this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025

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Steam Deck

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What handheld PCs should do to fight the Nintendo Switch 2 (www.theverge.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

There is no fight, they're different markets. Sure they're similar on the surface, but I use my deck differently to the Switch.

But if people insist on having this be a stupid "war", then Nintendo would obviously win. Even a Wii U level flop would vastly outsell the Deck, Deck 2, or any PC handheld. The Switch sold over 147 million.

I will continue to mainly play on my Deck while hoping for a Deck 2, and consider picking up a Switch 2 if the price is right and there are good couch multiplayer games. We don't need to turn this into a Sony Vs Microsoft-style fanboy war.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Why do they need to "fight"? They already have the massive advantage of not being locked into Nintendo's expensive ecosystem. It's an entirely separate market of people who specifically want to play (new & non-emulated) Nintendo games and nothing else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The fight part is debatable, but I thought the recommendations for future devices were all good ideas, and covers a lot of the shortcomings of many handheld PCs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

You're both totally right here. The article you linked was well written and had a bunch of good ideas about what players in the handheld market could do to make their products competitive and consumer friendly. I don't think many of the people commenting here actually read the article, which is too bad.

And yeah, I think Nintendo has and will continue to make hardware that is compelling to gamers of all kinds. There's plenty of room in the market for PC and Nintendo devices.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago

"Fight". Far be it that we don't turn everything into a zero-sum "war" 🙄. Can the SD community please not carry over the same console war bullshit just because it's kinda-sorta similar to the switch? That shit is so lame.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 days ago

I don’t think there’s any fight here? This is some weird holdover from console wars.

Let people enjoy things. Have fun Switch 2 peeps.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Linux. They should do Steam OS. Their main downfall right now is windows and the price point. But for the price they often offer better hardware. Steam OS is a much better experience than Nintendo's ecosystem and the dockability of these handhelds is already on par with the switch. They can do a lot more than the switch and switch two will be able to do with more game availability and game streaming as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

That's actually the first point in the article.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago

I don't think a fight is necessary. The Switch 2 is mostly for Nintendo 1st party games, and some third parties and perhaps a number of indies. There's room for the market for that. We didn't need to fight the Switch 1 either.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Nothing at all? I feel like Nintendo is old news now and it is mostly for 12 year olds. I personally will never buy another switch. I can basically play any game on my steam deck/PC, why waste my money on a platform that has a fraction of the games I have access to on my PC?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Yeah. The Switch was incredibly compelling when I couldn't get my hands on a SteamDeck, and before I had like six separate controllers die to joystick drift.

But now... Nintendo are the ones on the back foot. I look forward to playing with Mario again someday after Sonic teaches him how to lose gracefully and port his games to every platform.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I'll get a Switch 2 only for the first party Nintendo games (I'm a sucker for a good Mario game)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I could really only find three or four games I even wanted that were exclusively on Nintendo. I could never justify buying anything else from Nintendo going forward after how shitty the companies policies are. Nintendo's novelty has warn off.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Yup, another reason why I will never buy their stuff is how bad they've been towards little people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I'm not concerned with Nintendo, I'm more curious to see some real competition for the Steam Deck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The opening of the article gets it wrong but is so close to realizing it.

I stopped buying most games for my Nintendo Switch the day I bought a Steam Deck.

I did not.

My Switch has been a Mario and Zelda machine ever since.

That's why I did not. Switch has the exclusive.

It’s simple: the Steam Deck took the Switch’s best trick — pick-up-and-play portability

That's a great feature, but the best is the games.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I actually fully agree with the article on all of those points. I generally stopped buying switch games after I got the deck, titles like TotK sit barely played on my switch because I couldn't pull myself away from the Deck for long enough to play it.

Part of it is size, the switch is really uncomfortable in my hands, but the biggest reason is I share the switch with my kids, where the deck is exclusively my device.

As for the sleep resume feature, it's literally the biggest reason I play on a switch/deck over my desktop PC. Having my own dedicated game system that offers the option to instantly stop or start a game session is the killer feature that has let me play games again. The switch stopped being a viable option for that once I had to share it with my kids, because I would put a game to sleep, and they would close it to launch their own game.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I have a Steam Deck and a Switch and I definitely plan to buy the Switch 2 when it’s available (and I mean actually available, not available on eBay or if I camp in front of a GameStop for three weeks).

There’s a surprising lot of ways that the Switch and the Deck play different roles for me. I prefer handheld gaming now — thanks to the Switch — so it’s nice that I can use the Steam Deck for my PC game backlog but also things like connecting to a gaming PC or console (or emulation or whatever). And since it’s also a Linux PC in disguise — it uses Arch, by the way — you can bounce over to Desktop mode and install basically anything. I’ve even used it for quick work stuff in a pinch.

But even if I sometimes enjoy customizing my Deck and checking FPS, sometimes, I don’t feel like fiddling with settings or care about FPS. As the article notes, Switch is a walled garden and a standard platform so it can’t do as much but every game is going to just open.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Why can't the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs coexist with the Switch 2? Both are not interchangeable, just because its a handheld. You are not forced to buy a handheld PC to play certain games. This is not a situation like Playstation vs Xbox.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hall effect joy cons (combined with Switch 1 game support) could have gotten a hardware purchase out of me, but I think they already missed on that?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No I think they're doing both of those. Definitely backwards compatible, and this says yes to hall effect https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-switch-2-joy-con-drift-fixed-leak/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Ooh. Thanks! That's tempting, at least, from a games preservation perspective.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fight? There is no fight. The switch two will be another underwhelming cash grab only interesting to children and tasteless fanboys.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I partially agree, but I think the switch (or generally nintendo consoles) exist beside other consoles and there is no real fight.