I mean, I just said they were comparable. To say that they’re not remotely comparable is laughable. But here are a quick few reasons: one of them is in Walmart and the other is not; one appeals to children (not the least of which is the presence of a brand “moat” in Pokemon) in a way that most other electronics do not, which also translates to multiple children in a family each having their own, which drives up sales numbers; one of them already had an international distribution chain to handle territories like Australia rather than having to build one up; one came out 5 years earlier than the other, including existing in a time period where handheld gaming PCs were typically not driving comparable 3D graphics, but that changed a mere few years later with advancements from AMD in the x64 space.
This is a paradigm shift that has occurred since the Switch’s launch. Here’s an interesting thought: do you think there will still be the “port everything to the Switch” crowd for the next Switch when the game already has a PC version ready to go on the Steam Deck? Because I’ll bet they just buy that device, or a competing handheld PC, instead without having to hope that the game they want to play gets a Switch version, and that’s exactly the weakness of the console model in the modern era.
The differences between those two things have begun to dissolve very quickly in the past 5 or so years, and that’s both why they’re very comparable and why so many people are seeing the writing on the wall for consoles.
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I mean, I just said they were comparable. To say that they’re not remotely comparable is laughable. But here are a quick few reasons: one of them is in Walmart and the other is not; one appeals to children (not the least of which is the presence of a brand “moat” in Pokemon) in a way that most other electronics do not, which also translates to multiple children in a family each having their own, which drives up sales numbers; one of them already had an international distribution chain to handle territories like Australia rather than having to build one up; one came out 5 years earlier than the other, including existing in a time period where handheld gaming PCs were typically not driving comparable 3D graphics, but that changed a mere few years later with advancements from AMD in the x64 space.
This is a paradigm shift that has occurred since the Switch’s launch. Here’s an interesting thought: do you think there will still be the “port everything to the Switch” crowd for the next Switch when the game already has a PC version ready to go on the Steam Deck? Because I’ll bet they just buy that device, or a competing handheld PC, instead without having to hope that the game they want to play gets a Switch version, and that’s exactly the weakness of the console model in the modern era.
Uh, yes of course? The customers for a console and a handheld PC aren’t the same so naturally the former wants a game posted to the console?
🤷♀️
The differences between those two things have begun to dissolve very quickly in the past 5 or so years, and that’s both why they’re very comparable and why so many people are seeing the writing on the wall for consoles.