Honestly I prefer console to PC so much, even as a fediverse user, linux user, someone who has a degoogled phone and uses a home server instead of a cloud, because I just hate having to worry if games are compatible with my hardware, or if controllers are compatible with my game, or if graphical oddities in my game represent supernatural parts of the story or that I didn’t install the right NVidia driver. When it comes to games, which are leisure, I find I just can’t relax with PC games like I can with console games. As for emulation, I can’t enjoy my games like that at all becuse the worry that settings are wrong or emulation is wrong is just too much like work. So I love my switch and I’ll probably love my switch 2 one day.
Hello fellow kids, I, too, can not enjoy my steam deck video game PC. I prefer to pay my tithe to Nintendo, my best friend and surrogate parent. I love [Product].
Yes, to an extent, which is positive. I don’t know too much about the steam deck side of things, but I don’t get the impression that it’s got enough PC market share to do that.
I have a steam controller and last time I used that (admittedly years ago when it was still pretty new) I found Steam Input really didn’t have good defaults at all, despite what they said. The only sort of good defaults had the drawback of just ignoring most of the device’s USPs. It was bad, and community profiles weren’t good either. Maybe it got better?
Even if you own a Steam Deck, Nintendo has some attractive value. Nintendo essentially has a monopoly on at least 3 genres of videogame. The entire library of Steam doesn’t really have a casual racing game that can go toe-to-toe with Mario Kart. The same can be said for almost any Mario game. Even if a Steam Deck had the games, you’d need 2 decks or an extra controller to get the Switch-style experience. Valve isn’t really trying to compete with the Switch on its own turf.
This is very true. It’s not just that Nintendo makes good games, it’s that a lot of their games are wildly unlike anything else on the market. The reason I’m losing my mind over a Kirby Air Ride sequel is because there hasn’t been any other game like the original from 2003. I’ve waited 22 years for another game that could scratch that itch.
Within an enthusiast bubble, PC handhelds are a big deal, but they do not exist in the same universe as Nintendo consoles.
I keep hearing this shit and it seems like stupid wishful thinking, because in a locked-down universe where Switch 2 is not a shitty proposition for way too much cash compared to getting a PC with 10k+ PC games from the get go and also emulating anything you wish because it’s your hardware and it’s just bits - in that universe, Polygon is a much needed pool of experts that people go to for advice instead of a source of stupid ragebait titles telling them a log of shit is the new snickers.
Nintendo will not have true competition in handhelds until its peers in the console space get involved.
Shit no, its a different market. The switch was designed by committee to extract the maximum amount of money possible from the consumer. The Steam Deck is geared toward PC enthusiasts and built and designed by those same people. They aren’t even in the same ball park.
Nintendo consoles are locked down, solely designed to force you to spend top dollar on the latest Bing-Bing-Wahoo games and late capitalism subscriptions so you can play with children and manchildren alike. You get the choice to buy BingKart Horizon for $80-90, or buy the old Switch 1 games again, full price, because they didn’t want to bother releasing a 5MB update to unlock the framerates and resolution in the original ones. Nintendo wants more money, fuck you, pay more.
Steam Deck is effectively a gaming PC crammed into a handheld. It uses an open OS that you don’t have to root, so you can install almost every game humanity has ever made, including all the previous Bing-Bing-Wahoos. You can get any of these games for FREE (if you’re smart), or just wait for a fire sale held several times a year. We can vaguely count on someone eventually developing an emulator to work with Switch 2 games one day, saving everyone money in the long run, because those angel developers that operate against the wishes of corporate gaming cartel oppressors are the closest thing we have to Santa Claus and Jesus doing a fusion dance. The Steam Deck is how we forgive Gaben for never releasing HL3. Exclusively played by giga-manchildren.
I keep retyping what I want to say, but I think my feelings come down to:
There are 150 million switch 1’s in the wild, that’s going to continue to be a massive pull for developers when porting new games.
Many families may already have the switch 1, are the exclusives enough of a pull to encourage those people to upgrade?
I do think the switch 2 will do just fine, but I also think there are a lot of people who loved their switch 1 who might look at the games they played, and look at upgrading to a steamdeck instead of the switch 2.
I really truly don’t think so. While there is some overlap, I would never give my 5 yo a steam deck and tell them to just figure it out. And on a steam deck, I’d be really sad to not have any Mario kart, Zelda, etc…
I don’t see the problem with having both- they fill different niches.
I don’t see the problem with having both- they fill different niches.
