From Wikipedia: In November 2022, Embracer Group stated that Saints Row “did not meet the full expectations and left the fanbase partially polarized”, but financially “performed in line with management expectations in the quarter.”
The piles of money were as high as we expected, but really we wanted them to be higher
More like "We don’t want to say it was only that game… "
Though actually with it a year later, I would say their follow up effort wasn’t amazing them… which makes more sense. They probably were going through Pre-prod on “saints row too” or what ever it was going to be. And Embracer didn’t want to continue.
Sales are typically not going to be followed up by refunds in a meaningful way, however poor public reception will hurt the sales of the next iteration.
The sales were ok but the consensus is that the game is shit, or ” the udders are dry, time to slaughter the cow"
Yes to both. Nexus mods can be installed both manually or through an application like Vortex or Mod Organizer 2 run through Wine or Proton. You have a lot of options. Emulators run really well on Linux (including SteamOS). Checkout EmuDeck (popular application) or RetroArch (also popular).
Mods are tricky. The short answer is yes, absolutely*
The long answer is that youll have to read up on how compatibility layers like Wine work before being able to do everything you can do with windows on a Linux OS modding-wise. Long story short you just kinda stick them in the same instance, and it will all work pretty much perfectly. It’s more work though. Also in my experience MO2 crashes if run outside of Gaming Mode on my deck.
Nexus mods is, however, making a mod manager that supports Linux right out of the box, so we may not even have to worry about that anymore soon. I think it supports stardew valley already, next is cyberpunk 2077, and Bethesda rpgs are on the list to be added too.
In my experience, I’ve installed wabbajack mod lists for skyrim and fallout 4 and new vegas if I remember right, and they all work great. The instructions might seem a little janky, but they work. I’ve also made my own lists and followed manual modpack guides like Below Zero for fallout 4 Frost and it turned out great.
I think there are alternative FOSS launchers that you can use if the issue is the launcher itself. On the deck I use Heroic, I think there are also for windows.
Playnite on Windows is the premiere experience for multilauncher support. Highly customizable, and it has a UX that’s much better to lay-users than something like Gog Galaxy 2.0. Integrations are well QA’d and updated. It’s wild that this was built as a FLOSS project because it’s better than what billion dollar companies have done by a mile.
My only gripe with Playnite is how inconsistent feature support is in themes. You want to see your achievements? This theme has support, but it won’t show data from How Long To Beat. This theme supports both, but cannot show console icons for emulated games… Hopefully this will change when version 11 is out next year, with more features from plugins being moved to core.
Other than that, it’s great. I use it on a PC as a DIY console, Windows is set to start it automatically, and all my Steam games are here, alongside all my console games which I have downloaded as ROMs to centralize them all on a single device.
I find it’s a good way to demo games. Get it free, if I like it enough after a few hours I’ll go buy it on GoG or Steam and continue to play it on there.
There is no need to use their launcher, as there are open source alternatives. “legendary” is a tool that can download sand install games from epic, but it’s command line only. Fortunately, there is also “heroic”, which is a GUI for it and honestly a pretty good one. Can also handle GOG games.
They work well for me, haven’t had epic’s launcher installed in a very long time.
And to think that this all started because Gabe was afraid that microsoft’s “app store” would hurt Steam so he decided to fully embrace Linux to in preparation. I bet not even Gabe expected back then that the situation would be as it is today.
I am fairly sure Gabe expected this, in fact I think he expected more. See, back when Windows95 was first released people were skeptical that Windows would be a good platform for gaming, they cited non-existent technical issues (similar to how they do with Linux now) that drove the employees at Microsoft mad, so one particular employee had the idea to port the most advanced game at the time to Windows, they contacted ID software, and got in an agreement that they would write the Windows port of Doom and give them the code back, ID agreed and after Doom was released for Windows more and more people started to port their stuff over since it was clearly possible. So essentially Windows being a gaming platform was only possible thanks to that employee, who after working with games liked it so much that he quit Microsoft to create his own gaming company which he called Valve. Yup, Gabe Newell is responsible for both Windows and Linux being seen as a gaming platform.
Maybe I’m stuck in the last decade, but these prices seem insane. I know we’ve yet to see what a 5050 (lol) or 5060 would be capable of or its price point. However launching at $549 as your lowest card feels like a significant amount of the consumer base won’t be able to buy any of these.
