Great text. Thanks for writing it. Fully agree.

If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.

For now.

Has either company "lost" anything? They both seems to be raking in money quite healthily.

Steam Deck is the winner, They don't even advertise.

I'll emulate Nintendo games till the day I die because fuck Nintendo and their greed.

What I like about the deck is I bought it and I instantly already owned >1000 games for it where a good majority of those are playable out of the box.

So ya, I ain't paying $120 CAD per game. Fuck that.

Also my controllers basically all work for it so I don't need to buy these overpriced joycons again for a new system.

Already have webcams if I cared for a silly camera that streams at 2FPS.

It's unfortunate that theres been a lot more attention for optimization from some developers for the switch 2 though, not much we can do about that. Some games I own the deck is screaming and barely handling it and apparently the switch 2 runs it no problem.

I stopped buying consoles and moved pretty much exclusively to Steam because it gives me many more options. Thankfully, I don't think that's changing anytime soon. Consoles are great for some people, but I need more flexibility. I sometimes wish I could (legally) play Nintendo first party games, but it's really not that big of a deal.

The funniest thing is that Nintendo buyers are not even part of this conversation LMAO 🤣

The fact that the Nintendos are locked down, family friendly and with a reputation of good production quality (similar to Disney), are also important points for non-nerdy parents and casual gamers who don't want to navigate the ocean of PC gaming and its risks.

Actually you will be able to play switch two games on PC. It's only a matter of time so no your only option isn't just switch two. It's patience 😜

Playing with a amiga as a kid when I was at friends and got to play Nintendo I always felt like an outsider.. But I didn't realise how lucky I am that it was like that. I was exposed to so many more games, and got to tinker. Got to see many crack intros that was mesmerising to me as a kid. Soon enough I got into coding because of it.. And guess if that was useful later. I'm never going to think buying a walled garden device is ok, sends the wrong message to your kids and hampers their development. Don't take the easy way out.

No shame to anyone who bought a switch 2. My partner got one during pre-sales and is incredibly happy to have gotten one, and I feel so happy for him that he gets to have some joy in his life with it. I wish you the same joy.

But I just can't get into it. I didn't grow up with nintendo so the properties really don't mean much to me. And now, I just don't think I can swallow paying hundreds of dollars to start, then another hundred dollars to get games that seemingly play the same way as they did in the last release, plus a yearly subscription for online play. You may not see what you purchased the same way, and I'm glad that it's meaningful to you even if I can't find the same meaning in it -- it's good that there exists something for everyone's niche.

I don't see why this needs to be a competition. Are there really people out there who were about to get a steam deck but decided not to in favour of a switch 2? I feel like switch owners are well aware that it's a Nintendo machine and theyre not gonna be playing a lot of their favourite out-of-franchise games on it. That's what they expect and thats what they'll likely get.

In 1999, the SEGA Dreamcast was the fastest selling video game console when it launched. In 24 hours, it sold a little over 225k units (which was massive for the tiny gamer population of 1999). This earned it the Guinness World Record for Most Revenue Generated in the Entertainment Industry in 24 Hours.

Console sales at launch literally don't matter.

Also, I wonder how many of those were sold to scalpers that plan on returning them if they cannot sell them?

EDIT: For reference, the PlayStation 1 sold 300k consoles in Japan only when it launched, but not in 24 hours, that 300k is for the entire launch month of December 1994, per Sony's own official business data.

I loved my steam deck, but it was too chunky for me and certainly for my kid.

My compromise is Anbernic type devices. Long battery life, better form factor, lots of ported games too.

What kind of idiots are comparing the two? They're different things with entirely different markets. There was never a battle to be had lol

Also, for what its worth, the OLED Decks literally sold out today, as in, Valve doesn't currently have any more to sell in the US.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/supply-chain-issues-are-making-the-steam-deck-oled-go-out-of-stock/

Also also... I realize this is a silly comparison, but the Switch 2 has not outsold all variants of the Deck, yet.

Its at about 3.5 million, Steam Deck is at about 4.5 million since 2022.

Also x3, the Switch 2 is apparently already sold out as well, as in no more units available at US retailers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/nintendo-switch-console-record-sales.html

So no, Steam Deck didn’t outsell the Switch 2. It didn’t need to.

I don't disagree with the sentiment. I would still consider the Steam Deck a "failure" if it couldn't move enough units to justify its production cost, but it looks like they're still churning them out, so... eh, it's not great but its fine.

I would argue that merely comparing generic PC sales to Switch sales also misses the mark. At the very least, you'd focus on unique Steam installs or Active Steam Accounts if you're really interested in counting the success of Steam relative to Nintendo.

Even then, what you're really competing with isn't "SteamDeck sales v. Switch sales". I'd say its "SteamDeck sales per $1 advertising spent v. ..." Given that Nintendo spent around $730M in advertising last year and Valve spent under $100M, it seems that Nintendo has to spend roughly $50/unit to move a Switch relative to Valve coming in closer to $40/unit.

It's very difficult to compare popularity under two wildly divergent marketing strategies.