I advice you to rethink this. You’re paying earlier, the money won’t dissapear if you wait until release. Also, real reviews would help deciding what to skip.
I genuinely don’t get the “don’t pre order just buy the day it releases” thing.
Nobody ever said the second part.
Don’t pre order, wait for reviews a couple weeks after release, buy if reviews are good and no major bullshit is discovered.
What do you think you’re winning?
Avoiding the major bullshit.
Also, even if you did just buy day one: If developers have a lot of pre orders they know they’ll sell anyway they have less of an incentive to deliver the highest possible quality day one. That’s why people are telling you to not pre order. I could not care less if a stranger struggles with day one bugs, but they are helping to lower the bar for everyone else.
Pre-ordering physical goods is fine, especially if you expect a price hike and supply limitations after launch. I wouldn’t, but I can see how it would make sense.
It’s the digital goods that make no goddamn sense to buy before they’re out. They’re not limited in supply, and their return window is too small.
Meh.
Yes, for already announced limited runs of physical items that you know the quality off (say merch from artists) it’s more fine than for mainly digital goods.
And, I have to agree, such a broad blanket statement is not really applicable to every type of purchase or life situation.
To be fully transparent: Even I participated in pre-orders. Off the top I can only remember some artist merch items like CDs I pre-heard some tracks and know what to expect from it and the Kickstarter for the uGreen NAS. But even for the uGreen NAS I knew the specs, price and if It’s compatible with what I want to do before committing.
For any other purchase I waited patiently.
As long as i can chargeback on my credit card I have no problems preordering (couple months out at most though, lol at people doing long term pre orders) I have no problem. Digital goods can fuck right on off. So many slimy tactics.
Wasn’t it a kickstarter product? I wouldn’t consider venture a pre-order, tbf.
Pre-orders are reservations with pre-payment.
Crowdfunding is, well, funding. You aren’t buying a product. You’re funding it, which comes with additional risks and benefits.
Of course, there’s always a possibility that a product is being funded using pre-orders, which is financially irresponsible (norm varies from industry to industry). But you must be a moron to pre-order a product from a startup you know nothing about and expect not to get scammed. Outright buying their product would be risky enough.
Take housing market. You’re pretty much always either pre-ordering or buying second-hand.
Do you even know why you’re saying that? Physical goods that need to be manufactured and delivered are literally exactly what you should be pre-ordering
Physical goods are no different in that when you pre-order something you really have no idea what you’re getting. You’re counting on the reputation of the company to deliver on their claims. Which is often a bad idea.
If i am honest i dont have any games that DONT run on. It can run cyberpunk, baldurs gate, a lot other AAA / Indie games.
If it doesnt run, the devs did something SPECIAL to f*ck steamdeck / linux users.
The suspend game feature is probably the biggest player, especially when its idle it doesnt use any power ( except of course the common battery drain ) in comparison to windows “sleep” it just blacks out the screen and maybe run a little less background tasks.
Same, though I hope the SD2 had some more power, I would like to play on a 1080p (or even 1440p) monitor with mouse and keyboard without sacrificing framerate.
These are completely different devices for different use cases for different audiences with wildly different tastes. Nintendo hasn’t been in the “core” gaming space since before the Wii.
Yeah people forget that Switch 1 sold like hotcakes when scalpers were selling it for $500. And it was probably parents who bought them so they could be sure to have a Switch under the Christmas tree.
So yeah of course Nintendo has raised the price, they want consumers to pay them $500 and not a scalper.
Their demographic used to include families with multiple systems due to the hardware being cheaper than the competition. They’ve never sold a basic console for nearly as much as the Switch 2, nor have they charged $70 and $80 per game as a standard. Maybe it will go well for them, we’ll see, but there’s no precedent for the way Nintendo’s pricing things now.
You can spend more on mobile game mtx than a full triple A experience including the console and in fact most people do which is why the “core” is an ever shrinking slice of the pie that to GenA probably doesn’t even make any sense.
