Hot Take(?): Nintendo should stop making consoles and just allow their games on Steam since the Steam Deck is basically what the Switch wishes it could be
The steam deck is way too bulky and battery life is way too short to be a viable handheld for mass market rather than just enthusiasts. Also I will pass on having a console with DRM like Steam rather than physical media.
This chart shows the Switch OLED getting 33% more battery life at worst. The steam deck is good but that doesn’t make it accessible especially when it weighs twice as much and is 3 times thicker
I have the original and V2 Switches and they do not ever get nine hours. The OLED Deck gets up to 12 according to your chart. Not sure why you’re bringing up weight and thickness, it is playable.
Um wat? I understand that many of the games on Steam have DRM, but the Steamdeck itself is a pretty open ecosystem. Hell, it’s running Arch Linux and you can drop to both the Linux Desktop and a terminal shell without a need to hack anything. You literally have full control over the device and can even replace the Operating System wholesale, again without some screwball hack.
By contrast the Nintendo Switch is a complete walled garden. You have zero control over the OS, No ability to replace the OS, interface or anything about the software. You want to “pass on having a console with DRM” and yet the Switch is literally the one of the two which is completely locked down. What the fuck are you smoking?
I’m not a fan of digital only or a fan of Steam in general. You could use a steam deck as a GOG deck and only play DRM free games. You also won’t get access to AAA games from big publishers without DRM but those games either don’t come to switch or are heavily nerfed anyway.
To me thats missing the point of the thing being a a handheld console with SteamOS rather a PC. If you use it as a PC instead of a console it IS a pretty open ecosystem. But then it loses its main advantage over a normal PC or the other handhelds in the market which is its tight integration with SteamOS and the ability to be a handheld PC gaming console. It does keep its secondary advantage of price though. The Steam Deck is a good piece of hardware but I don’t prefer its form factor for what I see as its niche as a Switch competitor.
On the contrast, the switch is made to play switch games and I’m able to play any physical cart on any switch with a working cartridge reader without ever connecting the system online. That’s the advantage the Switch has over the Steam Deck when it comes to games and DRM
Why would they? What Nintendo is doing works really well for Nintendo. They’re over 100 years old (which is considered a young company in Kyoto!) and are not about chasing the best and shiniest, but what works best for their continued long-term survival. They will always do their own thing and at their own pace.
You arent their target market, nobody on Lemmy is. Their target market is pre-pubescent kids and their parents who want their kids toys to “Just work” the parents who just buy the games on the shelf at the store, and the associated merch.
They make great games and to play them you need their hardware, why would they dilute that? This way they get to hit you twice and control their own market pricing. I know “emulators and piracy” right? Those people werent buying shit anyway. Why accomodate them?
Their target market is pre-pubescent kids[. . . .]
You certainly wouldn't know that looking at most of their advertising on TV in Japan and by the people buying them. Handhelds are really popular in Japan because of train commutes by people of all ages.
I'm not sure what percentage of their business is domestic, though.
Japan had really useful cellphones and such when I could only opt for a PC in the US. As such, until recently with PC gaming, PCs we're always considered work tools and not a lot of people had them and those that did didn't game on them a ton. Kinda like I seem to see with Gen Z or maybe alpha in US media. This is one reason consoles we're quite dominant here.
We have two Switches in the house and a lot of games. Their target market is everyone; sure kids are a large part of it, but so are women and others who enjoy Nintendo games.
You wanna look at sales numbers and say that again?
The Switch may have sold more units last month than the Steam Deck sold last year.
That said, Nintendo would not lose any money porting their games to other platforms. Their whole deal is pursuing “incomparable advantages.” Which from 2017 until 2022 included being a handheld gaming console, like a tablet with buttons. Still not sure how they were alone in that market.
The big reason their gizmo flies off shelves is that it’s a generic compiler target for existing multiplatform games. There’s some hardware-specific cheats involved, but it’s generic smartphone hardware, so ehhh. Wolfenstein looked awful until Panic Button googled “ASTC,” but now it’s as good as 720p can manage, on $200 worth of neon plastic.
The PS5 and Xbox Whatever are not in that market. They are not competing. And despite being in competition with each other, Microsoft knows they can make a shitload of money selling their games on the other generic AMD laptop, because even with a horrific 30% cut as the standard, 70% > 30%.
What Nintendo’s going to make another zillion dollars on is some wacky bullshit that makes everyone go ‘why the fuck would they do that?!’ and categorically does not work on anyone else’s hardware. Sony had the chance to do that with VR and whiffed. Microsoft, AR, same deal. Nintendo themselves screw it up about half the time. But they’re sitting on a pile of money you could mistake for Mount Fuji, and honestly, Steam’s biggest advantage is that all their direct competitors are incompetent.
I do wonder how sales would be impacted if they ported on PC, since tech savvy people are already jailbreaking the switch or emulating the games. Would they make more or less money if they decided to start offering their games to people who will buy them, but don’t want to get a Nintendo console.
I’m guessing most Nintendo users are ones who prefer the simplicity of Nintendo devices. So wouldn’t expect a large percentage of PC and Nintendo console owners to make up their overall userbase.
I disagree. A Switch Lite is much better for a 6 year old than a big and clunky Steam Deck. I own a Steam Deck. It’s a fine device. But Nintendo works with their own hardware. I’m not even sure we would have a Steam Deck if Nintendo didn’t make the Switch and showed how much demand there is for dedicated handheld devices. Also Nintendo is better at taking risk with hardware designs than Sony and Microsoft. Other consoles makers just keep making the same box, just a bit better every generation. If anything Sony and Microsoft should just give up their hardware, and make PC games. Nintendo at least take some risk and try to do something different on the hardware front.
Also their games already play infinitely better on the computer. They could actually have my money if I could buy em as applications instead of popping em into Yuzu!
It's a nice thought, but it's hard to see how there won't be shortages and scalpers taking advantages of those shortages. Although hopefully those will just be "normal" shortages and not something on the scale of the PS5 and Series X launches where they were almost impossible to find.
I work hard for my money. I do not like spending it on games that barely function. I stopped buying 3rd party games of any variety on switch because of how many times I was burned by awful performance.
Even 1st party games now. I liked TotK a lot, but frankly it’s difficult to love a game when multiple areas are plagued with nausea inducing frame drops.
Like how has it become acceptable to even publish a game that can’t hold stable 30fps at not-even-real-1080p? Not asking for the world here.
I’d be half inclined to buy a switch 2 if they told me it could actually run my switch 1 library with any faint semblance of competence. But I think I’ll probably pass on this one, especially with the steam deck and other competitors right there. I doubt the switch 2 will be a price-for-performance powerhouse. Would love to be proven wrong though
They won’t. Nintendo has gone on record many times they didn’t care about competing at all in hardware. They think that if a game is fun, that’s all that matters. Ignoring the fact that if the game runs poorly or looks poorly then it will directly affect the fun factor, which makes ports at risk.
It’ll probably be an updated Nvidia SoC, but still bottlenecked my Nintendo (like the current switch is) because mobile battery life is all they really care about.
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