Money. Steam Deck OLED costs in my country €700, Switch OLED €350-360 and the Switch 2 will be around the €560-600.
steam deck, I’d be really sad to not have any Mario kart, Zelda, etc…
I’m so close on purchasing a Steam Deck OLED to game in weekends or in bed after full 5 days behind a desk job. But I’m always worried that these games won’t work well with emulations. I’ve been researching like crazy but keep reading different things.
And spending €700 with uncertainty is not my favorite thing to do.
I really doubt switch 2 games will emulate at all or well for quite some time.
I get the money argument. In that case, get the one that does more for you now now, and save up for the other one later. You don’t need them all at once.
I waited a year before getting the first switch, and almost 2 years for a ps4. I think I waited at least a year for all the other PlayStations too save the 5.
Getting something at launch isn’t all that great- bugs, limited games, max prices, etc… a year or so later and you get bundles and deals and lots of game choices.
I don’t have a deck- but a few of my friends do and I’ve played with it a bit- it’s great and I want one at some point, but I can wait for #2 to come out and then go on sale before I dive in.
Steam deck is definitely just as easy to use as the switch for playing and downloading basic games from the storefront. A 5 year old could absolutely use it easily with some games preloaded.
Its not specifically hard but its also not just as easy to use. I say this as someone whos been gaming on linux for over a decade now. You still run into issues here and there with proton(often a devs fault for bad code) and there is genuinely a lot more going on and tweakable on the steamdeck.
Steamdeck is a great device but Nintendo is good at making simple systems
The steam deck has way more potential, but CAN be just as simplr as only ever launching and downloading games through gaming mode. The parent downloads 5stean deck verified games and then all the kid has to do is use the joystick to switch between them. But then it also has the potential to be a learning experience or teaching tool as the kid grows. But the steamos gaming mode is dead simple to navigate and a child could definitely use it.
I think we should be asking the question the otherway around as some games on PC handhelds could be cheaper and possibly run better, but that’s just my opinion
They’re NOT cheaper. There is exactly one cheaper PC handheld, and it’s the base model of the LCD variant of the Deck.
And the reason for that is that Valve went out of its way to sign a console maker-style large scale deal with AMD. And even then, that model of the Deck has a much worse screen, worse CPU and GPU and presumably much cheaper controls (it does ship with twice as much storage, though).
They are, as the article says, competitive in price and specs, and I’m sure some next-gen iterations of PC handhelds will outperform the Switch 2 very clearly pretty soon, let alone by the end of its life. Right now I’d say the Switch 2 has a little bit of an edge, with dedicated ports selectively cherry picking visual features, instead of having to run full fat PC ports meant for current-gen GPUs at thumbnail resolutions in potato mode.
We don’t really know this. It is possible that the CPU will be trash. Nintendo’s devices don’t really support genres that require CPU power (4X, tycoon, city-builder, RTS, MMO etc.).
While we don’t have detailed info on the Switch 2 CPU, the original Switch CPU was three generations behind at the time of the console’s release.
Best we can tell this is an embedded Ampere GPU with some ARM CPU. The Switch had a slightly weird but very functional CPU for its time. It was a quad core thing with one core reserved for the OS, which was a bit weird in a landscape where every other console could do eight threads, but the cores were clocked pretty fast by comparison.
It’s kinda weird to visualize it as a genre thing, though. I mean, Civ VII not only has a Switch 2 port, it has a Switch 1 port, too. CPU usage in gaming is a… weird and complicated thing. Unless one is a systems engineer working on the specific hardware I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about how these things go.
If you primarily play CPU bound strategy games, you can very much make conclusive statements about CPU performance. For example, Cities in Motion 1 (from the studio that created Cities: Skylines), released in 2010, can bring a modern CPU to its knees if you use modded maps, free look and say a 1440p monitor (the graphics don’t actually matter). Even a simple looking game like The Final Earth 2 can bring your FPS to a crawl due to CPU bottlenecks (even modern CPUs) in the late game with large maps. I will note that The Final Earth 2 has an Android version, but that doesn’t mean the game (which I’ve played on Android) isn’t fundamentally limited by CPU performance.
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
The OG switch CPU was completely outdated when released and provides extremely poor performance.
The switch was released in 2017. It’s CPU, the cortex A57, was released in 2012. It was three generation behind the cortex A75 that was released in 2017.
I mean, the PC market has grown, don’t get me wrong. Consoles use to be the only thing that mattered and that’s no longer the case. You can’t afford to ignore PCs anymore.
