Valve's Steam Deck with SteamOS has been consistently in the top sales charts on Steam since release, but recently it dropped down rather hard following the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement.
It will be back . Nintendo’s catalog is very limited still by comparison to steam and they are peculiar about what they allow on their platform. I think its too early to say anything concrete without more data.
Have you seen the shit that the Switch Eshop is? There’s just a much garbage on it as Steam. At least Steam doesn’t have a seizure if I go to another search filter.
The Switch catalog was limited in no small part because the device just couldn’t give acceptable performance for a lot of contemporary cross-platform games. That, of course, didn’t matter for first-party titles.
Switch 2 performance is projected to end up somewhere around a base PS4, with better GPU but somewhat diminished CPU. However, it’s going to have more memory than the Xbox Series S that teams had trouble porting their games to.
The Switch 2 might benefit a lot from this generation’s extended cross-gen period. Add that to franchises like Fire Emblem, Metroid, Mario, Mario Kart, Pikmin and Zelda, and the average consumer is going to think of Steam as the “limited” platform.
A lot of conjecture, and maybe Switch 2 will turn out to be a monumental flop. I’m cautiously optimistic.
By the way, the old, selective policy that Nintendo exercised is pretty much a thing of the past. Just browse through the eShop for three minutes.
Steam has a massive catalogue. I doubt Nintendo could ever match it given how different the goals of the companies are.
That being said Switch will outsell the SteamDeck because the Switch is shipped kid safe. You need to actually do things on the SteamDeck to make it safe for kids.
Even outside of being kid “safe”, the Deck is too big and heavy for kids. Heck, I know a lot of adults who have that issue.
It’s also fairly expensive and while I would not call it “fragile”, I don’t the Deck would survive being owned by your average 10 year old as well as a Switch Lite does.
The Switch 2 is supposedly going to be 206mm L x 115mm W x 14mm D.
The Deck is 298mm x 117mm x 49mm. So still 1.5x the length of the S2 and 3x the width.
I can’t find any reports of the Switch 2’s weight, but I expect it to be significantly less than the 640g of the Deck. The Switch 2 will have a slightly larger screen, but is a smaller device overall.
But all that aside I still expect Nintendo to offer another, smaller version of the Switch 2 within a couple years. They had the Switch Lite, 2DS, DS Lite, DSi, GBA Micro, GBA SP, Gameboy Pocket, and probably more I’m not thinking of. So they will probably do a Switch 2 Lite or something.
It will be back . Nintendo’s catalog is very limited still by comparison to steam and they are peculiar about what they allow on their platform. I think its too early to say anything concrete without more data.
Also fuck Nintendo and their litigious nature 🖕
Have you seen the shit that the Switch Eshop is? There’s just a much garbage on it as Steam. At least Steam doesn’t have a seizure if I go to another search filter.
The Switch catalog was limited in no small part because the device just couldn’t give acceptable performance for a lot of contemporary cross-platform games. That, of course, didn’t matter for first-party titles.
Switch 2 performance is projected to end up somewhere around a base PS4, with better GPU but somewhat diminished CPU. However, it’s going to have more memory than the Xbox Series S that teams had trouble porting their games to.
The Switch 2 might benefit a lot from this generation’s extended cross-gen period. Add that to franchises like Fire Emblem, Metroid, Mario, Mario Kart, Pikmin and Zelda, and the average consumer is going to think of Steam as the “limited” platform.
A lot of conjecture, and maybe Switch 2 will turn out to be a monumental flop. I’m cautiously optimistic.
By the way, the old, selective policy that Nintendo exercised is pretty much a thing of the past. Just browse through the eShop for three minutes.
Steam has a massive catalogue. I doubt Nintendo could ever match it given how different the goals of the companies are.
That being said Switch will outsell the SteamDeck because the Switch is shipped kid safe. You need to actually do things on the SteamDeck to make it safe for kids.
Even outside of being kid “safe”, the Deck is too big and heavy for kids. Heck, I know a lot of adults who have that issue.
It’s also fairly expensive and while I would not call it “fragile”, I don’t the Deck would survive being owned by your average 10 year old as well as a Switch Lite does.
But now the switch 2 is big and heavy.
The Switch 2 is supposedly going to be 206mm L x 115mm W x 14mm D.
The Deck is 298mm x 117mm x 49mm. So still 1.5x the length of the S2 and 3x the width.
I can’t find any reports of the Switch 2’s weight, but I expect it to be significantly less than the 640g of the Deck. The Switch 2 will have a slightly larger screen, but is a smaller device overall.
But all that aside I still expect Nintendo to offer another, smaller version of the Switch 2 within a couple years. They had the Switch Lite, 2DS, DS Lite, DSi, GBA Micro, GBA SP, Gameboy Pocket, and probably more I’m not thinking of. So they will probably do a Switch 2 Lite or something.
Your measurements of the switch may be missing the controls
I can’t say for sure, but it looks like it includes the controls based on this mock-up from IGN: