cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/3922769

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/linustechtips by /u/RevolutionaryAd8204 on 2024-09-14 15:50:43+00:00.

158 points
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I’m not sure if it’s the meme but here (Europe) there is a huge difference in price between the basic 512GB OLED SD and the basic PS5 pro option.

569€ vs 800€.

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74 points

… and you have to pay for PS Plus repetitively to play games with friends.

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37 points

Jokes on you I don’t have any friends

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1 point

I feel like that’s cherry picking, like I’m comparing the cheapest Dutch webshop price for a new PS5 and it’s € 549,99 vs the Steam Deck which is only purchasable through Valve’s store for… € 419?

Wait why tf do people buy PS5’s here‽

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1 point
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I haven’t even picked the LCD 128GB SD…just didn’t pick the option with max storage. Also haven’t picked the PS5P with the Disc reader…

But anyway. This meme is very specific (and pointless) and it is just targeting a minority who would be choosing between a high end console to play at the sofa on the big screen and a handheld to play anywhere.

I think the main SD group of people, is people who want a handheld, and that group of people generally choose between SD, Nintendo Switch, or other handhelds (like the Asus ROG etc).

Some would go with Nintendo because they just care about Nintendo games. But the majority is just looking for a handheld to play any good games anywhere.

To answer the last question. I have a PC, a PS5 and a SD. So some people who own a SD would buy a PS5. If I’m on my couch I use the PS5. If I’m at the terrace, or on a flight, etc. I use the SD.

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2 points

I get that but damn, between a Switch or SD who’d choose for a PS5?

I personally already have a Switch (since launch), so many great games on it, which dimimishes the SD’s selling point for me. Those two really do thread in the same waters.

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125 points
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If you think $700 is bad, it’s £700 in the UK… which is $913. 🤢

Also:

  • median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)

  • median household income, USA (2022): $74,580

A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.

A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.

The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely insane.

The OLED Deck starts at £479. Still a lot but not as egregious. The LCD Deck is currently £262 ($344), which is pretty great.

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32 points

If you think 26% is bad, in Russia it’s going to be priced at around ₽80-100k(~$883, VAT included), but the median monthly salary is ₽43.500 - $480… That’s well over 100% median household income given that over 38% families only have a single parent. And I’m pretty sure that’s not even the worst out there, think like Argentina has an extortionate import tax or something?

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17 points

If you think $700 is bad

I don’t:

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17 points

Cool chart.

It really makes the point to me that the PS1 and PS2, when adjusted for inflation, and for relative compute power, were just such a fantastic deal.

I was recovering from some serious console-purchase fatigue, when I bought my PS1 to replace my garage sale purchased Super NES. It was a big deal to me.

I’ve paid PS5 prices (inflation adjusted) for a game system a few times (my first Switch and SteamDeck), but they’ve been a lot more mind blowing than what appears to be on offer today.

Disclaimer: My favorite game is 8-bit, anyway.

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7 points

Also drives home the point the PS3 was insanely priced.

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8 points
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So the most comparable console there is $456, and this is $700.

That is bad.

The PS5 Pro barely costs more to produce.

$700 is bad. $913 is awful.

Just because the PS3 (a console universally panned as being way too expensive) was similar doesn’t mean PS5 Pro pricing is alright.

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7 points

Charts like that are great, I love to see them. However, they need to have a year for the inflation-adjusted dollars else it’s nearly meaningless when referred back to.

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3 points

I’m not sure what this proves 🤔

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4 points

Anyone know the cost in the US including tax? Don’t they leave that off?

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21 points
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It varies state by state, some like Oregon have 0% tax, but most will be around 13% 6-8% or so iirc.

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6 points

The highest state sales tax is 9.56%, most states are 6-8%. Though some major cities also have a small sales tax as well.

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4 points

No sales tax in NH either.

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3 points

how does this work if you live close to another state? As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?

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17 points

The US doesn’t have a national sales tax, so it depends whether the individual state imposes a tax or not.