But consoles still drive a majority of revenue for a majority of games, to my knowledge. And the Switch is a huge market by itself.
More importantly, PC gamers should be extremely invested in console gaming continuing to exist. Console gaming is a big reason PC gaming is viable. They provide a static hardware target that can be used as a default, which then makes it the baseline for PC ports. With no PS5 the only games that make sense to build for PCs are targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs. That’s why PC games in the 2000s used to look like World of Warcraft even though PCs could do Crysis.
Consoles also standardized a lot of control, networking and other services for games. You don’t want a PC-only gaming market.
With no PS5 the only games that make sense to build for PCs are targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs.
Are we just ignoring all of the PC-exclusive games PS5 players will never get to play? And the games that were PC-exclusive until their success prompted a console port? The PC catalog dwarfs the PS5 catalog by hundreds of modern titles, and thousands if you count retro games. Steam (just one of the PC software distribution platforms) added over 14,000 games in the last year and there are fewer than 3,500 PS5 games in total. I can tell you that “targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs” has never really been a priority in the PC space; you can see this trend even before consoles like the SNES existed.
That’s why PC games in the 2000s used to look like World of Warcraft even though PCs could do Crysis.
A lot of PCs couldn’t do Crisis. It was a hardware seller because a lot of people significantly upgraded just to play it. Games in the 2000s looked like that because highly-detailed 3D polygonal models used too many resources (mostly CPU at the time). It made more sense, for developer and user, to limit the polygon count for everyone’s sake.
Even in the modern day, World of Warcraft is an MMO and the textures and other assets are deliberately less detailed to optimize performance, so this isn’t really a fair comparison and doesn’t really demonstrate that consoles prop up the PC market (especially since WoW wasn’t available for consoles during the peak of its success and was also a hardware seller due to that exclusivity). It’s like comparing Plants vs. Zombies and Half-Life 2, or Destiny and Alien: Isolation.
A lot of PCs can’t do a lot of games. That is precisely the point.
If you look at the Steam hardware survey at any given point in time, mass market GPUs are typically mid-range parts two to three generations old. And even then, those are still the most popular small fractions of a very fragmented market.
The average PC is an old-ass laptop used by a broke-ass student. Presumably that still is a factor on why CounterStrike, of all things, is Steam’s biggest game. It sure was a factor on why WoW or The Sims were persistent PC hits despite looking way below the expectations of contemporary PC hardware.
The beginning of competent console ports in the Xbox 360 era revolutionized that. Suddenly there was a standard PC controller that had parity to mainstream consoles and a close-enough architecture running games on a reliably stable hardware. Suddenly you didn’t need to target PC games solely to the minimum common denominator PC, the minimum common denominator was a console that was somewhat above average compared to low-end PCs.
In that scenario you can just let people with high-end hardware crank up resolution, framerate and easily scalable options while allowing for some downward scaling as well. And if that cuts off some integrated graphics on old laptops… well, consoles will more than make up the slack.
Sure, there are PC exclusives because they rely on PC-specific controls or are trying to do some tech-demoy stuff or because they’re tiny indies with no money for ports or licensing fees, or because they’re made in a region where consoles aren’t popular or supported or commercially viable.
But the mainstream segment of gaming we’re discussing here? Consoles made the PC as a competitive, platform-agnostic gaming machine.
The average PC is an old-ass laptop used by a broke-ass student. Presumably that still is a factor on why CounterStrike, of all things, is Steam’s biggest game.
It’s because of the high percentage of players from developing countries, countries where high-end electronics aren’t accessible, or countries with weak economies. Russia, Brazil, etc.
It sure was a factor on why WoW or The Sims were persistent PC hits despite looking way below the expectations of contemporary PC hardware.
When Sims 4 came out, people upgraded. They cancelled Sims 5 so Sims 4 remains, with largely the same specs. That’s not something consoles can change. WoW is similar, which is why there’s no WoW for PS5.
The beginning of competent console ports in the Xbox 360 era revolutionized that. Suddenly there was a standard PC controller that had parity to mainstream consoles and a close-enough architecture running games on a reliably stable hardware.
That’s because Microsoft owns Windows and Xbox, not because Xbox revolutionized gaming. They had the ownership of 2 platforms with significant lock-in. It’s like if Nintendo owned both the Switch and PlayStation (which they almost did lol).
Sure, there are PC exclusives because they rely on PC-specific controls or are trying to do some tech-demoy stuff or because they’re tiny indies with no money for ports or licensing fees, or because they’re made in a region where consoles aren’t popular or supported or commercially viable.
