Does the Steam Deck REALLY Destroy the Switch?

[Pemalite]

sethnintendo said:

Pemalite said:

Not really. You can reduce the Steamdecks refresh rate, clockrate, framerate, voltage and obtain:

1) Still better performance than the Switch.
2) Better battery life than the Switch.

You can limit the Steam Decks power to 3w (Much lower than the Switch, plus Steamdeck has a 20-25% larger battery) and get 5+ hours of Portal 2.

Plus... Unlike the Switch, you can also get 4+ hours of GTA 5. One of the best selling games of all time.

You can argue that x86 is CISC and ARM is RISC... But both have basically converged at this point, it all comes down to architecture and design goals... AMD's Ryzen APU's can hit some extremely low TDP's and beat the pants off Tegra in every single way... That includes weight, heat and battery.

Because most people want to play gta5 on handheld for 4-5 hours.  Yea I'm not seeing it.

But at least you have the option. Good thing the Steamdeck has a larger library than the Switch...

Kakadu18 said:

How many hours of Portal 2 do you get on the Switch?

And isn't the appeal of the Steam Deck appart from emulation being able to play games in handheld that can't run on Switch? You know, demanding games, where the Steam Deck's battery runs out after just two or so hours.

Some people get 6 hours with Portal 2... With some people managing to push towards 8 hours with some decent tweaking.

The Steamdeck has games that span 30 or more years... Obviously the games you want to run is up to personal choice.

Soundwave said:

I don't know how big of a seller the Steam Deck could be but I'd like to see them have store distribution in Best Buy and Game Stop at least, right now they can't even keep up with demand online though.

It's a nice product but I would probably wait for Steam Deck 2. I will say for a bigger device it's surprisingly comfortable to hold and use.

PC is basically purely digital. Has been for decades. And you get to bring your games library to any and all PC devices you own.

QUAKECore89 said:

Does Steam Deck have physical cartridge? Can i sell my physical Steam games at good price?

No. And selling your Steam games (Aka account) is against the ToS.

Conina said:

Mnementh said:

Hmm, I probably should say also: I did consider the SteamDeck. I do like my toys that make lights and sound. But I didn't consider it for long. Because - SteamDeck actually is missing an important part of the appeal of Switch: playing in docked mode.

That can be fixed for less than $13 or €13:

An USB-C-HDMI cable + a wireless bluetooth controller ain't more expensive than a Switch Pro controller without a cable.

Or if you also want additional ethernet and USB ports for less than 20 bucks:

Less demanding games (f.e. many indie games and point&click adventures) can be played in (native or upscaled) 4K with these cables; the Switch dock still limits to 1080p output.

I just stream it over my Wifi network with it's 3Gbps wifi speeds... Bugger the cables.
I can also throw it up on any compatible display that way too, don't need to move the dock around and recable everything.

Conina said:

A solution for what problem exactly?

It doesn't make a difference for Steam Deck owners if the Steam Deck sells 1M, 10M or 100M units. The Steam Deck doesn't need special versions of games, it can use the normal PC versions. Thousands of games* are already compatible and the number of good games that run well on the hardware will always go up.

For WiiU and Vita owners the low hardware sales were a problem, since they needed WiiU- or Vita-versions of games.

_{*(tens of thousands if we include the PC gamaes positively tested by others than Valve + emulation)}

It was a bigger problem with the WiiU as it ended up with a very insignificant games library in the end... Which also took years to build up... And which got ported to it's successor console and sold at full price again.

Steam library had thousands of games on it's first day of release and you didn't have to pay a cent extra if you already bought those games for a prior platform.