The price doesn’t really matter, my point is that you’re not buying a Nintendo switch to play GTA 6 and you’re not buying a steam deck to play Warioware Inc.
(Well, I am, because I’ve never given them any money nor plan to and think Nintendo peaked way back in either the SNES or the GBA era and I neither had nor knew what a Nintendo even was as a kid).
A handheld PC isn’t cheaper to buy, and most console gamers aren’t buying a ton of games either (like PC gamers do), so the total cost of ownership for a switch 2 probably still stays under the total cost of ownership for a handheld PC.
Edit: To clarify my point, the average Switch user owns 9 titles according to official Nintendo sales figures. This includes cheap indie titles. (Source: www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/…/index.html)
Outside of PC, it’s not normal that the average user has a backlog of hundreds of games.
PC is the number one piracy platform for starters, seeing as it requires no jailbreaks and the like.
Secondly, PC gamers tend to own a lot of games legitimately because our gaming library doesn’t expire with a console generation, and because our steam libraries consist of many many indie games that cost a few bucks each, not a few $50 AAA releases.
My steam library is about 435-ish games. But that’s since 2013.
The total value of the account per steamdb is like £1080, this is a vast over-estimate because I used to live in a country where the entire GTA series before 5 cost £0.20, but let’s go with £1080.
If I bought £1080 worth of standard £60 games, I’d only have 18 games. That’s actually less than I even had for the PS Vita, and most people would be surprised to know that platform even has that many games.
Between the online fees and subscriptions to PS Plus etc., lacking discounts compared to steam, and the inability to pirate even an extremely high end PC tends to be far, far cheaper in the long run than a console, especially since it also doubles as the TV, the music player, the work and hobby computer, etc etc.
Never heard of a steam backlog? PC is the number one piracy platform, but it’s also the only platform where people buy whole bundles of games in a sale or where you get at least one game for free every week.
Take for example the switch: 152 mio devices sold, vs 1391 mio units of software sold. That’s roughly 9 titles per device since 2017, or roughly one game per year.
Compare that to your 435 titles over 12 years, which equals roughly 36 titles per year.
You are a heavy buyer of games, in the order of 36x of what’s the average for a switch user. You just proved my point.
Btw, these 9 titles would have cost a switch user just €540, if all of them were AAA games at full price. That too doesn’t factor in that the figure from Nintendo includes massively popular cheap indie titles or the fact that even Nintendo games sometimes go on sale.
Btw, these 9 titles would have cost a switch user just €540, if all of them were AAA games at full price. That too doesn’t factor in that the figure from Nintendo includes massively popular cheap indie titles or the fact that even Nintendo games sometimes go on sale.
Yes, I’m a heavy buyer of games, but those games cost £12 on average, not £60, nor anywhere near to that amount, even if it’s lower due to the few indie games that get console releases.
€540 for those 9 games is roughly more than half of what I spent in the last decade on 430-ish PC games. It’s literally why I even have more games in the first place.
So even though I have more games on paper, I don’t spend more paper, capische?
And I certainly don’t spend more per game than the switch user, which makes your claim misleading.
In fact the opposite is true and most PC gamers are notoriously stringent in spending on games.
Price of the middle version of the Steam Deck: €569
Price of the middle version of the Switch 1: €284
So we got a price difference of €285 here.
€50 for the bundled Mario Kart upgrade plus 3 other full price titles, leaves us €55 to spend on another 5 indie titles, and then you got the average total cost of ownership for a switch for just about the price of the Steam Deck with a whopping 0 games on it.
The difference becomes starker if you go for the top-spec version: €679 for the Steam Deck, vs €329 for the Switch, a whopping €350 difference. For that difference you can afford Mario Kart plus 4 full-price titles and have another €60 remaining for a few indie titles.
Lmao so you include all the deals for the switch with your “mario kart upgrade”, but not the steam deck?
