I can’t see these gaining more popularity over Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo if they are only sticking to do retro.

Right. I don’t think they are particularly trying for those markets - although Sony dropping physical media of any kind is probably doing Evercade a favor anyway.

I carry my Hyper Mega Tech Pocket more often than my SteamDeck or Switch Lite, because it is so much smaller.

From my understanding, most indie companies want maximum reach for their games, especially for the amount of time and money they put into things.

Yes. Evercade’s gimick is multiple games per cart, rather than exclusives.

Some of my Indie game collection I got cheaper by buying it on Evercade. Some idie devs I have only discovered because they included a game on Evercade.

A few I have bought again on my SteamDeck, to add it to my family library.

Nothing explains Arch users, they’re a mystery.

I mean, I’ll agree 100% that docking a SteamDeck has been hit and miss, depending on the game. I have about the same annoyances docking a SteamDeck as docking a laptop. I’m not angry at Valve or Windows about that, but I am very impressed with Nintendo.

I haven’t had more wifi issues with SteamDeck than with my Switch or Switch Lite, or with a typical laptop.

I don’t use SteamDeck desktop mode, except to install my free copy of Luanti, so I cannot comment.

Now, when we dive into specific games - mutiplayer code varies wildly between games on PC, and SteamDeck is still much closer to a PC expeirence, in that regard. If that’s your point, I’m with you 100%.

A “Steam Remote Play Verified” badge would go a long way!

Edit: Decky is a mod right? I haven’t had anything on my SteamDeck break every few weeks.

Oh! We did have a long running bug where various network stuff never worked quite right after waking from hybernation, which I fixed by rebooting after any time I let the deck sit for awhile.

That was patched pretty recently. It never bothered me much (once I understood the solution was a reboot) because the boot time is like 20 seconds.

I admit, I am pretty technical, but guessing that it might need a reboot after hybernation is something I think I learned from gaming on a Windows laptop.

Still, to your point, a better experience for folks coming from PC gaming than coming directly from console gaming.

They are worried the cost of bottles of vodka and oily rags will cut into their free spending money.

I guess we’d be stuck using old machines. Given how powerful current systems are, that may be enough for indie studios.

The Evercade is proactively selling cartridge first game systems and games.

The available hardware is more retro focused, in power level, but everything in the line runs on every available device (outside of some license bullshit by Capcom and Namco, which I think they cleared up).

It’s still a mess. Only ready for technical users. Not even in the same ballpark for Xbox.

Tell me don’t have a SteamDeck without telling me you don’t have a SteamDeck.

Unless you just mean building a PC, in general. Sure. Building a gaming PC isn’t for everyone.

But generally speaking, Linux isn’t user-friendly (though I’m not saying it isn’t at all) in the sense that everything is guaranteed to be compatible with it and work immediately, whether it be certain peripherals that require extra setup to work correctly or software that was never specifically made to work on Linux.

On the hardware side, you’re really just describing custom PC builds. Pre-built Linux gaming machines exist and do solve the hardware issues.

On the software side, outside of the big asshole publishers, it’s a solved problem. Five years ago I shopped super carefully for SteamDeck compatibility. Today, OS compatibility is rarely even a consideration for me. Games just work on the SteamDeck. SteamOS has replaced Windows as the gaming default OS.

Indie devs now use game development frameworks that work perfectly on Linux, in order to get SteamDeck verified.

Even most of my “Windows Only” games just pull the correct emulators and run perfectly, automatically, when launched from Steam.

Gaming on Linux is a very different world, today.

As much as I like Linux, it’s generally not a good alternative for console folks who just want to relax and play video games.

That’s why I buy Valve hardware.

True. But anyone installing on a bare metal build should seriously consider installing Linux, today. The set of games that actually run simpler on Windows is getting thinner every year.

There’s mostly fear driving the decision, and most people fear Linux more than they need to, and don’t fear Microsoft’s apathy toward their custom PC build outcomes as much as they should.

With all the license unlock bullshit, my last bare metal Windows install was a bigger pain in the ass than any of my recent bare metal Linux installs.

Yes. Exactly! That’s why we’re so die hard into Linux, here.

It’s also a thinly veiled attempt to land at tax other than 100%, and overseen by courts that we suspect he has influence over.

I like the confidence. I imagine things could still go that well for him. Everyone should get a chance to dream of nice things.

For someone who has taken so much from the rest of us, a mere tax could be a pretty nice outcome.

Yes.

At this rate, we will be having a “local files are hard for the average user” debate, here, in another decade.

Which, maybe it will be, at that point.