What do you guys think causes nintendo first party games to sell so well on switch? I think that it's a few things.

1 The quality of the games are there people know the games are good.
2 Consistent releases. Nintendo putting out fire emblem, zelda, mario, and other franchises consistently help build build fanbases.
3 Nintendo fans talk about nintendo franchises. I gave golden sun and f zero 99 a chance because people talk about how good those series are.
4 Smash bros. Smash is a large marketing tool that advertises games to gamers.

Agree on all of them. But I will add another one.

Being the family friendly system of choice for many (grand)parents buying a first console for their young (grand)children. When kids get in the age group of 6-9 and get their first Nintendo, (grand)parents will be choosing the default recognizable games. And millions of children turn that age getting their first console each year, causing those evergreen sales.

Typical PlayStation/Xbox games, I believe appeal mostly to an older audience, so that audience will be buying the games they want fairly quickly. Not so many will get the evergreen status over the years, because their audience already bought it.

Those are all good reasons.

A couple of others:

I think the first-party "Nintendo game, Nintendo system" factor is a big part of it. When people buy a Nintendo console, they often get a Nintendo game (or two, or three) with it. Nintendo often offers these bundled in.

Also, Nintendo basically owns the heavily neglected local multiplayer sector: Mario Kart, Pokemon, Smash, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, and so on. Games like Monster Hunter and Stardew Valley are a rare serious competitor, and they tend to do great.

It hasn't been a flop at all. It's sold well considering the size of the handheld PC market to the extent it has caused that market to grow and has added value to Steam so it's definitely been a success for Valve. They literally couldn't fulfill demand for it for a while after it came out so it's not like it's sold less than they were expecting.

Explaining the Steam Deck was expected to have a low demand, that it's a "PC handheld", and that it is difficult to produce aren't reasons why it wasn't a flop. Rather, you explained some of the reasons why it was a flop.

In other words: explaining the causes of the flop doesn't explain away the causes of the flop.

But even if we agree to disagree, and you don't want to call it a flop no matter what, then at best you've argued it's a winner in an irrelevant subcategory of a subcategory of gaming devices.

Either way, the main point I was getting at is that the Steam Deck isn't successful enough to be in any way an explanation or evidence supporting the argument that Nintendo users only buy Nintendo games on Nintendo systems.

You know that small markets are a thing right? A product doesn't have to sell a lot to be a success if it matches or exceeds the expectations of the company has depending on the size of the market its targeting. A product releasing in a small market and being by far the most successful product ever in that market is clearly a success.

That main point is right though I think the broader argument his comment implies is that many people will play just Switch exclusive games on the Switch and multiplat ones on a more powerful platform and that has a lot of truth to it though many other people do still play multiplat games on it of course.

I would say over 90% of the games I have on Nintendo consoles are Nintendo games.

I prefer to just Nintendo games for my switch because that is the main reason for owning a Switch. Nintendo is the king of exclusivity.