Ironically enough a steam deck with zero games on it is still a way more compelling device if we’re describing a generic gaming device, because all games on PC are free if you want them to be, and that’s a library of hundreds of thousands of games. Then you consider it’s also your laptop/main PC too…
Plus, if you must buy games, you’re only a few quid away from one, not £60 + online fees etc etc.
We can go in circles forever though, but over the long term of course a PC or any Steam Deck will win in terms of ownership cost due to cheaper/free games. The issue is that we can’t really calculate an objective metric of value there.
That also isn’t the point I was even disputing, it’s precisely that the ownership is more expensive because PC gamers buy more games, but either way you’re wrong.
But if we keep going, we’ll run into problems because of course it’s apples to oranges to compare the value because these are largely mutually exclusive target audiences I’d imagine.
because all games on PC are free if you want them to be
If you include piracy, that’s available on the Switch too. Worst case you have to chip in €10 for a mod chip, but that’s it.
Lmao so you include all the deals for the switch with your “mario kart upgrade”, but not the steam deck?
Yeah, find me a deal to get Mario Kart for the steam deck legally.
Then you consider it’s also your laptop/main PC too…
You want to use a steam deck as a laptop? Do you really have no self respect?
That also isn’t the point I was even disputing, it’s precisely that the ownership is more expensive because PC gamers buy more games, but either way you’re wrong.
That was exactly my point. Steam Decks/PCs and consoles are used differently by different people, and in the end a Steam Deck is not cheaper than a console, even if you never pay a cent for a game (but then again, why are you buying a Steam Deck?)
But if we keep going
I get the feeling you don’t actually want to discuss or talk about the topic, you just want to win. So yeah, no point in continuing the discussion.
You would do that probably because you have a huge Steam library but many Switch users have a huge Switch library and want that performance upgrade. You and me are not their target audience but it remains to be seen if the Switch 2 will flop or exactly what Nintendo fans want right now. There‘s a huge difference between paying 600€ and 1000€ for hardware that‘s pretty much toe to toe anyway. If I wanted a Steamdeck I sure as hell wouldn‘t buy one right now but wait a little longer.
Toe to Toe? At least the steamdeck can run Crysis. Switch not, easy Steamdeck win.
Performance upgrade on a already locked on 60fps ( some 30 ) games? on default on a LCD display? That they didnt even considered default on OLED display is just … cash grabby.
And the switch 2 can run the new mario kart and the steam deck not.
Both of these games don’t run on the other platform because they are exclusives, not because the hardware can’t handle it. So what’s your point?
It’s just confirming what the guy you replied to was saying: if you have steam games and want to run steam games, get a steam deck. If you have switch games and want to run switch games, get a switch.
You know the PC vs. Console debate isn’t new. That one has been going on ever since PCs and consoles existed.
When I was a teenager, I, too, didn’t understand why anyone would buy a console over a PC because the PC can do so much more than a console.
Then I got kids, and I understood.
There are two main angles:
Parental controls
On a console, a kid can only play what I allow. I get the games, I can disable features (e.g. browser or social features) that I deem risky. It’s all easy, it just works. My 7yo won’t be playing Fortnite or Doom without my approval. Try locking down any kind of PC (Windows or Linux) to a child safe level so that the kid doesn’t have access to age-inappropriate content. It’s borderline impossible. My dad tried and failed, and if I tried, I’d most likely fail too.
Ease of use
Every second time, my wife and kids want to play something on the living room PC they call me to fix some issue. The controller isn’t pairing. The controller is pairing, but the game doesn’t recognise it. Steam link to the gaming PC doesn’t work. Or it does work, but the resolution is crap. Or all sorts of other issues. With consoles, you don’t have that. It all just works.
A PC is definitely the more capable system, and a power user will get more out of it than out of a console, no question about that.
But claiming there is no use case for a console is entirely wrong, too. A look at sales numbers for Switch (152mio sold) vs Steam Deck (3.7mio sold) should clear the question up whether there’s a use case for a switch.
I mean especially as a parent do i want to waste 80€ for a game? And i mean switch (1) is that what you describe the switch 2 is a cashgrab you cant tell me differently.