So there are 14,000 titles new to Steam in the last year and your conclusion is that they are all either keyboard-only, tech demos, indies, or from a poor nation? Wild. You just said that the Xbox controller opened up a new world over 10 years ago and yet you also believe that these new games just aren’t usable with a controller?
You are all over the place here. I’m not doing quotes, either, it’s an obnoxious way to argue online.
In no particular order: No, it’s not just developing countries on older hardware (although there ARE significant markets where high end hardware is less popular, and they matter). Microsoft doesn’t own Windows, Valve owns Windows, at least on gaming, as evidenced by the long string of failed attempts from Microsoft to establish their own store on Windows PCs. The standard controller was part of that, but it wasn’t all of it. And yes, most of the 14000 titles on PC are tiny indies that sold next to zero (or actually zero) copies.
Valve runs steam as a gig economy app, there are very few guardrails and instead very strong algorithmic discoverability management tools. Steam has shovelware for the same reason Google Play has shovelware, Steam is just WAY better at surfacing things specifically to gamers.
Incidentally, most of these new games support controllers because the newly standardized Xinput just works. Valve has a whole extra controller translation layer because everything else kinda doesn’t and they wanted full compatibility, not just Xbox compatibility because the blood feud between Gaben and Microsoft will never end, I suppose. None of that changes that it was the advent of XInput and Xbox 360 controller compatibility that unlocked direct ports, along with consoles gradually becoming standardized PCs.
No, it’s not just developing countries on older hardware
I was talking about Counter Strike specifically, because you used it as an example.
Microsoft doesn’t own Windows
They literally do. Look it up. Windows is developed and maintained by Microsoft. They own all trademarks and intellectual property related to Windows.
Valve runs steam as a gig economy app, there are very few guardrails and instead very strong algorithmic discoverability management tools. Steam has shovelware for the same reason Google Play has shovelware, Steam is just WAY better at surfacing things specifically to gamers.
I never disputed this, but you are arguing that PC games are all shit for some reason or another unless they’re ported either from or to PS5.
Incidentally, most of these new games support controllers because the newly standardized Xinput just works.
Newly standardized? Xinput was created in 2005. It has “just worked” for ages, because it is officially supported by Microsoft through Windows. Because they own Xbox, Xinput, and Windows.
Valve has a whole extra controller translation layer because everything else kinda doesn’t and they wanted full compatibility
So that they can support other controllers that aren’t Xbox…
You’re talking out of your ass here and not even paying attention to context which you yourself brought up. Not to mention you aren’t even aware of why Xbox had such stellar support (Microsoft is one of the largest tech companies in the world and own the PC OS with the largest market share by a longshot) and how that support translated to the modern rise of PC gaming.
I never disputed this, but you are arguing that PC games are all shit for some reason or another unless they’re ported either from or to PS5.
Wait, that’s what you think you’re arguing against?
No wonder this conversation is so loopy, then.
The fact that consoles are a huge asset for PC gaming doesn’t mean, and is nowhere near the same as, saying that “PC games are shit unless ported directly from the PS5”. Your straw man is not just subtly misrepresenting my point, it’s having some entirely unrelated conversation in a different room with a different person.
Consoles get to be a massive asset for PC games without… well, whatever that statement is supposed to imply. PC games benefit a LOT from having a set target for mainstream hardware be a fixed point for five to ten years. They benefitted strongly from access to a large volume of affordable, standardized, compatible controllers (these days things have been that way long enough that the standards aren’t going anywhere, but it was a massive deal in 2005, which is the period we’re talking about, despite your surprise that we’re talking about it). And yes, the target for PC-only gaming today would be both different and significantly less pleasant without those things. The shift to a more PC-centric market already made it so that ten-year-old games dominate the landscape.
It’s not just CounterStrike. It’s Fortnite, Overwatch, GTA 5, Minecraft, Roblox. PC gaming’s characteristics encourage those types of forever games targeting widely accessible hardware. Consoles existing in parallel open the door to additional viability for AAA releases targeting higher end specs. Not that you wouldn’t get any of those without consoles, but for the past 20 years consoles have been a big reason that’s a whole genre instead a one-in-a-generation thing you’d get when an engine company wanted to flex its tech muscle for potential engine licensors and accidentally made a game in the process.
