Well, the steam deck sold something like 6 million, and the switch sold 150 million, so…probably not? But on a more anecdotal level I know a lot of people for whom the Steam Deck took the place of their Switch.
Easily. Aside from the first party titles, there’s literally no reason to get a Switch 2. Everything else is objectively better on a PC handheld (especially the Deck).
Serious question. Do ANY of those have track pads? Because so far those seem to be something that only the deck has and I find them to be its most important feature.
There are thousands of games that come out every year, even after filtering out the asset flips and hentai games. A handful of those will have kernel-level anti cheat that make them incompatible by design. Fewer still will be pushing minimum specs that are too hefty for the Steam Deck to handle. So the thousands of remaining games are your use case for the Steam Deck, which tends to be cheaper than its competition and comes with a better OS. A device like those Android ones are fine for emulation, but you’re not playing newer releases on it, and newer releases are far, far, far more than just AAA games with hefty system requirements; it’s also Mouse: P.I. for Hire, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Warside, Descenders Next, Dispatch, and on and on.
The Ally, Legion, Claw and Win 4 are all more expensive than the Steam Deck. The Odin 2 and Pocket 5 are not, but they don’t run steam, so you can definitely not play all the same games as the steam deck
This is exactly why we have these issues like we’re dealing with with the Switch 2. Console gamers are only focused on hardware and exclusivity, they’re not focused on the operating system of the device, the build quality of the product itself (including the ergonomics), nor do they care about the company that produces it beyond their basic fanboy tendencies.
Steam Deck’s competitors might have slightly better hardware or a higher resolution, but none of them are right to repair friendly. None of them have custom software literally designed for the product, and none of them have the sort of ergonomics that the Steam Deck has. Not to mention the fact that Valve is an American company, which might not be important to everybody, but it is important to me. They’re also a company that has proven themselves to be largely consumer-friendly.
While I’m not dissing anybody who does make the choice to go for an Ally or a Legion Go, the problem I have is that those devices are literally just another hardware company jumping on a band wagon. The Steam Deck completely revolutionized the way that we play on PC. Sure, it took inspiration from the original Switch. There’s no question about that. But that doesn’t mean that Valve was just jumping on a band wagon the way that ASUS and Lenovo are doing.
Valve literally spent years working with Linux developers on software that makes Linux gaming truly viable in order to create devices that allow you to run virtually any game on a handheld that you fully own, are allowed to put any game on (including games from other launchers, which they didn’t have to allow) and you’re fully allowed to self-repair it if any issues arise. Meanwhile, companies like ASUS and Lenovo treat their customers more like smartphone suckers customers, not to mention the fact that they went the cheap and easy route of just using Windows, which isn’t optimized for a device like these. And guess what? Lenovo is bending the knee to the Steam Deck supremacy by allowing you to get a version with SteamOS in the future. That alone proves that Valve is one step ahead of their competition.
To summarize all that I said, the reason the Steam Deck is so good is not just the hardware, it’s not just the screen, it’s the fact that it’s a very capable device at the hardware level, combined with very, very good software and a very consumer-friendly company behind it all.
Yep! When you open the Steam menu, you can access a full-featured desktop mode. It makes the device virtually limitless outside of the software issues you mentioned. And I agree entirely that it’s ridiculous to see these companies ignoring Linux the way they do.
I picked up a Nintendo Switch because of it being a handheld. I wouldn’t have picked one up otherwise, since I had skipped generations of Nintendo consoles preferring Sony due to Nintendo games being too high. But, with the Steam Deck where I don’t even need to repurchase “Deck versions” of games the handheld component isn’t a selling point of the Switch to me anymore.
Honestly I prefer console to PC so much, even as a fediverse user, linux user, someone who has a degoogled phone and uses a home server instead of a cloud, because I just hate having to worry if games are compatible with my hardware, or if controllers are compatible with my game, or if graphical oddities in my game represent supernatural parts of the story or that I didn’t install the right NVidia driver. When it comes to games, which are leisure, I find I just can’t relax with PC games like I can with console games. As for emulation, I can’t enjoy my games like that at all becuse the worry that settings are wrong or emulation is wrong is just too much like work. So I love my switch and I’ll probably love my switch 2 one day.
