I like how this article does not talk about the anti consumer practices engaged in by Nintendo, that might push some customers away from their consoles.
The average consumer does not care about this. The biggest reasons for people to not buy a Switch 2 are 1) people don’t have money and 2) lack of major first-party games. I waited months until I found a MKW bundle for $450 at a black Friday sale.
Once we get the next 3D Mario or Zelda, you can bet they will sell a lot of consoles.
Since I’m one of the people who is on the fence about whether or not to pick up a Nintendo Switch 2 or to get myself an ROG Ally (I have $250 of gift cards for Target which don’t sell the Steam Deck) so that I can play steam games on a handheld. I heartily disagree.
And it’s Nintendo’s anti-consumer policies that is making me hesitate on the Switch 2.
It already comes with Linux installed, and an emulator can be setup with five button presses and thirty seconds of waiting.
The base system is setup as immutable, but /home isn’t, so aur isn’t available out of the box, but flatpacks are for example
Not exactly, but overlap is significant. A bunch of people want Nintendo because they always did Nintendo and that’s all they know, a bunch of people know that switch is something that kids want and so they get one, sure. But a bunch of people want to play some games lying on a couch or riding a metro or sitting in a queue at a dentist, and those people will at least google what exists on the market. This is an overlapped audience, and for a lot of them steam deck will be the obviously better choice.
I got a Switch because of handheld gaming and then I stopped using my Switch because I got a Deck, and my library became playable on it without having to rebuy them. And I can get cheaper games, bundles, and giveaways than on Nintendo to play on my Deck or PC. And if ARM support for steam frame makes its way to Android then I’ll be able to play those same Steam games on my phone too.
I don't think that's had much of an impact when Nintendo sold more Switch 2s at launch than Valve has manufactured Steam Decks over its entire lifespan. The Steam Deck is still an enthusiast product for a niche crowd, and will likely never be in direct competition with the big three.
It’s a comparatively new product, but it’s not like it’s something unsuccessful. It’s attached to Steam, that everyone who ever had a computer knows about, and everyone has a couple of games there, it’s being talked about very positively everywhere, and they’re repeatedly gained positive reputation over pro-consumer practices they regularly employ, and they somehow evading being put on blast for the child gambling industry they operate.
They’re known among gamers, which is indeed niche crowd, but also a crowd that is important here. They don’t have the cultural grasp on humanity as Nintendo, or other two, but all of them shitting the bed constantly and publicly, while Valve is catching wins all over the place.
Well… while the price of the Switch 2 certainly causes sticker shock, when you adjust for inflation it’s only about as expensive as the SNES was at launch… and is in fact cheaper then the NES was at launch. However, in the PS3’s case when adjusted for inflation it was about 1.5 times as expensive as the SNES at launch (for the 20 gb version, the 60 gb was double).
Isn’t the Switch 2 is cheaper in today’s money than the PS3 was without a decade of inflation?
Edit: PS3 was 600€, adjusted for inflation (by some random online calculator) that’s about 900 today. So yeah, the Switch 2 is about 60% as expensive as the PS3 was.
How relevant is inflation when cost of living has gotten so inflated that the idea of home ownership went the way of renting. So if anything in today’s money eating costs can hurt the wallet even more with how essentials are eating up more disposable income.
People bring up inflation as though salaries have kept up like NBA salaries have kept up due to their strong union. But, for every day people salaries have stagnated in relation to cost of property, rent, utilities, and food.
Well I saw Pokemon Legends ZA for 48% off recently. Not that it‘s worth that much or that I would ever buy a Switch 2. I actually stumbled upon that sale randomly. But the fact it‘s on sale already speaks volumes. Nintendo is likely in panic mode.
It might be, but if you care about the newest games, you either stick with the Switch 2, wait for a SD 2 or look elsewhere… The SD is getting closer to the Switch 1 state where modern games start to look more blurry, and if you want a hybrid device… Well, it is gonna show more.
Also for some stupid reasons SD availability sucks in several countries, like Mexico.
Most of “the newest games” are well within the spec of the Steam Deck. Of the 4 non-exclusive games nominated for GOTY at the Keighleys, they’ll all run on it just fine. Some of the biggest games of the year end up being the likes of Peak, Schedule I, or Megabonk, and not only are those games only available on PC (at least for a while), but they’re not even pushing the spec of the Steam Deck to its limit. With RAM pricing issues going on right now, high end studios are likely going to target a lower spec. And the companies that can afford to make a game that hits that higher spec are few and far between anyway, compared to the AA and indie studios that made most of the best games of the past few years.
From what I’ve heard, Expedition 33 runs like hot garbage. Even if you use something like Lossless Frames to use AI generated frames to fill in gaps and run at super low settings.
