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Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2? (www.polygon.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] ekZepp@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Considering this console comes after the Deck and the other handhelds, shouldn't be the other way around?

Btw to answer the question:

Few exclusive titles (for now)
Not great performance to some last year triple A game (like cyberpunk 2077)
The damn price of the games

The answer is: Yes. Any decently performing handheld right now is a better alternative. RIGHT NOW. In a year, with more exclusive titles and ( let's hope) better game prices, who knows.

[-] monotremata@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Yeah. I'm 100% who Nintendo is trying to lure with this launch, and honestly I'm a little ticked off about it--I've really wanted Metroid Prime 4 for a long time, but now it's coming out and I have to choose between playing an inferior version or shelling out over $500 to play the good version. ($450 for the system, $80 for the game, and compatible SD cards in sizes larger than the internal storage of the new system don't even exist yet.) So I'm inclined to wait, and see if there are enough good games to justify the Switch 2 purchase eventually, but they're going to count that as poor initial sales for Prime 4. It might kill the franchise. Replaying some of my switch titles with upgraded performance might have been enough to motivate me to make the move, but they're also going to charge extra for that. That's...not great. Nickle-and-diming on top of a much more expensive system with even more expensive games is just ugly.

It definitely has me thinking about getting a PC handheld instead. A lot of what I was picturing was second-screen gaming while watching TV or YouTube, and the Deck is definitely a competitor in that space. There are a bunch of people saying that "oh, the reason you buy a Nintendo system is to play Nintendo exclusives," which, yeah, that is a selling point, but for the original switch, just being a portable system that played modern games was also a selling point. That second factor is absolutely going up against the Deck, and frankly losing, because Steam has everything. Switch 2 has to go all in on the exclusives, and that's a much tougher sell, especially since they don't have the gold mine of good games nobody had played that they had from the Wii U to pad the release schedule.

Maybe they'll amaze me, but I see them being very unhappy with the revenue from this console in a couple of years, and casting about for stupid shit to blame. And I think they're gonna blame Metroid. It's not Metroid, guys. Metroid is great. It's the pricing.

[-] GooberEar@lemmy.wtf 6 points 1 week ago

The real question is: Do I care? And the answer is no. No I do not.

[-] joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes, when combined with the switch 1

I keep retyping what I want to say, but I think my feelings come down to:

There are 150 million switch 1's in the wild, that's going to continue to be a massive pull for developers when porting new games.
Many families may already have the switch 1, are the exclusives enough of a pull to encourage those people to upgrade?

I do think the switch 2 will do just fine, but I also think there are a lot of people who loved their switch 1 who might look at the games they played, and look at upgrading to a steamdeck instead of the switch 2.

[-] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

A lot of people are saying they're not really competition judging off sale numbers but I'd say they are, just PC handhelds aren't that big of competition. They still are taking away sales as I doubt people with a steam deck are also gonna own a switch or switch 2 unless they already had one before the steam deck came out or are well enough off to afford both and don't want to deal with emulating. I definitely get Lemmy and myself are a biased audience but I think arguing they're not competition at all is wrong, they're just not very big competition compared to Nintendo.

[-] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Shit no, its a different market. The switch was designed by committee to extract the maximum amount of money possible from the consumer. The Steam Deck is geared toward PC enthusiasts and built and designed by those same people. They aren't even in the same ball park.

[-] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I really truly don’t think so. While there is some overlap, I would never give my 5 yo a steam deck and tell them to just figure it out. And on a steam deck, I’d be really sad to not have any Mario kart, Zelda, etc…

I don’t see the problem with having both- they fill different niches.

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[-] warm@kbin.earth 4 points 1 week ago

No, they are successors.