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Honestly I prefer console to PC so much, even as a fediverse user, linux user, someone who has a degoogled phone and uses a home server instead of a cloud, because I just hate having to worry if games are compatible with my hardware, or if controllers are compatible with my game, or if graphical oddities in my game represent supernatural parts of the story or that I didn’t install the right NVidia driver. When it comes to games, which are leisure, I find I just can’t relax with PC games like I can with console games. As for emulation, I can’t enjoy my games like that at all becuse the worry that settings are wrong or emulation is wrong is just too much like work. So I love my switch and I’ll probably love my switch 2 one day.
Hello fellow kids, I, too, can not enjoy my steam deck video game PC. I prefer to pay my tithe to Nintendo, my best friend and surrogate parent. I love [Product].
Isn’t that precisely the point of the steam deck, it provides a console-like target for game devs to develop against.
Yes, to an extent, which is positive. I don’t know too much about the steam deck side of things, but I don’t get the impression that it’s got enough PC market share to do that. I have a steam controller and last time I used that (admittedly years ago when it was still pretty new) I found Steam Input really didn’t have good defaults at all, despite what they said. The only sort of good defaults had the drawback of just ignoring most of the device’s USPs. It was bad, and community profiles weren’t good either. Maybe it got better?
Even if you own a Steam Deck, Nintendo has some attractive value. Nintendo essentially has a monopoly on at least 3 genres of videogame. The entire library of Steam doesn’t really have a casual racing game that can go toe-to-toe with Mario Kart. The same can be said for almost any Mario game. Even if a Steam Deck had the games, you’d need 2 decks or an extra controller to get the Switch-style experience. Valve isn’t really trying to compete with the Switch on its own turf.
This is very true. It’s not just that Nintendo makes good games, it’s that a lot of their games are wildly unlike anything else on the market. The reason I’m losing my mind over a Kirby Air Ride sequel is because there hasn’t been any other game like the original from 2003. I’ve waited 22 years for another game that could scratch that itch.
The steam deck can play literally any Mario Kart except for MK World…
I keep hearing this shit and it seems like stupid wishful thinking, because in a locked-down universe where Switch 2 is not a shitty proposition for way too much cash compared to getting a PC with 10k+ PC games from the get go and also emulating anything you wish because it’s your hardware and it’s just bits - in that universe, Polygon is a much needed pool of experts that people go to for advice instead of a source of stupid ragebait titles telling them a log of shit is the new snickers.
Yeah, sure, fuck you Polygon
Shit no, its a different market. The switch was designed by committee to extract the maximum amount of money possible from the consumer. The Steam Deck is geared toward PC enthusiasts and built and designed by those same people. They aren’t even in the same ball park.
Nintendo consoles are locked down, solely designed to force you to spend top dollar on the latest Bing-Bing-Wahoo games and late capitalism subscriptions so you can play with children and manchildren alike. You get the choice to buy BingKart Horizon for $80-90, or buy the old Switch 1 games again, full price, because they didn’t want to bother releasing a 5MB update to unlock the framerates and resolution in the original ones. Nintendo wants more money, fuck you, pay more.
Steam Deck is effectively a gaming PC crammed into a handheld. It uses an open OS that you don’t have to root, so you can install almost every game humanity has ever made, including all the previous Bing-Bing-Wahoos. You can get any of these games for FREE (if you’re smart), or just wait for a fire sale held several times a year. We can vaguely count on someone eventually developing an emulator to work with Switch 2 games one day, saving everyone money in the long run, because those angel developers that operate against the wishes of corporate gaming cartel oppressors are the closest thing we have to Santa Claus and Jesus doing a fusion dance. The Steam Deck is how we forgive Gaben for never releasing HL3. Exclusively played by giga-manchildren.
Yes, when combined with the switch 1
I keep retyping what I want to say, but I think my feelings come down to:
I do think the switch 2 will do just fine, but I also think there are a lot of people who loved their switch 1 who might look at the games they played, and look at upgrading to a steamdeck instead of the switch 2.
I really truly don’t think so. While there is some overlap, I would never give my 5 yo a steam deck and tell them to just figure it out. And on a steam deck, I’d be really sad to not have any Mario kart, Zelda, etc…
I don’t see the problem with having both- they fill different niches.
Money. Steam Deck OLED costs in my country €700, Switch OLED €350-360 and the Switch 2 will be around the €560-600.
I’m so close on purchasing a Steam Deck OLED to game in weekends or in bed after full 5 days behind a desk job. But I’m always worried that these games won’t work well with emulations. I’ve been researching like crazy but keep reading different things.