I played it all on desktop, but it looks like it got an update a month ago and is now Deck verified. Friends of mine played it on Deck before that and didn’t mention any complaints, but I wasn’t fishing for them either.
With RAM pricing issues going on right now, high end studios are likely going to target a lower spec.
That is quite a positive thought that I would truly want to become real, let’s just wait and see I guess, that doesn’t change the fact that SD 2 is imminent though (I know that is obvious).
What about hybrid gaming? I don’t think anyone can agree that SD is better than the Switch 2 or any other handheld device in 2025 regarding that… Perhaps only in certain cases as locked awful framerate (for the Switch 2).
All of new gaming hardware is decidedly less imminent now that this pricing nonsense is going on. Even if the tech exists, no one thinks they can sell at what they’d have to charge for it. It’s going to be a rough near term future for gaming hardware before it eventually levels out. Reports are that consoles planned for 2027 are now looking like they’ll be pushed back.
I’m not super used to calling that “hybrid gaming”, but my wife seems to have no problem playing cozy games on the Steam Deck, almost exclusively on the TV when I didn’t take it with me on the go. And we’re once again back to the best games and the best graphics not being all that correlated. The other part is that even if a random gamer has a Steam Deck, it’s unlikely to be their only gaming PC, and if they want the power to produce that larger image at better frame rates at home, they’ll play on that other PC, and that game will run its best there. On Switch 2, that one device is your only option no matter what. That means that if you want to play one of those beefier titles from the Switch 1, they’re not going to run at better settings ever unless the developer explicitly upgrades them; even then, there’s often the Switch tax compared to buying the same game on PC.
I’m not trying to talk you down from a Switch 2 if that’s your preference, but if someone’s asking me for a recommendation for a gaming handheld, the Steam Deck is going to be what I tell them until I rule it out due to some other need. I definitely wouldn’t start with a Switch 2. The Deck just hits a compelling price with a good software experience and, perhaps most importantly, a library that dwarfs what Nintendo could ever hope to match by following the traditional console model.
There are several yuzu and ryujinx forks floating around. For yuzu there’s citron, and eden-emu; for ryujinx there’s ryubing. Game compatibility varies so I suggest trying them all and see if any works.
The people that think this are getting screwed by their jobs but they don’t want to think about their wage stagnating while their boss buys extra boats and houses.
I doubt it’s a common cause, but my impetus for boycotting Nintendo was Garry’s Mod. They sent their lawyers after animators, who actually get people more interested in their games. Their litigious nonsense caught up with them that time.
The biggest issue is the price. I remember a time when even the poorest kid in class had a Nintendo because it was cheap.
The last cheap Nintendo was the 2DS over a decade ago. Most parents are looking for cheap hardware with entertainment and there isn’t anything which comes close to it.
Even the switch lite is the same price as the PS3 bundle back in the day. And it came with 2 real controllers and a game.
The Wii made me absolutely rage because those consoles were region locked, preventing me from playing titles I had imported from other countries that weren’t published by Nintendo north America. I never spent money on Nintendo products after that. The rest of my family was still happy with Nintendo, and they have continued to purchase their consoles. I finally got my wife invested in PC gaming 2 years ago, and it warmed my bitter heart to hear she wanted a steam deck instead of the switch 2.
That was always the case for Nintendo's home consoles, not like it was a new thing that started with the Wii. Switch was the first one to be region-free.
This was not the case for Nintendo consoles in the past. I imported plenty of NES, SNES, GC, GB, GBA, and DS carts that were published in Asia/Europe, but not published in the Americas, and had no issues playing them until the Wii. Those consoles I just mentioned were all region free.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t region locking on the NES and SNES largely implemented via the shape of the cartridge? Frank Cifaldi and the VGHF just put out that NES history video, and it had some kind of authentication chip that could only be provided by Nintendo, and it was in the NES but not the Famicom. And on Gamecube, I seem to remember you needed an Action Replay to break the region locking, but I never dabbled in it myself.
Did you have a modded console? Without modification, the 10NES lockout chip prevents PAL cartridges from running on NTSC or vice versa. But it is possible to disable the chip to get around this.
NES and SNES were region-locked. In addition to an actual lockout chip, they even had different cartridge shapes so you couldn't physically fit Famicom or Super Famicom games.
Handhelds were not (until DSi and 3DS), but I specifically said home consoles.
I love mine. The FPS boost alone in Zelda and Pokémon made it worth it for me. Cheaper than the GPU I want for my computer too. Then again, I went all in on the Switch in 2017 after skipping the Wii U, so more performance is fine with me. I do wish there was more stuff announced, though.
I skipped the Switch because I did get the Wii U. They abandoned that system too quickly due to poor sales so I was a little bitter. I almost went with the OLED, but decided to continue waiting since I had other systems and PC to play on. It’s the first Nintendo console I have ever skipped.
