Why I Sold My Steam Deck to Buy a Switch OLED
Last October, I had a choice to make. Do I buy a fancy new Switch OLED model? Or wait until next year for an even fancier,
newer Steam Deck? I chose the Steam Deck, because, hey, we’ve
already got a Switch. This was something new. Thirty minutes after finally getting my hands
on a Steam Deck, I was sure that I’d made a mistake. I did my absolute best to like it. I gave it a good shake. For three months, I tried and tried to find
a way to fit it into my life. So, with no small amount of disappointment,
I walked it around to my local game trading shop and sold it so that I could replace it
with an OLED Switch.
To be clear: there’s nothing wrong
with the Steam Deck, and I know a lot of people, including some friends, are getting a lot
out of it. Personally, though, it didn’t meet my needs,
and a recent shift in the way my family plays games has meant that a Nintendo console is
just a more useful thing to have in the house. So what does the Switch do that the Steam
Deck doesn’t? Before we get into that, I’m going to talk
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of the video. Now, where was I? Ah yes: all hands on Deck. I was one of the first people to preorder
a Steam Deck. It seemed like the device I’d been waiting
for all my life: a convenient handheld PC that let me play all the games that just don’t
come to the console. I’ve always been a handheld guy.
I like a small, personal screen, and with
young kids in the house, playing games in portable mode has been best for keeping small
eyes away from, for example, somewhat adult monsters in Persona 5. I wanted a PC I could take on the go, which
would play anything, and would remove the faffing about that I always experience with
computer gaming. Because, somehow, every game involves a bit
of faff. I distinctly remember struggling for several
hours to get Sonic Mania to run on my computer, and that should have been easy! Maybe my computers are always just terrible. The other thing I wanted was to be able to
play weird itch.io games conveniently.
I love an indie title, a true indie title,
made by someone in a few weeks for a game jam or thrown together as a passion project
without much budget. These games never come to Switch, but they’re
glorious, and I want an easier way to play them. I figured a handheld PC would make things
nice and simple. When I first got the Deck out of the box,
I did the usual thing: I marveled at the size of it, and how loud the fan is, etc etc. Every Steam Deck review has covered this to
death. The truth is, the size is cumbersome enough
to be detrimental. Not long after receiving my Deck, I had a
trip to London.
I considered bringing it with me to entertain
myself on the train…but, that would mean carrying this chunky case around the city
all day…no, that was too much effort. I brought my iPad mini instead and spent the
time on the train drawing 8-bit skeletons. Maybe for a game project, maybe just for fun. They say the best camera is the one you have
with you, and similarly, the best handheld is the one that fits into your tiny
stylish reporter’s satchel.
In terms of actually playing on the Steam
Deck, though…this thing is incredibly comfortable. Honestly, it’s big, yet, but it’s designed
for a human adult’s hand, which is something I’ve never felt about any JoyCon configuration. I have never liked the size and shape of the
native Switch controls, which is probably again why I’ve been perfectly happy with
just a Switch Lite until recently. The Steam Deck is waaaaay better for actually
playing for long periods. So while I wouldn’t consider the Deck to
be very portable, it is comfortable.
As a device for playing around the home – in
bed, on the couch, at my desk, it’s fantastic. This alone would be enough to sell me on it,
were it not for the bigger issues I have with the software. Remember: I got one of the first Steam Decks. The software that it shipped with, pre-update,
was somewhat lacking. There wasn’t even a sleep function while
in desktop mode. It’s my feeling that the Steam Deck will
be perfect in a year or two. The software just isn’t quite ready yet. If you’re low down on the preorder list,
you’re just skipping the awkward trial period while SteamOS gets all its kinks
hammered out. I have two major issues with the software. First: Proton. Proton is the magic that I don’t entirely
understand which lets the Steam Deck play Windows games on its Linux operating system. It’s a marvel, truly it is. It’s a straight-up miracle that any of these
games run as well as they do.
As such, it feels like griping to complain
about the few games that don’t work, but complain I must, because it always seems to
end up being the games I wanted to play. The challenge is that most of the
games I want to play are on Switch already. I had a hard time finding PC-exclusive titles
that I wanted to play. I had a go at Horizon Zero Dawn, that was
fun, and probably the thing that taxed the Deck most of anything I tried.
