Nintendo’s unbeatable advantage will always be its first-party games, but the Switch 2 — a device rumored to be a fairly light improvement over its predecessor — doesn’t quite feel like it’ll be as culturally dominant as the Switch was in 2017.
That remains to be seen. Back in 2016-2017, every gaming media was skeptical that the Switch would be anywhere near as much of a success like the DS or the GameBoy had been, or if it was going to be another failure like the Wii U.
Why buy a game on PS5 when you can get it on Steam and have access to it on any number of devices?
That has been one of the arguments for PC gaming in a long time, but it never quite reached the console players’ mindset. Not to mention that, despite its dominance in game distribution, Valve and the Steam brand are nowhere near as recognizable as any of the other ‘big 3’. The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays. I can’t see it take less than a decade for that mindset to start changing change and competitors and regulation to get interested, and even that’s an optimistic estimate.
Still, it’s good to hear the platform exlusivity walls are finally breaking down.
The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays.
And yet monthly active Steam users are about the size of all Switches sold over its lifetime, including those who bought multiple Switches as new SKUs came out. I think what the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs capture are people who want to play PC games and play them handheld. Every Switch is handheld, but how many people are they capturing, or will they soon capture, that care very little about Nintendo games and just want to play games handheld? I have a feeling that the “port everything to the Switch” crowd won’t really exist anymore in a world where that game already plays on a similarly-priced PC handheld without having to beg the developers first.
That’s a good point. The number of Switches sold does nearly match Steam’s MAU.
Every Switch is handheld, but how many people are they capturing, or will they soon capture, that care very little about Nintendo games and just want to play games handheld?
Every Switch owner I know has bought at least one Nintendo game over its lifetime, and often several. According to the best selling Switch games list, it’s safe to assume at least one in every two Switch owner has bought Nintendo games for it. Is it due to the marketing and advertisement coming from the fact they own the platform, or that they’re still the kings of both casual and family friendly couch gaming? I suppose indie is strongly catching up, at least on the former but the latter might be more difficult.
I have a feeling that the “port everything to the Switch” crowd won’t really exist anymore in a world where that game already plays on a similarly-priced PC handheld without having to beg the developers first.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Given that PS and Xbox exclusives now all make their way onto PC to the point we barely have to ask anymore. Though if we were to reach that point, I’d seriously worry about the centralisation of the Steam market. Hopefully regulation will catch up soon.
I’m not hoping for regulation to catch up. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think it counts as a monopoly when you reach your market saturation by just being better than your competitors without putting your thumb on the scale. If it did count as a monopoly, I’d hate to break up the best market actor as punishment for giving people what they want. I’m hoping for the competitors to actually compete. Right now, I’d say the only option out there other than Steam is GOG, and there’s a lot I’d like to see them improve too.
Regulation isn’t just about breaking them up. I was more thinking along the line of applying the DMA and DSA to Steam proper, which would only lead to benefits for us. The presence of the speculation casino that is the Steam Market into the hands of kids without any regulation is nuts, and that’s not saying anything about the current hypertoxic state of the Steam Community forums. That’s not okay, and Valve seems reluctant to fix that (the former becausr it brings them a metric ton of money, and the latter probably to avoid pissing off the gamergate libertarian crowd). Regulation could force them to do so.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
You are completely right. What I meant, is that since PC Gaming is only considered a subset of PC & Console gaming market (as opposed to, say, Mobile gaming), if it were to grow in share within said market, it will likely attract the eyes of regulators who could improve the current situation.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.
it never quite reached the console players’ mindset
Exactly. Console players want to plug it into a TV and start playing. PC gamers are happy to tinker a bit. Steam Machines might fill that gap if Valve ever successfully launches one, but consoles still provide a good experience for a lot of people so it’ll be hard to shake loyalists.
Yup. I have a Switch, PS5, and a decent PC that can run most games fine on mid settings. I use the PC for gaming far less than the others partly because I prefer to play games on the TV sitting on the couch and partly because I like buying physical for trading in and buying used games. OSes designed for M+K just don’t lend themselves well to TV playing. If consoles move to being digital only, though, that advantage will be gone and I will look into a Steam Deck or whatever decently priced PC with an OS designed for TV + controller play is out there.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
No humor/memes etc…
No affiliate links
No advertising.
No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
No self promotion.
No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
No politics.