Hello fellow kids, I, too, can not enjoy my steam deck video game PC. I prefer to pay my tithe to Nintendo, my best friend and surrogate parent. I love [Product].
Yes, to an extent, which is positive. I don’t know too much about the steam deck side of things, but I don’t get the impression that it’s got enough PC market share to do that. I have a steam controller and last time I used that (admittedly years ago when it was still pretty new) I found Steam Input really didn’t have good defaults at all, despite what they said. The only sort of good defaults had the drawback of just ignoring most of the device’s USPs. It was bad, and community profiles weren’t good either. Maybe it got better?
Think about what the parent is going to buy their kids a easy to use Nintendo console or the Steam deck that doesn’t run every game you can buy on it because it’s really a pc
If you try to buy a game on the deck that isn’t verified to run there you get a warning. Meanwhile you have a limited selection on the switch of over priced games.
This is what cracks me up about this topic literally every time it comes up.
Everyone on highly tech savvy and linux loving lemmy not being able to wrap their heads around the idea that busy parents dont want to have to tech support their kids game console. They want to be able to tell Grandma “He has a switch 2 and wants the new pokemon game for his birthday”, they want to walk into stores and buy accessories that WILL fit and they dont want microtransaction laden shit. One of the FEW things I still respect about Nintendo is that their AAA in house releases are FULL games (for the price, they would fucking want to be).
The 6 to 12yo market alone is probably enough to make the switch worthwhile from a business perspective. The “just tech savvy enough to work facebook” crowd adds in the profit margins.
Yes but that group by in large won’t be buying a switch 2 for at least a couple of years. $450 per console plus $80 a game is brutal, especially if you’re buying for more than one kid.
On the other hand a switch lite can be had for like $100 and used games aren’t too expensive either. So for the price of a switch 2 you could get all 3 kids a switch lite + a game. No fucking brainer.
The sort of people who bought a switch at launch, after drinking Nintendo NX leaks like kool-aid, aren’t as impressed this time around. They’re also getting really pissed off at Nintendo’s behavior towards the emulation scene.
Lots of those people, myself included, will be getting a steam deck. A lot of us will also probably end up buying a switch later on after sales/price drops/cheaper revisions. The same time most parents will be snatching them up.
Lifetime sales won’t be affected nearly as hard, but I don’t know that the first year will be as big as the OG switch’s.
That being said if M$ can figure out a good UI for windows portables W/ Xbox integration that might make things even harder for them.
I think you’re definitely right about the adoption speed, people wont be dumping their switches en masse to buy a 2.
The Deck definitely puts a dent in their sales but “i DoNt gEt wHy aNyOnE wOuld bUy a sWitCh” comments on Lemmy show just how skewed the demographics are on here. Its not aimed at us.
Idiots who have never used a steam deck and are obviously scared by the word linux in this thread. You can easily use the steamdeck without ever leaving gaming mode and with absolutely no troubleshooting needed. Its as simple as browsing steam, pressing download, and pressing play. I would absolutely give it to a child with a few games preloaded, and they would be perfectly fine to use it. The UI is way more friendly than the switch one also. Everytime ive tried to play a game on switch with friends theres been some update that takes ages, the Ui is slow and clunky, and connecting joycons is an absolute pain. What troubleshooting do you think is necessary to run a game from steam lmao?
Imagine if you could go on the Nintendo store and buy a game you couldn’t even run, or had to check a third party website to see if it ran acceptably and let you use all the buttons.
How is that different from any other computer buying from steam, ever? In the history of all computer games? A steam deck is a hand held computer with a community large enough, and system specs stable enough to have a rating on potentially any PC, and most Nintendo games in existence. Compared to nintendo’s walled garden. Your comparing apples to oranges.
