Weirdly so is Nintendo these days.
In any case I'm not sure what "percentage of units sold/manufactured" implies there. Everybody has some stock of their products. Selling through your stock isn't much of a metric unless you're doing limited runs on purpose. If Valve was selling these faster they'd manufacture them faster.
I mean...
Not to take anything away from the Steam Deck, it's a very cool piece of hardware, but the Switch 2 beat its lifetime sales in what? Three weeks? I'm not even saying it's better, but I think people should get a sense of the scope of PC handhelds in general compared to consoles and the Switch specifically. And I say that as the owner of multiple handhelds, the Deck included.
I mean, for all the quotes you missed the one that explicitly does "all you ask".
I know that's not universal, and some people with similar accessiblity problems have the opposite experience. I don't question that.
The thing with talking to each other on the Internet while disagreeing (respectfully) is that we end up having to parse which of the parts we disagree in to even have an argument about. I don't mind people liking the Steam controller, but I'm also not shy at calling out the ways in which its rough edges are not a me thing.
I think it's undeniable that it's pretty plasticky. I think I can make a pretty solid argument about its setup and usability being overengineered while not getting to the ostensible goal (mouse and keyboard on a controller format, presumably). And for what it's worth, I think the fact that it's a pretty niche thing goes to show this is the consensus reaction to it.
All of that can be said without taking anything away from the people that like it, I think. But... you know, that doesn't mean I don't think they're wrong about it or that those are all entirely subjective observations about it.
I'll say that my "hate it with a passion" stance is less about the Steam Controller itself and more about how it keeps sneaking into all of Valve's hardware. I've said this before: I don't know who's still stuck on making touchpads happen, but it made my time with the HTC Vive much harder than it had to be and the Steam Deck didn't need to have Dumbo ears, so I do think there's a value to reminding people (and Valve specifically) that this isn't going to happen and everybody else is not jumping into their touchpad fetish for a reason.
I would argue that the reason you haven't found a controller with the same functionality as the Steam controller is most people don't like using overengineered trackpads to try to replicate sticks and d-pads that are much better at the job they're designed to do. Only Steam keeps messing with this concept and... it really doesn't work.
The Steam controller was an attempt to bridge the gap of consolizing PC games back when people still thought of PC games as primarily keyboard and mouse. It's... not a great way to play mouse and keyboard games on a TV and it's mostly a step backwards from a normal controller for games with controller support. Which is the vast majority of PC games now anyway.
And yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to say. You do play mouse and keyboard games on it and love it, and you think it beats sticks because you can spend hours on Steam making overly complicated setups that allow you to macro all sorts of nonses into the trackpads and paddles and whatnot.
That's cool, if that's what you want to do. Go nuts, have fun. But there's a reason it isn't a particularly mainstream way to engage with PC games.
Gyro, though, is actually useful for first person shooters. It's nowhere near a Steam-driven thing or a Steam controller-specific thing, but I do wish Microsoft would start building it into controllers so we could have it on Xinput as a standard and have an easier time using it at the Windows level instead of having to depend on Steam as a translation layer, particularly for non-Steam games.
I hate this thing with a passion.
Some of it is a me thing. The trackpads hurt me physically. I'm talking immediate pain. Even when it came out a decade ago and my writsts were less busted than they are now they hurt. I know that's not universal, and some people with similar accessiblity problems have the opposite experience. I don't question that.
Some of it is most definitely not a me thing. It was plasticky, flimsy, prototypey and trying to make a thing happen that was not going to happen.
I don't blame people for swearing by it as contrarians. Hey, I am fond of controllers people don't like (the joycon are the best controller this generation and people like the wrong Saturn controller, and I'll fight you on both of those). But still, I feel when this comes up it doesn't get enough pushback mostly because not enough people actually tried it. I own one, I tried it and it was not good.
I don't regret having one, though. Bit of a collector's piece. I should go dig it up and make sure none of the plastic has rotted away.
You know the real problem with this conversation?
It is not, and everything I said is sincere and honest.
I mean, unless it's a confession, which I guess I could believe.
What, you think any of the stuff he said is expected by his base?
