To be fair, and for all their other woes, Microsoft’s work on back compat with Xbox One / Series is a pretty incredible feat of engineering.
Too bad licensing means they’ve essentially run out of games to port.

There might be a few different scenarios, but outside of very specific consoles / handhelds, they’ve remained somewhat affordable tbh.

• 3DS line of handhelds, historically emulation has been good but not perfect (eg disruptive shader caching), dual-screen not being ideal on single screen setups and missing 3D effect via emulation make emulation a last resort for a number of people, myself included.
• PSVita, emulation is starting to get into its stride but nowhere near fully playable and supply of good condition OLED models is slowly dwindling.
• PS3, backcompat models have historically been pricey, especially CECHA/Bxx since they have full hw PS2 compat. Despite the usually high price point, it’s still the easiest and cheapest way to play physical PS2 games on a modern screen.

Most other “newly retro” consoles and handhelds really haven’t appreciated as much afaict, although that might be market-dependent.

Is there anything you’re currently missing out on with your Xbox?
Do you have any public libraries around you might borrow physical games from? (Assuming your Xbox has a disc drive)
Depending on what games you want to play, Game Pass might still be a relatively cheap option, especially if you can find it cheaper (Live Gold codes should still work conversion-wise, but who knows how much they go for these days).

A used Steam Deck or equivalent handheld PC might be a great option or addition to tour setup, obviously depending on what games you want to play.

That was a great read, thanks!
And it looks like they have a few other interesting blog posts about graphics drivers and shaders; bookmarked for later.

I recently installed ME:LE on Linux, directly via the EA app (got that game for free years ago), and the game runs flawlessly so far, so I believe you’ll be fine running it via Steam. FWIW I’m also running AMD hw only, albeit on Fedora.

I wouldn’t play the PS1 port, because of the long losing loading times.
I agree with that article though, that the best version to play is the DS port. The Steam release is okay, it’s simply the easiest to buy nowadays.

Great collection! But no love for Majora’s Mask?

All other things being equal (same game, settings and refresh rate / fps limit), the OLED and LCD models have comparable power draw.
If anything, the OLED max power draw at 15W TDP is lower, usually around 23W max versus 26/27W for the LCD iirc.

Have you tried using motion control?
My aim with controllers isn’t as accurate as m+kb, however I can get pretty close with the right motion control / gyro setup. It’s unfortunately not a given in every game on PS5, but most first-party titles and a good chunk of FPS should offer something.
To be clear, I’m talking about motion control for micro-adjustments in addition to fast movement with sticks, not as a sole replacement for stick based input.

TIL about WinGet.

ITAD allows for wishlist (and collection) imports from both Steam and GOG. You’ll end up with a unified wishlist, where you can set specific rules to get notified when there’s a sale, including which specific stores have a game on sale.
That’s what I use to track any game I wishlist, with specific rules to notify me when said game is on sale at GOG.

Was anyone else tripped up by the picture shown in that article? To me it looks as though it’s a miniature version of the device, but I can’t quite put my finger on why that is.

gpu_efficiency Display GPU efficiency in frames per joule

Finally a great way to “flex” with my 9070, haha

I feel like Sekiro would meet most of your criteria, except for the dungeon aspect.

I’m not familiar with either of those programs, sorry.
You might want to check what mpv and/or va-api is reporting.

Do you have any specific issues?
I’ve been using a 9070 on fedora (42 initially, 43 for a few days) and hw acceleration hasn’t been an issue. I’ve been using newer mesa drivers from a copr repo FWIW, but I don’t think hw acceleration was any issue before that.

Oh the memories, thanks for mentioning it!
I used to play on surf maps a lot with my friends back in the mid to late 00s; that and scout only maps.

A Plague Tale: Requiem.
I wouldn’t say it changed my life, but I couldn’t get myself to play another game for some time after both Plague Tale games back-to-back.

A Plague Tale Requiem, especially after beating the game.

OptiScaler works just fine with BG3 fwiw, so you can get either that way.