I mean, especially as a parent do I want to waste hours setting up the system, fixing misconfigurations and trying to keep my elementary school kid from watching porn or heavy violence on the system?
€80 is a lot, but not nearly as much as the time you spend on the device if you factor in your hourly rate.
And for most non-techy parents the choice doesn’t even exist. They don’t even know how they’d setup parental controls or fix issues on a PC.
Also: if you put €60 from 2017 into an inflation calculator and convert that to 2025 money, you get €82. Yes, it sucks that everything gets more expensive, but that’s just how inflation works.
My grandma also always complained that when she was young she could get a whole bar of chocolate for 0.50 Schilling (€~0.04).
If it’s too much for you, then don’t pay it. It’s not like there are no alternatives.
I usually just buy games years later for a fraction of the price. Or wait until a platform becomes abandonware and I can’t buy a game in retail any more (meaning the publisher doesn’t want to take my money), and then I pirate it.
There are a couple hundred of thousands of great games, I don’t need the flashiest, newest thing.
I’m just saying that the €80 pricing isn’t that crazy, it’s just inflation adjustment. In fact, the €60 price point for full-price games has been around since at least 2005. Adjusted for inflation, that’s around €100 in today’s money.
In fact, SNES games even cost up to €80 in 1993, which would be ~€180 in today’s money, and even the cheapest titles back then (akin to our current low-budget indie titles) started from €40 (~€90 today).
So, the price is really not that bad. And, as I said, you can just wait for the sale and get it cheaper anyway. Full price is only for people who need exactly this game exactly right now.
80€ is crazy nintendont games are just crazy priced and have fun getting one second hand games if nintendo allows it. 80€ for a AA game is much and a scam for a re released game because of a new poatform even tho old switch games should work.
And on Switch, it’s forbidden typically. Which is part of why people advocate for the Steam Deck instead. From Nintendo’s perspective, this very much is a vulnerability. It’s just not leading to custom firmware or ROM dumps from what I understand, so it’s not even close to the most significant vulnerability.
That is true, of course. But that’s a vulnerability from Nintendo’s perspective, not from a customer’s perspective. As in, if this exploit gets improved on, it might lead to people running unlicensed or pirated software on the switch, thus potentially hurting Nintendo.
It’s not something that might lead to people getting their Nintendo-accounts hacked or stolen or something like that.
On a Steam Deck, the former concept doesn’t even exist. There’s no Steam Deck vulnerability that might lead to people running non-steam software on the Steam Deck, because it’s allowed usage.
What I’m trying to say is that vulnerability is not negative for the user or indicative of bad platform security for the user.
LTT describes that the XBOX team have also trimmed down 2GB of W11 desktop bloat with this and have attempted to make the W11 experience more similar to a console. I’m curious to follow this. I’d imagine Microsoft are a bit intimidated by the fact that SteamOS is a better gaming OS than Windows. Obviously this must have been in the pipeline for a long time now.
I would be interested if it also supported quick resume from sleep like the Deck does. Imo that’s the killer SteamOS feature that’s keeping Windows alternatives from being even a consideration.
I have an Xbox Series S for my little one and Direct Resume is such a nice QoL feature. Having 8 games always ready and only takes 3 seconds to resume even after you turned off and unplug the console is very useful. There’s some games on my handheld PC I didn’t bother playing since launching it can take a long time.
Right. But I meant if SteamOS or Bazzite had that feature already for the ROG Ally, why reinstall an objectively worse OS when it also gains that feature?
Mind that this is different from pausing the game. The OS is suspending the game state into the disk, so it’s more similar to emulator snapshots functionality.
Compatibility for one. Also unpopular opinion here, but I actually like Windows and use it on my main desktop. So having everything run the same thing does add some conveniences. The only thing I really like about SteamOS right now is really just the battery life and the quick resume from sleep. If Windows gets those through this initiative, then I don’t really have any reason to stick with SteamOS.
That’s true, it took them 10-15 years but they built a huge service business. I was specifically referring to the loss of the desktop market to the “clones” which has a rough equivalence.