Sadly I think this is the new normal. You could buy a decent GPU, or you could buy an entire game console. Unless you have some other reason to need a strong PC, it just doesn’t seem worth the investment.
At least Intel are trying to keep their prices low. Until they either catch on, in which case they’ll raise prices to match, or they fade out and leave everyone with unsupported hardware.
Actually AMD has said they’re ditching their high end options and will also focus on budget and midrange cards. AMD has also promised better raytracing performance (compared to their older cards) so I don’t think it will be the new norm if AMD also prices their cards competitively to Intel. The high end cards will be overpriced as it seems like the target audience doesn’t care that they’re paying shitton of money. But budget and midrange options might slip away from Nvidia and get cheaper, especially if the upscaler crutch breaks and devs have to start doing actual optimizations for their games.
Actually AMD has said they’re ditching their high end options
Which means there’s no more competition in the high-end range. AMD was lagging behind Nvidia in terms of pure performance, but the price/performance ratio was better. Now they’ve given up a segment of the market, and consumers lose out in the process.
the high end crowd showed there’s no price competition, there’s only performance competition and they’re willing to pay whatever to get the latest and greatest. Nvidia isn’t putting a 2k pricetag on the top of the line card because it’s worth that much, they’re putting that pricetag because they know the high end crowd will buy it anyway. The high end crowd has caused this situation.
You call that a loss for the consumers, I’d say it’s a positive. The high end cards make up like 15% (and I’m probably being generous here) of the market. AMD dropping the high and focusing on mid-range and budget cards which is much more beneficial for most users. Budget and mid-range cards make up the majority of the PC users. If the mid-range and budget cards are affordable that’s much more worthwhile to most people than having high end cards “affordable”.
But they’ve been selling mid-range and budget GPUs all this time. They’re not adding to the existing competition there, because they already have a share of that market. What they’re doing is pulling out of a segment where there was (a bit of) competition, leaving a monopoly behind. If they do that, we can only hope that Intel puts out high-end GPUs to compete in that market, otherwise it’s Nvidia or nothing.
Nvidia already had the biggest share of the high-end market, but now they’re the only player.
It’s already Nvidia or nothing. There’s no point fighting with Nvidia in the high end corner because unless you can beat Nvidia in performance there’s no winning with the high end cards. People who buy high end cards don’t care about a slightly worse and slightly cheaper card because they’ve already chosen to pay premium price for premium product. They want the best performance, not the best bang for the buck. The people who want the most bang for the buck at the high end are a minority of a minority.
But on the other hand, by dropping high end cards AMD can focus more on making their budget and mid-range cards better instead of diverting some of their focus on the high end cards that won’t sell anyway. It increases competition in the budget and mid-range section and mid-range absolutely needs stronger competition from AMD because Nvidia is slowly killing mid-range cards as well.
Steam hardware survey puts 4090 at 1.16% and 7900xtx at 0.54%. That means if we look at only the 4090s and 7900xtx-s then just between the two of them the 7900xtx makes up about a third of the cards. So yeah, you are a minority of a minority.
As for this number jargon. I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to prove here but I’m sure you’re comparing an overclocked card to a stock card and if you’re saying it’s matching the 4090D then you’re not actually matching the 4090. 4090D is weaker than 4090, depending on the benchmark it ranges between 5% weaker to 30% weaker. If you were trying to prove that AMD cards can be as good as Nvidia cards then you’ve proven that even with overclocking the top of the line AMD card can’t beat a stock top of the line Nvidia card.
They’ll sell out anyways due to lack of good competition. Intel is getting there but still have driver issues, AMD didn’t announce their GPU prices yet but their entire strategy is following Nvidia and lowering the price by 10% or something.
Weird completely unrelated question. Do you have any idea why you write “Anyway” as “Anyways”?
It’s not just you, it’s a lot of people, but unlike most grammar/word modifications it doesn’t really make sense to me. Most of the time the modification shortens the word in some way rather than lengthening it. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember people writing or saying “anyway” with an added “s” in anyway but ironically 10-15 years ago, and I’m curious where it may be coming from.
Although considered informal, anyways is not wrong. In fact, there is much precedent in English for the adverbial -s suffix, which was common in Old and Middle English and survives today in words such as towards, once, always, and unawares. But while these words survive from a period of English in which the adverbial -s was common, anyways is a modern construction (though it is now several centuries old).
