I've been writing down these lengthy thoughts over the course of these past few weeks, so please bear with me if it doesn't seem consistent. My mind has simply been hopping a lot lately, and thus the end opinions of my findings might vary over time.
Here's my situation. I work about 40+ hours a week outside of my house, and I've been looking for a solution to play my backlog of games on a single device, both retro and modern, that's both portable and dockable. With the release of the Steam Deck OLED, I naturally thought this was finally my jump away from my Nintendo Switch OLED; being able to play a good majority of my library on this device. However, with the jump back into the PC platform after all these years, the Steam Deck brings out the true nature of PC gaming, in comparison to the home console platforms. In a way, moving back into PC gaming has been an "ignorance is bliss" situation for me, as I seem to find myself struggling even more now, with the many options at play. I've been hopping between my Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck for nearly a year now. After many hours of testing and tinkering on both ends, I've come to the firm conclusion that, while I do get the sentiment that the Steam Deck is technically superior to the Nintendo Switch, it still has some flaws that make it inferior to home consoles in comparison.
Steam Deck is a dangerous gateway drug.
The major complaint I have with the Steam Deck is the hard use of DRM. I get that the PC platform is much more "free" than console platforms, thus publishers take precautions to avoid piracy. But for a handheld PC, locking certain games down this way almost throws away the whole point of the Steam Deck and its portability. With home consoles such as Switch and PlayStation, digital games are playable offline on consoles assigned as primary (and physical copies obviously avoid any internet entirely, most of the time). It makes the Steam Deck feel more like a tether than an untied handheld. Denuvo is annoying, but it's not the worst of the bunch. If a game like Yakuza or any other older games that aren't available on a handheld like Switch has Denuvo, then I can tolerate occasionally having to launch it every couple weeks or so to authenticate it. Hell, sometimes Denuvo licenses expire and certain games no longer require it, which is a plus. But in the case that certain games are already available on Switch, you're essentially trading complete offline play (with physical cartridges, at least) for a performance boost. I'd love to experience Persona 5 Royal at a framerate higher than 30fps, but the quick and fluid game initializations of the Nintendo Switch draws me back to it. (Even in my testing, Persona 3 Portable has a few sections running at smoother framerates on Switch than on Deck, for some odd reason.) But since something like the upcoming Persona 3 Reload or Metaphor aren't planned for Switch anytime soon, I might have to deal with Denuvo for a bit. This is a case dependent on the game, personally. Then we have the third-party DRM, the most frustrating of them all. I haven't used Ubisoft Connect personally, but I'd imagine it's just as cumbersome as EA App and Rockstar Launcher. One prime title for me that I'd love to fully play on the Steam Deck is Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was never ported over to Nintendo Switch, so this is the only way to play it on a handheld. It runs fantastic on the handheld, but unfortunately the game won't start unless you connect the EA App online for authentication; no offline workarounds at all. The Rockstar Launcher DOES seem to have an offline authentication, but it's similar to Denuvo where it only lasts for an amount of time, and the overlay placed in-game when I'm trying to play Grand Theft Auto just makes everything feel like a mess, especially when the in-app cloud saves don't even work half the time. What would drive me to play these games on my Steam Deck using a mobile hotspot or something, when I can just play them on a more powerful, DRM-limited home console and stream them to my Deck using the same internet connection? And to top it all off, for Grand Theft Auto specifically, it's much faster to just boot it on something like Nintendo Switch because of how long it takes to get through the Rockstar Launcher on Steam Deck. This is an annoyance. And these clients are just the major suspects; there are still others, such as Square Enix (who I'll talk about more later on). Final Fantasy VII, the original PS1 game remastered and ported to new platforms, requires an active internet connection to play it on PC... and it seems to be the only Final Fantasy game that does that. (The Switch version not only has a physical cartridge for it, but can also play its digital copy offline.) I understand why DRM exists, and I know GOG releases DRM-free versions of select games, but it still leaves the dirt from big publishers like SEGA, Rockstar, and EA. Until they learn how popular handheld PC gaming is becoming, DRM does nothing but hold back from a traditional console experience. And of course, Steam DRM isn't as fluid either, as it typically requires manually going into "offline mode" in order for games to run without an internet connection for authentication.
Then, there's the choice of publishers focusing on where and when to push their games on specific platforms. I began to notice that certain developers focus more on the quality of their home console versions, and less of that with their PC ports that release later. I'm confident in Sega and Atlus supporting PC with simultaneous launches in the future (although their use of Denuvo will still be quite annoying), but there are other big teams that I have my eyes on, in particular. For starters, Rockstar Games seems to be one of these big publishers that tend to release their games first on home consoles, with some not even seeing PC releases (like Red Dead Redemption, for some odd reason). Occasionally as well, certain games like Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 have controller support on their console counterparts that arguably make the games easier to control, with their original PC versions not even receiving native patches just to have optional controls. (Planet Coaster and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 are also examples of this; even more wild considering the former has keyboard/mouse support on consoles.) Hell, even have games completely absent from PC and Steam Deck entirely, such as Vanillaware's catalog which I'm personally interested in checking out. Hell, even Minecraft and Fortnite don't run natively on Steam Deck; the former requiring an Android copy of the game, and the latter requiring Xbox Cloud Streaming. These are just small strikes against the PC platform and Steam Deck as a whole that just make me turn back towards the Nintendo Switch. But the one big studio that really annoys me with their decisions between PC and consoles is none other than Square Enix. I understand their timed deals with Sony and Nintendo, with some of their big games not launching simultaneously on PC. But there are several occasions of Square Enix making very strange and lazy decisions between their customer across all platforms, and I'm not just talking about the unoptimized PC ports. One such example that I've noticed recently is the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, which released on PC and mobile before being ported to home consoles. Despite the later console versions receiving tons of new improvements and upgrades (boosts, font changes, cutscene fixes), these updates TO THIS DAY still haven't been pushed over to PC. This has even been seen in reverse, where Final Fantasy X/X-2 on PC includes gameplay boosts, whereas the home console versions do not. And speaking of deciding what gets ported to PC, nearly half of the Star Ocean series is missing from PC, despite them recently releasing a new one on there. For whatever reasons, Square Enix just seems to care more for their home console gamers, but surely they're a major piece missing in Steam's triumph.
