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.
The funniest thing is that Nintendo buyers are not even part of this conversation LMAO 🤣
In a sense, this is also the point. They are different devices targeting different markets.
I’ll emulate Nintendo games till the day I die because fuck Nintendo and their greed.
I won’t even pirate their games
They make great games and they’re a super anti-consumer company. Perfect combination for going out of your way to pirate their games.
Meh, personally I haven’t enjoyed a Nintendo game since the GameCube. Every new game they release feels like a rehash of the same shit they’ve been shoveling down our throats since the Wii. Nintendo forgot how to innovate.
BotW and TotK were both really good. Don’t mistake this as me saying “Nintendo is good actually”, more like a broken clock is right twice a day sort of statement.
Personally I thought botw was pretty mid overall. The world is so empty and there’s no reason to really ever fight anything for the most part. The weapons breaking so easily just cements that. Haven’t played the second tho.
There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest. TotK mostly fixed the weapon breaking mechanic in my eyes. They’re much more durable now and last longer when fused (there is generally no reason to not do fusion). The only thing that’s more fun in BotW than TotK is riding a horse through Hyrule field while dodging tons of guardian lasers.
There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest.
Hmmmm… that’s a thinker.
In the older zeldas, you didn’t especially need to fight stuff on the overworld. I’d usually just run by, or kill the ones that were in my way.
In most FromSoft games, you can run past enemies but that can quickly spiral out of control. Killing them gives you time to explore safely, on top of the XP rewarded.
In shooters like Doom, you could probably run past most enemies, but they’ll keep attacking. Clearing them makes you safer.
Monster hunter it’s the whole point of the game.
What games are you thinking of where fighting is pointless? I don’t think it’s “most” games.
I don’t get this line of thinking… If you’re using arguments like “you can run past them but it’s safer to kill them so they stop attacking” how does that not apply to BotW/TotK? Obviously some eneny camps you ignore because they’re irrelevant, it is an open world game after all, all open world games are like that (many learned the hard way why you should ignore giants in Skyrim lol). But in areas where you’re trying to accomplish something, you “need” to kill them because they’re attacking. That’s still true.
You can’t say “I dislike the game because it doesn’t give me a reason to kill enemies” while saying “in Doom you don’t need to kill enemies but it’s easier if you do” when BotW/TotK are both easier if you kill enemies. And I know you’re not the one who said it, but you’re changing the context of the conversation.
In Zelda One you definitely needed to kill them because there were several good items to purchase with the rupees.
Ah, I see you haven’t played undertale yet!
BotW and TotK are by far the worst Zelda games ever made. What’s the point of having a huge open world if there’s nothing to do in it? Plus there are no real dungeons and there’s barely a plot. It honestly blows my mind that people enjoy those games. Hell, TotK was so lazily slapped together that they couldn’t even bother creating a new map.
BotW and TotK are by far the worst Zelda games ever made.
“At last, vindication!”
TotK didn’t have real dungeons? Huh? I disagree with that criticism for BotW, but I can at least understand why people say it.
But I’m not gonna get into this. I like them. They’re very popular. A certain vocal subset of the Zelda fandom hate them. A certain vocal subset of the Zelda fandom has hated a lot of more opinionated Zelda games on release only to view them more favorably later. People loathed Wind Waker on release, but now tons of people love it. I think these games will be viewed more favorably by fans long term. Yes, they’re different from the others, but not all of them need to follow the same formula. Variety is the spice of life.
For example, I really enjoyed Link’s Awakening HD.
Yeah, I think link between worlds is probably the best of them
I remember when botw came out and some time after it was cracked and you could play it in 4k 60. So i did and i was just like meh. Do i really want to collect all the same shrines in a boring world?
You only think a game is fun if you’re willing to 100% it?
It’s always morally acceptable to pirate Nintendo games.
If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.
For now.
Yuup. Nintendo’s biggest advantage has always been their intellectual property, and even that hasn’t always saved them. glances at the Wii U
Fuck $80 mario you can get Garfield Kart for $5
Personally I’m big on Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart. A mod of a doom mod that plays like super mario kart pushed to it’s absolute limit, with a community that has added most characters you can think of, a million quality of life changes, and some things that crank it to 11 for me, like the blue shell equivalent moving just slightly faster than your top speed, so if you play perfectly and drift dash nonstop you can keep it just barely tickling your butthole but not hitting you.
