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Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2?
(www.polygon.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Do people actually think its a competitor? This is just news sites trying to make something up for clicks surly.
I gave away my switch to a coworker because i didn't really like it to buy a steam deck. So i'd say for me yes they where competitors. I use a lenovo legion go now.
I feel like that's more of a preference than a competitor/competition though.
Honestly for me it came down to where i prefer to buy my games. Steam games will follow me for the forseeable future and switch games will not. I gave my coworker my nintendo account too with over $500 of games on it and i was like that's it. That's enough sunk cost that i will lose.
What's the difference?
A surprising number of people in this very comment section seem to.
All of these comments here are also on lemmy so I don't think that's a comparable sample.
At the time I'm writing this there are 78 comments in this comment section. I haven't read all of them, so let's just assume that every single one of those comments represents a unique individual who believes that the Switch 2 and the Steam Deck (and related) are direct competitors.
Given the nature of this platform and community that number is not even remotely surprising. It's also an utterly insignificant number of people.
The overlap between people who would buy a Switch 2 and people who would buy a Steam Deck is a tiny sliver of a Venn diagram. Those are two largely separate categories of gamer.
I think this more people mistaking people expressing their preferences for a system and extrapolating that to meaning market share predictions.
Reword the question to do you believe Steam Deck will overtake Nintendo market share and you'd get different answers. Same with if you ask someone why is Linux better than Windows versus do you believe Linux can overtake Windows market share?
I find people on the internet have a hard time differentiating between people who are expressing preferences and people predicting market share shifts. People just see oh this person doesn't like Nintendo or Windows and must believe Steam Deck or Linux is going to be more popular.
I typed out the below as a response to you, then reread what you wrote. We might be making the same point just with different words. Hopefully I'm not coming across as overly adversarial.
What I wrote might have been confusing, but I was trying say that places like lemmy may have view points that express preferences that aren't representative of the mainstream. Like how there may be more positive Linux comments on average per user.
But, that it doesn't necessarily mean the people expressing those views believe them to be representative of the mainstream. It is more just them expressing their thoughts.
However, people I found across social media can mistake what are simply individual opinions as general proclamations, and immediately jump to "Oh this person is claiming that their view point is one most people hold. What a bold claim." When all they were saying was I like turtles as opposed to most people like turtles.
I'd say its more people stating why they prefer the Steam Deck over the Switch than actually believing the Steam Deck would overtake the Switch. Challenge them to a bet and you'd see very few take it.
I think it is people mistaking people's preferences for market share predictions.
You can go on random comment section on internet, and people are starting new "console war" for Steam Deck vs Nintendo Switch.