And spending €700 with uncertainty is not my favorite thing to do.
I really doubt switch 2 games will emulate at all or well for quite some time.
I get the money argument. In that case, get the one that does more for you now now, and save up for the other one later. You don’t need them all at once.
I waited a year before getting the first switch, and almost 2 years for a ps4. I think I waited at least a year for all the other PlayStations too save the 5.
Getting something at launch isn’t all that great- bugs, limited games, max prices, etc… a year or so later and you get bundles and deals and lots of game choices.
I don’t have a deck- but a few of my friends do and I’ve played with it a bit- it’s great and I want one at some point, but I can wait for #2 to come out and then go on sale before I dive in.
Haha, I am researching like crazy as well. So far I came to the conclusion that I have 3 options:
So far I’m waiting. My current Switch isn’t going anywhere, but going forward I’m not going to spend much on games there.
Steam deck is definitely just as easy to use as the switch for playing and downloading basic games from the storefront. A 5 year old could absolutely use it easily with some games preloaded.
Its not specifically hard but its also not just as easy to use. I say this as someone whos been gaming on linux for over a decade now. You still run into issues here and there with proton(often a devs fault for bad code) and there is genuinely a lot more going on and tweakable on the steamdeck.
Steamdeck is a great device but Nintendo is good at making simple systems
The steam deck has way more potential, but CAN be just as simplr as only ever launching and downloading games through gaming mode. The parent downloads 5stean deck verified games and then all the kid has to do is use the joystick to switch between them. But then it also has the potential to be a learning experience or teaching tool as the kid grows. But the steamos gaming mode is dead simple to navigate and a child could definitely use it.
Is a pants really a competitor for clothing?
Trick question, there’s no “a pants”
Wouldn’t the switch (locked down) be pants and pc handhelds (anything) be clothing?
Yes? That’s the analogy. Did they flip it in the article maybe
No they are not mutually exclusive
Mine actually emulates switch games.
I think we should be asking the question the otherway around as some games on PC handhelds could be cheaper and possibly run better, but that’s just my opinion
They’re cheaper which is insane. We could see a boom if third party manufacturers hop on steamOS now
They’re NOT cheaper. There is exactly one cheaper PC handheld, and it’s the base model of the LCD variant of the Deck.
And the reason for that is that Valve went out of its way to sign a console maker-style large scale deal with AMD. And even then, that model of the Deck has a much worse screen, worse CPU and GPU and presumably much cheaper controls (it does ship with twice as much storage, though).
They are, as the article says, competitive in price and specs, and I’m sure some next-gen iterations of PC handhelds will outperform the Switch 2 very clearly pretty soon, let alone by the end of its life. Right now I’d say the Switch 2 has a little bit of an edge, with dedicated ports selectively cherry picking visual features, instead of having to run full fat PC ports meant for current-gen GPUs at thumbnail resolutions in potato mode.
We don’t really know this. It is possible that the CPU will be trash. Nintendo’s devices don’t really support genres that require CPU power (4X, tycoon, city-builder, RTS, MMO etc.).
While we don’t have detailed info on the Switch 2 CPU, the original Switch CPU was three generations behind at the time of the console’s release.
Best we can tell this is an embedded Ampere GPU with some ARM CPU. The Switch had a slightly weird but very functional CPU for its time. It was a quad core thing with one core reserved for the OS, which was a bit weird in a landscape where every other console could do eight threads, but the cores were clocked pretty fast by comparison.
It’s kinda weird to visualize it as a genre thing, though. I mean, Civ VII not only has a Switch 2 port, it has a Switch 1 port, too. CPU usage in gaming is a… weird and complicated thing. Unless one is a systems engineer working on the specific hardware I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about how these things go.
If you primarily play CPU bound strategy games, you can very much make conclusive statements about CPU performance. For example, Cities in Motion 1 (from the studio that created Cities: Skylines), released in 2010, can bring a modern CPU to its knees if you use modded maps, free look and say a 1440p monitor (the graphics don’t actually matter). Even a simple looking game like The Final Earth 2 can bring your FPS to a crawl due to CPU bottlenecks (even modern CPUs) in the late game with large maps. I will note that The Final Earth 2 has an Android version, but that doesn’t mean the game (which I’ve played on Android) isn’t fundamentally limited by CPU performance.
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
The OG switch CPU was completely outdated when released and provides extremely poor performance.
The switch was released in 2017. It’s CPU, the cortex A57, was released in 2012. It was three generation behind the cortex A75 that was released in 2017.
