atomicpoet @ atomicpoet @lemmy.world

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179

Joined

10 mo. ago

If you hook it up to a monitor and use a keyboard with mouse, it’s indistinguishable from a regular PC.

No, I’m suggesting that it’s 2025—not 2017 anymore.

Android gaming is now very good, with many excellent titles available at an affordable price.

What’s more, you can play them very easily with an actual controller.

Yeah, you can hook up a Bluetooth controller just fine. Lots of them available.

You can emulate too.

You can get a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (with a pen) for C$330. It has better GPU performance than a Switch.

You can play games like Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile, and Sky: Children of the Light pretty damn well.

I own a Switch, and I very much care about fps.

I suspect fps is a very big reason people are upgrading to a Switch 2 -- seeing how that's a key selling point.

Why not just… turn it off?

I use Steam Big Picture.

Specifically, I have a desktop PC, with an RTX 3090, hooked up to my TV.

Now I don’t recommend doing it this way anymore. It’s probably better to buy something like a Legion Go, hook it up to an eGPU, while you dock it to a TV.

But probably your bigger question is, “Why do I use Steam Big Picture?”

Because I specifically want to play PC games on my TV. Half my Steam library natively supports gamepad. And of those that don’t, I can easily adapt keyboard controls to a gamepad—if community-built options have not yet been made.

Truly, Steam is what Xbox should have been.

Well, Halo is an interesting story because that was supposed to be a killer game for the Mac.

I owned a Mac at the time and I was very salty that Microsoft bought Bungie, then made it the system seller for the Xbox.

But I loved Bungie so much that I was willing to make a deal with the devil just to play Halo.

Yeah, and what I’m saying is that the original appeal of Xbox was that it brought a PC gaming experience to the living room.

Stuff like hard drives and online multiplayer, that was a PC thing.

Games like Halo, MechWarrior, and Fable—they were more culturally a PC thing. Then Microsoft made it a console thing.

In my opinion, what killed Xbox as a console is that PC gamers no longer felt a need to “go console”. And the only customers left for Xbox were dyed-in-the-wool console gamers.

Which you can’t really build a business off of since even in the best case scenario, consoles sell only 150M units per generation.

The Xbox One should have been a Windows box in a console shell.

Crazy saying that Valve doesn’t operate in the same spot as Microsoft when Microsoft makes Windows.

Personally, I was never interested in Xbox as a PlayStation killer. Its entire appeal was that it was a consolized PC.

Then Valve went ahead and made all PCs into consoles.

The ROG Ally’s joy-cons are pretty much this except they lack a trackpad on the left controller.

PSP was released in 2004.

If it were a person, it would be able to vote.

I know, but I have so much hardware at my house. I really don’t want to hoard stuff. I have two old PCs I have to get rid of, and a bunch of GPUs too.

Totally fair, but let’s put “long” in context—by ’90s gaming standards, a year was practically an eternity. That’s like five TikTok trends or three failed live-service shooters today.

And sure, there were console ports flying around faster than a cacodemon on nightmare mode, but let’s be honest: nobody was lining up to play Doom on the 32X, Jaguar, or 3DO. Most people didn’t even know what a 32X was, let alone own one.

The SNES version had about as much horsepower as a Roomba with a dying battery.

Meanwhile, on PC, Doom was running smooth, loud, and proud, exactly how John Romero intended—mouse, keyboard, and all. Even the execs chasing that gold rush had to admit: the real party was on DOS. If you wanted Doom at its best, you were booting it up on a beige box, not squinting at a blurry mess on a doomed add-on.

So yeah, everyone wanted Doom, but only the PC really delivered. The ports were like decaf coffee. Sure, you can drink it, but why would you?

Sure, a lot of these characters have gone multiplatform. But let’s be real, they’ll always have PC in their blood.

Doomguy was fragging demons on a beige tower long before he set foot on a console. Geralt was busy crashing Windows installs before he ever picked up a PlayStation trophy. Vault Boy practically has “runs best on PC” stamped on his forehead. Console gamers might have visiting rights now, but these mascots grew up in the wild west of PC gaming, and that’s where their roots (and all the weird mods) are.

And honestly, you can play Mario games on PC too—emulation is a thing—but everyone still thinks of Mario as a Nintendo icon. Same logic applies here. PC or bust.

You mean…Windows?

Don’t get me wrong—I love SteamOS and Bazzite as much as anyone. But like it or not, Windows has been the backbone of PC gaming for decades. Most developers still build for Windows first. Even on Linux, you’re usually running Windows games through Proton, not true Linux ports.

And honestly, it’s not Microsoft that’s closest to monopolizing PC gaming. It’s Valve. They control 85% of the storefront market. If SteamOS takes off, I doubt most people will bother installing Heroic just to run GOG or Epic games. Sure, it’s possible—but for the average gamer, it’s more hassle than it’s worth.

What we really need is more competition. I want to see an Xbox handheld running Windows, but also a GOG Deck, an EGS Deck, maybe even an Itch.io Deck.

Hell, imagine if Apple finally woke up to gaming and made a Mac Deck. Now that would shake things up.

I’ll be honest: as much as I love Xbox—I still have my OG and a 360—PC gaming has completely leapfrogged it in terms of value.

The whole appeal of the original Xbox was that it brought PC-style gaming to consoles. I never liked playing FPS games on console until Halo came along and proved it could actually work.

But over the last 15 years, Valve has basically turned PC gaming into a console experience. These days, instead of hooking up an Xbox to my TV, I just connect a PC tower. Honestly, it’s way easier than it used to be.

The last console that really offered something unique for me was the original Switch, mostly because it made going from handheld to TV effortless. But with the new wave of handhelds running SteamOS or Bazzite, that same seamless experience is now possible on PC hardware.

If Microsoft can make Windows as smooth and intuitive as SteamOS, then maybe they’ll be back in the game.

I own the original LCD Steam Deck. Still a fantastic device.

But after trying the newer handhelds, I have to admit: the upgrades are anything but minor. Visually, it’s a bigger leap than the jump from DS to DSi. The difference is immediately obvious.

Legion Go owner here—well, technically my wife’s.

You can dock a Windows 11 handheld, but it’s not exactly seamless. You have to dig into Settings, disable the handheld’s own display, and tell it to use the TV instead. No problem for me, but most people won’t bother. Hopefully, the next "gamer-specific" version of Windows makes this automatic when you dock.

That’s why I ended up dual-booting the Legion Go with Bazzite. Navigating with a controller is just easier, and I’m not waiting six months for another Windows version I might have to pay for.

We paid C$900 for the Legion Go, and honestly, it was worth the premium for three main reasons:

1. The controls: Think Joy-Cons, but better. They’re detachable, comfortable, and feel great in the hand.
2. The display: An 8.8” screen, 1600p, 144Hz. Gorgeous and smooth.
3. eGPU support: Plug in an external GPU when docked, and it turns into a serious gaming machine.

I get that some people just want a cheap handheld. But my wife—who’s not a PC enthusiast (her favorite game is Little Kitty, Big City)—thought it was worth it. It was still cheaper than her iPhone 16e.

If it weren't for me getting three months for free, I wouldn't use it at all.

For me, the problem is that there's not enough games, and of the games that are there, they disappear too quickly.

It's just easier to look for deals on Steam, GOG, or EGS and keep those games indefinitely. Hell, sometimes games are given away for free.