It should work fine from SD cards. 5200 rpm drives only read at about 110 MB/s, not much faster and hampered by seek times. It will be hard for the PC crowd to go back to 5200 rpm drive speeds though. But true, the subsidized 399 entry point does make it look good.

As previously stated, difficulty is only a piece of the puzzle, the illegal activity of downloading software is another.  But you knew that already.

I don't see many parents buying a Steam Deck and telling Little Johnny to go download a bunch of illegal Nintendo games.  Do you?

This isn't going to compete directly with the Switch, two entirely different demographics, you should know this.

"The steam will be able to play most Nintendo gamez!"

And I am to be convinced that this is ok how? Nintendo have taking risks for decades and created their IPs out of scratch so that something like the Switch have pillars to stand on, as a result neither SONY nor MS come close in terms of the number of successful IPs they have. Those IPs were born out of sweat and tears, software that is an extension of their hardware, and arguably only exist to live on that hardware. For some other devices to emulate these games and reap the benefits of those IPs without taking any of the risks Nintendo took shouldn't be ok anyway.

My kids wouldn't know how to download illegal software. I could see teenagers knowing but not kids (5 to 12 years old).


And if I caught my kids illegally downloading software there would be hell to pay.

Pirates need to stop justifying their actions and just accept they are breaking the law, full stop.

I'm sure if someone owns a physical copy then the software is their to use whatever they want as long they are not exploiting it commercially. Whatever issues Nintendo (or any developer) had to make it it's not my concern, they were already paid for the software they made

For digital I think you don't really have the ownership of your software there is only have a license for using it as long the publisher revoke it, although I don't know if this license is hardware-specific. I guess it's not

A 5 year old won't know how to install an emulator, but a 11 or 12 year old? You'd be surprised.  11/12 year olds are aspiring to be digital content creators on Youtube and Tiktok and all that as a career, lol, watching a video on how to download an emulator is easy peasy.

I'm not saying I condone that, I'm just saying it's the reality of the situation. If you have a popular product that's easy to emulate and/or pirate, it's going to be open season. 

I don't buy for a second most people emulating modern games actually own them. It's just piracy. If you want to emulate Wolf Fang on Bulk Slash on SEGA Saturn. Run Saber on SNES, Ranger X on Genesis then I get it. Those games are stuck on consoles from 20+ years ago. Even PSP I get as Sony is not re-releasing those games.

I also don't believe most of people using emulation actually owns the games legally, unless it's a Switch or 3DS game you can insert in a SD cart and then move to a PC it's incredibly tiresome to make a rom, never done itself myself honestly. All games I played trough emulations were indeed pirate copies

However if you own a copy and don't mind dumping your games to a file then go for it, it's not illegal 

I really don't care too much about breaking some laws when I play games that I paid for, in some cases multiple times. So I won't feel bad about playing Tetris or Mega Man on the Steam Deck. I could even play Switch games. I have two of those console and a truckload of games and when I feel like it, no law on earth will prevent me from playing those games on a PC. It just so happens that I prefer to play them on the Switch. But that might change in the future.

So while I accept that I break the law by using emulators, I sure as hell won't stop doing so. 

Are your kids over 10? They probably know, they are either just not doing because you teach them it's wrong, not doing because they don't see the point as they can play everything they want already legally, or just doing and hiding it well from you.

Either case something being illegal or morally wrong never prevent something to happen. It's like drugs, some drugs are illegal in 90% of countries and people still using them anyway.

Back to the thread: I don't know if people who wan't to play things illegally wants to afford Steam Deck. My answer is... err not they definitely won't. Being Piracy-friendly isn't a selling point for Steam Deck. Pirates either a) Wants to play for free or b) want to play  what they can't legally or c) want manipulate software to play modified versions. 

Group a) are already wants to avoid higher spending, of course that includes buying less hardware

Group b) are already retro gaming wherever they can, being emulating their PCs or setting up weird modified versions of older consoles. A Steam Deck will be just another platform for them to emulate, not a replacement for Switch

Group c) these indeed I can see using Steam Deck specifically for the fun of playing Switch games better than the Switch itself. Those are tech-savy guys and I'm inclined to believe they actually already own a Switch. If they don't own them already then I can see them skipping Switch and using only Steam Deck 

So, can Steam Deck play games Switch games better than Switch? Yeah

Will people use Steam Deck for this? Yeah

Is this a Steam Deck selling point? No

Will this impact Switch sales in any way? Hell no