It's so simple. 

Steam Jeans!

Designed with bigger deeper front pockets.

If the failure of your project is the lack of definition and planning what else besides big retar can you call Steam over it?

I've told you what there is to know, but you're cock sure and already made your mind up before this convo even started, Don.

I know I'm repeating myself, but giving a free pass to Valve because they didn't care isn't a good atittude by customers, sure we can agree they didn't designed the hardware, but they gave it their stamp when calling steam machines and I severely doubt there were no absolutely minimum requirement or some agreement on specs and prices (and in the lack of it then is even more failure from the company).

Making a good controller doesn't help in experience on making a "console", or would we expect some of the 3rd party accessorie sellers on consoles to be able to make their own console? And sure we need to wait for the product to properly release to have it working and fully tested on the market.

It is expected of fixed HW to run games better than more pricey competition even more when the first is subsided (sold at loss) and the second is sold for a big markup (reason why even with some Sony games going PC I'm still not moving, the price of PS5 as a whole doesn't buy even half of the equivalent GPU in Brazil unfortunatelly). But still some of the glaring issues of the steam deck is from their lack of experience and I don't know why defend it as non-issues.

To add to the micro-SD discussion, USB-C SSD enclosures also exist. I have an m.2 SATA SSD in an enclosure and it is very portable. I use it to play some games in between my desktop and laptop without duplicating between their respective storages. USB-C supports up to 10 Gbps - plenty fast enough for all but the fastest SSD's.

This is about how big they are.

It's trivial to swap games between these and the internal SSD. 

Chazore is dismissing all the issues as non-issues. Like suddenly PC gamers are ok with 30fps, semi-portable but no great battery etc.

Sure I can see it being the best one available on a market that well only have bad HW available, that is on smaller PCs. But when we have had PSP, PSVita and Switch as portables that are acceptably near console level games (and in case of switch it is also equivalent to console in some aspects) then it is hard to defend the mistakes in design or sacrifices. Like if you make the portable so big (and well the screen isn`t as big) then do it properly for battery life (one of my main issues with smartphones is they having giant screens but ultra thin, while it could be a tad bulkier to have double the battery life).

On price we go back to the point that on PC space the HW are being sold for a good premium, and it is good that SteamDeck isn`t going the same way, but I guess it still have a premium.

I don`t like the idea of a "dongle" hanging on my portable device. Sure on a notebook is half acceptable as you likely would use it on a table, but for handhelds not confortable for me.

How am I "dismissing" said issues, and what issues are those even, that aren't Steam machine related or related to past history of Valve dealing with manufacturers (not to be confused with vendors). 

There are plenty of PC gamers out there who play at various framerates of their choosing. I merely pointed out to Mumm that there are games out there capped at 30fps and even 60fps on PC, that simply cannot be uncapped, and somehow 30fps is a problem?. The main problem is games being capped on purpose by the devs, not the user choosing what framerate they wish to play at. 

The other handheld devices aren't terrible, and that doesn't make the Deck shine by default, what makes it shine is that it's using their own OS, their choice of hw and the fact it's already showing gains with the current tests being done with the OS by devs themselves and reviewers testing out via their own benchmarking. 

Why do we even need to argue the Deck's design as some "objective" negative that "cannot be defended"?. They chose the layout they wanted, and while that's not everyone's cup of tea, that doesn't make the design so bad that it's doomed.

There are plenty of devices out there on the market that don't have the best battery life, and that's something manufactures/scientists are just going to have to power through over time. You don't just snap your fingers and have a battery that trumps all over, those things take years to come up with. 

The Deck has only one premium option going for it at the moment, and that also includes a different type of screen/memory, which is fair, because that kind of screen isn't cheap, and they likely don't have access to the premium internal memory, to make it cheaper and built in the millions. You have to remember that Valve is not a 1 to 1 copy of Sony, where they make console hw, sell it at a loss and then cut corners on getting parts cheaper down the line, or even waiting for cheaper parts at all.

You need to let that part of your logic go, because they are not the same.

I don't know if I agree it looks awful. It has issues, but when you consider the price point for the cheapest it's an impressive machine. My big problem with it is that it's Linux-based. That automatically removes support for a huge part of the Steam library, limiting its appeal for me. Then again, if it does well, it'll incentivize devs to develop ports tailored for it, making the experience even better than it is initially.

Yes you can mess around with settings to try and get the performance you are most confortable with, still being able to make it 60fps with other compromises don't nulify the defense that 30fps isn't a problem anymore for PC gamers while for the longest of time bitching console games were inferior 30fps experiences. But why not give more battery if you already making it this big?

Sure there were close to 1 gen difference between the games on console and PSP and Vita. But if we want to go that way there will be a gen difference in quality between a top level gamer PC and Steam Deck don't you think? Also sure that if Vita launched earlier it would need bigger size and less battery, there is no magic, the earlier your device the least powerful for same size and consumption.

I would say the 3 would likely use the space likely better, there isn't much to be done on the APU itself because well neither Steam nor the other 3 develop their APU.

I think it is hard to say that performance was first when well that in itself would already remove portable being a choice =p

And just to make clear, although I have Switch I would more likely play steamdeck than it, will monitor the prices for when I'm able to buy it.