I did pick up the Switch 2, however, so I get to play all the games I missed over the years and any new ones. Glad I don’t have to wait so long on loading screens for Zelda like I did on the Wii U… which was painfully long.
My Switch 2 is pretty much strictly my Nintendo machine. And yeah, just have to wait for them to come out with more 1st party games. I usually buy 3rd party games on other systems because the graphics tend to be superior.
Oh yeah, watching my girlfriend play her Switch 1 now is agonizing. Her birthday is coming up and I think I know exactly what I’m going to be getting for her.
Games like Zelda now load so fast you can’t even see your stats on the loading screen. And ya know, that’s an okay problem to have.
“Never discounted” is just factually untrue, though. The biggest hitters don’t reach Steam-sale levels, sure, but I’m looking at $70 Tears of the Kingdom for $47 USD right now on Woot. I’ve purchased a fair number of Switch 1 games for around $40 in the last year and some (like Mario & Luigi Brothership and Super Mario RPG) went for as low as $25 USD around Black Friday.
That’s the thing. Such being considered a ‘discount’ is why people say Nintendo doesn’t discount games; why the Nintendo consoles end up being quite expensive when compared with a Steam Deck, where games are on discount on the regular.
Not saying don’t enjoy the console. Just with prices like that, it’s hard to justify for many. gestures at OP’s article
Too expensive, too enshittified for me to consider. All they had to do was not fuck this up and they would’ve had a guaranteed sale but I don’t ever see myself spending a cent on Nintendo ever again.
You can complain with a lot about Nintendo, but it is not enshittified. Call it expensive, call it anti-consumer, whatever. But the Switch 2 runs phenomenally.
The point they are probably trying to make is with a key you don’t own the game like you would with a hardware cartridge in older Nintendo systems. So you own nothing on the switch.
Gee could it possibly be because there’s absolutely nothing compelling about the product? Everything about it is just crap.
It’s overpriced for what it is, pretty much all of its features are gimmicks and do not demonstrably improve on the original, everyone knows their games are overpriced and never reduce in price, and if you breathe on it in the wrong way Nintendo will sue you for 1100 quadrillion dollars. What’s not to love?
It's early and there aren't a lot of heavy hitters yet. But for me, Kirby Air Riders alone was well worth it, I waited 22 years for this sequel and it delivered.
They haven’t had a crossover hit yet. The Switch had at least 2. Breath of the Wild on Launch and Animal Crossing during COVID. Hoping Star Fox get’s a major Breath of the Wild type jump for the series and maybe a new IP. Metroid would be good to have a new sub-series that changes up the formula for 3D adventure. Hopefully a new IP too
Yeah it’s kind of a thing where the switch benefited from the failure of the Wii U while the Switch 2 is being hurt by the success of the Switch.
BOTW was available on the Wii U, but since so few people had one of those, it made sense to get a Switch to play it.
With the Switch 2 I feel like “Meh, I already have a Switch it doesn’t seem like it’s offering much more than what I already have”. Also it’s larger and when I want to use the Swtich hand held (mostly just when I’m on a plane) seems like that might be a pain in the ass. Also with the Switch 1 they eventually came out with a better OLED model, so I’ll just keep playing the Switch 1 until they come out with something a little more compact and maybe with a better screen or whatever. Stick drift has been an issue for me so also want something with more reliable sticks.
Seems like I might be asking a lot, but for the price they’re asking if I’m not getting what I want, then I’ll stick with the Switch 1. It’s fine.
$80 for Mario Kart? At that price, we’ve got Mario Kart at home.
In all seriousness, the Nintendo Wii was REVOLUTIONARY when it came out. It was gangbusters when it released. It was $249, which is about $400 in today’s money, but for a completely original and amazing new system. The Wii U wasn’t exactly as revolutionary. It was a controller with a screen that you couldn’t take with you. It was a flop.
The Switch was a modern equivalent of the Wii. It was new. It was different. It was a mobile gaming console.
The Switch 2 IS THE SWITCH. There is nothing new about it to the everyday consumer mom and dad. There are no cool new features. No cool new games. It doesn’t justify itself or the cost to the sticky fingered kid next door who is content with Minecraft on the original Switch. Nintendo did what an American company led by shareholders would do and continued to do more of the same and will likely blame the consumer.
Mario-Kart-at-home by the way: supertuxkart.net
Buy now for $0 and get Rocket-League-at-home for free on top!
(It’s one of the game modes in SuperTuxKart. 🙃)
But yeah, $80 is kind of wild, even just because it’s fundamentally still a cart game. You pretty much need a group to regularly play it with, otherwise you won’t get your money’s worth out of that.
nintendolife.com
Aktywne