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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Steam Deck Does What Nintendon't?

HoangNhatAnh said:
Agente42 said:

Drift problems?

Ps5 have similar drift problems than switch. The OG Switch you can change the controls, likewise ps5.

Lite  don´t have this luxury

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvqLDsSLS9M&t=582s&pp=ugMICgJ2aRABGAE%3D

Chazore said:

Yes, but you didn't pay attention to what he'd said in a prior thread, which makes playing a willing devils advocate rather pointless and irrelevant.

Yes, and yet there are still a good number of games out there that aren't playable anymore due to not being in print, that doesn't make it irrelevant, it makes it a fact of reality, because you cannot play those on Switch (but they can be played via emulation).

He didn't criticise Switch, he just said "physical games tho".

This thread is about Switch vs Steam dock, so obviosly the physical games he said here are Switch games. 

Bold: It can be applied that to any console, and can you play Pokémon Shield, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Xenoblade DE or 2 with much better performent on Steam Deck than Switch? As far as I know, you need something much more stronger to run and play them but still not completely perfect. 

now you have good slim docks with more ports and works very well, without modding. 



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hinch said:

All this talk of digital vs physical, of all things on a portable device the one thing I do not want is physical media. Out of convenience and space if anything (and less chance to misplace games) and this is someone who heavily leans towards physical media.

Yeah, especially with a mobile device, I find it annoying to lug around dozens of small game modules that can be lost, stolen or damaged in addition to the handheld when traveling.

For handhelds, I've preferred digital versions since the Vita and 3DS, and for the Switch as well.

I only buy Switch-modules for games that I might want to resell or if they are significantly cheaper than the download version.



Switch is not small and and this thing is not either. Even bigger. So you are lugging around a buncha shit in a bag anyway. So saying you don't want to bring games doesn't work. You have a bag full of shit and a luggable 6-7 inch tablet. Besides Unless you are ADHD with games. Just bring a one really good one. Why RPGs on handhelds are so great.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Conina said:
Agente42 said:

Switch is a hybrid system, Steam Deck is not a hybrid system on the box.

Why ain't the Steam Deck a hybrid system?

You can use it as a portable handheld.

You can probably use it as a home console wireless connected to a TV (BlueTooth / Miracast / SteamLink), optionally connecting additional gamepads.

You can use it as a home console connected to a TV with an USB-C -> HDMI cable.

You can use it as a PC with a first party or third party USB-dock (which allows connecting monitor, keyboard, mouse...)

It doesn''t get much more hybrid than that.

 

 

I knew it, the PSP Go was the first hybrid console ever! Nintendo copying Sony again!

For the record: I'm not serious. But going by the logic up there, Sony was first. 

As for the Steam Deck. It's a PC. Period. Just like with the PSP Go, you will need additional peripherals to use it with a TV, monitor or whatever. So I wouldn't exactly call that a hybrid. But what the hell do I know.



Official member of VGC's Nintendo family, approved by the one and only RolStoppable. I feel honored.

dx11332sega said:

There's an unmeasurable amount of hate for Switch Oled few are making fun of the people that double dip, I don't see nothing wrong in double dipping.

Ever since the Deck showed up, people made fun of it like it's a modern version of the Game Gear, as if the Game Gear itself was a bad console (fanboys never change). 



Step right up come on in, feel the buzz in your veins, I'm like an chemical electrical right into your brain and I'm the one who killed the Radio, soon you'll all see

So pay up motherfuckers you belong to "V"

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OdinHades said:
Conina said:

Why ain't the Steam Deck a hybrid system?

You can use it as a portable handheld.

You can probably use it as a home console wireless connected to a TV (BlueTooth / Miracast / SteamLink), optionally connecting additional gamepads.

You can use it as a home console connected to a TV with an USB-C -> HDMI cable.

You can use it as a PC with a first party or third party USB-dock (which allows connecting monitor, keyboard, mouse...)

It doesn''t get much more hybrid than that.

 

 

I knew it, the PSP Go was the first hybrid console ever! Nintendo copying Sony again!

For the record: I'm not serious. But going by the logic up there, Sony was first. 

As for the Steam Deck. It's a PC. Period. Just like with the PSP Go, you will need additional peripherals to use it with a TV, monitor or whatever. So I wouldn't exactly call that a hybrid. But what the hell do I know.

SEGA was first



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Oof, I'm going to confess I'm majorly having trouble keeping up lol...BUT, it seems the next universal point of contention is size and weight.  I never discussed those specs mostly because I didn't figure that small of a weight difference would be make or break, but by the numbers:

- The Switch OLED is .93 lbs with Joy Con attached, and the Switch is .88 lbs with the Joy Con attached

- The Steam Deck is 1.47 lbs, or 0.54lbs heavier than a Switch OLED, and 0.59lbs heavier than a Switch.  The weight difference is a little over half a pound.  If I round for simplicity, that's 9oz, and a pair of Joy Con attached to the grip is 6.9oz.  Take your Joy Con, put them on the grip, and then top it with one more Joy Con and there's the total weight difference in your hands.  You can decide from this is that's too much more weight or not, surely lol

JWeinCom said:
ZyroXZ2 said:

Sooo, first off... WHAT HAVE I DONE?!  Of course, after spending the last 30 minutes going through every page on here, there is one thing I want to summarily respond to on the whole.