The big system seller, Elden Ring, is probably
great on Deck…but I just don’t have time for an open-world Souls game. I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to
try it. I’m an extremely busy dad, so the prospect
of a game that involves me being beaten to a pulp over and over until I “git gud”
just isn’t what I’m looking for from my gaming time. After trying out a bunch of different stuff,
I finally found a game that I wanted to play: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2. Regular viewers of the channel might remember
that I often call myself Kotor, and that’s because, once upon a time, I used to make
Knights of the Old Republic fan comics and the name kind of stuck. If there is one thing that the Steam Deck
does perfectly for me, it’s retro gaming. KOTOR 2 fit particularly well because I could
even install the fan-made Restored Content mod that fills in all the bits of deleted
stuff that had to be cut from the official release.
I even went so far as to record a version
of this video wherein I said that KOTOR 2 with this mod was the one thing that the Deck
had over the Switch. I had to scrap that video because, while I
was editing it, Aspyr media announced that KOTOR 2 would be ported to the Switch and
that the Restored Content mod was coming as additional DLC. So, I was back to square one. Although, at least the Steam version of the
game already has this mod, and doesn’t have a game-breaking bug. Side note: I don’t rate Aspyr Media very
highly. Of the non-Switch games that I wanted to try,
the top of the list was The Forgotten City.
This is my kind of game: a glorified walking
simulator wherein I stroll around, chat to some NPCs, and uncover a mystery of some sort. I don’t know, I haven’t played
it. Because it’s one of the few games to be
marked as Unplayable. It just doesn’t run. Some games are Verified, like Sonic the Hedgehog. Some games are Playable but require a little
fiddling, like Sonic Adventure 2, which expects you to manually select gamepad controls before
starting the game. Some games, like Sonic Adventure DX, just
don’t start up at all. I have no idea why not. The Forgotten City, apparently, just doesn’t
work. Another game that doesn’t work is Worms
WMD. I know this because my friends wanted to play
it, but I couldn’t join in, because it doesn’t run on the Steam Deck. For a while there it felt like every key game
I wanted to play but just wouldn’t start.
Minit, I wanted to play. I have a DRM-free Linux copy, but, Doesn’t
work. Superhot I have on itch.io, doesn’t work. You can do some fiddling and get some non-Steam
games to run, but it’s hit and miss. Plus, it involves using the Linux desktop,
which I despise. Linux and I have a troubled history. When I was a teenager, my dad had a computer
company. What exactly he did I don’t know, but it
involved him replacing computers at local businesses, and then bringing home all their
scraps. In his spare time, after a long day of setting
up computer networks, he would…set up computer networks.
He’d fix up these old PCs and connect them
to our home network, which soon featured twice as many PCs as there were people in the house. Naturally, because Linux is free and Windows
is expensive, Dad would always install Linux on these computers, and I hated it. I would start some homework on a computer
at school, then bring it home on a floppy disk (yes, I’m that old), and…and then
I wouldn’t be able to continue it because OpenOffice either didn’t like .docx files
or reformatted the entire thing so that any pictures I’d placed in my schoolwork were
thrown around at random into the margins of the page. Plus, Linux couldn’t run Macromedia Flash,
and this was the program I was most excited to learn at the time, which started me
on my career of making digital art and videos which has led me to YouTube.
Maybe Linux was just trying to save me from
me? Anyway, returning to Linux after a twenty-year hiatus, I’ve got to say: all the same issues are still there. I love the theory behind Linux: an open-source
the operating system that can be completely customized and developed by passionate amateurs for
the benefit of the whole community. The thing is, though, you get what you pay
for. Especially in terms of quality assurance testing. Microsoft has a budget to make the Windows
UI is a little more friendly, and I feel that when switching between
the two operating systems.
This is especially apparent on touchscreen
devices. My main computer is a Surface Pro, so I use
touch controls all day long, and they’re nicely intuitive, although I preferred Windows
8 to Windows 10 if I’m honest. Haven’t tried Windows 11 yet because I have
no strong loyalty to Microsoft, whatever this video might have you thinking, and I don’t
trust that Windows 11 won’t somehow ruin my 2019 Surface in new and exciting unforeseen
ways. The Steam Deck’s gaming mode, which it boots
into initially, is pretty decent. It’s simple, straightforward, a little clumsy
in places, but mostly okay. Sometimes, though, I need to adjust a setting
or enter a Steam key on the browser or desktop mode. Or, I want to record gameplay footage for
a video, and OBS doesn’t run in gaming mode. So, I swap over to desktop mode and begin
an exercise in frustration.
