They weren't even the first, Ayn and Ayaneo were making handheld gaming computers well before Valve or the other major companies started to get involved.
It's a niche market. Niche markets are always under served.
As great as the steam deck may be, it's only going to appeal to a small percentage of gamers. Generally more tech savvy players who frequently travel some distance with enough down time to justify that purchase. Whether that's commuters or guys who travel for work. Or guys who just want a really expensive controller so they can play from their favorite chair.
device to play the
Actually, there are a few different ones. If you look for pocket PCs or even specific for gaming. The mainstream just didn't know about it because they don't have marketing reach.
Monopoly? More like, the choice that doesn't suck. Same game store for last 20 years. Free online play for games. FPS games support mouse and keyboard. No OS fee or subscription. Crazy cheap deals with stuff like humble bundle. Plus: sharing library with friends and family supported.
Meanwhile Xbox 360 store is closing this year. Microsoft, Nintendo and PlayStation are all trying to get me to subscribe to a Netflix style gaming service.
Considering the amount of PC portables releasing these days and the fact Nintendo made a portable that sold 9 figures, I wouldn't worry about a monopoly just yet
I mean, they worked really hard for this and did tremendosly improve linux gamig while doing so.
Having a monopoly because your product is too good comoared to everyone is something different than forcing a monopoly with market power, and I think that in this case it could be okay
Having a monopoly because everyone chooses to purchase from you is not "having a monopoly", so not only should it be ok, it should be a wake up call to the competition that they can and should do better.
They're using a cut down 700 series Nvidia gpu. Your phone doesn't feel faster, it is faster.
New Nvidia chips are very power efficient. The switch could be a powerhouse for wattage if they used a new chip but then they couldn't pocket as much profit. And people keep buying the switch anyways it seems. No matter that Zelda TOTK runs like a laggy potato.
Microsoft came crawling back. EA came crawling back. Ubisoft came crawling back. Square Enix came crawling back. Activision came crawling back. Most viable competitor can't turn a profit despite third-party exclusives and free games.
Now they've got handheld users and the entire Linux gaming community suctioned onto Gaben's tits.
Yeah i like its even open for non steam game launchers ( epic games etc... ).
And the trackpads are my favorite, its so easy to scroll or move the cursor with them.
They even have a super long charging cable. Its just valves baby, you know it when you have one.
Ryujinx and yuzu both work and run well in my experience. Biggest barrier was navigating the deck file structure for setting them up, but not impossible. Both also perform well via streaming from a desktop.
yuzu tends to be more performant, but ryujinx tends to scale with resolution options better. on strictly handheld, most of the time due to the steam decks resolution, there isnt a hard need to scale resolution conpared to the switch so more often then not, yuzu is the no brainer choice.