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It’s silly to compare Switch 2 sales to Steam Deck sales.

The Switch 2 is a locked-down, vertically integrated platform. There are no ROG Switch 2s. No Lenovo Switch 2s. No Switch laptops or tower PCs with discrete GPUs. If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.

Steam Deck, by contrast, isn’t a platform. It’s just one hardware option—one entry point into the sprawling, open ecosystem known as PC gaming.

Every year, around 245 million PCs are shipped globally. If even 20–25% of those are gaming-focused, that’s 49–61 million gaming PCs annually. Steam Deck is a sliver of that. So of course it won’t outsell a console that’s the only gateway to a major IP.

But that’s exactly the point.

PC gaming is too decentralized for any single device to dominate. The last “PC” that did was the Commodore 64, which sold 12.5–17 million units over 12 years because it was a self-contained platform, unlike modern Windows, Mac, or Linux machines.

That the Steam Deck has sold 4 million units despite competing with every other gaming PC in existence is remarkable. It didn’t just sell—it legitimized a category. Handheld PC gaming is now a thing. That’s why Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI have followed. Even Microsoft is getting in, optimizing Windows for handhelds—something they would never have done if the Steam Deck didn't hold their feet to the fire.

So no, Steam Deck didn’t outsell the Switch 2. It didn’t need to.

It won by changing the landscape.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (9 children)

There are millions upon millions of Mario, Link, and Pokemon fans.

There are not millions and millions of... what's the killer Steam Deck game again? Oh, right, there isn't one.

If Valve came out with Half Life 3, made it Steam exclusive and a pack in with the Deck, then it would start putting up Nintendo numbers.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You're right, the best part of PC gaming is that it's always inclusive, never exclusive. Thanks for the reminder

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Pc, where games are locked to launchers…? And OS…?

They have their own flaws, so that’s not even a good counterpoint. They are FAR from inclusive, and far more exclusive in a lot of cases. HL3 would likely be a Steam exclusive, to think otherwise is just ignoring reality.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Ok I'm with you on the whole store exclusivity thing but come on. More exclusive? Having to buy from a certain store and being able to run anywhere on hardware of your choice is hardly more exclusive than being forced to buy from one vendor and only run on one system.

That said, I do think this whole argument is somewhat moot because the steam deck and switch serve very different but overlapping audiences. I own an original switch and a steam deck, I don't think one can replace the other but I've opted not to buy the switch 2 because Nintendo's anti consumer practices really turn me off if they want to tell me what I can do with the games and hardware I bought from them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I’m passing on the Switch 2 for similar reasons.

I can either fund Nintendo to sue open source developers or I can fund Valve who are payrolling open source developers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Having to buy from a certain store and being able to run anywhere on hardware of your choice is hardly more exclusive than being forced to buy from one vendor and only run on one system.

But you can’t…? It’s locked to OS, and it doesn’t run on ALL hardware. There’s minimum specs, and you can’t play modern games on windows 95.

Why do people ignore the glaring flaws while preaching the few okay ones? And the obvious lies too. The pros that people use, all fall flat when you follow them. You say all hardware, but it’s not, and never has been has it…?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You realize there’s been vast technical advancements since 1995, right?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

able to run anywhere on hardware of your choice i

So if this statement is true, an OS wouldn’t be a limitation.

Of course tech is better, that’s why you can’t play on it anymore with anything modern. Do you seriously need this pointed out?

And lots of old windows 95 programs don’t run on modern hardware, so if you bought something back then, you’re SOL with modern hardware. Limitations everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m not the OP, but the original statement wasn’t that you can run on all hardware—but rather the hardware of your choice.

There are many, many different PC models available, with a variety of form factors, with vastly different components. And you can choose whatever gives you value.

Nobody is claiming that you should run Black Myth Wukong on an old IBM Aptiva except you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Right, but it’s not freedom, when it doesn’t run on everything. You need to keep your system updated to play modern games.

With a switch, any game released, you know will play.

