I don't know if I care about the features, what I do care about is the games and a lean-back experience which is not sweaty. I play games to escape the drudgery of software development and the last thing I want to do is mess with an .INI file.

I love the Steam Deck because it feels like a consumer electronics device: it has the reliability of Linux but not the sweat. The Steam Deck is the only device I've seen that works 100% perfectly with Airpods, for instance, including Apple devices.

I was at Best Buy the other day and saw an ASUS device that looked pretty cool until I picked it up and saw a Windows desktop with fonts not scaled appropriately for the size of the device. Like, wazzup? Steam Big Picture turns my big Windows machine at home into a game console and does the same for my Mac Mini. How is it you can have the back of frickin' Microsoft and not be able to do the same?

Not to say that Steam isn't packed with features that are valuable to many gamers, but just having a great selection of games that "just work" and knowing I can enjoy my investment on the devices I have now and devices I get in the future is worth a lot.

I think it's one of those things where people only care about a small percentage of the features, but which small percentage varies.

For example, I used the example of remote play together, which is very neat and a lot of people love it, but I personally don't use it.

On the other hand, I make extensive use of Steam's gifting feature, including its ability to handle multiple gifts to multiple people in a single transaction, and to schedule exactly when those gifts will land. And this is something that the other major stores don't seem to support at all, a big advantage for Steam for me, but I'm sure there's many people who don't care at all about gifting.