It was more of a cheap shot than a serious prediction ☺️ As long as MS controls the licensing and software this is a completely logical move.
This will likely only play pc games… And that is the big disappointment.
Who cares? We already have pc gaming handhelds. Unless this is subsidized to hell so it beats all other pricepoints… why should anyone care?
If my xbox library was made mobile… That would be something new and worthwhile. NO, I DONT WANT TO STREAM. I cant always stream on a handheld either. I want to possess my games!(As much as i can anyways)
Xbox will be disappointed by the sales of this handheld and might give up on their own that could play the xbox library locally. If they do that their next generation is screwed. Lets see how this plays out.
They have given up on their own handheld. And why wouldn’t you prefer the PC library when it’s so much larger? The appeal to this device at this point is that the new UI is better for the handheld use case than desktop Windows.
Its not that i dont prefer the PC library, its that there are already dozens of other handhelds that play PC games already.
So then the UI is the sole reason people should want this device?
I see no reason why this UI shouldnt also work on the plethora of other windows handhelds in the market currently. This leaves nothing new for this device to offer… Unless its really cheap.
At least at first, it will be the only handheld running this version of Windows. So maybe after a year or two, it won’t be all that unique, true, but a year or two is a long time at the rate these handhelds are advancing.
What a weak sell then, i understand your point, i just wish Xbox came out swinging with a compatibility layer for the Xbox game library. A portable device with that capability would have the potential to put them back on top.
Instead we get a less bad version of windows, that will likely be inferior to its direct competitor(steamOS) anyways, sans the ability to play a few multiplayer games.
Is it good enough for you? Is that why you will get it? Where are these people you speak of…?
I highly doubt there are enough people that want that super particular use case to make this particular handheld stand out at all, especially ones that didnt meet their needs with another handheld already.
I hate live service games and Windows, so no, this device is not for me, but those are also the most popular games on the market by a wide margin. Despite how awful the Windows experience is today, there’s still one Windows handheld sold for every two Steam Decks. That situation can only improve with a version of Windows designed for handhelds.
I see your point with the millions that play those specific games, maybe i am just disappointed by microsoft only doing the bare minimum when they are forced to.
the ability to log in via the Windows lockscreen with your controller
Seems like they’ve finally taken some notes from the Steam Deck, interested to see if they can actually make something decent. It seems unlikely, but I’m still interested!
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 suspect handhelds are going to be the future for awhile now. It’s not just out of a growing demand or simply because portable graphics processing and battery power have improved (although those factors do help) but it’s another chance to:
Push locked hardware
Funnel to controlled storefronts
Bring down and moderate the increasingly unsustainable AAA development costs
Those first two aren’t particularly surprising, they’re the key elements that Nintendo has honed in on while Sony and particularly Microsoft continue to struggle. Microsoft feels like they’ve just left XBox to languish while they focus on Game Pass as a means to ensnare you into their economy which is why they’re first down this path, but I think Sony will follow shortly. In an ideal world, I’d love to see Sony get back to hardware manufacturing with a Vita like device you could load Linux/SteamOS onto. Vita was a great little product, done so dirty. EDIT: I know the Portal exists, but that’s mostly just a dumb receiver as far as I understand it. Still, they’re already not too far off … come on guys, just a little further.
But moreover it’s that last point, really. It’s hard to continue to push out these extraordinarily big budget, bordering on AAAA (lol) territory games that continue to flop. I know the Switch 2 is already doing stuff like Cyberpunk 2077, but that stuff can still be hell on battery life as well as requiring lower resolution and lowered visuals in portable mode.
I feel like Nintendo is making a big mistake pushing that 4K60 envelope with the Switch 2, although I see why they made that maneuver. The Switch was perpetually underpowered and they felt the need to close that gap, but they already struggle to push out big budget tentpole franchises as is illustrated by Mario Kart World being the only big release title. Also, I just want to generally point this out, Nintendo suffers from needing to up the stakes. It’s what lead to Mario Galaxy being such a grand adventure, then Odyssey going even bigger than that. Now we have Kart World because … gotta get bigger than 8 Deluxe somehow I guess.