Sure, if it doesn’t bother someone to wait 3-5 years. It’s no Problem. You can say this too all kind of Games. You don’t want to pay 100$ for GTA VI? No Problem, just wait 5 years and it will be 20$ on sale.
Gamers do be a patient bunch sometimes
I’m still playing AOE 2/3, civ v and endless space after all these years
Has either company “lost” anything? They both seems to be raking in money quite healthily.
True no one needs to fight for either company.
Console wars stopped being cool years ago. Everyone has their preferences and favorites, no need to shit on someone’s fun because you think yours is better.
Steamdeck also isn’t a console anyway, it’s a handheld PC.
it plays like a console and repairs like a pc.
How? Its a PC with a built in steam controller. You can play dwarf fortress over SSH using a keyboard, it plays like a PC.
You turn it on and boom steam library ready to launch, click buy download play just like a console. Remember most peopl just want easy use and the steam deck does that.
Yes the average steam Deck user is above average in tech literacy.
So steam is set to autorun by default?
By that reasoning my old PC in like 2008 was a console because you boot and it starts up with a list of games to play that are all loaded from Linux DVD, just click to launch any of them immediately.
Yeah ease of use, no technical skill or knowledge needed.
Its unfair to call it a “console war” when one is a classic locked down console and another is a general handheld computer. This also means there are bigger societal stakes in this argument than just “which corporate flavor you like more” because one empowers people and the other does the exact opposite.
So no, “console wars” here are very much cool.
Competition is good. If the Switch didn’t exist then I don’t think we would’ve gotten the Steam Deck.
If the Switch didn’t exist then I don’t think we would’ve gotten the Steam Deck.
or we would have earlier and more of it? I’m not sure how are you basing your hipothesis is but to assume that handheld market with this crazy demand would just be there unfulfilled is kinda silly. Switch didn’t event some magic technology that was not available before - it just took the market.
You’re contradicting yourself. If you believe the Steam Deck exists purely independently from the Switch and that we would’ve had the Steam Deck before the Switch if the Switch never existed, but we didn’t, it came after.
And no, I don’t think it invented some sort of magic technology, obviously I don’t think that. I’m saying the Steam Deck was good competition for the Switch in the portable/docked market (whatever we wanna call those).
Correlation vs causation much? Not sure what to tell you.
You’re saying if we didn’t have the Switch we would’ve had the Steam Deck earlier but you’re also saying the Steam Deck is something totally independent of the Switch. But if it was totally independent, why do you think it would’ve come earlier if the Switch didn’t exist? That’s why I’m saying you’re contradicting yourself.
I said it might have come earlier. You fundamentally don’t understand correlation vs causation and getting angry with me dude. Seriously go read a book or something this is silly.
PC G*mers aren’t known for being with the times.
There’s no hate for Nintendo here, just explaining why Steam Deck is different.
Sorry, should’ve clarified that this isn’t directed towards you, OP! Just at a lot of the other comments in here who are acting like someone else’s decision to buy an expensive gadget is a personal insult to them.
That is unfortunately very common, especially in the gaming world.
Steam Deck is the winner, They don’t even advertise.
I loved my steam deck, but it was too chunky for me and certainly for my kid.
My compromise is Anbernic type devices. Long battery life, better form factor, lots of ported games too.
Actually you will be able to play switch two games on PC. It’s only a matter of time so no your only option isn’t just switch two. It’s patience 😜
Welcome aboard !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
What I like about the deck is I bought it and I instantly already owned >1000 games for it where a good majority of those are playable out of the box.
So ya, I ain’t paying $120 CAD per game. Fuck that.
Also my controllers basically all work for it so I don’t need to buy these overpriced joycons again for a new system.
Already have webcams if I cared for a silly camera that streams at 2FPS.
It’s unfortunate that theres been a lot more attention for optimization from some developers for the switch 2 though, not much we can do about that. Some games I own the deck is screaming and barely handling it and apparently the switch 2 runs it no problem.
I ain’t paying $120 CAD per game.