So yes it’s MORE exclusive in some situations.

Nobody is claiming that you should run Black Myth Wukong on an old IBM Aptiva except you.

Where? Don’t put words in peoples mouth if you want to have a civil discourse, but of course with this being your post, we know your bias already.

The thing you are arguing for, literally has a list of games it CANT run… and it includes a lot of modern games as well as older, so it can’t even run them… nice non-exclusion eh? It limits on BOTH sides.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not a sock puppet, [email protected] just happens to agree wholeheartedly with SchmidtGenetics and downvote/upvote the same comments a couple minutes after they do. /s

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

that anyone would even have the thought of "killer steam deck game" amazes me. It's just a pc. You can run literally every game in existence that doesn't require a top of the line nvidia card as a minimum, have rootkit anti cheat, or is still exclusive to yet un-emulated console.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

There are limits as to what runs well on the Deck and what does not run well.

When I got my Steam Deck I was asking around to see what the "must have" game is with the caveat that I already have a Switch, Xbox Series X and PS5. So what's a must have game on the Deck that I can't already play?

. . .

The answer I got back was "Well, emulation, piracy, and streaming from the Xbox and PS5."

There really isn't a killer app on the Deck, and that's fine. I bought mine to better explore the Steam ecosystem as I had no gaming PC at the time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Exclusives are a bad thing. The fact that you're asking to be fed the same regurgitated ip slop gives them the idea that maybe, $80 games are underpriced. Maybe they can bump that up to a base $90, $100 for physical. Nintendo keeps exclusives out of greed, worse than even Sony. There shouldn't be exclusives. Ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Exclusives are good for the company making them, but they are anti-consumer. I'd be open to buying Switch games if they were available on PC. But I'm not buying a whole separate piece of hardware (complete with various accessories) so that I can play whatever exclusives that I'm interested in. I'll just pass on it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Do you mean the millions of available games on PC? That easily far outweighs the switch.
Oh wait, and you can play switch games on PC too.

What was your point again?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are actually thousands of games that run on Steam Deck with no additional configuration that aren't even available on Switch, and conservatively, hundreds of those are extremely popular. Plus a lot of Switch's library is on Steam Deck, where it tends to be a better version of the game for one reason or another, not the least of which is free online play.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's exactly the problem... there are thousands of games but nothing stands out the way Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon do on a Nintendo platform.

I still look from time to time on my Deck. I picked up Borderlands 2 the other day because it was free.

But what I usually see browsing are a bunch of games I can already play on other systems, plus porn games, anime games, and anime porn games.

There really isn't one game that stands out on the Deck.

Vampire Survivors?
macOS, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

En Garde? PC Exclusive, decent game, but limited and a little boring if I'm being honest.

https://youtu.be/MfUmgmMp964

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

You have a fanboy perspective here. The Steam Deck's ecosystem is hardware agnostic, and to a large extent, Steam agnostic. No one game needs to "stand out" on the Steam Deck when it plays almost every video game that exists besides the ones Nintendo makes. Out of the sample size of "almost every video game", there's a high chance that there are many that are important to you and not made by Nintendo.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Blood, Baldur’s Gate, Septerra Core, and Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi have all been PC exclusives for decades now.

Seriously, I got lots of great PC classics to recommend to you.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Pretty great that they sold 4m of this device without any exclusive tbh. It's not even their main income.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

The killer Steam Deck game is absolute choice. Oddly enough you can play many Switch games and older on the Deck.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Very doubtful tbh. You can look at HL: Alyx as an example. It sold well I'm sure, but not Nintendo level. As much as people like to belly ache about VR being too hard to get into, it's truly no more expensive than a Steam Deck if you actually bother to take more than 2 seconds to legitimately look into it.

I played Alyx on a mobile 1060 and a $300 headset and while it wasn't top of the line, it was still perfectly playable. I imagine most gamers these days have at least that, but Alyx absolutely did not sell like hot cakes. And I doubt the Steam Deck would either, even for HL3.

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