To add on to what everybody else said, it’s probably not worth the time/money to have a team of developers play cat and mouse with pirates for the rest of time when they make the large majority of their sales off OEMs. Dell, HP, and Lenovo probably make up something like 80% of Windows license sales. And if it’s a business buying them, then they are also making money off of M365, Azure, and Intune subscriptions. Losing the sales from people who build their own PCs is chump change to them.

You know, and all the data slurping and ad sales etc etc.

This was the type of information I was looking for, no need to apologize for being rambly. I’m going to look into these games and use them to weight my decision. Of course this all kind of hinges on the price of the frame. If the price point is right, it might be the platform that finally gets me to buy into VR, but I’m still very skeptical.

Honestly, one of main motivators is throwing money at things that use Arm arch for gaming. It’s clearly the future and Apple silicon has forced the hand of a lot of developers to make business apps for Arm. But the steam frame feels like the first thing to make gaming on Arm mainstream. Baby steps, right? If the frame drums up enough development for games running natively on Arm, then maybe the next steam deck will be arm, and it will be super fucking awesome. Valve has spoken about not wanting to make a Steamdeck 2 until there is a “generational” leap. Arm arch would do that. It just needs people to develop for it (without using amd64 emulation)

Yeah but what are some good VR games? This is the part I am having a hard time justifying. I never hear about good VR games. Beatsaber? Super Hot? Like… I love the Steamdeck because there is a plethora of 10/10 indie games that run awesome on it. It feels to me like the VR game library is very lacking in that sense. Like are there “Must play - 10/10” games that are VR only? What is the “Hollow Knight” of VR?

I’ve never had a VR headset, and this is the first one I am considering as it feels like we are finally out of “First Gen” VR and we have moved into the product space of VR that is not clunky and burdonsome.

With that said - convince me to get one.

I have a killer PC for playing at my desk, and a Steamdeck for playing on my couch. What will I actually gain? I don’t really have the space in my apartment for things that require moving around, and I don’t really care for VRchat type social experiences. Is there anything about the platform that I will actually use, or will it become an expensive dust collector hanging on the side of my desk? I have a hard time coming up with something that will actually add value. The only thing I really want to play is Half Life Alyx because I love the series and it’s the only thing I haven’t played.

Relavant WKYK

Visions of Mana. I’m almost at the end and I have been putting off beating it because then I will be sad.

Stray

Binding of Isaac Rebirth

Disco Elysium

Dark Souls Remastered (don’t think it was even on sale, but I have never played a souls game and was told this was a good place to start)

Basically a bunch of big hits that I never got around to. I’m starting with Stray, it’s relaxing and fun. I played a little Dark Souls, but I need to come back to that when I have more time to focus.

I was also looking at Death must Die. I played the shit out of Vampire Survivors, and I’ve heard DMD is more of the same.

Last big StamDeck game for me was Hades 2. Loved the original and 2 was just as fun. I know it’s not fully complete, but I unlocked everything available and upgraded most of the gear all the way. I can’t wait for the full release.