I personally have a huge backlog of games I’m happily playing through on the deck. And, having been burnt a few times (Cyberpunk, No Mans Sky …), I very rarely buy new full priced games anyway (better to wait for a discount and some patches!)
But according to this rather clickbate article …
In the last month alone, we’ve seen three disappointing examples of games that are too demanding for the Deck. Star Wars Outlaws is unplayable on Low settings, even with FSR set to “Ultra Performance.” Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 can’t reach a steady 30fps at the lowest quality setting. And based on the demo, Final Fantasy 16 is unplayable without FSR and Frame Generation, and afflicted with stuttering and horrible frame pacing with those scaling features enabled.
Yeah well my steam deck will survive 2025 unless I break it. It’s a proper nifty little machine, so glad I bought it. I’ve not done any gaming since i had a PS2 so there’s loads of games to catch up on. Recently finished bioshock, wow. I’ve got a long list of older games, but I’ve tried a couple of newer things. It plays doom 2016 just fine, same with deathloop and beam ng drive
Personally, I just don’t have time or energy to play big AAA games for the most part. I very much prefer smaller indie games nowadays, and Steam Deck has those in spades. I would wager a lot of older gamers are in the same boat.
In 2027 the current iteration won’t be legally able to be sold in the EU, since the EU will require portable devices to have easily replaceable batteries. (Which the Steam does not qualify for due to needing a heat gun). So an upgrade is almost certainly planned by then.
I mostly use the Deck for indie games and emulation so a CPU/GPU upgrade isn’t something of interest for me. A larger, 16:9 screen or better ergonomics on the other hand…