The Deck is targeted squarely at enthusiasts. While it’s a fantastic product for that niche, anyone who thinks it’s going to capture a market the size of Nintendo’s any time soon is living in a fanboy bubble.
Hell, right now Valve isn’t even capable of manufacturing half as many Decks as Nintendo will manufacture Switch 2s. They literally can’t sell that number because they can’t produce that number.
Maybe it’s from huffing too much copium; but I think that Valve’s eventual Steam Deck successor will probably have mainstream console levels of appeal.
By that point in time, compatibility should be nigh-sorted (thanks to all the hard work currently happening), and users won’t need to interact with the Linux desktop mode at all. It would be completely transparent, and only enthusiasts and power-users would ever want interact with it.
The biggest thing going for the SteamOS platform is the immense library that it brings forward; no other console can compete with — even with full backwards compatibility (which even the Switch2 is struggling with).
What is it about backwards compatibility that the Switch 2 is having issues with? I thought it was all games that brought their own hardware, or depended on a feature that the new Switch doesn’t have (IR camera on the Joycon for example)
Nintendo published a list of games with compatibility issues. Says they are “continuing to improve compatibility, including by working with publishing and developing partners”, which implies they’re hoping to patch in fixes for affected games.
From my understanding, even though they both run Nvidia-designed ARM processors - there are enough differences between the two SOCs that a direct 1:1 translation is not possible for all titles, and those will need to go through an emulation layer.
Additionally, there are certain titles won’t be compatible due to hardware changes (Ring Fit Adventure for example, and probably all of the LABO stuff?).
For Ring Fit and Labo, they’ve clarified that those games aren’t compatible with new JoyCons but can still be played with old JoyCons.
Also Lenovo is releasing a legion go that ships woth steam os. Thay will help push steam os development and adoptions.
For some actual numbers, Valve had sold ~4 million steam decks since it was released over 3 years ago.
Nintendo has sold ~150 million switches to date. And they sold nearly 18 million of them in its first full year (2017).
Saved you a click: “nO thEyre DiffErANT dEmoGraphiCS”
Gotta huff that copium. We need to pay 80 dollars for a ‘key card’
There’s a lot here, and yes, the total addressable market for the Steam Deck is currently less than either Switch will sell in a single quarter, but the video game market is a very different thing now than it was in early 2017. The Switch was the only game in town; now it’s not. Live service games make up a significant amount of what the average consumer wants, and those customers largely play on PC for all sorts of reasons. The Switch 2 is no longer priced cheaply enough that it’s an easy purchase for your child to play with, abuse, and possibly break. The console market in general is in the most visible decline it’s ever been in, also for all sorts of reasons, and those handhelds from Sony and, at least, Microsoft are likely to just be handheld PCs as well.
Development on blockbuster system sellers has slowed way down, which comes hand in hand with there just not being as many of them, which makes buying yet another walled garden ecosystem less appealing. This walled garden has Pokemon and Mario Kart, so Nintendo’s not about to go bankrupt, but if we smash cut to 8 years from now and the Switch 2 sold more units than the Switch 1, I’d have to ask how on earth that happened, because it’s looking like just about an impossible outcome from where we stand now.
Also, there’s this quote:
But, although Microsoft has now been making Xbox consoles for over 20 years, it has consistently struggled to use that experience to make PC gaming more seamless, despite repeated attempts
Look, I’m no Microsoft fanboy. Windows 10 was an abomination that got me to switch to Linux, and Windows 11 is somehow even worse. The combination of Teams and Windows 11 has made my experience at work significantly worse than in years prior. However, credit where credit is due: Microsoft standardized controller inputs and glyphs in PC games about 20 years ago and created an incentive for it to be the same game that was made on consoles. It married more complex PC gaming designs with intuitive console gaming designs, and we no longer got bespoke “PC versions” and “console versions” of the same title that were actually dramatically different games. PC gaming today is better because of efforts taken from Microsoft, and that’s to say nothing of what other software solutions like DirectX have done before that.
Still, the reason a Microsoft handheld might succeed is because it does what the Steam Deck does without the limitations of incompatibility with kernel level anti cheat or bleeding edge software features like ray tracing (EDIT: also, Game Pass, the thing Microsoft is surely going to hammer home most). Personally, I don’t see a path for a Sony handheld to compete.
live service games make up a significant amount of what the average consumer wants, and those customers largely play on PC for all sorts of reasons
You are leaving out the elephant in the room: smartphones.
