I’ve wanted to get into PC gaming forever but I’ve been a console gamer my entire life. For context, I go to a University out of province (Canadian) and I travel home for summers and breaks so transporting a PC every summer just isn’t realistic. I already have a Macbook as a laptop and have considered switching to a gaming laptop but since I need to use it every day and around other people it kind of just doesn’t make sense. Already own a PS5 but the deck is interesting to me because it seems like I could play the PC games, especially online games because I refuse to pay for a subscription service, I’ve always been interested in without having to sacrifice a chunk of my room to a PC setup and then not be able to use it a lot of the time. Also, I could bring it home during the summers which I can’t do with my PS5 either. At the same time, it feels a little silly to slam down a good deal of money for a Steam deck when I do have a PS5 which will run my games better with a library that isn’t transferable. Most of the time if I have a choice between PS5 or Steam Deck for AAA games I’ll end up choosing the PS5 simply because it’s more powerful and I want the best experience, but I can see myself playing any indies and online games on the deck. Thoughts?
The money wasn’t really an issue in my case, but I will say that I’m similar to you. I do not play modern AAA games on my Steamdeck, but it’s still a great companion to modern consoles.
Streaming via Game Pass or directly from my consoles, purchasing games from Steam that haven’t been ported to consoles, emulating my owns ROMs instead of paying Nintendo a rental fee for an inferior experience, etc. It works as both a primary gaming device or a complementary one.