Valve: Steam Deck ISN'T competing with the Switch

You are upset that folks made a direct comparison to what Valve offers to what Nintendo is offering and you view it as an attack?

No, because I know this thing won't sell more than 10 million units. However, they don't get to play the oblivious act with "why are Nintendo fans attacking the Steam Deck?"

If y'all are wondering why Nintendo fans are 'attacking' this, then look no further than comments trash talking the OLED Switch and comparing it to this. Y'all don't get to play the oblivious act now.

Read above.

The comparison is made for obvious reasons, but it can't and won't compete with Nintendo. Obviously it's not gonna have Nintendo exclusives and then there's the simple fact that Nintendo has been the leader in handhelds for years. No company has come close to taking them down. This device is simply meant for PC gamers who want the option to take their games on the go and to introduce PC gaming to gamers who may not otherwise be interested. For a decent price, you can PC game on the go or dock it to a screen. No need to build your own PC and worry about all that silliness. Sure, it's not 4K, it's not 120fps+, but that's not what it's meant for. It's an easy breezy way to PC game with desktop and portable options.

"Will it sell" is the big question mark. We're gonna find out.

I didn't, that's the jump you made. Feel free to quote it. I said the attempt is to make Linux viable. Since you said you're hearing about the transition of gamers for 2 decades that means something has been done 2 decades back to facilitate it. Feel free to to share who did it and when.

What about the above? @TheEroica comes off as a very unbiased, pro-Nintendo, pro-Valve party that sees advantages to both.

Makes a decent point about the timing but if you think Valve hasn't been working on Steam Deck for years and hasn't planned to announce it at this time for months, you're kidding yourself.

These are industry people, they all know what they are up to, and Valve is not throwing shade at Nintendo. I mean the two don't even play eachother's games for the most part, what is there to compete over?

"It's another attempt by Valve to entice developers to adopt Linux." That is a transitioning.

Hearing something for 2 decades does not equate to hearing something 2 decades ago. It means hearing something over the past 2 decades.

Why are you attempting this strange sematic strategy for something that is pretty clear?

The fact people make the comparison between it and the Switch with "oh, it's like a Switch that plays PC games" means yes, whether Valve likes it or not, or wants to admit it, it IS competing with the Switch.

Adoption doesn't mean transition. That's the jump you made. MS has adopted Linux themselves for a plethora of things, doesn't mean they are transitioning to it or even want to.

Over the past 2 decades means that this idea to 'gamers transition to Linux' existed 2 decades ago hence you were hearing for over 2 decades. If there was nothing 2 decades back then there's no way you would be hearing about it for over 2 decades.

Just correcting that this whole thing is fairly recent.

Valve does have a giant boner Linux. Must admit, having tried it, I don't get it. Why use this over windows? It's more open, but kind of seems more like a pain in the arse. Maybe you need to be an egg-head to understand the Matrix properly.

It also seems somewhat of a coincidence for something def not competing with Switch, to announce it on the exact day the new Switch goes up for pre-order sure seems pretty fucking competitive to me.

@uninspiredcup: just a really good opportunity to announce a device that provides the power and scope people are looking for... Nintendo didn't announce a switch pro so valve kinda did.

Live and let live I say!

I never said otherwise. However, they're trying to act like they don't know why Nintendo fans are attacking the Steam Deck. It's because of what I wrote before, people were using the Steam Deck and jumping on that bandwagon to attack the Switch. It's like the Remy Ma and Nicki Minaj situation all over again. "Why are Nicki Minaj fans attacking Remy Ma?" I don't know, maybe it's because a lot of Remy Ma 'supporters' were simply just haters of Nicki? Of course Valve is smarter than Remy Ma. Valve knows not to jump on the hatewagon, because it doesn't translate to sales or support. Meanwhile, Remy Ma jumped on the Nicki hatewagon because she thought that Nicki haters were her fans, which was proven false.

@luxuryheart: I think everyone was expecting major Switch upgrade aka Switch Pro but Nintendo left everyone disappointed with this OLED and charging $350 which is barely an upgrade. Valve out of nowhere announced Steam Deck which should have been a super upgrade Switch from the get-go, and charging $50 more and up depending what GB version to buy.

Hate isn't the word, just upset with Nintendo for not making a beefy handheld upgrade but the fact Steam Deck proves you can spice up the specs really hurt Nintendo fans in a way.

Oh and I do like Nicki Minaj...but Cardi B is where it's for me😏

@davillain-: Nintendo’s price would have been a lot more. The Steam Deck is missing adjustable stand, NFC reader, Oled screen, Dock to increase performance, detachable controllers, add the SSD drive 64g upgrade CPU, more RAM, and then make it indestructible like Switch is….you now have a $700 dollar Switch and Nintendo is going out of business.

Wait, is Niki Minaj, Gaben in this scenario?

Adoption in this context is a move towards a different platform. That is literally a transition. You believing the my choice of words is somehow changes that or means something different is silly.