So, so, so many people game on smartphones. It’s technically the majority of the “gaming” market, especially live service games. A large segment of the population doesn’t even use PCs and does the majority of their computer stuff on smartphones or tablets, and that fraction seems to be getting bigger. Point being the future of the Windows PC market is no guarantee.
I don’t think the people gaming on smart phones are the same demographic that would compete with the Switch 2 or a handheld PC. It’s not a lot of data, but take a look at how poorly Apple’s initiative for AAA games on iPhone has been going. There are more problems with that market than just library. The PC market has been slowly and steadily growing for decades while the console market has shrunk.
deleted by creator
Yeah, you and @ampersandrew@lemmy.world have a point.
I am vastly oversimplifying a lot, but… Perhaps mobile gaming, on aggregate, is too shitty for its own good? It really looks that way whenever I sample the popular ones.
I suspect it’s more that the time people can and do spend playing phone games has just about zero overlap with PC games. You play phone games while on the bus or on the toilet, you play PC games while at home behind your desk.
deleted by creator
I think a huge reason so many people with a Steam Deck also have a Switch is that the Switch had a 5 year head start. Hades did really well on Switch, but I can’t imagine anyone choosing that version of the game if they had a Steam Deck, and the same applies to Doom, The Witcher 3, etc. I have a Switch and a Steam Deck, but I haven’t used one of those machines in years.
Some people spend a lot of time, money in mobile games.
Occam’s Razor. I think it’s just the “default device” and placed in front of their eyes, so it’s what most people choose?
Really wild to go from this vibe at the end of the seventh generation of consoles to the one we’re at now. For me, and many other people that like high quality gaming experiences, mobile games have completely vanished.
deleted by creator
Direct input existed before xinput and works just fine
Yes because Steamdeck games are cheaper
And a lot of people already have hundreds of them
They won’t be cheaper for long…
Sure they will, Steam has sales all the time
There’s some overlap in customers, sure but the vast majority of people who buy a Switch 2 aren’t the types who would buy a Deck. Switch 2 will sell tens of millions more units to a mainstream consumer. And that’s fine. Deck can still be a successful product in its own right as long as Valve is making a profit off of it through Steam software sales.
Yep they can both be in the same space.
After playing tens of games on the Switch people might want to play the tens of thousands of games on Steam.
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
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.
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?
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.
Deck runs every game that you can easily buy on deck, and then some that you can’t
They’re cheaper which is insane. We could see a boom if third party manufacturers hop on steamOS now
They’re NOT cheaper. There is exactly one cheaper PC handheld, and it’s the base model of the LCD variant of the Deck.
And the reason for that is that Valve went out of its way to sign a console maker-style large scale deal with AMD. And even then, that model of the Deck has a much worse screen, worse CPU and GPU and presumably much cheaper controls (it does ship with twice as much storage, though).
They are, as the article says, competitive in price and specs, and I’m sure some next-gen iterations of PC handhelds will outperform the Switch 2 very clearly pretty soon, let alone by the end of its life. Right now I’d say the Switch 2 has a little bit of an edge, with dedicated ports selectively cherry picking visual features, instead of having to run full fat PC ports meant for current-gen GPUs at thumbnail resolutions in potato mode.
that model of the Deck has a … worse CPU
We don’t really know this. It is possible that the CPU will be trash. Nintendo’s devices don’t really support genres that require CPU power (4X, tycoon, city-builder, RTS, MMO etc.).
While we don’t have detailed info on the Switch 2 CPU, the original Switch CPU was three generations behind at the time of the console’s release.
Best we can tell this is an embedded Ampere GPU with some ARM CPU. The Switch had a slightly weird but very functional CPU for its time. It was a quad core thing with one core reserved for the OS, which was a bit weird in a landscape where every other console could do eight threads, but the cores were clocked pretty fast by comparison.
It’s kinda weird to visualize it as a genre thing, though. I mean, Civ VII not only has a Switch 2 port, it has a Switch 1 port, too. CPU usage in gaming is a… weird and complicated thing. Unless one is a systems engineer working on the specific hardware I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about how these things go.
If you primarily play CPU bound strategy games, you can very much make conclusive statements about CPU performance. For example, Cities in Motion 1 (from the studio that created Cities: Skylines), released in 2010, can bring a modern CPU to its knees if you use modded maps, free look and say a 1440p monitor (the graphics don’t actually matter). Even a simple looking game like The Final Earth 2 can bring your FPS to a crawl due to CPU bottlenecks (even modern CPUs) in the late game with large maps. I will note that The Final Earth 2 has an Android version, but that doesn’t mean the game (which I’ve played on Android) isn’t fundamentally limited by CPU performance.