AMD has been taking over market share slowly but surely. And the console gaming market… and the portable gamimg market… and the chips out perform intel chips over and over. But ya sure.
I don't dispute that AMD is eating Intel's lunch, but performance-wise, AMD has nothing for nVidia. And that's what the discussion is about, performance.
So much of nvidia’s revenue is now datacenters, I wonder if they even care about consumer sales. Like their consumer level cards are more of an advertising afterthought than actual products.
Bought my first GPU, an R9 Fury X, for MSRP when it launched. The R9 300 series and GTX 900 series seemed fairly priced then (aside from the Titan X). Bought another for Crossfire and mining, holding on until I upgraded to a 7800 XT.
Comparing prices, all but the 5090 are within $150 of each other when accounting for inflation. The 5090 is stupid expensive. A $150 increase in price over a 10-year period probably isn’t that bad.
I’m still gonna complain about it and embrace my inner “old man yells at prices” though.
I immediately sought out working backups of both Yuzu and Ryujinx. The “bright side” of this situation is that it pissed me off enough to go acquire both the new Zelda game that potentially caused this whole situation by being leaked early, and the game that was at the absolute top of my to-play list: Unicorn Overlord. So far it is looking like a fantastic game.
I like it more, but I’m a fan of the more classic Zeldas. It’s good, but it’s marred by the same technical issues that plagued the LA remake, and the lack of some basic QoL features like a Quick Select or Favorites wheel is bringing it from ‘great’ to ‘good.’
They don’t want to compromise battery in favor of performance and I agree. With smaller games like Hades or cult of the lamb my steam deck battery will last and last. On more demanding games like cyberpunk or Armored Core I get a little over an hour out of it best case scenario.
Beefier graphics hardware will only make that issue worse.
I so often use mine plugged in as I’m not walking or in a park, I’m on a bus or train which can often have a plug, so not much of an issue there, however I’m not playing high-end games, it’s so good for stuff like Hades and whatnot.
Yeah, the technical error of enabling them before they meant to. Anyone who’s stupid enough to have bought a Ubisoft game in the past decade deserves this shit. There’s so much excuse-making about the way gaming companies are going, that they can all get fucked. I hope they enjoy their full screen ads.
They didn’t accidentally code everything for this, test it, put it in updates, etc. That was all on purpose, and they ‘accidentally’ enabled it to measure how much outrage was generated. If people make excuses for this shit now, it WILL be coming as a permanent “feature”.
Absolutely agree. I was about to play the devils advocate and try to find ways, that this could happen by accident. If it was on PC it could’ve been the Ubisoft launcher (or whatever it’s called) which accidentally took window focus.
But this is on Xbox and PlayStation. That can only mean that it’s in the game files. That does neither happen by accident nor by technical error.
The only error could be, that it was enabled before they meant to. But no, this was 100% fishing for reactions.
I’ll tru to play Devil’s Advocate as well. You know how, durong development, specially on AAA games, they try things, discard them, and then leave them in the code, caise removing it is harder? Like Bethesda’s cut content, secret, semy empty levels in other games, etc. Maybe they tried a new ad pop up system during development, ultimately decides to remove it with a feature flag or something for it not to actually pop up, and then it turns out they did not disable the pop up.
Buuuuut they are Ubisoft, so while this is definitely possible…
If you pay for the discs, you can’t use the discs on future generations. Right? Ps4 can’t read ps3 or ps2 discs. Xbox one can read xbox and 360 discs, but they limit it to only specific games. So in general, you have to buy it once again on their online store, if its available at all.
Yeah, idk why Ps4 has no backwards compatibility. PS3 (fat) was backwards compatible with PS 1+2, and PS5 is backwards compatible for PS4. I didn’t buy a PS4 for that exact reason, and was lucky enough to get my hands on a PS5 during launch to play all the PS4 games I missed.
With all the niche Japanese games I like slowly coming to PC, I probably won’t buy a new console ever again. (As an aside, if anyone has a spare fat PS3 they’re willing to sell for parts…)
I agree. One of the few reasons I still stuck to consoles is because I could buy the physical games and have it on my shelf forever. That’s going the way of the dinosaurs, and while I love that things are more accessible via Steam or whatever, I can’t let my friends borrow my games, or pass it along to someone else to enjoy if I didn’t like a game as much.
I also just love collecting and displaying game cases and steelbooks and stuff. That’s rarely a thing anymore, either.