- Emulation itself is a grey area, you could argue that all day and each side has valid points.  The one things that stands in the middle of the grey area is profit.  It's rare that a company goes after someone reverse engineering their things if said person is just doing it as a hobby, and you'll find that outside of gaming, people do all kinds of crazy reverse-engineering just because, well, some people love tinkering.  Emulating really is at your own risk, but the moment you start having a monetized YT channel or streams, or are in any way making money from it, you'd better start getting worried.  No one cares until money is involved, and that for me is the best reference point for emulation.

I'm not sure if you know this, but... the emulators also work with Wiimotes and Joy Con.  You can pair those up using Bluetooth, so the motion controls would also come along with the emulation because the dock has multiple USB ports.  There's virtually nothing the Switch can do that the Steam Deck can't other than the detachable Joy Con, and ends up compensating by way of full support for any input devices you use on a PC.  Good luck using a racing steering wheel or flight stick on a Switch lol

Soundwave said:

It really on takes watching a 3-4 minute video on Youtube these days. I remember back in the day how widespread Playstation piracy was and you have to actually soder the mod chip onto the board, but there was a massive market around doing that but people in the 90s were making due. 

DS piracy being quite widespread as the device aged, I think that was a big part of the reason Nintendo wanted to move on to the 3DS. 

Piracy/emulation is inevitably a problem if you want to keep using tech that is very outdated as time goes on, it become easy for piracy to become a problem. 

So I wouldn't say it's so complex that you have to be some kind of computer nerd to figure it out, it's not that hard to install an emulator on a PC. 

I don't know if this one specific model is the be all end, but I can see this doing well enough that Valve keeps iterating other models and eventually starts selling them in major retailers. And I could see other manufacturers trying their hand too, making it kind of like its own product category (Switch like portable PCs). This model is more like the genie coming out of the bottle, but once the genie is out, it's hard to put it back in. 

The funny thing about what you're saying is true: Nintendo's weaker hardware makes emulation just that much easier to do because virtually any mid-tier PC has more than enough power to do it.  And the fact of the matter is that it's easier to do than people realize, and most kids can figure this stuff out... which I later saw as posts lmao

Remember when we were kids and we got away with all kinds of things our parents didn't know about?  Ever been caught doing something and THEN your parents found out because you got caught?  Don't underestimate kids hahaha!

hinch said:

I think people are missing the point in this thread and not watching OP's video.

Granted handheld PC gaming isn't exactly new, the Steam Deck is made and backed by the biggest platform on PC (Valve Corporation). And they are offering a mini PC from $399. That's big. And because they own the platform, they can take it hit in hardware costs and subsidize it by software sales (very much like consoles). This hasn't been done before yet on PC and is exciting to a lot of PC gamers especially those invested in Steam. I mean emulation is just one of the many things PC's.. its a multimedia device, a productivity device and gaming system on the go. It smaller than a laptop and easier to pick up and play.

On top of this Steam as a platform is absolutely huge and not to be overlooked. If we look at how many active concurrent people playing and online - https://store.steampowered.com/stats/. There are millions of active gamers on there at any given time.


OP was looking this at a hardware level and to that point. The Tegra X1 in the Switch is getting a little long in the tooth and with the OLED announcement, and then the Deck, comparisons are going to made. The Deck really did come in the exact right time. Yes it won't likely won't affect Nintendo sales in any meaningful way and I don't think anyone on this site believes this so I'm not sure why this is echoed so much on here.

You watched it?!

Wait wait... I didn't say I was going for clicks on YouTube, I actually made a literal title that represented what I was talking about lol

CGI-Quality said:

Precisely why they aren't PCs at all, 'stripped down' or otherwise. They remain a closed platform with barely a ¼ of PC's functionality. Very little to no customization, couldn't run half the programs on them (including a few I use to create high quality offline renders), and the list could go on.

So, yes, the distinction remains. Despite how much I love my Series X, it is not even close to the PC just five feet from it.

The distinction is more software-based functionality, and even then, it's simply programmed that way.  He's got a fair point about a walled garden: the most custom thing about consoles is their form factor.  They ARE using parts that can be found in PC hardware: the days of purely custom built silicon, APIs, etc. are all-but-gone, including with the Nintendo Switch.  The remaining distinction is the OS in which, yes, it's a walled garden where there is far more control over the apps that can run on it (which naturally cuts down on bloatware).  Just because I CAN'T open up MS Word and type up an essay on an Xbox Series X doesn't mean it can't do it, the functionality is simply not allowed.  They are PCs, just with less functionality, not that they aren't PCs at all.  I mean, on the flipside, many apps are made for the consoles to allow functionality not built into the OS, so in theory if someone wanted to make an app for 3D rendering on the Series X using your controller, it would be entirely possible if allowed.

This!  Piracy is its own entire ecosystem on its own.

padib said:

That's not the whole dickture!