I mean…
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cities-skylines-nintendo-switch-edition-switch/
So you’re saying it’s identical to the PC version in terms of scope and capabilities?
Have you ever played Cities: Skylines on PC?
And claiming that the Cortex A57 was a capable CPU in 2017 is not serious.
Well, it runs like crap, for sure, but that’s not the bar that you set here.
Now that I think about it, what are you saying? Your point seems a bit muddled.
I mean most games coming to switch outside of Nintendo themselves is already on or coming to steam deck.
Nowadays consoles don’t really matter. Which is good for the users.
This is objectively wrong.
I mean, the PC market has grown, don’t get me wrong. Consoles use to be the only thing that mattered and that’s no longer the case. You can’t afford to ignore PCs anymore.
But consoles still drive a majority of revenue for a majority of games, to my knowledge. And the Switch is a huge market by itself.
More importantly, PC gamers should be extremely invested in console gaming continuing to exist. Console gaming is a big reason PC gaming is viable. They provide a static hardware target that can be used as a default, which then makes it the baseline for PC ports. With no PS5 the only games that make sense to build for PCs are targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs. That’s why PC games in the 2000s used to look like World of Warcraft even though PCs could do Crysis.
Consoles also standardized a lot of control, networking and other services for games. You don’t want a PC-only gaming market.
Are we just ignoring all of the PC-exclusive games PS5 players will never get to play? And the games that were PC-exclusive until their success prompted a console port? The PC catalog dwarfs the PS5 catalog by hundreds of modern titles, and thousands if you count retro games. Steam (just one of the PC software distribution platforms) added over 14,000 games in the last year and there are fewer than 3,500 PS5 games in total. I can tell you that “targeting integrated graphics and lowest-common-denominator CPUs” has never really been a priority in the PC space; you can see this trend even before consoles like the SNES existed.
A lot of PCs couldn’t do Crisis. It was a hardware seller because a lot of people significantly upgraded just to play it. Games in the 2000s looked like that because highly-detailed 3D polygonal models used too many resources (mostly CPU at the time). It made more sense, for developer and user, to limit the polygon count for everyone’s sake.
Even in the modern day, World of Warcraft is an MMO and the textures and other assets are deliberately less detailed to optimize performance, so this isn’t really a fair comparison and doesn’t really demonstrate that consoles prop up the PC market (especially since WoW wasn’t available for consoles during the peak of its success and was also a hardware seller due to that exclusivity). It’s like comparing Plants vs. Zombies and Half-Life 2, or Destiny and Alien: Isolation.
A lot of PCs can’t do a lot of games. That is precisely the point.
If you look at the Steam hardware survey at any given point in time, mass market GPUs are typically mid-range parts two to three generations old. And even then, those are still the most popular small fractions of a very fragmented market.
The average PC is an old-ass laptop used by a broke-ass student. Presumably that still is a factor on why CounterStrike, of all things, is Steam’s biggest game. It sure was a factor on why WoW or The Sims were persistent PC hits despite looking way below the expectations of contemporary PC hardware.
The beginning of competent console ports in the Xbox 360 era revolutionized that. Suddenly there was a standard PC controller that had parity to mainstream consoles and a close-enough architecture running games on a reliably stable hardware. Suddenly you didn’t need to target PC games solely to the minimum common denominator PC, the minimum common denominator was a console that was somewhat above average compared to low-end PCs.
In that scenario you can just let people with high-end hardware crank up resolution, framerate and easily scalable options while allowing for some downward scaling as well. And if that cuts off some integrated graphics on old laptops… well, consoles will more than make up the slack.
Sure, there are PC exclusives because they rely on PC-specific controls or are trying to do some tech-demoy stuff or because they’re tiny indies with no money for ports or licensing fees, or because they’re made in a region where consoles aren’t popular or supported or commercially viable.
But the mainstream segment of gaming we’re discussing here? Consoles made the PC as a competitive, platform-agnostic gaming machine.
It’s because of the high percentage of players from developing countries, countries where high-end electronics aren’t accessible, or countries with weak economies. Russia, Brazil, etc.
When Sims 4 came out, people upgraded. They cancelled Sims 5 so Sims 4 remains, with largely the same specs. That’s not something consoles can change. WoW is similar, which is why there’s no WoW for PS5.
That’s because Microsoft owns Windows and Xbox, not because Xbox revolutionized gaming. They had the ownership of 2 platforms with significant lock-in. It’s like if Nintendo owned both the Switch and PlayStation (which they almost did lol).