The lack of backwards comparability is because of the large difference in architecture.
The PS2 was a128 bit custom processor, the PS3 had PS2 hardware in the original fat versions to achieve backwards compatibility, it was dropped to reduce the price.
The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.
With the PS4 Sony switched to x86_64 processors making the console essentially a PC with bespoke custom hardware. The PS5 is the same but better speced components as the tech moved on. That’s why the PS4 & 5 are compatible, they are essentially using the same architecture.
Microsoft is a similar story but they went all in on emulation of their old consoles which is why only certain games are allowed, they only allow the ones tested to work with the emulator.
The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.
Thanks for jogging my memory, I completely forgot how different the PS3 architecture is compared to the other PlayStations and also the 360. Same reason why emulation for it is so hard (and why MGS4 has no modern ports 🥲)
The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.
PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).
From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.
It did when the ps5 first came out. $500 for it was a steal back then. I wanted to build a PC at the time but due to the crazy GPU prices and low stock for other parts I decided it was best to wait. Got a ps5 instead (was also hard to get as well) and thought it was absolutely worth the price for the experience it offered. Just built the pc I wanted last fall shortly after prices started dropping. First time ever I made a good choice.
Yeah, after that time I really didn’t think consoles would be as much as a midrange PC. And yet, here we are. Feels like Sony’s back to late PS2 era levels of hubris now.
Even at the time it came out you could have built a pc with an RTX 3060 for that price, which would outperform the PS5 by a big margin and have a way bigger game library
Depending on how much you care about visuals, yeah.
A decent GPU will often be the price of an entire console. That said, even if you go with high-end hardware I found that eventually the cost will make up for itself for not having to pay for PSN to make use of and play on the internet. Or the fact that games are very often priced up to 50% more on the PS store than those on PC because there are no competing stores.
You absolutely will not get anything that runs even remotely decently with ray tracing on in any recent title.
For the fair comparison you’re only allowed to buy new, not used parts. So, for 700$ you won’t even be able to put together a decent system with a 3070 in it.
“Oh but i don’t care about ray tracing” – nice copium.
I got a cheaper AMD GPU specifically because I do not give a fuck about ray tracing. Also just look at the steamdeck, you can get great performance for very cheap nowadays. It might not be as powerful or nice as a PS5 Pro, but the $700 computer has many advantages in its favor
Get fucked. After all the shit I’ve seen them pulling with Windows 11 they’ll never get a dime out of me again. I’ll ride my win 10 until it’s out of support then switch to Linux. Fuck monopolies, and fuck enshittification for profit.
I’m sure on the game specs on the store it says steam will no longer support win 10 in jan 2025. Unless i misread and it’s it’ll only support win 10 and above.
Maybe you are confusing this with the news from a year ago that Steam doesn’t support Windows 7 and 8 anymore?
By the way MS-support for 7 ended in 2015, so that’s 9 more years of Steam support after updates from MS stopped. I’d count on Steam working on Windows 10 for years to come.
Steam already runs fine on Linux, you don’t need SteamOS to us the compatibility functionality, meaning anything you can play on the steamdeck already works on a Linux pc.
Playing modern Windows games on Linux and SteamOS is done using Wine and Proton. Wine is available on almost every Linux distro and Proton comes* with Steam.
*You can use Proton outside of Steam but it’s quite hacky and not really needed.
Anything Microsoft built lately is dogshit. They turned Windows into a steaming pile of shit over the past 20 years. When you think it can’t get any worse, they somehow raise the bar on disappointment.
No doubt it will be loaded with a shit ton of tracking/telemetry to build new datasets and train LLMs. Mining data from kids/teenagers and building those ad profiles early on is key.
I’m curious what the movie would contain that the game didn’t. The game was very linear and almost played like a movie itself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a cat movie! Just curious how it will differ from the game.
“In the beginning, animated movies starring Chris Pratt were spaced by 24 weeks, then 12, then six, then every two weeks. The last one, with Garfield, was a week. In four days, we could be seeing new casting announcements every eight hours, until they’re coming every four minutes.”
If you’re just looking for sales numbers, which we haven’t had much of for a long time, the long and short of it is:
4M Steam Decks since launch, 2M of all of its competitors combined; expected that all handheld PCs sharing this AMD tech will sell about 2M more this year.