I find you pretty amusing and love turning your shows on :)

But remember that the Switch does also what the Steamdeck don't, and that's being a proper handheld. You see, it weighs almost twice as much as a Switch, it will probably be unconfortable over long playthroughs. Also, the switch is motion gaming ready, so games like Ring Fit and Skyward Sword (for those who want to play with motion, yes I am one such person), the steamdeck just won't work even as an emulator.

So you can take your handheld P n C and shove it up your.... dock! :'))

*hole dickture lol; glad to hear someone enjoyed the juvenile humor

I actually answered this above: emulators also allow you to use Wiimotes/Joy Con through Bluetooth lol... So really, there is virtually nothing left the Switch can do that the Deck doesn't except detach said Joy Con.  As for the weight... come on, man: 1 x 2 is 2.  Ergo, twice has heavy sounds heavy, but then it's 1.6 lbs which is easily still within "proper handheld" territory weight lmao

I know what you meant, but that would be forwards compatibility with the Switch lol... I do miss the Gamepad, though: way better ergonomics than the Switch as a handheld!  Sadly, I do very little handheld gaming, so it's not really a big deal to me, but for those that do, the Gamepad did such a better job...

I'm not sure if you know this, but... the emulators also work with Wiimotes and Joy Con.  You can pair those up using Bluetooth, so the motion controls would also come along with the emulation because the dock has multiple USB ports.  There's virtually nothing the Switch can do that the Steam Deck can't other than the detachable Joy Con, and ends up compensating by way of full support for any input devices you use on a PC.  Good luck using a racing steering wheel or flight stick on a Switch lol

"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."

You seem to have called out people for not actually watching your video. Similarly, I find in annoying when 90% of my post is ignored, and the part that wasn't ignored wasn't read carefully. Obviously, I know that motion controls are a possibility on PC, hence why I mentioned it three times. Didn't specify Wiimotes or Joycons, because I wasn't talking about emulation yet. But, I didn't mention Joycons as an advantage of playing Switch games natively when I did, so clearly I was aware of this possibility.

The point of the post, and several others, is about convenience, optimization, and simplicity. To play ARMS online (with motion controls because I like punching) on Switch I would have to...
1. But a Switch, arms, and Nintendo online.
2. Set up my internet collection.
3. Play.
On Steamdeck, assuming it can run it at reasonable quality (which there doesn't seem to be agreement on, especially when it comes to handheld mode, I would have to.
1. Buy Steamdeck and joy cons.
2. Possibly switch out the OS (and windows is not free or cheap, although I guess you could likely find anything for free with enough knowhow).
3. Download better joy.
4. Download and set up emulator.
5. Find reliable rom source and download.
6. Wait weeks or month until emulators support multiplayer for this game.
7. Find community of people who play ARMS online on emulators if a big enough one exists.
8. Find someone looking for a match and exchange info.
9. Connect and hope it runs well.

And it likely won't run well. Even assuming the Steamdeck is perfectly capable of running Switch games 1:1 online emulators tend to suck unless it's for a devoted community like Melee that developed/optimized their own emulators or if you can do something like parsec which likely won't work on steamdeck. I'm more tech savvy than most and my quest to play CvS2 online ended in frustration after repeated desyncs match after match. 
So, Id say for all practical purposes, this is something Steamdeck can't do. Similarly, on a bunch of occasions I've had impromptu multiplayer sessions on my switch. I can theoretically carry around a steam deck with two extra controllers at all times, but that would be really inconvenient. Fitting in my pocket is something the Steam Deck can't do unless I buy a pair of Jinco jeans. Linking two screens ala Super Mario Party is something I doubt the Steamdeck can do. Dunno if it can do Amiibo (and if so would likely involve a cumbersome workaround). Can't do Labo (unless you want to custom make your out cardboard kits but then that would defeat the purpose). It can't run physical media. I imagine it may have difficulty running some software like Super Kirby Clash or Pokemon Quest that rely on time based events/microtransactions. A lot of modes in games (Splatfest, Luigi's weird balloon thing in Odyssey, Arms Party) don't seem feasible due to install base or other reasons. The Steamdeck probably won't let me visit most of my friends' islands on Animal Crossing.

Oh and... you know, online gaming... in general. To the best of my quick google search knowledge, as of half a year ago, two games worked with online multiplayer. Luigi's balloon world (which seems like it wouldn't have enough people to really be worthwhile but what do I know) and Mario Maker 2 (which naturally has a much smaller community unless it can actually connect to Nintendo's service which seems doubtful). These are both asynchronous experiences that don't require an actual live p2p connection. Meanwhile local 2-system multi works with a handful of games over Wifi, and not particularly well from what I see. That's people in their house with high speed wi-fi, not taking out your Switch at a tailgate (yep, I've done that). Kind of doubt local multiplayer will work with two people out on the wilderness with their Steamdecks. Unless you have better info than me, it seems like that a huge thing Nintendoes that Steamdon't, that kind of debunks the entire premise of the clickbait.  Cause there are plenty of things that the Switch does that the Steamdeck either cannot do nearly as easily, cannot do practically, or cannot do at all.

