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What people miss about Steam Deck's "loss" to Nintendo
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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There are millions upon millions of Mario, Link, and Pokemon fans.
There are not millions and millions of... what's the killer Steam Deck game again? Oh, right, there isn't one.
If Valve came out with Half Life 3, made it Steam exclusive and a pack in with the Deck, then it would start putting up Nintendo numbers.
You're right, the best part of PC gaming is that it's always inclusive, never exclusive. Thanks for the reminder
Pc, where games are locked to launchers…? And OS…?
They have their own flaws, so that’s not even a good counterpoint. They are FAR from inclusive, and far more exclusive in a lot of cases. HL3 would likely be a Steam exclusive, to think otherwise is just ignoring reality.
Ok I'm with you on the whole store exclusivity thing but come on. More exclusive? Having to buy from a certain store and being able to run anywhere on hardware of your choice is hardly more exclusive than being forced to buy from one vendor and only run on one system.
That said, I do think this whole argument is somewhat moot because the steam deck and switch serve very different but overlapping audiences. I own an original switch and a steam deck, I don't think one can replace the other but I've opted not to buy the switch 2 because Nintendo's anti consumer practices really turn me off if they want to tell me what I can do with the games and hardware I bought from them.
I’m passing on the Switch 2 for similar reasons.
I can either fund Nintendo to sue open source developers or I can fund Valve who are payrolling open source developers.
But you can’t…? It’s locked to OS, and it doesn’t run on ALL hardware. There’s minimum specs, and you can’t play modern games on windows 95.
Why do people ignore the glaring flaws while preaching the few okay ones? And the obvious lies too. The pros that people use, all fall flat when you follow them. You say all hardware, but it’s not, and never has been has it…?
A yes, a very insightful and polite response.
Should have known trying to have a civil discussion about anything related to Nintendo would lead to trolls coming and brigading and insulting.
You realize there’s been vast technical advancements since 1995, right?
So if this statement is true, an OS wouldn’t be a limitation.
Of course tech is better, that’s why you can’t play on it anymore with anything modern. Do you seriously need this pointed out?
And lots of old windows 95 programs don’t run on modern hardware, so if you bought something back then, you’re SOL with modern hardware. Limitations everywhere.
I’m not the OP, but the original statement wasn’t that you can run on all hardware—but rather the hardware of your choice.
There are many, many different PC models available, with a variety of form factors, with vastly different components. And you can choose whatever gives you value.
Nobody is claiming that you should run Black Myth Wukong on an old IBM Aptiva except you.
Right, but it’s not freedom, when it doesn’t run on everything. You need to keep your system updated to play modern games.
With a switch, any game released, you know will play.
So yes it’s MORE exclusive in some situations.
Where? Don’t put words in peoples mouth if you want to have a civil discourse, but of course with this being your post, we know your bias already.
The thing you are arguing for, literally has a list of games it CANT run… and it includes a lot of modern games as well as older, so it can’t even run them… nice non-exclusion eh? It limits on BOTH sides.
Bingo. Nintendo and all game consoles are all walled gardens, but not necessarily a bad thing in this case. The Steam Deck is more of handheld PC that can pretty much run anything when in Desktop Mode. They’re two completely different beasts.
Any non modern Nintendo console is capable of playing homebrew games, so this isn’t even true.
People have released NES and gameboy games in the last few years. Even on carts.
Just because Homebrew is possible doesn’t mean Nintendo intended for you to do that.
The games released on carts arent official games, but they’re playable on an unmodified console/system. Where do the goalposts get moved to now? Games are released on something you said wasn’t possible, so which is it?
Both can be true.
How so? How can it be a walled garden if anyone can develop and release a game cartridge for it?
If anyone could release a game cartridge, the GBA would have been filled with shovelware and we wouldn't need emulators. Homebrew was possible on the DS and later thanks to off-the-shelf SD cards, but that didn’t mean you were going to be suddenly granted a writable game cartridge.
Anyone can release a cartridge though? This part you’re ignoring.
Why move the goalposts? You’re also now suggesting we gatekeep devs? Why is releasing something on pc fine, but wouldn’t be fine if it was “homebrew”? Because it doesn’t fit your bias?
A game release is a game release, or do these limitations only apply to one side unevenly?
Pc is FULL of shovelware, so that shouldn’t be the metric we use? Yeah?
Why do you keep insisting I’m moving the goal post? I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just pointing out the process is not easy as you claim it is.
I never said it was easy?
You said it was a walled garden, so it sounded like you weren’t aware that homebrew and modern cartridge releases exist. And are now arguing why those aren’t applicable to your “walled garden” comment.
Ok, now suppose you want to release a game for any of the modern Nintendo consoles.
You need to get a devkit. To get it, you need Nintendo to approve your request, and you need to pay them for a license to use the devkit hardware. And, to actually use the devkit, you need a PC running Windows.
Sure, to develop a game for PC, you need a PC. But do you know what you don't need on top of that? A devkit and a Windows license.
Edit: Two downvotes in two minutes? Oh my, the sockpuppets are angry today.