I just find all of these publisher decisions annoying, because I'm one who prefers assigning a platform when playing through a series. The Steam Deck would've been my ultimate Final Fantasy machine, with all of them up through Final Fantasy XV included, had the Pixel Remaster releases on PC not lack the improvements made for the home console port. With Grand Theft Auto, knowing that the upcoming GTA VI is going to be exclusive on consoles at launch kinda drives me away from playing the rest of the series on Steam, despite it currently being the only modern way to play GTA IV on a handheld.
Aside from all of that, I still think the Nintendo Switch is superior in its build and OS quality. It's noticeably lighter and slimmer than the Steam Deck, and its user interface is much more simplified and faster. I personally use a grip case for my Switch, as well as a custom d-pad joy-con, and I think anything on the Deck that isn't an analog stick or trackpad feels mushy in comparison. When comparing both OLED models, while the Steam Deck's 16:10 display can create pure black bars on both the top and bottom, I think I still prefer the Switch's simple 16:9 display, as it is both smaller and has thinner bezels. In addition, SteamOS is slow at times, sometimes even freezing upon booting and requiring a hard reset. Steam Deck games are all the same size as their PC counterparts, while Switch versions of the same game tend to be nearly halved in size, albeit sacrificing certain elements like texture and audio quality. And when comparing battery life, I found both handelds to be nearly identical when placed under the same load, only with the Steam Deck having more flexibility with its own power consumption. Docking isn't so seamless either; the Steam Deck showing issues with incorrect color range on televisions, resulting in very high contrast and dark images. The only real advantage the Steam Deck has against the Nintendo Switch right now, aside from its processing power, is mainly its load times via internal SSD, which I imagine (and hope) Nintendo will integrate into their next hardware. If you're into achievements too, that'll be another push towards the Deck, although the online-integral nature of Steam doesn't always allow the feature to work as intended.
The PC library may be vast, but its compatibility compared to home consoles is varied. Believe me, it's an absolute joy to be playing games like Yakuza, Mass Effect, or even The Sims that haven't made their way to Switch (yet), but it all comes at a cost. I still wish I had a singular handheld for all of my needs, but I am once again sticking to two main handhelds, falling back into the problem of choice.
Let's say I'm going on a trip and can only bring one handheld with me. What if I'm in the mood to progress through Yakuza's story, then later feel like grinding in Xenoblade while catching up on podcasts? Not possible on the Deck. How about wanting to play through Minecraft after a few matches of Halo? There are ways to make it work, but it requires a third-party client that isn't caught up with the latest Minecraft updates. What if I want to play some NieR, then hop on Fortnite for a bit? Can't do it without a Game Pass Ultimate subscription. They're very specific scenarios, I know, but if you're like me with a massive catalog, once again trying to find the single device for all of your needs, it begins to catch you off guard. Deciding what games to play where, what works better or has better features on which platform, it somehow makes everything worse to handle.
When going the route of the Steam Deck, you're choosing cheaper digital-only games and deep customization. Conversely with the Nintendo Switch, no worries about DRM or launchers, but at a cost of performance. Both work in unison. But with my dilemma currently, I'm at a stalemate. Let's be clear though, Valve's strategy is working. They intend to attract home console gamers into the PC ecosystem and their own platform, an all-in-one device with its flaws aplenty. The Steam Deck made me double-dip on games, some of which I already owned and played through on consoles, just to experience them on a 90Hz OLED handheld display. It encouraged me to upgrade my computer's GPU and SSD to match that of my PS5, until I later found out that in-home streaming doesn't quite bring the quality and latency that I was hoping for. (It's not a total loss though, because I use those components for PCVR and game development anyways.)
There is no "one handheld to rule them all", and the Steam Deck is no Switch killer. Both handhelds are great, but for different use-cases. Looking into the future, Nintendo really needs to focus on backwards compatibility in their next hardware iteration, and Valve needs to work with more publishers to mitigate compatibility issues involving Proton and DRM. We'll see just how well my full rundown here ages within the next year or so. For me personally, at the time of this writing, my solution may simply have to involve moving back over to Switch and PS5 as my main platforms, ignoring the technical advantages of the Steam Deck and simply making it a secondary handheld for games like Yakuza, Mass Effect, the Remedy library, Xbox-published titles (Starfield runs great, by the way), PC-exclusive indies, and my entire retro catalog emulated with ease. I wouldn't say my purchase was all for nothing, as I'll still use it for those games mentioned, but it did open my eyes to why I chose to leave PC gaming for consoles back in my youth, and truly how different that other side has evolved since I was gone. As I said, "ignorance is bliss".