TBH, I have had the switch for a few weeks and brought skyward sword, and two mario games. Not overly impressed though. The handheld feels very plasticky, controllers are slightly loose. The games play ok (don’t bother with mk11 as it’s another 20gb download!). Games are hugely expensive, 10 games can easily cover the cost of a gpd win now, probably why the console is cheap. So yeah, if there is something you really want to play then maybe, otherwise look at one of the proper handhelds which have far more power and scope. I am torn between a gpd win 3 and the aya neo. Nintendo really lost my attention after GameCube.

It is a matter of who you are talking about. You do not see a need for this,But I am on SSDI (I am in the US, and this would be the US version of Universal Basic Income, I get this monthly, and only $550 ) and medicare(the US version of Universal Heath Care) Oh and I am Diabetic Type 2, and have a prosthetic left leg(I was standing on the sidewalk when a car hit me)
I have a lot of time on my hands, I am a huge geek, so I do have a lot of stuff to pass my days. I take a walk every day to the nearest Araby's and spend about 2 to 3 hours playing my Nintendo Switch.When I get home I read books,manga,and watch Blu Rays of my favorite anime,shows and movies, I would love to have a handheld that played all my GOG games. Love my Switch but would love to play my GOG games on the go. I plan on getting this.
and to the laptop and Mobile. Laptops are too bulky, and Mobiles are only good for calling,texting,useing non gameing apps,and watching YouTube videos,but the only games I have on my phone are Sport Manager games that I buy..Only games I play on my phone.
So yeah I am a soft hypocritical geek.:)

It's just a shame that GOG will never officially Support Linux the wishlist for it was marked as in progress 6 and a half years ago.

Without Galaxy we cannot play loads multiplayer native Linux games on the SteamDeck and running Galaxy using wine has massive overhead and is glitchy and 95% of my games are native Linux way so using wine defeats the purpose for me.

Steam now has hundreds of native Linux ports of games that are missing on GOG it's just driving me back to using Steam.

Whatever do you mean?
Surely they wouldn't have lied to us..?

The Galaxy for Linux wishlist was marked as in progress in 2015 and still is marked as in progress despite them saying over the years it will never happen.

It's why a lot of multiplayer games that have a Steam Linux port with cross platform multiplayer only have local co-op for the Linux on GOG or just outright refuse to put the Linux port on GOG due to no multiplayer API.

Developers can use the Galaxy API for Windows and Mac OS GOG releases to do cloud saves, achievements, friends lists and multiplayer but need to make the Linux version a separate thing which is why so many Linux ports that are on Steam are not on GOG because it's just not worth the extra effort for a lot of developers.

Steam Deck battery may be the end of you?

Louis Rossmann giving opinions on Steam deck opening and breakdown. And that the battery isn't as big a deal as originally suggested.

Though the batteries in Electric cars can look like fireworks and reignite hours after putting it out... So...

Almost all of us have phones (and tablets, laptops etc.) with similar batteries with us, yet we rarely hear or see them catching fire. I guess sometimes it happens though.

I've stopped buying Huawei/Honor phones and tablets though because both my wife's Honor 10 phone, as well as my kids' Huawei tablet, battery started to swell after two years or so, breaking the whole device (e.g. the screen of the tablet cracked as the battery inside it started to swell).

I haven't seen similar battery swelling with any of our Samsung phones, e.g. our Samsung J5 phones from 2015 and 2016. Hence the new tablet I recently bought was a Samsung A7.

I don't know if I've just had bad luck with Honor/Huawei, or if they really use some kind of different batteries that start swelling after a couple of years...

As for electric cars, I guess there is a difference in different countries, but here you are normally obliged to mot test your card every year. I presume or at least hope those mot tests would start including health checks for the electric car batteries. Not sure how well the cars themselves report about possible problems with the battery.

I had a hellish time getting Samsung to refund us on 2 galaxy s7 phones that had battery problems. In a week of ownership my partner's s7 kept overheating & the screen developed a hairline fracture & bled (no exterior damage including the digitiser) battery was later proven to be damaged. During that initial lengthy fight with Samsung over it, my own s7's battery expanded to the point it warped the aluminium sides, despite me disabling fast charge day 1 and taking care of it so that was added to the case against them. We won because I was able to provide a stronger technical argument than they did (the S7 edge ironically was also in the news around that time for battery issues).

