Absurd is too strong of a word, but 100$ ain't nothing. Not for everyone.

Asking out of genuine ignorance here: is there a setup that allows a 100+ GB game to be played on the 64GB Steam Deck?

Not currently, no. They burned enough dev cycles trying to get split screen co-op on the S that now BOTH the S and X versions are delayed, which I guess is better than "not happening at all."

The S has every right to exist, but as soon as it starts interfering with Series X development (which has been for a while now), it's time for it to go.

Microsoft needs to cut it loose like the boat anchor it is and just release a discless Series X and call it good.

My cheap mainstream laptop runs the game on mid settings just fine. It cost ~500 USD.

Am I misreading your comment? You're saying Series S is not the cheapest because Steam Deck is more expensive? Did you have a typo? Am I suffering CO poisoning?

Good luck installing BG3 on that 64GB eMMC, mate.

I don't blame the lack of good shooters on consoles. Consoles never interfered with that before. I blame the popularity of Battle Royale. Everything is a fucking BR now. And it's not like they just took the gameplay style; they also took the jank.

All the best new shooters are indy developed boomer shooters with retro aesthetics. And I'm getting kinda over that, too. The genre needs some new ideas.

The Series S is very frequently on sale for $50 off, sometimes more, and often comes with a bundled controller or game.

The Deck is only playable in Act 1. The frame rate in other acts struggles to reach 20 FPS, even on low settings. Also, the $400 deck you're referencing cannot even install the game unless you buy an accompanying microSD (which I can't imagine provides a good BG3 experience) or an SSD which you then crack open the steam deck to install (which will be too intimidating to most casual, non-tech people).

$450+ is a more accurate price point for playing BG3 on Steam Deck; 50% more than the Xbox MSRP, which is significantly discounted every few weeks. The Xbox will also offer a much more convenient experience to those who want to play the game on their TVs, and the game will look nicer on that hardware.

The Deck is an awesome little device, but you're overselling it here, and ignoring a lot of nuance.

I mean it's definitely not a great experience on the steam deck. I would imagine even the Series S can run the game better than the Deck can. Especially at 1080p since the deck only has an 800p screen. (Yes you can dock it but the experience will be even worse than the already reportedly poor visuals on the 800p screen)

If that report about the Series S losing split screen is true that seems like a pretty good compromise while also allowing a decent quality single player experience for Series S owners.

The steam deck is about half as powerful as the Series S. If you don't want mobile gaming, there's zero reason to buy the steam deck over the Series S.

Sure, the Steam Deck is cool, but a Series S can actually be bought in most of the world. Last I checked, Valve only sells it in less than 20 countries

It's not exactly isometric considering you can tilt and zoom the camera and get it all the way down to over the shoulder adventure style, allowing you to see off into those beautiful vistas. It has some performance issues even on PC in some places like the mountains and the namesake city.

Microsoft did the right thing by softening their stance on system parity. Insisting on it would have hurt the Xbox further along the line, but now devs know they can still release on Xbox if they can’t get one or two features to run on the S.

Yeah feature parity made sense in the beginning so the S didn't get left behind but at this point its place feels secure to me. It's the cheap option. I think most gamers understand that and accept the trade-offs that are inherent in that choice.