My comment is germane to the post comparing the two devices in an aspect that exemplifies how they can’t be compared, and tries to spin it as a negative, while attempting to bury its positive.
The fact you say that the switch is not like any other computer is both true in the sense that i already argued, and false in that it IS yet just another computer, but with a walled garden.
If there was any a comment that was irrelevant, it would be yours.
If you try to buy a game on Deck that you couldn’t run on Deck, there will be very clear warning about it, one you can’t miss. At least it was last time I checked. And to be honest, I’m pretty sure the list of games like that is now almost exclusively consists of competitive shooters, and you wouldn’t even think of buying it on Deck anyway.
You can even get every achievement in a game, and return it for a full refund, granted you can beat the game in under two hours. Someone did it with resident evil 3 remake: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp8a5EjAcGs
A lot of people are saying they’re not really competition judging off sale numbers but I’d say they are, just PC handhelds aren’t that big of competition. They still are taking away sales as I doubt people with a steam deck are also gonna own a switch or switch 2 unless they already had one before the steam deck came out or are well enough off to afford both and don’t want to deal with emulating. I definitely get Lemmy and myself are a biased audience but I think arguing they’re not competition at all is wrong, they’re just not very big competition compared to Nintendo.
I think we should be asking the question the otherway around as some games on PC handhelds could be cheaper and possibly run better, but that’s just my opinion
It largely depends on what you want out of a game system. Currently, no not really. Nintendo is a closed environment with no alternative platforms for the games, and their games are very family friendly and widely popular. Steam Deck is just a portable option for PC games, and therefore has to share its customer base with PC gamers.
Switch 1 emulation on the Steam Deck already has much worse performance than a Switch, given the overhead of emulation. There is no possible way it can run Switch 2 games.
I wouldn’t say much worse performance, really depends on the game you’re trying to run. Based on what I’ve seen online ToTK is maybe slightly worse depending on the place you’re at while a lot of other games match or even exceed switch 1 performance. Combine that with all the dumb shit Nintendo is doing around upgrade packs and making you pay to get better performance and I’d rather go with the free option, since it’s gonna keep being worked on and get better and better. As for Switch 2 games that definitely might be a bit more rough at first but all we can really do with those is speculate until the console is out. Might take a bit for emulation to become available readily for those games but again with all the dumb things Nintendo is doing right now I’d rather wait then reward them for it. Plus by then there might be a new Steam Deck Gen or more PC handhelds from other companies that can compete with the Switch 2.
No they’re aren’t competitors. I’d wager a significant portion (probably the majority even) of Switch users have never heard of the Steam Deck or even less so the other handhelds.
Steam Deck has it’s fans but like everything in life just because you love it doesn’t mean the majority of people have any clue about it.
I think to the “early adopter” crowd, the people like me who where huffing Nintendo “NX” leaks back in 2016, the more “core” audience of people from the ages of late teens to however old James Rolfe is now.
Those people will probably buy a steam deck before a switch 2. There are a lot of them.
Though not as many people as there are like my ex-sister-in-law and her new bf who put together have four kids. The Linux PC I built them to make sure their kids had a good puter is enough trouble, even with me to help. I don’t see them even considering them for their kids.
That being said I also think many of those people will stick to their current console until they release a cost reduced “switch 2 lite”.
Buying a new $450 console for every kids plus $80 games is fucking brutal and most parents won’t put up with that shit when a used switch lite is like $100-150.
I see this hitting their initial sales a lot more than their sales over the new consoles life span, especially as people who chose steam deck, and the parents who waited, slowly grab a switch 2 during sales/price drops.
Steam Deck will not be able to compete with Switch 2 for first party titles since it can barely emulate Switch games at a decent frame rate. Will likely need a proper gaming PC to emulate S2 first party titles. For all other games, Steam Deck wins because the games don’t cost $80, vastly bigger selection, mods work, etc.
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