Ready to hear more about the Steam Deck?
RIP Black Widow. It was fun while it lasted. It seems people want the new hotness already, and that comes out as Space Jam 2. I certainly don’t understand it, especially considering if you have an HBO Max subscription already you can watch it at home. Seems like the masses really want to see LeBron on the big screen.
Loki is over but its effects on the MCU will be long lasting and far reaching. Introducing a new multiverse where literally anything is possible and still remain canon leaves the door wide open to bring in all those sweet new Fox acquisition characters. Any guesses who will be first? If it’s not Wolverine, that tells me they are saving him for something special. Disney does love their plans.
Something else interesting showed up in the last day or two as well: the timeline for events (in real time for the episodes) line up very well for the finales of Loki and WandaVision. Coincidence? Maybe, the episodes are different lengths. Seems *pretty lucky* that He Who Remains would do his weird mid-rant “We just crossed the Threshold” pause right at 27 minutes and 30 seconds in, which is also when Wanda is accepting her place as a Nexus Being in the WandaVision finale.
Yes, there is almost certainly a formula for how the plot lines for these episodes are constructed which will leave them very similar anyway. But within the same 30 second time frame, even accounting for “Previously on…” at the beginning of each one? Smells like planning to me, and if it was then bravo to them. That kind of editing across entirely different production teams is impressive even for Disney.
If you listened to the show already this week, you know I’m pretty psyched about the Steam Deck. The PC gaming circles I spend time in also seem excited, but I wanted to get an outside perspective from Vic. My guess is that people who don’t already play games on PC might just end up confused by the Deck. It looks like a Switch, but doesn’t have Zelda and Mario?
Despite the obvious visual similarities, in my mind the Deck and Switch couldn’t be more different. The Switch (and Nintendo hardware in general) are all individual walled gardens. With the exception of the Wii playing GameCube games, if you bought the latest and greatest offering from Big N, you also got to rebuy your favorite games to play on it, assuming they were available at all. You are 100% beholden to Nintendo on what they are going to allow on each individual platform.
I pay for the Nintendo Online service and am mostly happy to do so. It is very cheap by online subscription standards and I like the classic games that you get access to via the service. Playing through Super Metroid and Link to the Past on my Switch was great! But where is Earthbound? Where is Final Fantasy 6? Are we EVER going to get Super Mario RPG? Don’t even get me started on Chrono Trigger.
The only option right now, in 2021, for playing these games legitimately are:
- Buy an SNES and the games (have you seen the price of these games now? maybe my old copies are still in a box somewhere…)
- Somehow find an SNES Classic (good luck with that too)
- Dust off my Wii and play the Virtual Console versions I already bought
And if want to play them during lunch at work? Forget it. There is no “legit” way to play these classics on the go, not because of some physical limitation on the Switch. Nintendo just didn’t bring the Virtual Console store over to the latest hardware. Why not? I have no idea. I’d imagine they would make dump trucks of cash if they did.
So herein is the core argument I have against console gaming, and Nintendo is only an example. They have the games, they have the hardware. But never shall the two meet, for who knows what reason. I have easily spent a Steam Deck-amount of money just rebuying games I already owned for newer console generations, or to be able to play them in a portable fashion on the Switch, because there wasn’t any good option I liked for taking my PC library with me.
But Ben, you ask, why not just get a laptop? Gaming laptops are an excellent way to play while traveling etc. and some aren’t that much more expensive than the top-tier Deck. But personally, that is no way to play without a desk. Yeah, that might just be a “me” issue, but there it is. I can’t play on a gaming laptop comfortably in my living room recliner the same way I played through all of Final Fantasy X and XII on the Switch.
I already own an embarrassingly large number of games on PC and there are plenty I would love to be able to play from the comfort of a hammock. Why should I need to buy them again? Or what if I want to play older games that aren’t being ported to the latest generation of hardware. This, to me, is where PC will always take the cake, for all time. Playing older games, even from decades ago, for the most part just works on PC, and if I bought the game at any point in my gaming career (and still have the discs for it…) I can just fire it up again with minimal effort. (And if I don’t have the discs any more, there is always GoodOldGames).
Don’t even get me started on PC games constantly being on sale, mods for new ways to play and a massively larger catalog overall, not to mention the nearly infinite possibilities for emulation (which is legal, BTW). The one thing that was missing, mostly due to technological limitations, was having an all-in-one device that you could use to play them wherever you were. Is the Steam Deck for everyone? Not even close. But it pushes the envelope for portable PC gaming in a huge, and hugely important direction.