I don’t know what any of this means or where it’s going, I just wanted to try and call out some of these observations. Turbulent times ahead, I don’t know that anyone really knows what the next 2-3 years will look like.
I know the Switch 2 is already doing stuff like Cyberpunk 2077
It’s 4 1/2 years old and already runs on other handhelds. Not really an impressive feat.
they already struggle to push out big budget tentpole franchises as is illustrated by Mario Kart World being the only big release title.
Yeah, I read that they only released something like 22 original titles in the 8 years the Switch has been around. That’s not counting any ports, remasters, and the like, which make up a hefty chunk of their Switch releases. They got away with it before because so few people had a Wii U, but they need to up their game to make the Switch 2 appealing to the masses, especially with the high price tag. It’s not a promising start, with announced titles being Donkey Kong Bananza (which looks great) and a whole bunch of Switch 1 upsells, including Metroid Prime 4, which will be released for both consoles. Feels like they’re trying to cannibalize their Switch 1 releases the way they did their Wii U ones, but 150 million Switches were sold. People already played these games if they were interested in them.
Silksooooooooooong ! New images and half revealed date of “you will be able to play it on day one”. So either same launch day or a bit before. 2nd time (after the switch 2 trailer) that they mention silksong for this year. So maaaaybe ?
Oh by the way, why are the image shown at an angle? Is it really only to showcase the console? Whatever.
This machine will be the same desktop-mode-not-required-but-allows-for-more-functionality thing that the Steam Deck is, but it will chew through battery faster in exchange for more compatibility.
Well, at least the base model Xbox Ally has essentially the same SoC as the Steam Deck. The Z2 A has 4 Zen 2 cores and 8 RDNA 2 CUs. It will be configurable up to 20 watts TDP instead of 15 on the Deck, but that’s it. So much for “long in the tooth technology wise”.
Sure, the Z2 Extreme variant will be more powerful, but it’ll also be in a different price category (800-900,-€).
And in terms of user-friendliness: the Xbox Ally will run Windows. It won’t launch into the regular desktop shell (by default), and it won’t have as many services running in the background which might help with performance and battery life, and you’ll probably be able to update drivers and Windows through it. Maybe it will have some preconfigured scripts/shortcuts to install Steam, Battle.net etc. But that’s it. Expect to fall back to the desktop mode (or open a browser, terminal and Explorer window in the new gaming mode) for anything more advanced like installing emulators.
In terms of pick up and play this won’t be much different to the Steam Deck, with the one exception being Game Pass - but even then don’t expect any of the more demanding titles to run well.
The ROG Ally X’s MSRP is 899,-€ and that’s what it currently costs here in Germany at least. It was as low as 799,-€ though recently, but now it’s back up. Considering this “Xbox Ally X” is the successor to it, I don’t think it’s unrealistic.
You’re good, no worries. We’re all just speculating anyway, there isn’t really a right or wrong.
I’d just be surprised if it’d come down in price one model to the next considering prices for tech in general. Maybe Microsoft made a special deal with ASUS, but I think the base model with the Z2 A is what they’ll use to rectify the price of the Z2 Extreme model.
Nintendo wiped the floor in the mobile gaming market for decades despite their competitors having beefier specs. The DS lasted for years before we ever got the Switch. Let the Steam Deck mature.
Even if you’re correct, it’s still too early, anyway. That’s my point.
The DS had a seven-year lifespan and the original Switch had eight. Even living room console have an average near decade long lifespan. So, of course Valve isn’t going to throw their money into a second generation.
The difference is that nobody’s releasing games specifically made for the Deck. Some are including optimizations to make their games run decently well on it, but it’s not a AAA machine. I bought one knowing this full well and am satisfied playing less demanding games on it, but it’s not going to be playing new demanding games, unlike with dedicated consoles.
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