No I agree with you on the Steam license thing. That’s why I used quotations in my previous comment.

But Game Pass isn’t any better. It’s worse than licensing games because, again, Microsoft can choose to remove games from Pass at will.

The Steam Deck can do what you describe as well. Some prefer SteamOS for it’s sleekness, where Windows can become bloated over time. Then you also don’t need to factor in how Windows machines need to have the price of Windows built into their purchase price. The SD runs off of SteamOS, which is a free OS provided by Valve. And yes, dual booting to run SteamOS and Windows is possible, allowing users the same game and market compatibility as the ROG Ally.

SteamOS is the key factor for a lot of people here. Linus just did a video on it. Consider giving that a watch!

Game Pass doesn’t give you ownership of games however. Microsoft can rotate games out of Game Pass in a matter of weeks to months. If you want to keep those, pay out CAPEX in addition to your ongoing OPEX costs via Game Pass.

And if those games you liked that you went out and bought have online multiplayer, well then you’re locked into ongoing OPEX via Game Pass Core in order to get at least multiplayer access. This is regardless of whether you use Game Pass to explore new games.

Subscriptions also induce FOMO and create uncertainty costs. Microsoft can choose rotate a game out of Game Pass, which then forces you to make a decision about whether you play it to 100% completion before it’s gone, or buy it. And because Game Pass is a subscription, Microsoft can choose to raise its prices for access to the same games for no real reason.

With Steam, I “own” my games so I know I can always play them for the foreseeable future. With Steam, if some of my games have multiplayer, I only need to pay my telco utility bill to gain access. With Steam, I don’t have FOMO because my games aren’t going away, and I limit my uncertainty costs because I only need to consider my telco utility raising prices and not my telco + Microsoft.

Ultimately though, I think the top comments of this reddit post speak to the pros and cons of both platforms. If there’s an expensive AAA game coming out that you want to play, it’s cheaper to do the Game Pass route to play on Day 1. If you want to own that game long term, you can stop Game Pass payments until the next Steam sale to get the game discounted (else you run into the above issues). Game Pass to try, Steam to “own”. Plus with a Steam Deck, you can dual boot Windows and SteamOS, so you can do Game Pass PC and Steam on the same device. No need to really buy into the Xbox ecosystem.

You’re moving the goal posts. The original commenter posed the question asking why someone would purchase a console in this day and age given inflation. You gave some answers, and I gave some rebuttals.

Whether we can call the SD a console or handheld PC is moot to that conversation.

What’s more important is how you don’t have to pay anything above a monthly internet bill to play multiplayer games, talk, etc. on the SD. With other consoles, you have to pay an internet bill plus network fee (e.g. Xbox Live, PS+, etc.) which raises OPEX costs.

Replying to your original points:

Because you can buy a consol3, plig it into the back of your TV, and be confident that it will work.

The Steam Deck has a dock that you can plug it into and have it hooked up to your TV via HDMI just like a normal console. Plus, any Bluetooth controller syncs with the SD, which makes plug and play even easier.

You don’t have to worry about system requirements, storefronts, launchers, driver updates fucking you up, etc.

No real issue here on the SD either. The main storefront is Steam. You wouldn’t be inclined to purchase PlayStation games from an Xbox or Xbox games from a PlayStation. Pretty sure that’s not even possible unless you do some bootlegging. Drivers aren’t really an issue either.

Power Cable, HDMI cable, and connect to wifi - that’s it.

Same as the Steam Deck - with a dock. Although it does have a USB-C port so you might be able to do this without a dock by using a USB-C to HDMI or DP cable. The dock is probably the best way to go though as this is also how the Switch is marketed to be played while not on the go.

I’ve been PC gaming since the mid-80s, and even I sometimes just want to sit on the couch, push the Xbox button on my controller, and get going. Is it lazy? Yes. But I work 2 jobs and get to be lazy when I get home.

Welcome to the Steam Deck where the only time you don’t have to be lazy is buying the “console”/dock, buying your games, setting shit up, and gaming on. None of the your issues here really affect the SD. I just highly recommend you try it, especially after doing PC gaming for years. Opened me up to all of those games I can’t find on the Xbox store, being an Xbox native myself, while not needed to pay for Xbox Live. Such a great choice looking back

One rebuttal: Steam Deck.

