Given how many games the Deck has access to, the greatest roadblock players will find toward actually playing them all is storage space. The Deck offers a 256GB model as its cheapest current option, but to get a full terabyte of storage, users will need to provide a whopping $649. The most expensive versions of the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles are around $150 cheaper than this version of the Deck, and they include 1TB storage as a baseline. The only way to expand this storage is through the use of microSD cards, which can end up being very expensive at higher capacities.
Compared to the Switch, it might seem like the Deck still wins out with the former’s 32GB storage. But something important to note is how Switch titles are optimized in both texture capabilities and file size. Demanding games like DOOM Eternal take up far less space on Nintendo’s console. The Steam Deck also relies on a shader cache to make games run more smoothly, causing its drive to fill up with these shaders while games are being played. This caching feature can be disabled, but doing so could lead to further performance issues.
