"It's not strong enough" - Steam Deck Gamers Speak Up

65% of steam deck Gamers said that they feel limited by the steam deck's performance 70% said that they don't look at a game's verified status at all and over a third of people using the steam deck are primarily playing AAA games these results are all courtesy of a steam deck survey conducted by the good Folks at overkill. WTF there's a link to the article with the results in the description so definitely head over there and look at these numbers for yourself I found some of the details fascinating so I thought it would be really good to talk about these results with you all this is all particularly fascinating because we are seemingly very close to a new steam deck revision coming soon it's unclear if this will be a silent revision like they've done up until now or more like a mid gen refresh like the slim down PS5 or the switch OLED there's a chance they may even offer an alternate color like a white steam deck or the portal themed steam deck we got a glimpse of before launch we do know two things though there will be upgraded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth but the performance likely won't improve since valve has said several times that they see the current performance Target for the steam deck as stable for at least the next couple of years to many of the respondents of this survey that may be a little disappointing considering the majority have said that they consider themselves at least a little bit limited by the performance of the steam deck strictly speaking we can technically point the finger at poor optimization or games being rush to release as an example Boulders Gate 3 had notoriously bad performance in the third act and this is across the board on any PC you may have so even if you had a fine experience in the first 40 hours of the game you may have experienced the point in that game where you hit a wall and then the performance tanked like I said this is a problem for all PCS but it's something that may be more pronounced on a PC handheld like the steam deck where the game goes from being 30 FPS and playable to under 20 FPS and for many unacceptable likewise Starfield is another game which has been criticized for its optimization or lack thereof and again the the problem is emphasized on the steam deck because you literally do go from 30 FPS and playable to under 15 FPS and unacceptable in a matter of minutes areas with less geometry like tight quarters play great but Open Cities can dip into the low teens even with the dynamic resolution scaling down to potato levels naturally mods have helped to alleviate this issue since launch but it seems like experiences like these could be shaping the opinion that the steam deck is currently limited by its power but although there are games like Starfield and boulders gate which have had maybe less than ideal performance on the steam deck there are still other games like Li of P armored Core 6 and the latest expansion to cyberpunk 2077 you know Phantom Liberty these games show that when they're well optimized you can still have goodlook Tech and play well on the steam deck and open yourself up to a larger audience and personally this doesn't impact me too much I think of the steam deck as more of a console than a PC valve themselves have stayed stated that the goal of the steam deck was to consolized the PC experience so that it's more streamlined for users that are used to consoles in that way I don't think the steam deck has to be able to play every new game well but I do think it has to be clear about what games it does play well and what games it doesn't and in addition to thinking of the steam deck as a console I have another handheld that's been taking more and more of my time in the 1X fly I do prefer stee OS and trackpads and so I do miss those things when I'm using the 1X fly but it does mean that I haven't had to worry about performance as much so of course the beauty of PC is that you have options even with handhelds like the rlg Ally and the upcoming Lenovo Legion go I think valve welcomes those handhelds and doesn't see them as a reason to rush to make the steam deck 2 so aside from performance there's a lot more interesting stuff in this survey so let me tell you how they gather data to at least contextualize this a little bit this is a survey that ran from September 5th to September 20th it was a questionnaire that consisted of about 50 questions and it was all about the steam deck over 3,000 people participated it was 3,150 to be exact the overall satisfaction with the steam deck was an 8.94 out of 10 so really really good 48% of participants were in North America 41% in Europe and then just the remaining people were scattered all over the world the bulk of people responding were between the ages of 18 and 39 that makes up a 41% and most of the respondents came via the steam deck subreddit so I did share this survey during this time so some of you may have responded as well uh but I think the source for many folks came from the steam deex subreddit and in that way there is a bit of self- selection here a good bit of self- selection actually right and it means that the respondents just as overkill. WTF put it are highly interested in the steam deck platform and its success and furthermore they are more likely to be favorable towards the device when compared to a random sample like asking folks on the streets so the first question covered was whether or not people own a steam deck 95% of the people that responded did own a steam deck there were 83 individuals so around 3% that owned multiple Decks that I'm one of them right and then there are people that don't own a steam deck so that was about 5% of the respondents which is pretty high you know I'm always surprised and fascinated by people that watch my channel and don't have a steam deck I've received that comment before where they