.
Then you're comparing it to full retail price ignoring that the entire discussion was that PC games are available heavily discounted with regularity. And again, the fact that as soon as you can't pay $30/month for GameFly and Gamepass, your "library" is gone.
You can go buy 3 years of gold and convert it into 3 years of GPU for $70. Even without the discount you are taking about $250. The math still easily works out.
It doesn't work that way anymore
Okay. So you have to play 6 games instead of 5. Seems like the majority here are focusing in on details that don't have a large effect on the math.
It could be $500 and it's 7 games to break even.
How many times do you need to be told, you don't buy games on PC for full price when on a budget you wait for sales that will frequently get you down to 60% of the price if not even lower for a couple year old game. Go for more indie titles and you have an exponentially larger pool of games to pick from than on game pass. Then you are not having your library pulled out from under you when Microsoft decides not to support a title anymore.
I’m a major advocate for GPU, and I’m currently subscribed, but even I wouldn’t say it’s a better cost ratio than Steam games.
You’d be winning more people to your argument if you at least admitted and apologized for the things you got blatantly wrong.
That math is so wrong on so many reasons. Let's compare it
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:
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.
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.