I think steam deck is a pretty good choice from that perspective.
There is little vendor lock in, you could upgrade from a deck to a competitor and so long as it uses steam you won’t really be missing out on anything
Valve has gone in pretty hard on repairability. so while it may become obsolete (and I don’t think it will for a while, Moores law isn’t what it used to be) it should still be able to run very far down the line.
The steam controller and ecosystem planned around it was a financial failure. While there were a hunch of enthusiasts into the steam controller (myself included) it never gained mainstream appeal. The steam machine that it was meant to synergize with did even worse. Otoh the valve index did pretty well and still is quite a popular pick if you wanna get into vr today despite being 5 yrs old, while vr wasnt as successful as i think some wanted (I blame meta for that!) It did carve out a niche for valve that helos there long term plans. The steam deck has been a run away success and also brings a big boost to a lot of valves long term strategies (decoupling from windows, competing with consoles, giving people a reason to stay on steam), and its already seen a refresh. I would be very surprised to not see a steamdeck 2, although it may be a while (valve has stated as much, because they want to make it easy for devs to target steam deck for recommended specs)
I think steam deck is a pretty good choice from that perspective.
There is little vendor lock in, you could upgrade from a deck to a competitor and so long as it uses steam you won’t really be missing out on anything
Valve has gone in pretty hard on repairability. so while it may become obsolete (and I don’t think it will for a while, Moores law isn’t what it used to be) it should still be able to run very far down the line.
The steam controller and ecosystem planned around it was a financial failure. While there were a hunch of enthusiasts into the steam controller (myself included) it never gained mainstream appeal. The steam machine that it was meant to synergize with did even worse. Otoh the valve index did pretty well and still is quite a popular pick if you wanna get into vr today despite being 5 yrs old, while vr wasnt as successful as i think some wanted (I blame meta for that!) It did carve out a niche for valve that helos there long term plans. The steam deck has been a run away success and also brings a big boost to a lot of valves long term strategies (decoupling from windows, competing with consoles, giving people a reason to stay on steam), and its already seen a refresh. I would be very surprised to not see a steamdeck 2, although it may be a while (valve has stated as much, because they want to make it easy for devs to target steam deck for recommended specs)