The version of Linux that the Steam Deck runs
is not yet optimized for gamepad and touchscreen controls, which is a problem, because the
Steam Deck doesn’t have a button keyboard or a mouse. Somehow even with two trackpads and two analog
sticks and a touchscreen, simple things like dragging and dropping files is a tremendous
chore on the Deck. I don’t understand it, there are so many
control schemes and somehow none of them work 100% of the time?! The piece de resistance for me was trying
to get some gameplay footage for our Sonic 3 Simon Thomley video from the Deck and onto
my PC so I could put it into the video I was editing.
The natural option was to upload it to the
cloud and download it again, but my neighbors must have been all playing HALO Infinite or
something because my bandwidth was throttled. So can I save the file to the micro SD card,
pop it out, and put it into my computer for simple offline file transfer? Nope. Something about the way the Steam Deck formats
its memory cards means that it’s completely incompatible with Windows.
So I had to wait three hours for the file
to upload and then slowly download it again. This isn’t strictly the Steam Deck’s fault,
but it’s an indication of the kind of challenges I’ve faced with this thing every time I’ve
tried to use it for work. I thought this would be a useful tool to help
me make new, different kinds of videos. It turns out it’s much easier to get files
between the iPad that I use for drawing, and the PC that I use for video editing. The Steam Deck is somehow less compatible
with Windows than an Apple product, and that’s bizarre to me.
I could have put Windows on the Deck, in theory. Doing so now, though, would have lost me the
use of Steam OS, and without a keyboard and mouse, this thing wouldn’t let me, for example,
suspend or exit a game conveniently. Eventually, the Steam Deck will get dual support
for Windows and SteamOS at the same time, and at that point, it might be more suitable
for my personal needs. The whole time I had the Deck, regular updates
brought a variety of quality of life improvements that made a genuine difference to how comfortable
and convenient the thing was to play and use.
If you’re on the waiting list for one of
these things, there are advantages to not being an early adopter. The Deck software at the start of this year
was significantly different from the latest update. There’s nothing wrong with letting other
people beta test this, then getting a far more stable and comfortable experience out
of the box once it turns up. This glimmer of hope for the future, though,
doesn’t fix the fact that the current incarnation of the Steam Deck just isn’t right for me
right now. Instead, I need
another Switch. It’s all my daughter’s fault. That’s probably enough of an explanation
for most parents watching, but bear with me. I’ve always been a handheld
fan, and with a baby in the house, the Switch Lite always seemed like the best option for
me. I could play privately, quietly, without accidentally
giving my kids unwanted screen time or showing them any games I’d rather they didn’t
see.
Now, though, my daughter is seven, obsessed
with Splatoon and Zelda, and very eager to play as many games as possible. We must be the only family left in the world
that still plays the Wii U as much as we do. We’re still getting a lot out of it. Gaming for me has gone from being a solitary
experience to a family bonding activity. My daughter played the Wii U so much
that she wore out the GamePad charging cable, I had to buy a new one on eBay. Then a second new one when the first one turned
out to be dodgy. Nintendo’s retro support just ain’t what
it used to be. Currently, there is only one thing on my daughter’s
mind: Splatoon 3. We get a daily countdown as if waiting for
Christmas. Every day she’ll tell us just how desperate
she is for the game. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t want
my daughter playing online games on Switch Lite. I don’t feel comfortable with that.
Splatoon isn’t even the issue – it’s
whatever comes next. The Fortnites or Among Uses of the world. Once there’s a precedent for my daughter
playing online games in her bedroom, we can’t take that back. Currently, she plays the original Splatoon
on Wii U, but it’s clear just how much Splatoon 3 means to her. So, we need a Switch that plugs into the TV
for her to play. This also opens up a lot of other options
for us. I am probably the person that Let’s Go Pikachu
was made for – one thing I’ve been looking forward to is playing a relaxed, casual multiplayer
Pokemon RPG with my daughter, but I’ve held off because that just wouldn’t be comfortable
on handheld mode.
We have played some games together on the
Switch Lite – most recently, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but let me tell you: that
is not a comfortable experience. My back hurts. So, we need a new Switch, one with HDMI out. It might as well be an OLED model, I’d prefer
to future-proof it a bit. If I feel like splashing out, we could
get the limited edition Splatoon 3 Switch. I’ve never had a novelty Nintendo console
before. So, it made sense to me. Sell the Steam Deck, and buy a Switch. Maybe I’ll revisit a handheld PC in a few
years when the wrinkles have all been ironed out. All of this is not to say that the Deck isn’t
good.
There’s nothing wrong with it. It just doesn’t fit my lifestyle. The moral of the story is? Everyone has their preferences. Sometimes something that seems perfect on
paper just doesn’t fit, and that’s okay. I hope my Steam Deck goes to a good home with
someone who actually will make the most of it.