You are correct. If you want Tears of the Kingdom, it is $130 ($115 plus tax). I am stunned that this is the launch price of Switch 2 games. How high will they go in the future?
The Switch 2 makes even the new ROG Ally X seem like a good deal (assuming it is around $1000 CAD), since you can just play any of your Xbox Play Anywhere games that you have acquired on sale, or have access to via Game Pass. You don’t even need a subscription to access online play, and it has free cloud saves.
No shame to anyone who bought a switch 2. My partner got one during pre-sales and is incredibly happy to have gotten one, and I feel so happy for him that he gets to have some joy in his life with it. I wish you the same joy.
But I just can’t get into it. I didn’t grow up with nintendo so the properties really don’t mean much to me. And now, I just don’t think I can swallow paying hundreds of dollars to start, then another hundred dollars to get games that seemingly play the same way as they did in the last release, plus a yearly subscription for online play. You may not see what you purchased the same way, and I’m glad that it’s meaningful to you even if I can’t find the same meaning in it – it’s good that there exists something for everyone’s niche.
I don’t see why this needs to be a competition. Are there really people out there who were about to get a steam deck but decided not to in favour of a switch 2? I feel like switch owners are well aware that it’s a Nintendo machine and theyre not gonna be playing a lot of their favourite out-of-franchise games on it. That’s what they expect and thats what they’ll likely get.
I DID grow up with Nintendo. The first gaming thing that wasn’t a DOS computer with asteroids and commander keen on it was a NES. Then an SNES. Then an N64. A few months after the N64 we got a Sega Genesis, and a PS1.
All that said?
…fuck Nintendo. Switch 1 games play at a higher resolution and better frame rate ON MY PHONE. I refused to buy a switch, and there’s no chance in hell I’ll get a switch 2. The fact that they say if they “detect” cheating or that your S2 is jailbroken they reserve the right, and built in the ability to, brick your device. Fuck them, get fucked, no fucking chance they’re getting a single cent, pence, fucking whatever out of me. Fuck yourselves well and truly to fuck! 👍🖕👍
Rant over 🥰
There is no value in defending a billion dollar company from another billion dollar company. Just accept Nintendo is more popular and live your life ❤️
What company do you think I’m defending?
Valve?
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.
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.
Exclusives are a good thing if you want to justify a $400 hardware purchase. :) “What can I play here that I can’t play elsewhere?”
If you can play it elsewhere, why blow $400?
If you want to play it, then you can buy any console. This creates competition, hopefully decreasing or at least maintaining prices for consumers.
For example, games like Jedi Survivor. Very popular. Not an exclusive. You can play it on Xbox, Playstation, PC, whatever. If all games weren’t exclusives and could be played on anything, then the only reason to buy or not buy a console would be the console performance and company behavior. This would definitely increase game sales and availability as well.
Novel interactions and consistency remain a factor, though.
Xbox is essentially straight and standard, but Nintendo and Sony games often make use of controller features (gyroscope, touch, IR sensors) which, while not exactly widely utilized, allow for interesting methods of interacting with games that are not typically found on multiplatform releases that mostly support only features common between all platforms.
And with that in mind, you can safely make some of those novel interactions into core features of first party games when you can safely assume everyone is using the same input devices and has the same hardware.
This is basically a very minor nitpicky consideration, but as an example, gyroscopic aiming was born out of first-party games. If you’ve played a game with gyro aiming, it’s very cool and nice to have, but it will never become a standard part of most third-party games if only a subset of users have hardware capable of supporting it.
You’re the perfect consumer, bud.
I just like good games, I’m platform agnostic.
You’re right, the best part of PC gaming is that it’s always inclusive, never exclusive. Thanks for the reminder
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.
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.
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…?
There are flaws and benefits to every platform, that’s why they exist otherwise only one would stand the test of time. There’s a reason why PC gaming continues to march on. It has its flaws, sure, I wouldn’t necessarily say glaring though.
The argument here isn’t that PC gaming is flawless or you can run on literally any hardware or os, that’s silly. Just that it’s more flexible and open to choice. I run my Steam library on my Windows PC, Linux PC and steam deck. Games I bought a decade ago can run perfectly fine on all these configurations. That’s the argument I was making and why your claim of PC being more exclusive seemed so disconnected from the reality of my experiences at least.