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
The OG switch CPU was completely outdated when released and provides extremely poor performance.
The switch was released in 2017. It’s CPU, the cortex A57, was released in 2012. It was three generation behind the cortex A75 that was released in 2017.
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
I mean…
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cities-skylines-nintendo-switch-edition-switch/
So you’re saying it’s identical to the PC version in terms of scope and capabilities?
Have you ever played Cities: Skylines on PC?
And claiming that the Cortex A57 was a capable CPU in 2017 is not serious.
Well, it runs like crap, for sure, but that’s not the bar that you set here.
Now that I think about it, what are you saying? Your point seems a bit muddled.
I mean most games coming to switch outside of Nintendo themselves is already on or coming to steam deck.
Nowadays consoles don’t really matter. Which is good for the users.
This is objectively wrong.
I mean, the PC market has grown, don’t get me wrong. Consoles use to be the only thing that mattered and that’s no longer the case. You can’t afford to ignore PCs anymore.
But consoles still drive a majority of revenue for a majority of games, to my knowledge. And the Switch is a huge market by itself.
More importantly, PC gamers should be extremely invested in console gaming continuing to exist. Console gaming is a big reason PC gaming is viable. They provide a static hardware target that can be used as a default, which then makes it the baseline for PC ports. With no PS5 the only games that make sense to build for PCs are targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs. That’s why PC games in the 2000s used to look like World of Warcraft even though PCs could do Crysis.
Consoles also standardized a lot of control, networking and other services for games. You don’t want a PC-only gaming market.
PC gaming is much bigger now.
One such article that discussed the revenue change. https://wccftech.com/pc-gaming-brought-in-significantly-higher-revenue-than-consoles-in-the-last-decade/
But if we are talking about pure revenue, mobile game blows both PC and console out of the water.
I suppose saying that consoles don’t matter altogether is disingenuous to the conversation. They matter less now should be the correct statement.
You’re objectively wrong.
Skillful counterargument. Not sure how I’m coming back from that one.
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.
Even if you own a Steam Deck, Nintendo has some attractive value. Nintendo essentially has a monopoly on at least 3 genres of videogame. The entire library of Steam doesn’t really have a casual racing game that can go toe-to-toe with Mario Kart. The same can be said for almost any Mario game. Even if a Steam Deck had the games, you’d need 2 decks or an extra controller to get the Switch-style experience. Valve isn’t really trying to compete with the Switch on its own turf.
This is very true. It’s not just that Nintendo makes good games, it’s that a lot of their games are wildly unlike anything else on the market. The reason I’m losing my mind over a Kirby Air Ride sequel is because there hasn’t been any other game like the original from 2003. I’ve waited 22 years for another game that could scratch that itch.
Is the switch 2 even competitive?
It’s a hall pass to an ecosystem. It’s barely hardware.
You mean as opposed to the Steam branded Steam PC running the Steam OS that boots straight into Steam?
Theoretically you can spin up a used thinkpad from a yard sale and run steam. Nintendo doesn’t (legally) run on anything that’s not Nintendo branded ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And theoretically you can install Windows on a Steam Deck. Not making something specifically unsupported doesn’t mean you’re not building your business model around the default use case.
For the record, Nintendo games can be legally run on an emulator, much as Nintendo may protest this. It’s a pain in the ass to do so without technically breaking any regulation, but it sure isn’t impossible, and the act of running the software elsewhere isn’t illegal.
I mean the hardware is at least decent. And they aren’t shitting out another one because they aren’t seeing the generation improvement in performance they wanted (its coming). If I buy a Steam Deck, I at least get capable hardware.
Nintendo last several generations of hardware are born anemic. They start behind where even close to the cutting edge is. Nintendo has long since gave up pushing any kind of interesting boundary with its hardware.
I can’t just download “SwitchOS” and throw it on some non-anemic hardware to get a decent experience.
As much as people want to project onto Steam the idea that its a walled garden, its not. It is a cultivated garden, but its not walled off. You can enter and leave freely.
I legitimately thought you were talking about Nintendo hardware there for a while.
As far as we can tell the Switch 2 seems like it’s a bit ahead of the Deck, which is on the low end of the current batch of PC handhelds anyway. I don’t think the quality of hardware is the differentiating factor here, one way or the other. I also don’t think “anemic” was what the Switch felt like at launch. It was somewhere between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, which was only slightly inadequate for a home console and incredibly bulky for a handheld in 2017. “Not pushing any interesting boundary” is somewhere between extremely opinionated and outright incorrect, quite frankly.