To put it in perspective there are 150 million Switches and 75 million PS5s out there. And 15 million Wii Us, if anybody is counting. This puts PC handhelds some ways ahead of the N-Gage and well behind the Game Gear.
I'm less concerned about who's ahead in the handheld PC market and more interested on whether it'll ever become a mass market space. I think a lot depends on prices for integrated GPUs not skyrocketing like their desktop counterparts and their performance stepping up a notch or two. We'll see.
It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.
Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.
Yeeeah, I don't know that "it'd slot in next to the Nomad" is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
You, by the way, are not in the majority in your usage pattern for the Switch. Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split. Which is surprising to me, because I see it as a handheld first and foremost.
I do agree that it'll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 fares in a market where it's not the only thing in its class, but if I had to place any bets, they have a humongous lead despite PC handhelds having been around for ages and the Deck having taken a very good stab at competitive pricing and performance a whole three years ago (what is even time, holy crap).
As for mini PCs... Man, I don't get mini PCs. I'm very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but... who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop? I can see some use cases for it, I've had some NUCs and thin clients here and there, I just don't think the value proposition is there to use them even as a media device. But hey, it's a small but clearly competitive space, and if this gen APUs do indeed match a 4060 desktop level of performance when fed enough power maybe that starts to make sense next to a Xbox Series S or something as a gaming device. We'll see.
For the record, I do have a PC plugged into a TV for gaming, mostly made out of spares and hand-me-downs built into a smaller, less garish case. I haven't seen a mini PC that made me question that choice yet. I'm open to having my mind changed, it just hasn't happened yet.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
PC gaming has mainstream appeal, measurably. There are lots of reasons to play games on PC, and this is an additional one, particularly compared to PlayStation and Xbox, moreso than Switch.
Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split.
I haven’t seen any reporting on that in a long time, since before this PC form factor existed, but I’d happy to peruse a link. I see some people playing Switch on the subway from time to time, but also anecdotally, most of my friends, all adults, play them docked just about exclusively. I’ve definitely seen children playing Switch Lites at the laundromat as a tool that parents use to keep them busy.
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop?
My use case is I have a very easily packed and unpacked local multiplayer machine, for emulators and fighting games especially. The Steam Deck is a bit of a pain to set up for this use case, and it can’t run Street Fighter 6 very well or at the resolutions I’d want it to, but the mini PC does all of that very well. That use case, and some interested fighting game tournament organizers I’ve been talking to, are admittedly very niche, but I think the alternative for a laptop has real legs. My friend just got one for her dad (in his late 60s) for a little north of $150. It runs Windows. It allows him to browse the web and run his office applications, plus whatever else he needs to run on x64. Most older folks I see using laptops only ever use them in a single place like a desk anyway, and they’d rather output them to a larger monitor. This is where I think this form factor will sing in the coming years, plus the real possibility of whatever living room PC game machine that Valve can put together for decent value. The other advantage is that not only can they be cheap up front and take up less space, they also use less electricity and produce less waste heat.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it's growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway. I find people tend to hedge on this. Either the Steam Deck is a consolized solution to PC gaming that makes the Switch obsolete or a bit of an experiment that doesn't need to stack up to mainstream devices.
Yes, PCs (desktop PCs, laptops and handhelds together) are comparable to 4K home consoles these days and lead in some segments. But of those categories the handhelds are the smallest contributor while they are the largest portion of the console market. I love PC handhelds and I'd like to see those proportions shift, but it's interesting that Valve has put a lot of resources behind having a competitive device at a very low price point and we haven't seen more of a change.
On the docked vs handheld thing, Nintendo disclosed that info a few times. This is the first result I found just searching for it. It's recent enough that there were already a hundred million of the things in the wild, so I don't expect it'll have changed much.
As for the mini PC thing... yeah, sure. I mean, I'm not sayng they don't do the thing, I'm saying whenever I sit to look at the optimal solution for a problem the mini PCs never seem to come out on top. A PC for an older person taht doesn't need a ton of computing power? I went with an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard last time, they are delighted at having a laptop-style thing and a tablet to watch media that works like their phone. A low power device to run some specific application? I can probably find some cheap SBC somewhere I can get running passively with a heatsink and will do the job. A portable gaming solution? I have laptops with dedicated GPUs around that are older but much faster than most mini PCs. Also, they have a screen, so there's that. A set-top box? I can put something together for cheaper in the same performance range.