It looks like the recommended Pixelfed instance, pixelfed.social, is running an outdated version of the platform. Aka the instance most new users will login to, and the one I created my account on last year. I guess I could make an account elsewhere, but meh. Hopefully they get that sorted

Fucked up man. Glad I became vegan

Yes

Probably that orca that killed their trainer at SeaWorld in the US a few decades (?) ago

Gold

You’re right. Not 100% failsafe is failproof.

Another way to put it is 100% failproof is failsafe, by definition.

Bro, THE FUCKING BACKUP DIESEL GENERATORS FOR THE PLANT WERE BELOW SEA LEVEL.

Make it make sense. If those generators had been above sea level, well probably above 100-year tsunami levels, we likely would not have seen the plant catastrophically fail.

Lol and the commenter above you is forgetting about the aluminum of the PV module’s frame, as well as stainless steel used for the racking. Those things are super easy to recycle.

Solar panels are glass and rare elements that we can’t recycle properly yet.

NREL’s Solar PV fact sheet on circularity says that conventional solar PV panels have recovery rates of 80-95% given existing recycling infrastructure.

We know how to recycle these things. The fact that we maybe don’t do so in a widespread way is because it’s still cheaper to throw shit in a landfill or incinerator.

Can’t wait to see enhanced geothermal take off tbh. I know that the drilling tech couldn’t really get us to the depth we need to see the right energy gains, but you are right that there are companies out there looking to make strides.

If you’re trying to maximize energy collection then yes you’ll want to face the fence rows NS.

But there are also some benefits for making use of vertical bifacial panels oriented EW. You get a bimodal energy plot: one in the morning and one in the evening when the sun’s direct rays shine near horizontal (something NS panels can’t collect).

I’d actually be interested in reading the literature on mixing these types of panel orientations to see what the resulting production yields would look like, and if stakeholders like utilities would find any benefit in them to help better manage grid demand in those peripheral times of the day.

Something to note about your link to solar fences is that one of the cons mentioned is that panels can’t produce power for half of the day because they’ll be facing away from the sun.

Bifacial panels exist and can collect energy from both faces of the module. We in the utility-scale space use these all the time. You’d want these over monofacial panels for fence applications

Just because those panels will need to be replaced in decades time doesn’t mean they won’t have value then.

NREL estimates that PV 80-95% of modules’ materials can be recovered through recycling, and there is constant academic work on refining the EoL process to better delaminate panels so they can be better sorted and their materials better reused.

I can’t find the figure, but I believe the IPCC found in their 6th Assessment Report that the cost to deploy renewables + battery storage, and manage the grid more intelligently on the backend, absolutely demonstrate lower costs than it takes to build new nuclear. I want to say that that finding still out value on our existing nuclear fleet, so we definitely don’t want to shut any existing plants down if we don’t have to.

I don’t think fission nuclear will get our energy systems off of fossil fuels. Fusion nuclear has the potential to do this, but by the time that technology reaches commercial operation, renewables alone will likely be in the multiples of TW of generation capacity.

Nuclear should be part of the future if modularity and MSRs/thorium reactors can breakthrough. Until then, solar/wind + storage baby

Something to note about this chart is that ground-mount silicon solar PV isn’t considered for sharing land use with activities such as farming in comparison to how onshore wind is (i.e. agrivoltaics).

NREL in the US estimates that there are currently ~10.1 GW of agrivoltaics projects spread across ~62,400 acres (or ~7 m^2 / MW).

Even this being said, I think brownfield or existing structures for new PV is the way of the future for solar PV. There is so much real estate that could be used and has the potential to offset grid demand growth while providing greater reliability for consumers. You’ll need the big players to help with industrial loads, but even then, the growth of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) has the potential to balance loads at the same scale as the big players for the prosumer market.

Edit: I’ll also make mention of floatovoltaics, or the installation of solar PV on bodies of water, either natural or artificial. This is a burgeoning side of the industry, but this is another area that could present net zero or even negative land use per unit of energy.