And none of this is of course to knock the Steamdeck. I'm not denying the Steamdeck is more powerful, versatile, has a bigger overall library, etc, but for the thing people buy a Switch for, playing Switch games, it really doesn't do it nearly as well. 

Uh, who said I ignored 90% of your post?  Projecting there a little, lmao... I simply addressed you particularly saying there would be an expensive add-on, and there isn't: if you take Ring Fit, dump the game and emulate it on your Steam Deck, this would include pairing up the Joy Con so you can use the ring...  I don't know where you got all the ignoring, I simply addressed that part of your post lol

You breaking out the steps of emulation as granularly as possible, though, looks like an agenda against emulation even if you say you are not.  I'm not for or against it, but I'll leave you with this: I confess to having emulated a Wii game a long time ago.  I emulated Xenoblade Chronicles because I had already gotten into PC gaming at the time and was enjoying 1080p resolutions and 60fps.  You can imagine that 480p and 30fps (or lower sometimes) was painful for me, so I dumped the game, and emulated it surprisingly well (I can't recall what CPU I had at the time, but I had it overclocked to 5.0GHz and with a CPU cooler running 100% all the time... My PC was annoyingly loud!) at 1080p 30fps.  Naturally, I had to pair up my Wiimote in which I connected the Classic controller to it.  You have a time frame for when I did this based on the game I'm talking about, and I will tell you it wasn't hard at all.  Fast-forward to now, and I guarantee you that most of the "doesn't run well" complaints are from potato PC users trying to emulate.  Emulation is really easy: anyone can do it.

Most people who will buy the Steam Deck likely are already more tech savvy and have mid-to-upper tier PCs.  Emulation isn't hard in the slightest as it already wasn't back when I did it, and the only thing you need to dump a game on the Switch is an inexpensive part that puts the Switch into RCM mode.  You might not be aware of this part, but as an example: yuzu runs on Linux, too.  It's just not complicated... Is it as simple as buying a Switch and popping in a cart?  Of course not, no one at any point was arguing that except you.  It's the emulation is easy enough to be considered a fair option, and as stated later on, even kids could do it.

The part about online is a different story entirely, and that's where the Melee part comes in where Nintendo shut it down anyway.  Online gaming has always been a point of contention in piracy, the one area that's harder to "crack" since there's more authentication challenges, and yet the strength of Nintendo's library isn't online gaming.  I can concede that you would be right if someone's focus on Nintendo games were there multiplayer ones, but it's also fair for someone to say that's not the majority of Nintendo's exclusives which makes emulation still a fair crack (me so punny!) at covering the vast majority of the Switch games people will care about.

CGI-Quality said:

The distinction is more software-based functionality, and even then, it's simply programmed that way.  He's got a fair point about a walled garden: the most custom thing about consoles is their form factor.  They ARE using parts that can be found in PC hardware: the days of purely custom built silicon, APIs, etc. are all-but-gone, including with the Nintendo Switch.  The remaining distinction is the OS in which, yes, it's a walled garden where there is far more control over the apps that can run on it (which naturally cuts down on bloatware).  Just because I CAN'T open up MS Word and type up an essay on an Xbox Series X doesn't mean it can't do it, the functionality is simply not allowed.  They are PCs, just with less functionality, not that they aren't PCs at all.  I mean, on the flipside, many apps are made for the consoles to allow functionality not built into the OS, so in theory if someone wanted to make an app for 3D rendering on the Series X using your controller, it would be entirely possible if allowed.

"If allowed". 

On that basis alone, they aren't PCs. More allowance would mean there's no functional point in making it a closed platform, thus, a PC. There, you do not have these restrictions.

Have consoles become more like them? Absolutely. The shelf parts by themselves always guaranteed this (though even those are tailored to a console and not the straight up original part). That was was never a point of contention, however. I'm simply saying they remain closed, uncustomizable (by any real stretch) devices, despite their moves in other directions. 

I mean, the reason I said what I said is because you were totally hyperbolic about it: "not even close" to it 5ft away and stuff, and not even "1/4"... And literally all the components inside a modern console operate like they do in a PC (just, again, custom form factor lol) We're talking the way the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, etc. all work is now identical in nature to PCs, and Xbox in particular is just using a customized Windows OS, now...  I think you were a bit dramatic with the "difference" is all I was going for haha!

TomaTito said:
Conina said:

Why ain't the Steam Deck a hybrid system?

You can use it as a portable handheld.

You can probably use it as a home console wireless connected to a TV (BlueTooth / Miracast / SteamLink), optionally connecting additional gamepads.

You can use it as a home console connected to a TV with an USB-C -> HDMI cable.

You can use it as a PC with a first party or third party USB-dock (which allows connecting monitor, keyboard, mouse...)

It doesn''t get much more hybrid than that.

I think he means that the Steam Deck does not include the usb-c hub/dock in the box.
That you have to purchase an additional dongle for this functionality.

The Deck isn't like the Lite that is missing the output video in its usb-c.

