Steam Deck Does What Nintendon't?

[JWeinCom]

Sure, but the Switch does a lot of things the Steam Deck doesn't. I actually have used the detachable joycons with multiple players on many occasions. It's not the best controller, but it's perfectly serviceable for most games. More importantly than being useful for the Switch in handheld mode is the fact that it is usable in docked mode. This means you can play two player games out of the box, whereas with the Steambox you will need to have a separate controller to play even single player games in docked mode. I'm guessing most people have something that they can use for games in docked mode (at least a mouse and keyboard), but it may not be ideal, may not be plug and play, and they may not have enough for multiple players. Particularly for less tech savvy people, it's going to be a far clumsier solution that the Switch's quick and easy transition from handheld to docked or one players to two.

It also does motion out of the box. Something like Ring Fit could easily work on the Steamdeck but would probably require a more expensive add on. Motion controls aren't huge on the Switch but I like them and I'm guessing I'm not alone.

Switch also is a closed ecosystem which obviously has some drawbacks but also has some advantages, mainly that you can be fairly confident it will run every Switch game, whereas it remains to be seen how well the Steamdeck will run things, and if it will be running modern games 3-4 years from now at playable levels. The Switch also can fit comfortably in a pocket (at least a man's pocket) whereas the Steam deck would likely require a carrying case. Switch also has better battery life, which is largely because games are targeted towards the Switch and run at lower quality.

Most importantly, the Switch has access to Nintendo's first party library. Maybe the Steamdeck will be powerful enough to run games smoothly. And that's probably the biggest reason people buy Nintendo systems.

Steamdeck may have access to it illegitimately, but we'll have to wait till its released to see if it could emulate Switch games well and how that impacts power consumption. The above video of Mario Odyssey running looks pretty rough and that's not the most demanding game, or even the most demanding part of that game. Even to the extent that it runs Nintendo games, there are drawbacks. Will you be able to play Splatoon 2online? I'm sure there's some way to make that possible but unless there's a really dedicated community like with Melee, there's unlikely to be a satisfying way to do that. And even though Melee matches online run better than Ultimate, it's still a bit of a chore to get to an online match, which is probably a bit too much effort for your average gamer.

So, yeah, Steamdeck does things the Switch doesn't. You can say that about more or less any two products that aren't identical or at least incredibly similar. The things it does probably aren't the things that are driving Switch owners. It may find its own market, but if the things Steambox did were that important to Switch owners, the Switch probably wouldn't be that successful in the first place.