they say they don't have a steam deck but they enjoy watching my videos and that really feels like the highest compliment I can get that you really enjoy watching my videos even though you don't own a steam deck when primarily of course what I cover is the steam deck so that's really cool I really appreciate that in any case likewise here there are 5% of people that don't own a steam deck but did respond to this survey presumably they are on the steam deck subreddit saw the survey and participated that said the number one reason they gave for not owning a steam deck was the price so yeah the main reason to not own a steam deck is just you can't afford it right now that makes sense there were also some folks that said they don't own a steam deck because they're not keen on first generation products some others said they prefer other handhelds some other still said performance so that goes back to the previous discussion there are some that say they ordered the steam deck it just hasn't arrived yet hopefully you've gotten it by now and then just a few people maybe one or two people it looks like said that they don't own a steam deck primarily because it runs on Linux or because of quality issues it is good to see that so few people use the reasoning that it runs on Linux as a reason to not own a steam deck I have seen a few more comments ever since the Ally was released that Steam OS is actually holding the steam deck back obviously I don't agree with that I can understand the preference for Windows especially if you're someone that plays online shooters for example or you really want to play games that are not on Steam that sort of thing I can definitely get that but yeah I can't agree with the premise that Steam OS is holding the steam deck back I think that Steam OS is very clearly the unique selling proposition to the steam deck and I genuinely believe that the steam deck wouldn't have sold nearly as much if it was just another Windows handheld I'm glad Windows handhelds exist but I'm also glad that the steam deck exists and that it has Steam OS which is really tailored specifically to this gaming experience and I really wouldn't have it any other way personally all right the next few questions are about storage and these are my favorite for a few reasons right so overkill. WTF did the same survey last year and last year the 512 GB steam deck was the most popular option and this year that's flipped now the 64 GB option is the most popular with 37% of people owning the 64 GB version the 512 is right behind it with 36% but as soon as you dig deeper you can see sort of why the meta has shifted towards the 64 GB version obviously that price is unbeatable right like $3.99 so I think that as more casual consumers have been buying the steam deck it Mak sense to come in at that 3.99 price point but more importantly more than half of the respondents that bought a 64 GB steam deck have replaced that drive so out of approximately 1100 people that bought the 64 GB steam deck 357 of them replaced it with a 1 terb drive another 200 replaced it with a 512 GB drive another 89 replaced it with a 256 and even 74 folks replaced it with a 2 tbte drive so yeah it seems like over 60% of the people that bought a 64 GB version replace their Drive I think that's really fascinating so I kind of feel like the 64 GB model is Obsolete and depending on how you look at this this data either really confirms what I'm saying or really goes against the face of what I'm saying so on the one hand the 64 GB model is the most popular version so a lot of people are buying it so it can't be obsolete right but on the other hand those that are buying it are by and large changing the storage to a bigger version so absolutely the 399 price point is a necessity but if valve are to do a midgen refresh I think it would be cool if they were able to make the 256 version available for 3.99 and move up from there because really it does feel like the 64 GB version only exists so that people can go ahead and upgrade that storage even if you didn't upgrade your SSD of course 85% of respondents did use a Micro SD card 512 GB being the most popular version followed by 1 TB then 256 128 400 GB and then 2 terab I don't know where you're getting these 2 terab cards from but definitely send one over to me why not but yeah it feels like the 512 being the most popular is no surprise I know a lot of people advocate for going with the 1 tby so that you never run out of storage but it does feel like the 512 GB is the best bang for your buck considering as of recording you can get a really good one the Samsung EO for $28 the next subject focused around issues with the steam deck apparently last year there was a lot of outcry on the steam deck subreddit about different issues that early adopters were facing with the steam deck and so Overkill asked the same question again and 200 people said that they had to return their steam deck but even with that inconvenience they found valve support to be on average 8.7 out of 10 which is really really good Overkill goes on to say that of the people that did have to return their steam deck most issues were related to display like stuck pixels and flickering 37 of the 200 people had screen problems 16 participants seemed to have issues with the fan and 13 people had issues with the 400 MZ lock bug aside from issues and repairs they also asked how many people modified their steam deck nearly 500 people modified it somehow meaning even steam deck skins or back plates or even people that reapply thermal paste even more than skins 900 people have cases on their steam deck I bet a good amount of those are the kill switch because that kill switch case is is pretty dope and over half of the respondents own a dedicated dock for their steam deck that's pretty cool and it definitely shows the influence of the switch here where you can have a hybrid that plays both handheld