I remember reading that a third party usb-c hub would work on the deck, that you don't need to wait for the official dock, and thanks to mobile phones and Switch, these have come down in price quite a bit and you can purchase one with PD (power delivery) and hdmi for 15eur. EDIT: Only thing missing in those cheap hubs is the hdmi-cec that easily turns on the TV with your console.

Yes, the developers had already mentioned that really any USB-C to HDMI hub device would work the same way it would work on a Linux laptop or PC.  The dock is a convenient form factor, not a requirement for external monitor output, or really anything in general.  My bet is a generic USB-C hub would work, so you could just buy a cheap one, lay your Steam Deck down on the desk, and plug it into the hub, et voila!

dx11332sega said:

There's an unmeasurable amount of hate for Switch Oled few are making fun of the people that double dip, I don't see nothing wrong in double dipping.

I do: it sends Nintendo the message that they can take 2015 hardware in their 2017 product, and despite four years of producing it at which point it is likely wayyy cheaper now to produce, use a comparatively inexpensive OLED screen and add features that virtually no one was really asking for and set the price to $50 more than a launch model.  I can promise you that if the Switch wasn't selling as well as it is, they probably would have a) never made this "refresh" and/or b) set it at $300 instead.

By this token, they should have raised the price of the battery refresh to $310 or something, huh?  I think most people can tell that it would have been far better positioned to REPLACE the standard Switch at the $300 price point and push the standard Switch down to $250.  I can guarantee if they did that, no one would be "hating".  People have wised up to greed a bit, and I think that's a good thing.  Otherwise, things will simply keep getting more expensive because, well, greed knows no bounds.  The more money they ask for, the more you give them, the more money they ask for ("give 'em an inch, and they'll step all over ya!" is the more colloquial form of this).  It's simply a dangerous precedent for us consumers.



Check out my entertainment gaming channel!
^^/

JWeinCom said:

I'm not sure if you know this, but... the emulators also work with Wiimotes and Joy Con.  You can pair those up using Bluetooth, so the motion controls would also come along with the emulation because the dock has multiple USB ports.  There's virtually nothing the Switch can do that the Steam Deck can't other than the detachable Joy Con, and ends up compensating by way of full support for any input devices you use on a PC.  Good luck using a racing steering wheel or flight stick on a Switch lol

"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."

You seem to have called out people for not actually watching your video. Similarly, I find in annoying when 90% of my post is ignored, and the part that wasn't ignored wasn't read carefully. Obviously, I know that motion controls are a possibility on PC, hence why I mentioned it three times. Didn't specify Wiimotes or Joycons, because I wasn't talking about emulation yet. But, I didn't mention Joycons as an advantage of playing Switch games natively when I did, so clearly I was aware of this possibility.

The point of the post, and several others, is about convenience, optimization, and simplicity. To play ARMS online (with motion controls because I like punching) on Switch I would have to...
1. But a Switch, arms, and Nintendo online.
2. Set up my internet collection.
3. Play.
On Steamdeck, assuming it can run it at reasonable quality (which there doesn't seem to be agreement on, especially when it comes to handheld mode, I would have to.
1. Buy Steamdeck and joy cons.
2. Possibly switch out the OS (and windows is not free or cheap, although I guess you could likely find anything for free with enough knowhow).
3. Download better joy.
4. Download and set up emulator.
5. Find reliable rom source and download.
6. Wait weeks or month until emulators support multiplayer for this game.
7. Find community of people who play ARMS online on emulators if a big enough one exists.
8. Find someone looking for a match and exchange info.
9. Connect and hope it runs well.

And it likely won't run well. Even assuming the Steamdeck is perfectly capable of running Switch games 1:1 online emulators tend to suck unless it's for a devoted community like Melee that developed/optimized their own emulators or if you can do something like parsec which likely won't work on steamdeck. I'm more tech savvy than most and my quest to play CvS2 online ended in frustration after repeated desyncs match after match. 
So, Id say for all practical purposes, this is something Steamdeck can't do. Similarly, on a bunch of occasions I've had impromptu multiplayer sessions on my switch. I can theoretically carry around a steam deck with two extra controllers at all times, but that would be really inconvenient. Fitting in my pocket is something the Steam Deck can't do unless I buy a pair of Jinco jeans. Linking two screens ala Super Mario Party is something I doubt the Steamdeck can do. Dunno if it can do Amiibo (and if so would likely involve a cumbersome workaround). Can't do Labo (unless you want to custom make your out cardboard kits but then that would defeat the purpose). It can't run physical media. I imagine it may have difficulty running some software like Super Kirby Clash or Pokemon Quest that rely on time based events/microtransactions. A lot of modes in games (Splatfest, Luigi's weird balloon thing in Odyssey, Arms Party) don't seem feasible due to install base or other reasons. The Steamdeck probably won't let me visit most of my friends' islands on Animal Crossing.