There are valid use cases. Sure, if you need a dozen of these things to embed in desktops, or something you can mount behind a screen, or... something to run a FGC tourney for cheap, apparently, there are reasons to use them. I just haven't found they provided a better alternative than other devices for most of the uses I personally have.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway.
I’d wager that the reason the PC market has grown is due to a million different reasons that, on their own, are quite small. Probably not many people would ditch their PlayStation just for mods. Or just for more freedom on controller choices. Or just for better performance. Or just for free online play. Etc.
If I might nitpick your link on the handheld usage, which by the way is dated approximately right when this handheld PC market was born, the thing that Nintendo was seemingly seeking to justify with that data is, “Do people switch with the Switch?”, but it would not answer the question, “How many people would buy the handheld-capable version if they already had a more powerful stationary machine that plays the same games?”
I'm confused on what your hypothesis is here. You think PC handhelds are massively shifting the modes of usage of the Switch towards being primarily docked? I'm not gonna dig for it, but my understanding was that the Switch usage was slowly drifting towards more handheld over time. Even if that wasn't the case, the numbers just don't match. Even if 10 million people had shifted from using the Switch as a handheld to a PC handheld, why would that impact the remaining 130 million users? PC handhelds are a rounding error in the space the Switch operates in.
If I had to guess the drift towards PC probably has a lot to do with software. PC ports weren't a given until recently and they arguably still aren't reliably great. With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware. PCs have always been backwards and forwards compatible, but with all sorts of devices able to run the same software across many device types and hardware generations that is becoming a big selling point.
Which on the Switch is a lot weaker, mostly because Nintendo is better at making a ton of first party games than Sony and Microsoft and because they have a younger userbase that is less likely to have three other gaming-worthy devices at their fingertips at all times.
Answering this post is difficult without writing an entire book, but I think the existence of this form factor, the iteration on it, and the cycles of hardware going out of date and being replaced will, in the long term, have more and more of a tangible effect on all consoles, and Nintendo will feel that last out of the three. Rumor has it Xbox has given up on being a console and will actually just be a PC going forward.
With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware.
This is basically the gist of my point, and long-term, I think it will apply to handhelds as well. As an example, on the current Switch, you can get compromised versions of the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal, or you could just get the better version of the game on PC; it will run perfectly at home, and you can run it at acceptable settings when handheld. Feel free to extrapolate that a few years into the future when there’s a new handheld PC out and the consumer is comparing the latest new game on PC against a Switch 2.
This has been true of Nintendo hardware for a long time, though. I wouldn't discount their ability to sustain it through a steady feed of exclusives.
Whether they can do better at managing rising costs and complexity than others is anybody's guess. And we'll see what happens on PC with compatibility. With a handful of games that don't run on SteamOS dominating the PC market there is a quiet conflict there and it's not clear how it will resolve itself.
I think it’s very interesting to note that mainstream consoles like the Switch or PS5 have massive ad campaigns behind them, expensive television spots, and a constant churn of new exclusives that they’re using to keep themselves in the conversation. The Steam Deck certainly had an ad campaign, but it feels impressive to me that they managed to make those numbers happen mostly just through throwing up an announcement on the Steam front page and then having it review well once it found its way into critics’ hands.
I look at the Steam Deck less as an end product and more of a means.
The Steam Deck is absolutely getting slaughtered by the Switch in terms of sales, but it gives Valve an alternative to the Windows ecosystem that is becoming more hostile as Microsoft tries to muscle in on gaming. I also think that Valve could have designed a Steam Deck variant to compete with the Switch 2, but hasn’t for various reasons
Already, Valve has the technology to create a console to compete with a PS5 and Xbox Series X, but doesn’t seem to want to.
I can’t imagine it would be that much harder to make a Chromebook equivalent, giving it access to the PC market without Windows.
Since Valve is using Linux, developing the tech stack is cheap. Also, Valve seems to be selling hardware for a profit, so it may be more comfortable with slimmer margins.
I'm comparing unit sales. The Deck just happens to slot in between older handhelds in terms of unit sales. It also sold about as much as the Saturn and a little more than the Dreamcast, as far as I can tell. I may be ahead of both and on par with the Wii U now, but Steam isn't super transparent with giving sales numbers.
No, I get it, no animosity here. I'm just curious about why you think the bar is fundamentally different for the Deck than for consoles in general.