So there are 14,000 titles new to Steam in the last year and your conclusion is that they are all either keyboard-only, tech demos, indies, or from a poor nation? Wild. You just said that the Xbox controller opened up a new world over 10 years ago and yet you also believe that these new games just aren’t usable with a controller?
You are all over the place here. I’m not doing quotes, either, it’s an obnoxious way to argue online.
In no particular order: No, it’s not just developing countries on older hardware (although there ARE significant markets where high end hardware is less popular, and they matter). Microsoft doesn’t own Windows, Valve owns Windows, at least on gaming, as evidenced by the long string of failed attempts from Microsoft to establish their own store on Windows PCs. The standard controller was part of that, but it wasn’t all of it. And yes, most of the 14000 titles on PC are tiny indies that sold next to zero (or actually zero) copies.
Valve runs steam as a gig economy app, there are very few guardrails and instead very strong algorithmic discoverability management tools. Steam has shovelware for the same reason Google Play has shovelware, Steam is just WAY better at surfacing things specifically to gamers.
Incidentally, most of these new games support controllers because the newly standardized Xinput just works. Valve has a whole extra controller translation layer because everything else kinda doesn’t and they wanted full compatibility, not just Xbox compatibility because the blood feud between Gaben and Microsoft will never end, I suppose. None of that changes that it was the advent of XInput and Xbox 360 controller compatibility that unlocked direct ports, along with consoles gradually becoming standardized PCs.
I was talking about Counter Strike specifically, because you used it as an example.
They literally do. Look it up. Windows is developed and maintained by Microsoft. They own all trademarks and intellectual property related to Windows.
I never disputed this, but you are arguing that PC games are all shit for some reason or another unless they’re ported either from or to PS5.
Newly standardized? Xinput was created in 2005. It has “just worked” for ages, because it is officially supported by Microsoft through Windows. Because they own Xbox, Xinput, and Windows.
So that they can support other controllers that aren’t Xbox…
You’re talking out of your ass here and not even paying attention to context which you yourself brought up. Not to mention you aren’t even aware of why Xbox had such stellar support (Microsoft is one of the largest tech companies in the world and own the PC OS with the largest market share by a longshot) and how that support translated to the modern rise of PC gaming.
Wait, that’s what you think you’re arguing against?
No wonder this conversation is so loopy, then.
The fact that consoles are a huge asset for PC gaming doesn’t mean, and is nowhere near the same as, saying that “PC games are shit unless ported directly from the PS5”. Your straw man is not just subtly misrepresenting my point, it’s having some entirely unrelated conversation in a different room with a different person.
Consoles get to be a massive asset for PC games without… well, whatever that statement is supposed to imply. PC games benefit a LOT from having a set target for mainstream hardware be a fixed point for five to ten years. They benefitted strongly from access to a large volume of affordable, standardized, compatible controllers (these days things have been that way long enough that the standards aren’t going anywhere, but it was a massive deal in 2005, which is the period we’re talking about, despite your surprise that we’re talking about it). And yes, the target for PC-only gaming today would be both different and significantly less pleasant without those things. The shift to a more PC-centric market already made it so that ten-year-old games dominate the landscape.
It’s not just CounterStrike. It’s Fortnite, Overwatch, GTA 5, Minecraft, Roblox. PC gaming’s characteristics encourage those types of forever games targeting widely accessible hardware. Consoles existing in parallel open the door to additional viability for AAA releases targeting higher end specs. Not that you wouldn’t get any of those without consoles, but for the past 20 years consoles have been a big reason that’s a whole genre instead a one-in-a-generation thing you’d get when an engine company wanted to flex its tech muscle for potential engine licensors and accidentally made a game in the process.
You’re objectively wrong.
Skillful counterargument. Not sure how I’m coming back from that one.
PC gaming is much bigger now.
One such article that discussed the revenue change. https://wccftech.com/pc-gaming-brought-in-significantly-higher-revenue-than-consoles-in-the-last-decade/
But if we are talking about pure revenue, mobile game blows both PC and console out of the water.
I suppose saying that consoles don’t matter altogether is disingenuous to the conversation. They matter less now should be the correct statement.
No, they are successors.
I’d much rather buy a Steam Deck and run Switch emulation on it, knowing I can buy games a whole lot cheaper on Steam sales.
Betteridge wins again.
Handhelds are a niche in PC gaming. Especially in the whole gaming market.