Comments.
No personal attacks.
Obey instance rules.
No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc…)
Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
That remains to be seen. Back in 2016-2017, every gaming media was skeptical that the Switch would be anywhere near as much of a success like the DS or the GameBoy had been, or if it was going to be another failure like the Wii U.
That has been one of the arguments for PC gaming in a long time, but it never quite reached the console players’ mindset. Not to mention that, despite its dominance in game distribution, Valve and the Steam brand are nowhere near as recognizable as any of the other ‘big 3’. The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays. I can’t see it take less than a decade for that mindset to start changing change and competitors and regulation to get interested, and even that’s an optimistic estimate.
Still, it’s good to hear the platform exlusivity walls are finally breaking down.
And yet monthly active Steam users are about the size of all Switches sold over its lifetime, including those who bought multiple Switches as new SKUs came out. I think what the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs capture are people who want to play PC games and play them handheld. Every Switch is handheld, but how many people are they capturing, or will they soon capture, that care very little about Nintendo games and just want to play games handheld? I have a feeling that the “port everything to the Switch” crowd won’t really exist anymore in a world where that game already plays on a similarly-priced PC handheld without having to beg the developers first.
That’s a good point. The number of Switches sold does nearly match Steam’s MAU.
Every Switch owner I know has bought at least one Nintendo game over its lifetime, and often several. According to the best selling Switch games list, it’s safe to assume at least one in every two Switch owner has bought Nintendo games for it. Is it due to the marketing and advertisement coming from the fact they own the platform, or that they’re still the kings of both casual and family friendly couch gaming? I suppose indie is strongly catching up, at least on the former but the latter might be more difficult.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Given that PS and Xbox exclusives now all make their way onto PC to the point we barely have to ask anymore. Though if we were to reach that point, I’d seriously worry about the centralisation of the Steam market. Hopefully regulation will catch up soon.
I’m not hoping for regulation to catch up. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think it counts as a monopoly when you reach your market saturation by just being better than your competitors without putting your thumb on the scale. If it did count as a monopoly, I’d hate to break up the best market actor as punishment for giving people what they want. I’m hoping for the competitors to actually compete. Right now, I’d say the only option out there other than Steam is GOG, and there’s a lot I’d like to see them improve too.
Regulation isn’t just about breaking them up. I was more thinking along the line of applying the DMA and DSA to Steam proper, which would only lead to benefits for us. The presence of the speculation casino that is the Steam Market into the hands of kids without any regulation is nuts, and that’s not saying anything about the current hypertoxic state of the Steam Community forums. That’s not okay, and Valve seems reluctant to fix that (the former becausr it brings them a metric ton of money, and the latter probably to avoid pissing off the gamergate libertarian crowd). Regulation could force them to do so.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
You are completely right. What I meant, is that since PC Gaming is only considered a subset of PC & Console gaming market (as opposed to, say, Mobile gaming), if it were to grow in share within said market, it will likely attract the eyes of regulators who could improve the current situation.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear before.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
Neither of them has even tried to distribute their own store as a Flatpak. That doesn’t strike me as Valve abusing a monopoly position.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.
Exactly. Console players want to plug it into a TV and start playing. PC gamers are happy to tinker a bit. Steam Machines might fill that gap if Valve ever successfully launches one, but consoles still provide a good experience for a lot of people so it’ll be hard to shake loyalists.
So yeah, your assessment is spot on.
Yup. I have a Switch, PS5, and a decent PC that can run most games fine on mid settings. I use the PC for gaming far less than the others partly because I prefer to play games on the TV sitting on the couch and partly because I like buying physical for trading in and buying used games. OSes designed for M+K just don’t lend themselves well to TV playing. If consoles move to being digital only, though, that advantage will be gone and I will look into a Steam Deck or whatever decently priced PC with an OS designed for TV + controller play is out there.
Couldn’t you just use Steam Big Picture + Controller for TV play?
Possibly, but I’m not dragging my computer into the living room every time I want to play it on the big TV. Need a dedicated one for that.
Or a long cable. It just depends on how things are located. Steam Link could also work, depending on how good your wifi is and if your TV supports it.
Yeah, neither are a great solution for me. Dedicated console for gaming on the TV for now, but it might be changing in the future.
Yeah, whatever works. I do the same, but I’ve seen some setups where PC works on both. It really depends on where things are.