So, I kinda feel like buying before Summer Sale ends, but I have mainly one doubt. That is, does it make sense to buy now?
I remember reading news about the next installment of Steam Deck right after it came out. I really wouldn’t like it if I bought and next year something new came out and my device would already be outdated (not from a specs point of view, I know it isn’t particularly powerful or anything). For the same reason I usually prefer consoles over gaming computers, since generations have more or less a fixed time length (I hated last generation’s mid-gen upgrades) while new CPUs and GPUs basically come out every year or so. But this is another story.
So, do you know anything about the next Steam Deck? What’s your advice for someone in my situation?
Personally, I think I could put up with the next Deck coming out in, say, two years. But before that?.. I don’t know, I’m afraid I would feel like I wasted money.
The current steam deck isn’t going to be obsolete just because a newer model comes out. I’m happily playing through the new System Shock right now, and there’s a gazillion things in my steam library that I can install and run any time I like.
At some point there will be a faster, better deck, but this one is going to do me for a while. It is, in that sense, like a gaming PC. The lifetime of it isn’t determined by the manufacturer in the same way, because you can choose when it’s worth paying more for a better experience.
Like a gaming PC the first question you need to ask is “what’s my budget”, and the second “what would I like to be able to play”. When you have those answered, you can decide whether the current sale price offers value for money. There is always going to be more power available for a higher price.