Are PC handhelds like Steam Deck really competitors for Switch 2?
-
You mean as opposed to the Steam branded Steam PC running the Steam OS that boots straight into Steam?
Theoretically you can spin up a used thinkpad from a yard sale and run steam. Nintendo doesn’t (legally) run on anything that’s not Nintendo branded ¯_(ツ)_/¯
-
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.
that model of the Deck has a ... worse CPU
We don't really know this. It very 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.).
-
that model of the Deck has a ... worse CPU
We don't really know this. It very 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.).
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.
-
Theoretically you can spin up a used thinkpad from a yard sale and run steam. Nintendo doesn’t (legally) run on anything that’s not Nintendo branded ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And theoretically you can install Windows on a Steam Deck. Not making something specifically unsupported doesn't mean you're not building your business model around the default use case.
For the record, Nintendo games can be legally run on an emulator, much as Nintendo may protest this. It's a pain in the ass to do so without technically breaking any regulation, but it sure isn't impossible, and the act of running the software elsewhere isn't illegal.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Yes because Steamdeck games are cheaper
-
live service games make up a significant amount of what the average consumer wants, and those customers largely play on PC for all sorts of reasons
You are leaving out the elephant in the room: smartphones.
So, so, so many people game on smartphones. It's technically the majority of the "gaming" market, especially live service games. A large segment of the population doesn't even use PCs and does the majority of their computer stuff on smartphones or tablets, and that fraction seems to be getting bigger. Point being the future of the Windows PC market is no guarantee.
I would’ve entertained this argument more in 2017 at switch’s launch, but smartphone gaming has not significantly eaten into console or PC gaming marketshares. Definitely not to the degree people were anticipating in the 2010s that’s for sure.
-
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 games 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) 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.
-
This post did not contain any content.
There's some overlap in customers, sure but the vast majority of people who buy a Switch 2 aren't the types who would buy a Deck. Switch 2 will sell tens of millions more units to a mainstream consumer. And that's fine. Deck can still be a successful product in its own right as long as Valve is making a profit off of it through Steam software sales.
-
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.
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.
-
If you primarily play CPU bound games 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) 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.
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
I mean...
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cities-skylines-nintendo-switch-edition-switch/
-
It very much is a genre thing. Can you show me a game like Transport Fever 2 on the Switch? Cities: Skylines?
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?
-
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?
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 would’ve entertained this argument more in 2017 at switch’s launch, but smartphone gaming has not significantly eaten into console or PC gaming marketshares. Definitely not to the degree people were anticipating in the 2010s that’s for sure.
Yeah, you and /u/ampersandrew have a point.
I am vastly oversimplifying a lot, but... Perhaps mobile gaming, on aggregate, is too shitty for its own good? It really looks that way whenever I sample the popular ones.
-
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.
That the Switch CPU had very poor performance for 2017, it was 3 generations behind then current ARM/cortex releases.
It is very likely the CPU in the Switch 2 will also be subpar.
-
You’re objectively wrong.
-
Nah, this is pretty bad analysis.
Nintendo got to the Switch via the Wii U and through the realization that they could package similar hardware with affordable off-the-shelf parts and still drive a TV output that was competitive with their "one-gen-old-with-a-gimmick" model for home consoles.
It was NOT a handheld with AAA games, it was a home console you could take with you. That is how they got to a point where all the journalists, reviewers and users that spent the Vita's lifetime wondering who wanted to play Uncharted on a portable were over the moon with a handheld Zelda instead.
So yeah, turns out the read the article has is actually far closer to what happened than yours, I'm sorry to say.
Yes, that's why they took an ARM based Tegra (like the vita with the powerVR from imagination tech) unlike the inhouse wiiu
Also, the WiiU is basically the PSP remote play in one package, 6y later...
C'mon man, do Nintendo fanboys really have to ape Apple fanboys for everything. Next thing you're going to tell me how palworld should be sued to the ground...
-
That the Switch CPU had very poor performance for 2017, it was 3 generations behind then current ARM/cortex releases.
It is very likely the CPU in the Switch 2 will also be subpar.
What is "par" here?
Nobody was complaining about the Switch CPU. It was a pretty solid choice for the time. It outperformed the Xbox 360 somewhat, which is really all it needed to do to support last-gen ports. Like I said, the big annoyance that was specifically CPU-related from a dev perspective was the low thread count, which made cramming previous-gen multithreaded stuff into a fraction of the threads a bit of a mess.
The point of a console CPU is to run games, it's not raw compute. The Switch had what it needed for the scope of games it was running. On a handheld you also want it to be power efficient, which it was. In fact, the Switch didn't overclock the CPU on docked, just the GPU. Because it didn't need it. And we now know it did have some headroom to run faster, jailbroken Switches can be reliably clocked up a fair amount. Nintendo locked it that low because they found it was the right balance of power consumption and speed to support the rest of the components.
Memory bandwidth ended up being much more of a bottleneck on it. For a lot of the games you wanted to make on a Switch the CPU was not the limit you were bumping into. The memory and the GPU were more likely to be slowing you down before CPU cycles did.
-
This post did not contain any content.
After playing tens of games on the Switch people might want to play the tens of thousands of games on Steam.
-
Yes because Steamdeck games are cheaper
And a lot of people already have hundreds of them
-
That the Switch CPU had very poor performance for 2017, it was 3 generations behind then current ARM/cortex releases.
It is very likely the CPU in the Switch 2 will also be subpar.
What "standards" are you comparing it to? The Switch 1 was behind home consoles, but that's not really a fair comparison. There was nothing similar on the market to appropriately compare it to, no "standard".
Five years later the Steam Deck outperformed the Switch, because of course hardware from five years later would. But the gap between the 2017 Switch and 2022 Deck is not so vast that you can definitively claim in advance to know that the 2025 Switch 2 definitely has to be worse. You don't know that and can't go claiming it as fact.
All we know so far is that the Switch 2 does beat the Deck in at least one major attribute: it has a 1080p120 screen, in contrast to the Deck's 800p60. And it is not unlikely to expect the rest of the hardware to reflect that.