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4 points

I don’t remember exactly, but some relative poverty lines start at 60% of median household income.

  • £700 / (£32,400 * .6 / 12) ≈ .43, thus 43% of monthly income for a poor household in the UK
  • $700 / ($74,580 * .6 / 12) ≈ .19, thus 19% of monthly income for a poor household in the US

I hope median household income is netto, otherwise this is skewed.

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92 points
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And for those who have not tried it, the desktop is fully functional (not some half baked version. My son uses the desktop mode as a full school workstation for internet browsing, email, teams, Google docs, etc

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56 points

More people should thank KDE for the desktop mode.

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15 points

Indeed… I avoided it for years because I bought into the “it’s too heavy” narrative.

Then I saw a phoronics benchmark sayin it was actually faster and lighter than lxde if you turn effects off

I tried it then and was blown away, never looked back

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5 points

I don’t know what the KDE devs eat, but they are somehow maximising both features and performance.

Incredible.

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32 points

That sells it for me. Steam Deck is in my future. Windows will not be my next OS.

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7 points

I pretty much only use mine in desktop mode and I’m currently playing world of warcraft on it lol!

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9 points
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To me, it’s looking like a replacement for a PC and a portable device, and does not need to compete against a console. And that’s what I’m looking for. I’m just sick of the rising price of video cards, and the worsening state of Windows. I’ve had plans to upgrade my video card for a while now, and could never justify it. I feel like it’s as viable now to get a Deck and a PS5 Slim or a Pro than to get a PC and another portable. PC gobbles up too much power as a desktop nowadays and too expensive as a premium machine.

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20 points

That is KDE Plasma for those who are curious. It is one of the main desktop environments in Linux. It is my daily driver on my main PC. It is the most customizable desktop I know of. There is nothing you can’t change.

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7 points
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Hi there, just a small correction. Compared to existing linux distros, it’s slightly different. Steam OS is an immutable OS, which means you can’t edit the root partition (Like you can’t edit the C:\ drive in Windows). This is both good and bad.

Good -> Users can’t mess up their device while trying to mess around with it. Updates are smooth because Valve knows the previous state of the OS.

Bad -> It’s bad only for extreme power users as it’s not fully customizable. You can’t run your own kernel, install certain build packages to do some advanced stuff. But this is a tiny tiny bad.

Overall, Steam OS is great and I believe will be the gateway for the general PC crowd.

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3 points

Thank you for the correction, although I was only talking about the desktop environment. I understand the immutable part of it :)

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2 points

I’m using Fedora KDE right now for their Wayland support, because I wanted stuff like FreeSync on my AMD GPU, but I do miss Cinnamon. And Autokey.

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1 point

Thanks to KDE on the SD, I’ve switched my main DE on my desktop. Still have a soft spot for XFCE, but KDE Plasma on the SD was polished and was very “coherent”.

One thing the SD is missing for being a complete “serious” computer is printing support. I’m sure I could it installed, the SD is eminently hackable, but a Flatpak solution or a Steam default solution would really justify using a SD in Desktop mode for school and work.

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3 points

It doesn’t have cups? You should be able to install it and plasma’s ctrl+p should work with it.

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18 points

I had to use mine as a desktop for two weeks while my PC was undergoing a repair. It was wholly uneventful: installed OpenOffice and had a wholly normal workweek. It’s perfectly fine to use as a regular, boring desktop if you need it to. Absolutely love the Steamdeck. Every gamer should have one.

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3 points

I’ve been complaining about printer support. It’s pretty much the last piece of the puzzle for a school focused SD.

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1 point

There’s a workaround where you can install Chrome then install ipp/cups printing from the chrome web store, then save whatever file you need printed to Google docs.

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9 points

I used mine for a few months for work. only problem i had with it was it struggled with multiple external monitors. i got it working but i had to fiddle with xrandr everytime i docked it and put it into desktop mode

This was a couple years ago now though, it might be better now.

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81 points

Eventually, Sony will stop supporting the PS5 and it’ll be a brick. If Valve ever stops supporting the Steamdeck, it’ll keep running.