I'd never use Samsung again after tearing down one of those s7's; Samsung make phones that look good but have near zero durability even if there's no manufacturing flaws (nothing whatsoever to mitigate dropping or twisting for instance).

I used to work on phones (& pda's :p) primarily nokia's flagships when they were big players, & all I can say is that phones nowadays are made to break & be financially unviable to fix because they primarily focus on the contract market. Glued shells, unreplaceable batteries, wafer thin casings with no buffer zone, seating or even voidspace to mitigate impact damage, glass front & back (cannot cope with edge impacts well) or wafer thing aluminium that has no real strength & dents easily.

Weirdly I think Chinese companies like Huawei & Xiaomi have the sweet spot with their mid range phones because they have less premium exteriors that are actually better practically (e.g. plastic back) but the same high end hardware... Of course like you say batteries can be an issue, China's market has almost zero consideration for quality or safety, they only care about flooding the global market.

Maybe I'm just nostalgic for tactile buttons, weird designs & plastic cases!

Yay! Pleased to annoy some partisans doing this necro, some links:


steamdeck.com/en/verified
store.steampowered.com/greatondeck

Your Games: Steam Deck Compatibility
store.steampowered.com/steamdeck/mygames

Steam Deck Forum
steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions


I see CDPR games are Not verified yet... curious of their official stand about it.

Some early adopter yet to share experiences?

(Waiting to see if SD gives a serious boost to the Linux desktop/gaming. Or not.)

I answer/amend myself. Quoted:

"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt plays on Steam Deck, you can rest easy! We're pleased to confirm that our game has been Verified for Steam Deck Compatibility.

Steam Deck users are able to enjoy Geralt's adventures to the fullest. If you already have a copy of the game in your Steam Library then it's ready to run on your new hardware.

We’re working closely with Valve on the compatibility and performance aspects of our games on the Steam Deck. The goal is to provide the best possible Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 experience on this platform, while keeping in mind its unique hardware characteristics.

Please note that the above pertains to our recent games — there is no plan to provide additional Steam Deck optimizations for our legacy titles (like The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut)."

source:
store.steampowered.com/news/app/292030/view/4712459761457742330

I have to say that GOG's decision to not produce their own launcher is throwing money away.

I love my deck, I have a huge library on GOG, but all of the 3rd party launchers / game managers are a mangled mess of poor functionality, bad UI, and zero documentation.

HGL is meh
Lutris is good, but clunky and you never know if it is going to install your games correctly.

Sadly, I find myself looking at a game on GOG & then sighing before going to Steam to see if they have it at a comparable price ... and for no other reason than my Deck has become my primary gaming system, and I want to be sure that I will actually be able to run the game I just bought.

A bit of necro-posting but I'm in the same boat... I love gog and was getting games there but after getting SD pure convenience of ItJustWorks for the huge majority of games simply wins...

If I buy a handheld for PC games, it will probably be a Aya Neo.
It's Windows based, so we don't have to worry about games being compatible with Linux or some Valve standard.

I don't know if two months is enough to consider it necroposting, but I have to say that the SD intrigues me a lot.
I've been a Linux user since 2007 and I would never go back.
My priority goes to DRM free (I use mainly Free Software but hey, I like games) so I keep buying almost exclusively on GOG, and I don't plan to subscribe to Steam.

My hope is the SD becomes enough of a game changer for devs to focus more on gaming on Linux and by consequence for GOG to finally see that it's a profitable platform, as I feel that after all Linux gamers are usually more concerned about DRM than most gamers. It may be just me being biased, though.

It's also a middle ground between PC and consoles, as like consoles it's a common hardware on which games could be optimised for, and i guess having presets for games on such platform could be pretty neat.

So, tl;dr, although I won't support Valve by purchasing games from them, I still have to hope they finally push Linux gaming so much that GOG starts thinking seriously about it. In that case, I'll likely get one to play my console-like games I bought here

I have it since April and installed about 20 GOG games through linux mode and all work properly, only you need to add it as non-steam games afer intall them and put the specific controls and proton. And better than steam games that doesn´t ply without internet or install incorrect languages.