I like how this article does not talk about the anti consumer practices engaged in by Nintendo, that might push some customers away from their consoles. /s Nintendo can disable your Switch 2 for piracy in the U.S., but not in Europe, as confirmed by its EULA. There is already a switch in my household, but the price along with the ability to remotely brick the device, is what made our household pass on the switch 2. We bought a second steam deck instead.
The Steam Deck is the better product anyway. Got one recently and damn is it good.
Same. I was able to get like 10 long-wishlisted games for ~$100 with the Steam Winter Sale, too. Nintendo would never.
Bro that’s my patient gaming technique! $10 games FTW!
What you got?
and I guess no. 10 was a copy of Coral Island I was gifted, oops lol
At some point I still want LAN Party Adventures, and The Lonesome Guild but those will wait until the next sale. In the meantime I have plenty to sink my teeth (thumbs?) into!
Well I saw Pokemon Legends ZA for 48% off recently. Not that it‘s worth that much or that I would ever buy a Switch 2. I actually stumbled upon that sale randomly. But the fact it‘s on sale already speaks volumes. Nintendo is likely in panic mode.
I got emulators setup so I can even play switch games on it as well.
Which switch emulator is working well for you? I still have yuzu and ryujinx on mine but games are crashing when I try to load them and stuff
There are several yuzu and ryujinx forks floating around. For yuzu there’s citron, and eden-emu; for ryujinx there’s ryubing. Game compatibility varies so I suggest trying them all and see if any works.
Its so much fun! And my library of steam games already works on it.
I find the Steam Deck far too heavy and bulky unfortunately. I’d love a Switch sized handheld PC.
It might be, but if you care about the newest games, you either stick with the Switch 2, wait for a SD 2 or look elsewhere… The SD is getting closer to the Switch 1 state where modern games start to look more blurry, and if you want a hybrid device… Well, it is gonna show more.
Also for some stupid reasons SD availability sucks in several countries, like Mexico.
Most of “the newest games” are well within the spec of the Steam Deck. Of the 4 non-exclusive games nominated for GOTY at the Keighleys, they’ll all run on it just fine. Some of the biggest games of the year end up being the likes of Peak, Schedule I, or Megabonk, and not only are those games only available on PC (at least for a while), but they’re not even pushing the spec of the Steam Deck to its limit. With RAM pricing issues going on right now, high end studios are likely going to target a lower spec. And the companies that can afford to make a game that hits that higher spec are few and far between anyway, compared to the AA and indie studios that made most of the best games of the past few years.
That is quite a positive thought that I would truly want to become real, let’s just wait and see I guess, that doesn’t change the fact that SD 2 is imminent though (I know that is obvious).
What about hybrid gaming? I don’t think anyone can agree that SD is better than the Switch 2 or any other handheld device in 2025 regarding that… Perhaps only in certain cases as locked awful framerate (for the Switch 2).
All of new gaming hardware is decidedly less imminent now that this pricing nonsense is going on. Even if the tech exists, no one thinks they can sell at what they’d have to charge for it. It’s going to be a rough near term future for gaming hardware before it eventually levels out. Reports are that consoles planned for 2027 are now looking like they’ll be pushed back.
I’m not super used to calling that “hybrid gaming”, but my wife seems to have no problem playing cozy games on the Steam Deck, almost exclusively on the TV when I didn’t take it with me on the go. And we’re once again back to the best games and the best graphics not being all that correlated. The other part is that even if a random gamer has a Steam Deck, it’s unlikely to be their only gaming PC, and if they want the power to produce that larger image at better frame rates at home, they’ll play on that other PC, and that game will run its best there. On Switch 2, that one device is your only option no matter what. That means that if you want to play one of those beefier titles from the Switch 1, they’re not going to run at better settings ever unless the developer explicitly upgrades them; even then, there’s often the Switch tax compared to buying the same game on PC.
I’m not trying to talk you down from a Switch 2 if that’s your preference, but if someone’s asking me for a recommendation for a gaming handheld, the Steam Deck is going to be what I tell them until I rule it out due to some other need. I definitely wouldn’t start with a Switch 2. The Deck just hits a compelling price with a good software experience and, perhaps most importantly, a library that dwarfs what Nintendo could ever hope to match by following the traditional console model.
From what I’ve heard, Expedition 33 runs like hot garbage. Even if you use something like Lossless Frames to use AI generated frames to fill in gaps and run at super low settings.
I played it all on desktop, but it looks like it got an update a month ago and is now Deck verified. Friends of mine played it on Deck before that and didn’t mention any complaints, but I wasn’t fishing for them either.