Topic: The everything Xbox thread

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@NintendoByNature @Tasuki
Here's my thoughts.

While this will vary from person to person, preference to preference, I can only share my perspective. And my perspective is this- SteamDeck doesn't come close to replacing my Switch OLED for multiple reasons- notably the fact Switch OLED has a better screen, is lighter, gets twice the battery life on average, easily plays on the TV, handheld or tabletop with removable controllers, and at least for the 1.5 TB of curated games I have downloaded, they look and run just as good as they would on Deck, since I cap literally EVERYTHING to 30fps on Deck for battery life.

However.

For games not on Switch, or the select games that are noticably downgraded on Switch (Witcher 3, DOOM Eternal, Alan Wake, etc), Deck is the perfect companion piece, and has, if anything, replaced my PS5, XSX and gaming PC.

Aside from the advantage of being handheld, the Deck offers a number of advantages over Xbox and PS consoles, which I will list below:

• Ability to utilize gyro aiming for any game you want. This in and of itself is a dealbreaker for me on other consoles, and resulted in me only playing RPGs without aiming. But with Deck, I don't have to worry about it. Every game that needs gyro aiming, you can toggle mouse gyro aiming within seconds.
• Rear buttons make using the controller much more comfortable. Because all controllers except Switch Pro have shoulder bumpers that are ergonomically hard to reach (especially Xbox and yes, even the SteamDeck), mapping LB/RB to the L4/R4 rear buttons is an amazing solution that solves the issue entirely. Furthermore, you can also map another 2 buttons (I usually go with A/B) to the bottom rear buttons, L5/R5
• You can run emulators such as PrimeHack (A fork of Dolphin Emulator designed specifically to play Metroid Prime Trilogy with "dual analog" mouse and keyboard controls, which, since you're playing on Deck, can easily be mapped to controller with mouse mapped to gyro aiming, so you can play Metroid Prime 2 Echoes and Metroid Prime 3 Corruption with the same modern control scheme seen in the Switch remaster of Prime
• Steam Input is the best controller config in the history of video games, and goes way beyond simple remapping or assigning mouse to gyro aim- you can create extra commands, action layers, on screen radial menus... the sky is the limit. And since Steam Input has a community tab you can access from simply pausing the game with the Steam button, you can instantly assign configs uploaded by other users.
• Your games are purchased on Steam, which means you can play said games on a separate gaming PC if you so desire, or even dock the Deck to your TV.
• Because SteamDeck is a PC, you can install all kinds of plug-ins to adjust color saturation to look more like an OLED, have ProtonDB icons on each game in your library that provides the playability rating as platinum, gold, silver, bronze or borked (separate from Valve's internal rating system of playable, untested or unsupported) which hyperlinks to the game's ProtonDB page with user comments on how they got it running best, you can use plugins to change music, themes and sound effects (kind of like homebrewing a console would offer) undervolt for better battery life, upgrade SSD, etc.

Aside from that, there are some negatives to be aware of. The system is 680 grams, so it's heavier than Switch OLED which is 422 grams. But imo it's not so heavy its uncomfortable. Other PC handhelds like OneXplayer2 that clock in at 820 grams... that's too heavy imo. The battery life is also short for AAA games, though if you install CryoTools and if you undervolt, you can stretch 2.5 - 3 hrs on many AAA games, such as RE4 Remake. Less demanding games like Alan Wake (original 360 version port) can hit 5 hrs. You'll pretty much always want to run at 30fps for battery life, though less demanding games can do 40 fps (since it allows you to change screen refresh rate to 40 Hz to match). Pushing 60 though... even the games that can handle it, I wouldn't recommend it.

You can buy the $399 64GB model, then order a 2TB m.2 NVMe 2230 SSD for $157 from AliExpress and swap it out yourself. That's what I'm doing (though I originally bought the 512GB model). That's $557 for 2TB vs $650 for 512GB. It's a no brainer to just do that. Slap a 1TB microSD in on top and you're all set with 3TB, which should last a full generation for Steam games downloaded.

HOWEVER. It does support hot-swapping microSD (means you don't have to power the system off to swap) so in theory you could forego the SSD upgrade and just hot-swap 1TB microSD's as needed. But load times won't be as good as if you upgraded the SSD.

It's also of note that Steam wasn't really designed around offline portable play. All Steam games only have to be launched one time connected to the internet, the first time. After that they can be played offline. However. There are a number of 3rd party games that mandate an online check, such as Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. So just be aware and research before buying games.

I used to love tinkering with my modded 3DS, but that's outdated now and I don't really use it anymore. Deck has taken over that role of "modded system I tinker with". Be it finding the lightest weight portable 10,000 mAh battery in the world and using Deckmate attachment to clip it on the back to get extended playtime, be it installing CryoTools to extend min VRAM from 1GB to 4GB and change Swappiness setting from 100 to 1, be it installing plug-ins to increase color saturation and activate ProtonDB playability rating icons for all games, be it undervolting the CPU, SoC and GPU, be it upgrading the SSD to 2TB... I just love tinkering with this thing to deck it out.

If you don't really value portable play, you won't get much from it. But if Switch has spoiled you to the point you wish every game had the freedom to be played anywhere... you'll get a lot from it. Just be aware of the fact that, for every game you first launch, you're going to have to mess with the settings to get them appropriate for Deck. Sometimes that's easy, other times I have to watch a YT video guide to get the exact settings to reach stable 30. It just depends on the game. But that usually only takes a few min, and it's a one time thing. After you've got the settings dialed in, it's plug and play for that game just like any other platform.