and docked that's really awesome so here's something interesting apparently the most popular genre to play on the steam deck is RPGs and that shouldn't be too surprising perhaps especially if you look at the most popular games every month in fact Overkill did the same thing and they have the most popular games for the year according to the survey number one is vampire survivors number two is Elden ring which moved up actually since last year number three is Boulders gate number four is Hades that also moved up number five is Dave the diver number six is stardew Valley which also moved up and then number seven is cyberpunk 2077 eight slay the Spire nine Hogwarts Legacy and 10 Red Dead Redemption 2 so you can see just on this list there are a number of RPGs with Elden ring Boulders gate cyberp Punk Hogwarts Legacy and arguably some other games if you consider them to be RPGs as well I think that action adventure games being the second most popular also makes sense especially given how wide of an umbrella that really encompasses but what I found interesting is that shooters were the third most popular genre here both firstperson shooters and third person shooters now I imagine this mostly consists of like doom and stuff like that but I do wonder what other Shooters people are playing on their steam deck how they're playing I would love to know how many people are playing using trackpads or Gyro or anything like that but yeah it's pretty cool to see Shooters up here also surprising are Platformers I would expect actually that Platformers are a little bit higher like I would say that this handheld is perfect for platforming games so yeah like I said I would expect this to be a little bit higher for the most part people are playing 4 to 7 hours a week on their steam deck that sort of matches my play time it's about 30 to 60 Minutes a night but also let's talk about emulation because over half of steam deck US users are emulating on the steam deck and I've got to say they have Immaculate taste because the PlayStation 2 is the first most emulated console followed quickly by The Game Boy Advance the Game Boy Color the Game Boy and the Nintendo GameCube not to mention the Nintendo switch now again this is a self- selected audience but it's kind of wild to see that a third of the respondents are playing Nintendo switch on the steam deck that is certainly not going to make Nintendo happy speaking of Nintendo of course next after that is the NES and sest then the Nintendo 64 then PlayStation 1 and here maybe I'm a little surprised by how many people are playing DS and 3DS games between the touchcreen and the trackpads you would think that the steam deck is a really good system to emulate these handhelds and it it is especially compared to other handhelds on the market but honestly every time I try to play one of those games it never ends up feeling close enough to the original experience and I'm not a stickler for recreating the authentic experience in most cases but really with the DS and the 3DS when I am playing one of those stylist touchpad games like trama Center or Kid Icarus I have tried a number of ways to really make it work on a steam deck and it just never gets there for me so I am curious to know what you all think do you enjoy playing DS and 3DS games on the steam deck do you have problems like I do what is your preferred way to play those games outside of that I was surprised to find that 956 people are using in-house streaming like Moonlight Steam remote play or PlayStation Remote Play and 520 people used off-site streaming so GeForce now or Game Pass Cloud around 37% of folks are not using any other launcher other than steam but for the folks that are using another launcher heroic launcher is by far the most popular and for me it has been the easiest to use so it's the one that I've recommended in the past oh and I mentioned trackpads well 55% of you folks are using trackpads to play video games and and the remainder of you are using trackpads to navigate desktop mode which makes sense so I think most people are happy with trackpads and I am impressed that that many people are using them to play games that is pretty cool and I think the last thing I'll talk about here is how many people are spending time on the steam deck versus other platforms so of the respondents almost all of them also had a PC or Mac and over half also had a Nintendo switch according to this graph of the respondents more people are generally spending time on the steam deck what I found interesting was how many people are spending less than an hour on other platforms versus how many people are spending less than an hour on the steam deck you know a lot has been said about the steam deck being sort of a great secondary device but the way I'm looking at this is that at least for the enthusiasts the steam deck is the primary device right and I think that makes sense because a lot of us bought a steam deck because we don't necessarily have time to sit at a TV to play the PS5 or to play the switch we are playing on handheld and also you know if so many of the respondents are PC Gamers primarily then you know we bought the stee deck to break away from the desktop and again this is like the third or fourth time I'm saying this but this is a self- selected audience so these are enthusiasts but I do find the results interesting nonetheless anyway definitely check out the results of the survey for yourself I did skip over a lot of things and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to look at so take a look at that survey the link is in the description let me know you think were there any surprises for you or was this all sort of in line with your expectations let me know that gang out [Music] goodbye

Channel: Fan The Deck

Views: 155,664

Keywords: PC Gaming, Steam Deck, Steam

Id: jrG2c4VMt_g

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2023