It was never about the stuff he said, it was about how you didn't have an answer to it he couldn't counter, so you lose and they win.
What you lose and they win about was never the issue, and there is no consequence to it beyond perhaps the opportunity of another argument they may have a harder time winning, but they know how to win arguments against you, so they're not particularly worried.
Who said "why aren't you playing it"? I said you should play it. Very different things.
I know why you're not playing it. It's because you're a sourpuss that doesn't like good games and does like being angry on the Internet.
I'm saying you should change that and play good games. Don't even need to spend hundreds on them. Just throw a tenner at them on sale, give them a look, maybe.
Also, and I say this with utmost sincerity, I am not a serious person. Wish I was even less serious. I'm a bit too stiff for comfort, really.
Man, you really should play the game if you're trying to be mad about the additional content. It's really good and it's ten bucks on sale right now. Forty to get all the extra content. Well worth it.
The stamps are mostly premium edition filler. There are hundreds in the base game and nobody is particularly mad at the three jpegs they try to sell for two bucks as a way to pretend they added two bucks of value to your premium bundle.
The music pack is pretty solid, though. Lots of licensed anime music. Can't argue with blasting out Solid State Scouter when playing with Bardock. Just... remember to disable it if you're going to stream the game, you will get dinged for copyright infringement on Youtube. You want to get mad about something? How about selling people music as part of a game and then accusing them of infringement for streaming the game they paid for? How silly is that?
There is no exploitation in charging different prices for different things. Prices aren't based on how much a thing costs to make, they're based on how much people are willing to pay for it. Welcome to supply and demand.
Cosmetics are (relatively) cheap to make and sold at a high margin because they are subsidizing a game that is sold at very low price. Turns out the sticker price in DBFZ with its what, 24 characters at launch is twenty bucks or so cheaper than good old Street Fighter 2 with its eight characters.
There are a bunch of ways we've been shaving cost from games to keep that somewhat artificial price point. Selling people who are willing to spend more a bunch of non-game-relevant stuff at a higher margin is just one of them. You are extremely outraged by this for some reason, I am very glad.
Because yeah, sure, I spent like 200 bucks in my copy of the game (probably a bit more, I got the Switch version, too) and I subsidized a number of more casual players that only bought the base game.
That's cool. I get more people to play against and they get a cheaper game up front. I played that game for 500 to 1000 hours, I spent 3-5 cents per hour. I have no regrets. Didn't even have to pay a subscription for it, my physical version will live forever and I can still play my Steam copy with forty-plus characters.
You are commited to being mad about this on our behalf, turns out us spenders don't need your protection. If you don't like it, that's fine. You don't have to get it. We'll pick up your slack.
Which is not to say everything is fair game or that there aren't predatory practices at play in gaming. It's to say you're obscuring those by crying wolf because you like being mad about things and have fixated on this in particular to an unreasonable degree.
3 Km is what? A half hour walk? I've lived in multiple European countries in my life and never been that far from a supermarket.
I mean, I definitely have walked that much daily. My longest walk to work I can remember was maybe 40 minutes. In some places where I'd take public transportation for like 20-30 min I've walked for an hour when I felt like it instead.
For groceries I don't think I'd take that with me that far walking unless it could go in my backpack. But seriously, if you don't have a shop in that radius around you in Europe you need a car anyway because you're out in the middle of nowhere.
But also, in European supermarkets you can normally get big grocery hauls delivered that far away. Just go there, buy your stuff, pay, book a delivery. Lots of old people who can't carry heavy weights do it. They still go to the shop, though.
I am very glad it exists. I may have a problem with owning handhelds. I am the perfect mark for this stuff. I have multiple upcoming boutique handheld PCs I'm actively trying not to overspend on.
But they are competitors. If anything, they are about as similar as they've ever been, honestly.
I'm only reacting to they weird Valve mythmaking that presents them as being extremely successful in the meme up top. Yes, the Deck is a very popular PC handheld, it is supposed to account for half-ish of the entire segment and it's been very well priced for what it is, but it isn't a runaway hit in the large scheme of the game industry and game hardware manufacturing.