Oh and... you know, online gaming... in general. To the best of my quick google search knowledge, as of half a year ago, two games worked with online multiplayer. Luigi's balloon world (which seems like it wouldn't have enough people to really be worthwhile but what do I know) and Mario Maker 2 (which naturally has a much smaller community unless it can actually connect to Nintendo's service which seems doubtful). These are both asynchronous experiences that don't require an actual live p2p connection. Meanwhile local 2-system multi works with a handful of games over Wifi, and not particularly well from what I see. That's people in their house with high speed wi-fi, not taking out your Switch at a tailgate (yep, I've done that). Kind of doubt local multiplayer will work with two people out on the wilderness with their Steamdecks. Unless you have better info than me, it seems like that a huge thing Nintendoes that Steamdon't, that kind of debunks the entire premise of the clickbait.  Cause there are plenty of things that the Switch does that the Steamdeck either cannot do nearly as easily, cannot do practically, or cannot do at all.

And none of this is of course to knock the Steamdeck. I'm not denying the Steamdeck is more powerful, versatile, has a bigger overall library, etc, but for the thing people buy a Switch for, playing Switch games, it really doesn't do it nearly as well. 

Uh, who said I ignored 90% of your post?  Projecting there a little, lmao... I simply addressed you particularly saying there would be an expensive add-on, and there isn't: if you take Ring Fit, dump the game and emulate it on your Steam Deck, this would include pairing up the Joy Con so you can use the ring...  I don't know where you got all the ignoring, I simply addressed that part of your post lol

You breaking out the steps of emulation as granularly as possible, though, looks like an agenda against emulation even if you say you are not.  I'm not for or against it, but I'll leave you with this: I confess to having emulated a Wii game a long time ago.  I emulated Xenoblade Chronicles because I had already gotten into PC gaming at the time and was enjoying 1080p resolutions and 60fps.  You can imagine that 480p and 30fps (or lower sometimes) was painful for me, so I dumped the game, and emulated it surprisingly well (I can't recall what CPU I had at the time, but I had it overclocked to 5.0GHz and with a CPU cooler running 100% all the time... My PC was annoyingly loud!) at 1080p 30fps.  Naturally, I had to pair up my Wiimote in which I connected the Classic controller to it.  You have a time frame for when I did this based on the game I'm talking about, and I will tell you it wasn't hard at all.  Fast-forward to now, and I guarantee you that most of the "doesn't run well" complaints are from potato PC users trying to emulate.  Emulation is really easy: anyone can do it.

Most people who will buy the Steam Deck likely are already more tech savvy and have mid-to-upper tier PCs.  Emulation isn't hard in the slightest as it already wasn't back when I did it, and the only thing you need to dump a game on the Switch is an inexpensive part that puts the Switch into RCM mode.  You might not be aware of this part, but as an example: yuzu runs on Linux, too.  It's just not complicated... Is it as simple as buying a Switch and popping in a cart?  Of course not, no one at any point was arguing that except you.  It's the emulation is easy enough to be considered a fair option, and as stated later on, even kids could do it.

The part about online is a different story entirely, and that's where the Melee part comes in where Nintendo shut it down anyway.  Online gaming has always been a point of contention in piracy, the one area that's harder to "crack" since there's more authentication challenges, and yet the strength of Nintendo's library isn't online gaming.  I can concede that you would be right if someone's focus on Nintendo games were there multiplayer ones, but it's also fair for someone to say that's not the majority of Nintendo's exclusives which makes emulation still a fair crack (me so punny!) at covering the vast majority of the Switch games people will care about.


TomaTito said:

I thi

dx11332sega said:

I do

"Oof, I'm going to confess I'm majorly having trouble keeping up lol...BUT, it seems the next universal point of contention is size and weight.  I never discussed those specs mostly because I didn't figure that small of a weight difference would be make or break, but by the numbers:

- The Switch OLED is .93 lbs with Joy Con attached, and the Switch is .88 lbs with the Joy Con attached

- The Steam Deck is 1.47 lbs, or 0.54lbs heavier than a Switch OLED, and 0.59lbs heavier than a Switch.  The weight difference is a little over half a pound.  If I round for simplicity, that's 9oz, and a pair of Joy Con attached to the grip is 6.9oz.  Take your Joy Con, put them on the grip, and then top it with one more Joy Con and there's the total weight difference in your hands.  You can decide from this is that's too much more weight or not, surely lol"

This wasn't addressed towards me but is another example of downplaying any advantage the Switch has, and honestly to a point where it seems intentionally dishonest. I'm quite capable of holding an extra 7 oz, but my pocket can't just go and hit the gym if it's struggling. The Swtich already juts out of my pocket on most of my pants, and I tend to take one of the joy cons off of it to make it fit better. The steamdeck is a full 2" longer than the Switch with both joycons, and length really does matter. The steam deck just isn't fitting in my pocket, which is the ideal place for a portable gaming system. You really could not have just not considered that. And honestly, the weight does make it significantly less comfortable, particularly for touch based games where I'm going to be holding it with one hand. A 3DS feels so much better in that regard. 

I said you ignored 90% of my post. Because you did. The post contained 27 sentences, and your response addressed two, poorly. So, I actually slightly understated how much was ignored. That was a rather insubstantial part of the whole thing and how you got from "Something like Ring fit could easily run on the steamdeck" to "Joycons won't work on the Steamdeck" is rather strange. Picking out the least significant detail of my post and arguing against a point that could not be reasonably inferred from it is kind of irksome.

