Pemalite said:
Biggerboat1 said:
It's disingenuous to imply that the cost of the OLED SD is $150 more solely due to the screen. For that premium you also get a way better battery life, double the storage, better wifi & a slightly more performant chip on a more efficient process.
And I think we will see a backlash if there isn't at least an OLED variant of the SD2 when it arrives.
The other handheld PCs sell in such comparatively small numbers that the comparisons aren't particularly useful.
They don't benefit from economy of scale that S2 and to a lesser extent SD do & they also have to make a profit at sale, whereas S2 & SD can rely on recurring revenue from software sales.
There's also an economy of scale gulf between Switch vs Steam Deck. Steam Deck has only sold around 4m units of which only around 1.4m are OLED.
So if Valve can deliver a price point of $549 which includes an OLED of which they've currently only sold 1.4m, surely S2, which is likely to hit 100m+ can do the same for $100 bucks less purely through the discounts enjoyed when ordering at those exponentially higher volumes? Oh, and let's not forget for that price point, compared to S2, Valve are also including more ram, better wifi, double the storage, miles better battery life & a chipset that's in the same ballpark (undocked)...
I think a reason that these comparisons are also scewed is that for some reason the competition are all on AMD. I'm no expert but I'm guessing it's due to these other devices selling so little that Nvidia just aren't interested...
Purely by going with a newer process Nvidia could easily trounce the performance of S2, why that's not happening does seem odd to me - maybe that's a direction they'll explore, or again, maybe it's just not worth the effort for such a huge company & such a niche sector.
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Don't forget that the handheld PC's are using better and faster components than the Switch 2.
That's not free.
Rog Ally X for example... Has:
* Zen 5 Cores which obliterate the Switch 2 Arm A78AE.
* Twice the RAM at 24GB.
* More RAM bandwidth.
* Chip size of 233mm2 vs Switch 2 chip size of 207mm2.
* Full fledged, much larger nvme based SSD.
...And yet it's the Switch OLED I keep gravitating back towards... Why? That OLED display beats the Switch 2 and the Rog Ally X blurry LCD panel... And it's battery life in games like Breath of the Wild is much longer which is more ideal for a handheld.
In docked mode, the Switch 2 showcases it's hardware advantages over the Switch 1, the display is no longer a turn off then.
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If Nintendo wanted to sell a $900 Switch 2, they could likely easily compete with a ROG Ally X and then some but there is not much of a market because the supposed "tech heads" in gaming are actually a tiny group of little nerds that can't afford to buy things like that, so it's a non-market basically. They make a lot of noise on the internet but in reality they're a tiny group of people.
The Switch 2 obliterates the Switch 1 even undocked too, lets get real here. The Switch 2 is obviously better. Cyberpunk 2077 looks better than any Switch 1 game, I don't care if you run Switch 1 games on a 5000 dollar micro LED panel that is superior to OLED. The general public is loving the Switch 2 and for good reason ... it's pretty darn nice piece of hardware especially for that price point. Even Digital Foundry admits the hardware is quite good.
Nintendo will offer a OLED Switch 2 most likely in a couple of years for $600 and then you'll have some group of babies crying about that price too and how they can't afford it. Like Nintendo needs to be a socialist grow-op that gives away goods for charity cases apparently.
The people who think they're entitled to the world for $400 or so are going to be in for a reality check in the coming years also. For one they don't understand inflation (or any economics reality really) but secondly the era of massive subsidization of game hardware is over. Even Microsoft and Sony are not doing it much anymore either. PS5 Pro is expensive as hell. $400 doesn't get you shit anymore, what Nintendo is bringing to the table here for $450 is quite solid and not really matched by any other device in 2025. Certainly not size wise either, all of those other janky ass PC handhelds are like 2-3x the thickness, might as well carry a brick around in your coat pocket. They'd need to be on a 2nm or 3nm process to match the Switch 2's thickness which would make them even more expensive by a significant amount.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 29 June 2025
