I’ve yet to see another handheld that has touchpads like the Deck. IMO those are a must-have because a lot of older games especially don’t have good controller support.

The Steam Deck arguably created the handheld PC gaming market.

Sure, there were handhelds before, but almost no one gave a shit about them. Gamedevs certainly didn’t.

It wasn’t enough just having the hardware exist, it’s also the massive amount of effort Valve put in to ensure compatibility with a ridiculous number of titles.

The renewed emphasis on controller support in games alone has significant ramifications for the wider community. A lot of players with physical disabilities use input devices that map to controller actions.