Last year I reserved against my better judgment in a Steam Deck (opens in new tab). Then this year, against my better judgement, I canceled that reservation. Despite everyone who’d received theirs before me raving about it, telling me how badly I was missing out and how much they loved catching up from bed, I still couldn’t bring myself to buy another gaming device. to add to my collection. Now, five months after refusing to follow up on my purchase, do I regret my decision?
Quite frankly! Don’t get me wrong, I love gaming on my PC. I’ve spent a lot of time nurturing my setup, tweaking things like the chair I sit in or putting an extra hard drive in my setup so I can install more games. I have what I would consider a pretty awesome leeway right now. It’s comfortable, well-lit and not only do I spend all my time there doing this work, but I also spend a good portion of my evenings playing games in the same place.
That’s kind of the problem. When I think too hard about how long I’ve been languishing at my desk, my heart palpitates. Again: love my setup, love my little area. But dear god, sometimes I feel like I need to touch grass more. It’s difficult when working from home also takes up your relaxation room, and I deliberately chose to just spend less time behind my PC in 2023. I still want to be able to game, I just don’t want to be tied to my desk to stop doing it.
That really is the shining point of the Steam Deck, isn’t it? The ability to take all these games you’ve been dying to play and give you the ability to do it anywhere you want. I’ve had to sit there while colleagues at work rave about being able to finish their work for the day and then take their Steam Deck to bed or to their couch to play whatever they want without having to go through ants in the area where they were just spent the last eight hours writing. Awesome Steam Deck games (opens in new tab) like Vampire Survivors, Persona 5 Royal, Return to Monkey Island, Into the Breach. All released this year and I would definitely have more time for them if they came with the portability that the Steam Deck offers.
All hands on deck… except mine
But at the same time, despite all my FOMO and my bank account silently crying whenever my friends start talking about the Steam Deck, I can’t bring myself to buy one. I don’t know exactly what it is. The price is certainly one of them. The three choices aren’t hugely expensive by video game standards, but I’m always more hesitant to put a large chunk of cash into a handheld than a PC or full home console. I think it’s a perceived bias I’ve developed over the years about handhelds having a shorter lifespan than consoles or PC, despite not using handhelds like my Vita, DS, and Switch for years.
Besides, when I have all those handhelds at my disposal, I actually do need a steam deck? It almost feels like a waste when I have so many other things I can start playing when I really don’t want to sit at my desk gaming. My Nintendo Switch is regularly neglected and I wonder if my Steam Deck would suffer the same fate. With so many choices about how and when to play, it seems greedy to want to add to that. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t remain infinitely jealous of all my Steam Deck owners, though.
I know that Steam Decks are now free in the wild and always available to me. But despite my intense desire to leave the shackles of my desk behind, I still can’t bring myself to pour a large chunk of my monthly paycheck into one. I still have that fear of investing in something that might be obsolete in a few years. I think when Valve releases its next iteration I’ll take the bait and finally free myself from my big, bulky rig. Sometimes it pays to be patient and besides, would a Steam Deck really help me reach my 2023 goal of spending more time on other hobbies? Probably not.
