My wife wanted a switch for her birthday since my son is getting older and wants to spend more time playing games. So we waited on the Switch 2 Direct announcement and it was clearly just a cash grab. Even the hardware demo "game" is a digital purchase. The Chat button only works with a subscription. €90,- for a Mario Kart game and expensive upgrades for games you already own.
So Steamdeck it is, the OLED model is a bit pricey, but i've only been hearing good things. And it wil run emulators which is an added boon.
Something interesting is that Steam users, (myself included) will ignore a game not on sale, I couldn't tell you why. The only thing I can think of is that we are so used to things being "on sale" we forget that there was a reason it was priced at that amount in the first place.
$60 $70 looks better than $60
Factorio is an interesting example, its never on sale. It's just the price. In fact it keeps going up in price.
Because steam always has a plethora of amazing games on sale. You could never buy a full price game and still never run out of awesome things to play. And even if there is a particular game you want, it'll almost certainly be on sale within a few months. I'd have to double check, but I don't think I've paid more than 40 bucks for any single game in years.
The Steam Deck can run Biebian and Hannah Montana Linux fairly easily. That's not really a selling point just another thing Nintendo isn't bringing to the table.
I impulse bought a deluxe Need for Speed game a few weeks ago for $6.50. I've already played it 65 hours. I don't want to jump into the math of it but I reckon I would need to enjoy Mario Kart for much greater than 650 hours before I would get the same hours per dollar value NfS: Heat has brought me thanks to a Steam sale. And Mario Kart could never catch up in miles per hour.
Just a heads up you'll get to learn how to navigate Linux if you change your mind on the starter car. The only way I could start a new save file was by manually deleting the old one in the file system. It was a little frustrating but served as a good reminder that it is a handheld computer not just an outlet for gaming.