Still, it’s not an argument to say you should use one platform or the other. Just that they are different and have their pros/cons, flexibility being a huge pro of the PC platform that’s important to some people and less so for others.
That’s literally what I’m trying to point out? They all have their own quirks. And yet people bicker it’s funny.
I point out there’s limitations on PC, and get insulted. The circlejerking against Nintendo and for Steam is just wild on this community.
Well, I don’t know what to tell you then, mate. If that’s all you’re trying to say I don’t think it’s particularly controversial. Maybe it’s the way you’re saying it.
You realize there’s been vast technical advancements since 1995, right?
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think it would help SD sales much, either (and everyone would just play HL3 modded to run on regular PCs anyway if that happened), but Alyx is a bad comparison because the barrier to entry for VR is much higher than pretty much any other platform. It’s not only expensive, but requires a large amount of room, which not everyone has to dedicate exclusively to games.
Eh, I literally played Alyx on a gaming laptop with a 1060 in front of my dining room table in no more than a 3x3 cube with a $300 headset. That is not a very high barrier to entry for existing pc gamers at least. A Steam Deck exclusive may fare a little better since it’s a self contained console, but I doubt it would do that much better if VR was enough to discourage people tbh
That’s good that you were able to do that with that specific game, but would all VR games work in that space? After all, you wouldn’t be getting it to play one game.
I mean, I played most of my library in that space. I ‘S’ ranked plenty of Beat Saber maps on Hard. Played Space Pirate Trainer a few times. The Lab. Phasmophobia. Etc. You can genuinely easily play most VR games seated if you really wanted to, even if it’s not as nice as having standing room
I needed more room to not hit things when I used it, but I am pretty clumsy. Must be a skill issue.
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.
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.
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.
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 5En Garde? PC Exclusive, decent game, but limited and a little boring if I’m being honest.
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.
I can’t imagine a point and click RPG like Baldur’s Gate or Fallout 1 and 2 being remotely playable on a Steam Deck. You pretty much have to have a Mouse and Keyboard for them. The Glide Pads will only get you so far.
Lol what comical copium.
They are both handheld gaming devices. To claim otherwise is nothing more than an ideological feature that only matters to 2% of thr market.
Not really copium. OP makes a great point. It’s like comparing Xbox sales to the sales of a specific pre-built PC. The pre-built PC could never compete, but all PC sales over a given period likely outnumber Xbox sales significantly.
I don’t own either, and probably never will, but IMO, you are the one who is coping.
Pure copium.
They are both handheld gaming devices. Consumers do not care about anything else, just wait until the xbox handheld eats even more of those sales.
Playing with a amiga as a kid when I was at friends and got to play Nintendo I always felt like an outsider… But I didn’t realise how lucky I am that it was like that. I was exposed to so many more games, and got to tinker. Got to see many crack intros that was mesmerising to me as a kid. Soon enough I got into coding because of it… And guess if that was useful later. I’m never going to think buying a walled garden device is ok, sends the wrong message to your kids and hampers their development. Don’t take the easy way out.
Fuck yeah, the Amiga was an amazing gaming machine. We had cracked copies of damn near everything. Wings, Lemmings, Lost Vikings, Monkey Island, Leisure Suit Larry, Blood Money, Menace, The Killing Game Show, Woody’s World, It Came From the Desert, Bubble Bobble, Elvira, Out of this World… hit after goddamn hit.
Shit, I might need to reinstall WinUAE if that’s still a thing.
Also, for what its worth, the OLED Decks literally sold out today, as in, Valve doesn’t currently have any more to sell in the US.
Also also… I realize this is a silly comparison, but the Switch 2 has not outsold all variants of the Deck, yet.
Its at about 3.5 million, Steam Deck is at about 4.5 million since 2022.
Also x3, the Switch 2 is apparently already sold out as well, as in no more units available at US retailers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/nintendo-switch-console-record-sales.html
Wild the Switch 2 has nearly caught up to the Deck in less than a week.
Not surprising. The Deck has always been niche and is just one way to play PC games out of many, many other options.