Plus, you're dead wrong on this too. I wasn't talking about literally running Ring Fit though you seem to think I was, but you actually cannot do that in Yuzu at the moment according to what I can find on the internet can not emulate the Ring Con properly. The pressure sensing feature has not yet been emulated properly. You could try running it on a NASA supercomputer and it wouldn't work. 

"You breaking out the steps of emulation as granularly as possible, though, looks like an agenda against emulation even if you say you are not.  I'm not for or against it, but I'll leave you with this: I confess to having emulated a Wii game a long time ago.  I emulated Xenoblade Chronicles because I had already gotten into PC gaming at the time and was enjoying 1080p resolutions and 60fps.  You can imagine that 480p and 30fps (or lower sometimes) was painful for me, so I dumped the game, and emulated it surprisingly well (I can't recall what CPU I had at the time, but I had it overclocked to 5.0GHz and with a CPU cooler running 100% all the time... My PC was annoyingly loud!) at 1080p 30fps.  Naturally, I had to pair up my Wiimote in which I connected the Classic controller to it.  You have a time frame for when I did this based on the game I'm talking about, and I will tell you it wasn't hard at all.  Fast-forward to now, and I guarantee you that most of the "doesn't run well" complaints are from potato PC users trying to emulate.  Emulation is really easy: anyone can do it."

Actually, no, my list is if anything way too generous. According to Yuzu's website, arms will require workarounds to play, which means several other steps may need to be done to get it to run, and online multiplayer is effectively impossible. So, no matter how many steps I put in there, I was actually overstating how easy it would be to play Arms online by an infinite amount.

For the record, I don't really care if anyone emulates anything. My preference to hardware has way more to do with the fact that it's way more convenient and I could thankfully afford most games I want. If there was a reasonably good way to play Powerstone online through emulation, and not on dedicated gaming hardware, I'd be on that shit immediately.

And... because you were able to easily emulate a Wii game a decade ago on unspecified hardware, the Steamdeck can emulate Switch games? O_o... This is a really shit analogy. It in no way speaks to how easy emulation is nowadays, which we'll get to later. If your most recent experience with emulation is from about a decade ago, maybe you should do more research before speaking to that...

"Most people who will buy the Steam Deck likely are already more tech savvy and have mid-to-upper tier PCs.  Emulation isn't hard in the slightest as it already wasn't back when I did it, and the only thing you need to dump a game on the Switch is an inexpensive part that puts the Switch into RCM mode.  You might not be aware of this part, but as an example: yuzu runs on Linux, too.  It's just not complicated... Is it as simple as buying a Switch and popping in a cart?  Of course not, no one at any point was arguing that except you.  It's the emulation is easy enough to be considered a fair option, and as stated later on, even kids could do it."

Yes, you were arguing that, when you said the Steamdeck could do literally anything the Switch could do. Does popping in a cart and playing a game not fall under the umbrella of "literally anything"?

Even aside from emulation, there would be basically no reason, aside from exclusives in Sony's case and pretty much nothing for MS, to buy a gaming console if convenience and simplicity weren't important to people. Yet, people buy consoles.

Bringing up the specific people who would buy the steam deck is a huge shifting of the goal posts, and an entirely different argument, so stop that. People who don't need a device that does everything Nintendoes may find the Steamdeck to be a substitute, which has nothing to do with this conversation. And it's actually still wrong, which we'll get to.

"The part about online is a different story entirely, and that's where the Melee part comes in where Nintendo shut it down anyway.  Online gaming has always been a point of contention in piracy, the one area that's harder to "crack" since there's more authentication challenges, and yet the strength of Nintendo's library isn't online gaming.  I can concede that you would be right if someone's focus on Nintendo games were there multiplayer ones, but it's also fair for someone to say that's not the majority of Nintendo's exclusives which makes emulation still a fair crack (me so punny!) at covering the vast majority of the Switch games people will care about."

Nintendo did... not shut down Melee multiplayer? I assure you that it is still very much possible. Not sure what actions Nintendo has taken to try, but they have failed.

I'm not right "if". I am in fact right. Your premise was that the Steamdeck can do literally anything the Switch can do, and you are literally wrong. You literally cannot play Switch games online. And to brush off a fundamental feature like that as nbd kind of destroys any credibility. Like, if Nintendo announced the Switch and said it doesn't do online multiplayer people would just have shrugged and said "Still just as good".  

But that's just kind of your whole schtick in your video and this thread which is why it's kind of... well dumb. The Steamdeck does everything the Switch does, as long as you downplay or ignore everything the Switch does that the Steamdeck doesn't. 

Just for fun, let's see how the Yuzu community feels the emulator runs the top 10 Switch titles. They have a list that is easily googlable, but I won't post it because idk if there is any policy about linking to sites that have emulators available. Obviously there are other emulators available, but this tends to be the best one, and having to have a variety of emulators for different games is another rather significant disadvantage.

