When the Steam Deck was still just an idea, Valve says some staff were like, "I just want that for me" and "the point wasn't even to make a product out of it"

I remember one of my first thoughts on the Deck was "even if this fails commercially or can't play any new games, I want it for old games and emulation. Even if it goes nowhere else, it would be worth it for me."

and that's the secret to a good product

I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.

Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.

It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel's place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn't be competing in that space anymore.

It's such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.

The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.

I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I've barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it's just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.

It really shows, because it's just a well thought out, no compromises device. I'm still crossing my fingers hoping that they're getting somewhere with the steam controller 2 prototypes that I'm sure they're playing with if only for shits and giggles

In the early days I thought it would be some niche gimmick that would never take off. Turns out it wasn't and it's the best handheld gaming machine ever made.

It feels good to be wrong!

It's also what got me to finally go linux full-time.

I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.

When the deck was announced I thought to myself "that can't work with every game, can it?" as I'd attempted that myself.

But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it's gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?

When I heard of it, I was wondering who that was for and what was even the point. Since I got mine, I barely play on my desktop PC anymore. I really didn't expect to live it this much.

I'll be real, before the Steam Deck existed, I was toying around with the idea of either building something basically like it, or how to slap a Steam Link into that kind of formfactor (3d printer, breadboard shenanigans, etc.)

Was very pleasantly surprised when Valve announced exactly what I wanted. Have been happy with it ever since.

still loving and using it. grabbed bf1942 from the archive.org, now playing in lan with friendo and 255 bots. epic joy.

There’s another product that probably was this and ended up… somewhat badly. Valve index

It wasn’t bad in itself but the whole vr thing kinda missed the chance for whatever reason and now Zuckerberg took over it mercilessly. Maybe it was naive to think it will ever take hold outside of simming

Still the beginnings were real fun and that valve demo was so real I had panic attack from past me agoraphobia while in tutorial

I am impressed with how many games are now playable on Linux with Proton and how well they look and play, to think this game meanwhile has graphics glitches on the PS5. I might get one myself.

While you're all here what controller do you use for your deck? Been thinking of getting one of the hall effect 8bitdo ones, but I'm open to trying anything.

That's how all products should be

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I got one to replace the Xbox that I've had hooked up to my tv's since gen 1.... absolutely no regrets.

I have a 14+hr travel day coming up in the next couple months and it's going to get it's first work out as a portable, lol.

Isn't that generally how Valve operates on the whole anyway? They don't set out to make products; they just do what they want and if they actually finish it, they sell it.