| KLAMarine said: Do it Steam! Give Nintendo a kick so they step their game up! |
If the Deck is able to sell well enough to sell at a profit, then maybe Nintendo will look at it. Otherwise, they probably did enough R&D and determined taking a more powerful chip wasn’t the route to go for now, considering what’s happening around the industry regarding supplies of parts for consoles. Nintendo likely wants to increase their profit margins with the Switch OLED.
The Steam Deck will do things the Switch is not able to do, but it’s also true vice versa.
The $200 Switch Lite and the $300 Switch V.2 are selling fine. With their price point, I don’t see how they can be affected by a $400 low end version of the Steam Deck that doesn’t have a dock. Heck, the Xbox Series S, so far, hasn’t done much to affect Switch sales at $300.
Most indies run fine on Switch, even most third party ports. Of course, Steam has about every game on Earth outside of most Sony and all of the Nintendo games (not emulated of course). Plus, would emulation really be a selling point for those who play games more casually and don’t know much about emulation? Not to mention, the Nintendo’s first party Switch games are the main attraction for getting a Switch. If emulation is affecting sales of their big first party games on Switch, then maybe they’ll do something about it. But as of now, from what I’ve seen, emulation of Switch games still has a long way to go to be considered comparable (or better) than being played natively on Switch.
Also. retail is still important to maintain a presence among casual consumers. There are physical games and the Switch console itself on store shelves.
I almost forgot about Japan. I don’t know about the PC community (or Steam community) in Japan, but the Switch is a monster in Japan. Even the PS5 is not able to break into that bubble. You probably have seen the software sales of the PS5 in Japan (let alone the hardware sales) on the weekly discussion of the Japanese sales charts. Heck, it goes back to the PS4. The PS4 had all the big AAA Japanese games in existence and the majority of the smaller titles from Japan. It basically had every element to dominate Japan except two, portability and Nintendo games. Frankly enough, the Switch needed just those two elements just to fly by the PS4 in sales. Could the Steam Deck breakthrough in Japan? Hard to tell.
The Steam Deck appears to aim towards a different audience that the Switch is aiming towards. I’m sure the Steam Deck will do fine, but I think it’ll take more than being a more powerful, but more expensive, handheld to suddenly divert attention away from Switch in a general consumer point of view.