1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe- Okay which they define as "Game functions with major graphical or audio glitches, but game is playable from start to finish with workarounds."

2. Animal Crossing- Great "Game functions with minor graphical or audio glitches and is playable from start to finish. May require some workarounds."

3. Super Smash Brother Ultimate- "Okay which they define as "Game functions with major graphical or audio glitches, but game is playable from start to finish with workarounds."

4. Zelda Breath of the Wild- Great ("Game functions with minor graphical or audio glitches and is playable from start to finish. May require some workarounds.")

5. Pokemon Sword- (Okay "Game functions with major graphical or audio glitches, but game is playable from start to finish with workarounds.")

6. Mario Odyssey- Ok 

7. Super Mario Party- Bad (Game functions, but with major graphical or audio glitches. Unable to progress in specific areas due to glitches even with workarounds.)

8. Pokemon Let's Go- Okay

9. Splatoon 2- Bad

10. NSMB Deluxe- Okay

So, you claimed that emulation covers a "vast majority" of games people care about. Ignoring the downplaying of online features, according to Yuzu, two of these games can't be played through at all, and 6 have major visual/audio glitches and require "workarounds". Only two games run without any major graphical or audio glitches, and even those may require workarounds. The majority of first party games in general run "ok", some significant titles are "bad" which is effectively unplayable.

Of the Switch library, 409 games are listed as running perfectly, 545 are listed as Great, 350 are okay, 345 are bad, 310 can't get past the intro menu, and 187 won't boot. 2146 This means 39% of the Switch's library is practically unplayable, another 16% will require workarounds and have glitches,  and another 25% may require workarounds. Pretty much all of these were tested by their team within the last 6 months.

And even for the games that run great, that's going to depend a lot on your hardware. I'm not the most tech savvy, but someone on the site who tested BOTW found the game to run "bad" with a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980. I'm not really all that knowledgeable, but as the cheapest version of that card runs at about 500 dollars, seems like this would be way stronger than Steamdeck. Someone with more tech knowhow can let me know if that's right. And a lot of games require certain settings to be enabled, which is a major pain in the ass, especially for a portable system where the ability to take it out and play anywhere right away is kind of a big deal. I play my Switch mainly on my morning commute, and I don't want to fiddle with the settings to get into my game and hope that the game will run properly at the part I'm on. Moreover, how well a particular computer runs a game is not necessarily a function of its power. Certain gpus don't play nice with certain drivers when implementing certain features. Mario Odyssey doesn't like AMD GPUs and Fire Emblem Three Houses doesn't like Nvidia.

As for what a "workaround" entails, I don't see a clear answer, but for FireEmblem Three Houses the description is... "~* Both Chapter 15 - Valley of Torment and Chapter 17 - Blood of the Eagle and Lion cause an unskippable cutscene crash. To circumvent this issue you need to either transfer your save to your switch and proceed past this point before transferring the save back or download the very old yuzu version mainline 41 and create a portable install with it (this version is so old that current settings etc. do not work with it so a portable install is required). Load the mission with this version and then save when in battle preparation and copy the save back to the current yuzu. You can also follow this guide on Reddit for chapters 15 and 17. It works perfectly with the save editor solution with version 1.2 of this game. It should be the same with 1.0 and 1.1. You can also transfer your saves from Yuzu to Ryujinx to get past this issue.~" Sounds like the workarounds for games that run "ok" can be pretty substantial. When I buy a Switch game I can be reasonably confident that I'm going to be able to play it from start to finish with no major non-gameplay related impediments, whereas my experience with emulators would be much less stable and predictable.

Steamdeck owners will be able to play about 1-2/5 of current Switch games, have to worry about potential gamecrashing glitches (which I've experienced maybe thrice in all of my Switch gaming), have no reasonable confidence they will be able to play future Switch games (it can be quite hit or miss with Fire Emblem Warriors running bad but Age of Calamity running ok), will not be able to play online pretty much at all, won't be able to play local multiplayer with two systems, won't be able to play local multiplayer on one system unless they plan on carrying around two controllers with them, have a system that is about twice as bulky to carry around, will require "workarounds" for most of the games that are playable to the finish, and won't run physical media. But yeah, it's essentially "I can't believe it's not Switch".

Not only can the Steamdeck not do literally everything the Switch can do, but it *maybe* can do a small portion of what it does, and of that, it likely won't do it very well. There are plenty of reasons to get a Steamdeck, but being a Switch isn't one of them. 

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 01 August 2021

Conina said:

Yeah, especially with a mobile device, I find it annoying to lug around dozens of small game modules that can be lost, stolen or damaged in addition to the handheld when traveling.

Addition: digital games can't be chewed by a dog either.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ov0id3/no_gaming_just_staying_home_with_dog/



Conina said:
Conina said:

Yeah, especially with a mobile device, I find it annoying to lug around dozens of small game modules that can be lost, stolen or damaged in addition to the handheld when traveling.

Addition: digital games can't be chewed by a dog either.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ov0id3/no_gaming_just_staying_home_with_dog/

What dog would do that? They have literally the worst taste ever!