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25 points

All (most?) of your games will run on your future computers.

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14 points

You can play DOS games just fine right now, so yes it’s a good bet. And a far better bet than the PS6 being backwards compatible.

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6 points

The crazy thing for me is that I have a little handheld specific for dos games. The problem I run into every time is having to setup computer keyboard bindings for each game to play them using the built-in controller. I really want retroarch or another dos emulator to do profiles for different games and I haven’t seen that yet.

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7 points

Unless they change CPU architectures.

And even then it’s no guarantee. Plenty of games needed support from the likes of GoG to run. Hell, I couldn’t even play Ex Machina because I had a HDR monitor and the game detected that and completely broke. Disabling HDR in Windows did nothing.

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5 points

Unless they change CPU architectures.

well. there’s already winlator (basically box86 / wine-wrapper for android).
Not as polished and far as Proton is, but the bones are there.

A CPU architecture change wouldn’t be a deathblow.

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2 points
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Ex Machina the movie or the 1984 “game”? That’s before Mario was even a thing.

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4 points

After over 3 decades as a gamer and tech user this is maybe the single most consistent important benefit for any open platform were you can just install Linux.

The rest is nice but this one means that 10 or 20 years from now your hardware might have been repurposed for something else and still be useful and in use whilst a closed platform will just be more junk in a junkyard or sitting in a box of those things you’ve kept just because you don’t like to throw expensive stuff away but will in practice never use again.

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0 points

Device, maybe. What happens to the games bought from a DRM monopoly?

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31 points

It plays piracy-reclaimed games just fine.

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21 points

While valve has a lot of deserved goodwill, that’s always the problem - they’re well-behaved, but set up in a way in which the customer has no leverage if they where to change their approach tommorow.

Good thing drm-free games run just as well on the steam deck.

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-4 points
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These devices have different use cases. Steam Deck also is digital only. If a publisher decides to kill a game, they can control whether you can or can’t play the game. PS5 Pro is expensive, but so are video cards nowadays. PS5 Pro is just following a trend set years before, including the shift from physical games and cost. The only way to stop anti-consumer trends is to stop buying expensive hardware (PS5 Pro included). Also, give some love to physical copies of games.

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12 points

Saying the Steam Deck is digital only is like saying a tower computer is digital only. That’s purely false. If you can put it on a tower computer, you can put it on the Steam Deck.

All the Steam Deck, like many modern tower computers, needs for physical copies is a USB media reader.

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-9 points

If we can argue that Sony will stop supporting the PS5 in the future, who’s to say in the future, (without the good leadership), Steam won’t restrict what can be put on the Steam Deck? We have a lot of arguments for wanting a Steam Deck and an alternative OS to boot for gaming, but saying PS5 will be bricked in the future is not a strong one.

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61 points

You know what the main difference between the Steam Deck OLED and the PS5 Pro is? Customers wanted and asked for the Steam Deck OLED.

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19 points

I really like my PS5, but I see no value in a model costing 80% more and being only current for half a generation.

All that for an “up to” 40% performance increase.

I don’t care how much of a graphics nerd someone is, that just isn’t worth it.

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9 points

And if you’re that much of a graphics nerd, you own a PC.

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2 points
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A game that was released last year has absolutely zero knowledge of this 8k PS5 so it’s not going to magically render at 8k or 40% improvement. Some might get a framerate bump if frame sync can be turned off - the game might have been GPU bound and therefore with a better GPU it yields a better framerate. Sometimes. And AI upscaling might give a pseudo > 4k effect but it’s not really true 8k.

A handful of games might get patched to avail of the improved rendering capabilities when they detect PS5 Pro. Minimal stuff really. Maybe the config file will improve draw distance or turn on certain effects like raytraced shadows / reflections when it knows the console can handle it.

Hardly seems worth the vast additional expense especially if somebody already owns a PS5 though. Moreso because Sony are trying to stiff people into buying the cheaper “digital” version which basically means any physical collection won’t work with it.

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