Yeah, honestly I pre-ordered the Deck and felt like it was a real gamble at the time. Like, “no way it’s going to be able to play many major titles - especially given the dearth of AAA games on Linux - but I want to support the idea and am willing to give it a shot”.
Then I got it and frankly I was amazed, not just at what portable hardware can do but also at the amount of work Valve has contributed towards the software side, Proton in particular. A year since I got it and award-winning AAA games run nicely. Not always out-the-gate but that’s an issue for many systems.
Even if the Ally is better hardware (and I can’t say one way or the other) Valve was the first to make a real investment in a hardware ecosystem for real portable PC gaming (no, I’m not counting cheap Chinese systems running dodgy software).
Also, kudos to AMD for the chip powering the thing, as it’s a pretty damn good balance between power output and consumption.
Same, I saw it as a gamble. I set my preorder, and saved up for the following months until the device released.
I had been looking into this space for years wishing it would get better and cheaper. It’s the only thing that I have been willing to preorder and be a “beta” tester for in several years