Funny how month long idle accounts come out as well on those same votes, what does any of it imply?
that anyone would even have the thought of "killer steam deck game" amazes me. It's just a pc. You can run literally every game in existence that doesn't require a top of the line nvidia card as a minimum, have rootkit anti cheat, or is still exclusive to yet un-emulated console.
There are limits as to what runs well on the Deck and what does not run well.
When I got my Steam Deck I was asking around to see what the "must have" game is with the caveat that I already have a Switch, Xbox Series X and PS5. So what's a must have game on the Deck that I can't already play?
. . .
The answer I got back was "Well, emulation, piracy, and streaming from the Xbox and PS5."
There really isn't a killer app on the Deck, and that's fine. I bought mine to better explore the Steam ecosystem as I had no gaming PC at the time.
Exclusives are a bad thing. The fact that you're asking to be fed the same regurgitated ip slop gives them the idea that maybe, $80 games are underpriced. Maybe they can bump that up to a base $90, $100 for physical. Nintendo keeps exclusives out of greed, worse than even Sony. There shouldn't be exclusives. Ridiculous.
Exclusives are a good thing if you want to justify a $400 hardware purchase. :) "What can I play here that I can't play elsewhere?"
If you can play it elsewhere, why blow $400?
I spent a few grand on my gaming PC. I can play those games on other hardware, but the hardware I bought plays those games the way I want to play them. The same goes for a Steam Deck compared to any other handheld gaming device.
Well for one thing, playing online games (that aren't F2P) on PC does not require me to pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of using my own internet connection that I already pay for. That is the most odd subscription to have to pay for - doubly so on Switch where most games of their FP games are ironically P2P, last I'd heard.
I also like being on an open platform where my games will generally continue to follow me as I upgrade. The only one who actually holds even somewhat of a candle to this is Microsoft with their Xbox backwards compatibility program, but there are no guarantees with that. If I had to pick up the PC I used in 2007 to play Portal, I'd be pretty upset given how hardware degrades over time (especially in the realm of handhelds - ie batteries). If I want to play the Nintendo Wii version of Animal Crossing however on an official supported Nintendo console, I'd have to buy another Wii given that when I moved out I didn't steal the Wii from my other siblings who were still growing up. Thankfully I can emulate it on PC (such as my Steam Deck), but I wouldn't want to gamble on emulation being possible, similar to Xbox's BC program.
The money spent on the hardware in the PC ecosystem also go further than just playing games. I work from home, and am able to use that same hardware to do my job. Funnily enough, I thought I was going to end up having to dock my deck to do a shift due to a failing drive - meanwhile I can't even open Spotify on a Switch to listen to some music. If I even tried that on a NS2, Nintendo wants to permanently brick the entire device, no thanks.
So no, I don't need a "Haha! I can have this game and you can't!" to justify a hardware purchase. There are plenty of reasons for me to justify my purchase of PC hardware that won't just be used to harm me.
I just like good games, I'm platform agnostic.
If you want to play it, then you can buy any console. This creates competition, hopefully decreasing or at least maintaining prices for consumers.
For example, games like Jedi Survivor. Very popular. Not an exclusive. You can play it on Xbox, Playstation, PC, whatever. If all games weren't exclusives and could be played on anything, then the only reason to buy or not buy a console would be the console performance and company behavior. This would definitely increase game sales and availability as well.
There are actually thousands of games that run on Steam Deck with no additional configuration that aren't even available on Switch, and conservatively, hundreds of those are extremely popular. Plus a lot of Switch's library is on Steam Deck, where it tends to be a better version of the game for one reason or another, not the least of which is free online play.
That's exactly the problem... there are thousands of games but nothing stands out the way Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon do on a Nintendo platform.
I still look from time to time on my Deck. I picked up Borderlands 2 the other day because it was free.
But what I usually see browsing are a bunch of games I can already play on other systems, plus porn games, anime games, and anime porn games.
There really isn't one game that stands out on the Deck.
Vampire Survivors?
macOS, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
En Garde? PC Exclusive, decent game, but limited and a little boring if I'm being honest.
https://youtu.be/MfUmgmMp964
You have a fanboy perspective here. The Steam Deck's ecosystem is hardware agnostic, and to a large extent, Steam agnostic. No one game needs to "stand out" on the Steam Deck when it plays almost every video game that exists besides the ones Nintendo makes. Out of the sample size of "almost every video game", there's a high chance that there are many that are important to you and not made by Nintendo.
Blood, Baldur’s Gate, Septerra Core, and Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi have all been PC exclusives for decades now.
Seriously, I got lots of great PC classics to recommend to you.
Pretty great that they sold 4m of this device without any exclusive tbh. It's not even their main income.
Very doubtful tbh. You can look at HL: Alyx as an example. It sold well I'm sure, but not Nintendo level. As much as people like to belly ache about VR being too hard to get into, it's truly no more expensive than a Steam Deck if you actually bother to take more than 2 seconds to legitimately look into it.
I played Alyx on a mobile 1060 and a $300 headset and while it wasn't top of the line, it was still perfectly playable. I imagine most gamers these days have at least that, but Alyx absolutely did not sell like hot cakes. And I doubt the Steam Deck would either, even for HL3.