I have to say, it’s a bit surprising to see all the hostility from… I don’t know who this is. PC master race bros? Steam fanboys? You’d think that last group at least would have some fondness for the Switch, given it effectively invented the entire segment of modern hybrid handhelds. Not that I have a horse in that race, there are pros and cons of both, I own both and I think both are pretty great. The Deck effectively replaced the Switch on my rotation, then it got replaced by a Windows handheld and I assume the mix will lean slightly more towards the console end when then Switch 2 comes out, then swing back when newer PC handhelds come out. I am fine with that.
I find the last point interesting, though. What IS a “cultivated garden” platform? I don’t know that I think of Steam in those terms at all. Steam is a software platform that just happens to be tied to someone else’s hardware and OS and seems very unhappy about it. From the perspective of a PC user I think Steam’s dominance is a problem. For one thing because my storefront of choice is GOG (screw DRM, thanks) and for another because the entire point of an open platform is competition. From the perspective of a console user Steam is… well, not that. It’s a PC gaming thing, so I don’t see it as direct competition in the fist place. Which I guess is why I’m more weirded out than anything else to see people taking sides this aggressively.
What are you on about with the switch having higher specs?
https://hothardware.com/news/switch-2-vs-steam-deck
“Not pushing any interesting boundary” is somewhere between extremely opinionated and outright incorrect, quite frankly.
I mean its not. Nintendo, in ancient history, did actually push boundaries around hardware. Most console makers did. The switch did not represent that. The completely transformed their approach to hardware, to shift to weaker, cheaper hardware so that they don’t push themselves out of reach for their target market: children.
The steam deck was a real advance in that regard. The handhelds that have followed have also pushed further. That’s not at all what the Switch2 is. Its behind the starting point for things that were available a few years ago.
The hostility is that Nintendo products have developed from actually capable, latest capabilities things, to a ticket you need to have punched to play a brand of games. The franchised is being carried by fan-boy-ism, not anything that they are doing that are objectively good, or that advance the industry. Its annoying also, that they are constantly being white knighted.
It seems like you are mostly concerned about grinding your axe against steam.
I’m confused. The article you linked seems to very clearly agree with me:
In terms of performance, the Switch 2 is clearly more powerful than the Steam Deck before we even start talking about cooperation with NVIDIA, DLSS upscaling, and tighter game optimizations possible when developing for a fixed console hardware platform.
I mean, yeah, that tracks and is verifiable. It’s a more power hungry APU (although admittedly on a larger node), it has more cores on both the CPU and GPU side, a higher resolution and framerate screen. Storage seems to fall somewhere between the cheaper and more expensive Deck models and, while it has less memory it’s also… you know, a console, so there’s presumably less overhead and the RAM itself is a bit faster, which is very relevant to APUs. The Switch 2 is built on Ampere, while the Deck is on RDNA 2. Both launched in 2020, but I think it’s not controversial to say that Nvidia had the edge on both features and performance for that gen.
It is absolutely true that Nintendo traditionally latched on to older, less performant components paired with hardware investment elsewhere, but the Switch was a huge outlier there. If you consider it against handhelds it stood alone as the single most powerful one. Granted, the Vita was the closest comparison and that was a whole generation behind, but I can’t stress enough how outclassed it is against the original Switch. The need to push a TV display from a mobile chipset ended up making the Switch a genuinely beefy handheld.
The Switch 2 is interesting because besides iterating on that requirement it also seems like a very deliberate response to the Deck and PC handhelds. It seems intentionally designed to be competitive against the current set of those. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Nintendo pushed the price and performance up a bit specifically for that reason, frankly. It seems egnineered specifically to not feel outdated at launch, even if it will presumably be outclassed again in a couple of years.
And for the record, I’m not “white knighting” Nintendo. They’re famously ruthless, litigious and quirky bordering on unreasonableness. Not white knighting (or grinding an axe against) Valve, either. They’re also ruthless and quirky bordering on unreasonableness, although clearly much, much better at PR with core gamers. I am actively hostile towards Nintendo’s approach to a number of things (primarily emulation) and to Valve’s approach to a number of things (primarily their gig economy approach to game development and their monopolistic tendencies). Not rooting for one of them doesn’t mean I’m rooting against either of them, or that I don’t acknowledge the things they do well or poorly.
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.
deleted by creator
I’d much rather buy a Steam Deck and run Switch emulation on it, knowing I can buy games a whole lot cheaper on Steam sales.