Hell, adjusted for inflation the Game Gear retailed for the equivalent of 300 bucks at launch, which is not far off from the lowest price for the Deck at 399. Plus 90s devices sold a lot less than modern devices. Why would meeting the Game Gear not be a reasonable target for the Deck?
It's the most successful individual PC handheld, but it's also not made it into the same range as most consoles so it hasn't turned this product category into a mainstream device... yet.
Hah. You're overestimating the potential of 90s gaming devices. No game console, handheld or not, had sold a hundred million units. Hell, the Game Boy didn't crack into the hundreds until the Game Boy Color came around, and it was certainly the first.
Anyway, mild exaggeration aside, I get what you're aiming for, but I guess my question is why people read that positioning on Valve devices in the first place. There's no obvious indication that Valve is any less ambitious than any other first party, or any reason why they would be. They went to AMD and comissioned a custom APU at scale, just like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft are doing. The only differentiating factor is they built the thing on top of a mostly usable pre-existing OS (which I suppose Microsoft also does, but hey). If anything their entire call to fame was to "consolize" Linux for SteamOS, which they'd been trying to do for a while anyway.
I agree that their goal is to set up an ecosystem that works for them, but I find it surprising that people assume they're disinterested in hardware sales. If I had to guess I'd say it's because they refuse to market too hard outside their own ecosystem, so their branding feels different than the more in-your-face releases of Sony, MS or Nintendo products and people assume that's because they're intrinsically or intentionally smaller, which I don't think is true. I do think that image is projected on purpose, though.
Nintendo has done backwards compatibility before, pretty extensively. The Switch 2 isn't a departure. They put a GBA cartridge slot in the first few Nintendo DSs (they lost it in the DSi), and the 3DS was backwards compatible with the DS. They also did GC to Wii and Wii to Wii U (but not GC to WiiU). They even put physical plugs for GC controllers and memory cards on the Wii.
And they've done weirder stuff, like the ability to use a GBA as a controller on the GameCube and some cross-save bonuses between games in some platforms.
The Game Gear is a weird example for that, specifically, since it was basically a repackaged Master System, so there was a lot of game crossover. Sega also had a widely advertised adapter that allowed the Mega Drive to play Master System games.
Anyway, nerdy retro gaming stuff aside, there is definitely a gradient across Valve, that is mostly driving a software platform across a ton of third party hardware, the 4K twins, which are relatively focused on service providing and Nintendo, which is somewhat more focused on a single platform, at least so far. It's very much not black and white and very much not a new thing, though.
And in any case, the smooth gradient does mean that ultimately it should be fair to at least compare Deck sales to console sales.
Maybe handheld gaming PCs aren’t something that has mass market appeal? It feels like theres so many variables that depend on it. Exclusives? Price? Ease of use? Brand recognition? Advertising? Im glad Valve is happy with deck’s sales numbers becuase it means we will probably keep seeing more support for it and newer models down the line. It still feels like if Microsoft launched a handheld xbox, it would probably still be a console first experience without traditional PC functionality and probably sell more while directly competing with switch 2. Definitely will be interesting to see how handheld PC pan out in the next 5 years, right now it feels like a slowly emerging market.
As you say, it doesn't seem that manufacturers are too unhappy with their sales here, but I'd also like to see scale grow to the point where we can start seeing devices launch cheaper, rather than more expensive. Besides the presumably heavily subsidized (or at least priced for scale) Deck the more interesting alternatives are luxury items. It'd be nice to see them find some room for more competitive pricing, and that probably requires adding a zero to the sales numbers.
Well, with low-end gpus (like the integrated APU in the Steam Deck) there is still competition. The main reason high-end gpus are so expensive is that there are no alternatives to Nvidia, so they can ask for any price they want
Hm. That is an interesting read, I don't know if I see it. For fast iGPUs it's been all AMD for a while. Nvidia has been threatening to build a faster one, but it seems they may be targeting integrated, fully branded devices for AI instead of gaming or general use.
Intel has started competing there, but so far it's not been a popular pick with handheld manufacturers.
My understanding is this generation there are more powerful parts but they're expensive to implement and they many not be as good at low wattages, but I guess we'll have to wait a while to know for sure. Either way I don't see a reason why there would be downward pressure on prices. Less upwards pressure than Nvidia just throwing a number at the 5080 and 5090 presumably selected from a bingo card, for sure, but still not necessarily down in price to performance.
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