Then you also decided to redefine the meaning of "over the past two decades" to "it happened two decades ago". Is even more silly and is a very unusual battle you decided to argue on. Anyone stating that feature X or something is going cause a shift towards Linux is not something new and is not something that spurred into existence because of Steam Deck. How long have you been gaming on PC? 😐

It doesn't matter who is who because it's all bullshit drama for the sake of drama, suppose that's to be expected from people referencing Remy Ma and Nicki Minaj, though.

There's no escaping that shit, swear to god. Go read your People and Us! magazines if you want that stuff.

If Valve said that its upcoming Steam Dock is not competing against Nintendo's Switch, then Nintendo continues its iron-fisted monopoly of the hybrid console market making small improvements of the Switch due to a lack of competition. If Microsoft, Sony, and now Valve are unwilling to compete against Nintendo for the hybrid console market, who will?

Well... I got my 512 version reserved for the 2nd quarter of next year.

It's funny that Bloomberg's fake Switch Pro leaks turned disappointment came at exactly around the time SteamBox was announced on the same day as Oled.

Obviously planned, a pathetic coup to overtake the king, off with his head.

wut? this has been happening in the gaming industry since forever. did i say gaming industry? i meant to say in any competitive industry.

The base deck will struggle to run every game on PC because of it's slow memory. Anything designed for faster storage might not work to well on the base model.It also won't be viable to play some games on the deck because of storage limitations unless you want to spend extra money to get additional external storage(like micro sd cards) to play larger games.

@super600: And Lord Gaben stated micro SD isn’t recommended for amazing next gen AAA games for some reason.

Switch is targeted at people who want a portable video game console.

Steam Deck is targeted at people who want a portable PC.

Completely different markets.

Early damage control 😄

Yesyes. Steam D(r)eck is as much competition to the Switch as Steam Machines are to home consoles.

eMMC is faster than HDDs which is what the overwhelming majority of games on PC are made in mind with. eMMC has a maximum read/write speed of 400mb/s while SATA SSDs have read/write speeds of 550mb/s at most. You can get a 512GB Micro SD for around $60. Base Steam deck will be fine.

Only if you're willing to buy some Chinese off-brand that's not actually 512GB.

@dzimm: Here is this $65 512gb sd card from Gigastone. It's got 5 stars and 19,945 reviews. The other day Sandisk's 512gb sd card was on sale for $62 on Amazon now it is currently $69.99 same for the Samsung EVO SD card. SD cards are on sale pretty often so finding one for a decent price isn't hard.

I think sheep are just upset that Nintendo can't coast on being the only handheld hybrid anymore and the advantages of the Steam Deck make Nintendo look bad in some ways. I mean the fact that they want it to fail so badly just because people made the comparisons says it all to me.

Nah, this was always bound to happen. Steam fans have always insulted Nintendo by claiming they're emulating their games because they think Nintendo games and consoles aren't worth buying, and mocking Nintendo fans for buying their games at full price. The Steam Deck thing was just the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Huh... looks like prices recently plummeted. I was just looking at microSD cards last week, and they were selling for significantly higher.

Nintendo fans never took the tiny basement emulation crowd seriously, and those games are glitch fests. Anyone who would take the time to rip off glitchy versions of Nintendo games months after release deserves pity 😄

Do you really think this or are you just trolling?

Loser leaves town bet, Switch destroys the deck in sales. It won't even be remotely close.

Will you put your money where your mouth is?

I got 512gb of nvme storage on my PC mate, it will be fine also that nvme drive is porbably 1-2gbps. Its fast as hell. This thing is leagues ahead of the switch.

Even the micro sd card is like what 90mbps, which will absolute be faster then what HDD's do.

And about the memory being slow its 88gbps, for 800p, that's 1 million pixels, slam fsr on it and u can cut it in half on top of it. xbox series X sits at 8 million pixels at 560gbps, so divide it by 8 and u get 70gbps or even lower with FSR.

This handheld has no problems playing anything under the sun.

This handheld gets praised for its insanely good memory architecture, storage solution and hyper modern architecture for gpu and cpu that are equal towards current gen consoles. There is nothing this handheld won't run unless the raw performance simple isn't up for it when games are getting extremely complex and push 1080p 30fps on consoles again. We won't be seeing those for a while however.

The switch can't even play a hybrid ps3/ps4 game called witcher 3 without needing to have glasses to how blurry as **** it looks like, with pretty much all detail stripped to its core. Basically the entire game needs to be redesigned to get it to run on that thing and even then that's it.

U will be playing current gen ac games / horizon zero dawn / far cry all on this thing without effort.

This thing will have no issue playing any game without effort straight out of the box. And that's what makes this handheld being far more useful then the switch which basically can only play "select nintendo games".

Steam deck is in another dimension versus the switch its not even funny and that's even with the base 399 model, the higher models are even better.

Its actually so far ahead it can even emulate the switch games in the same generation where its released in, and do it at most likely double the performance + enhanced settings. That's how pathetic the switch is.

There new switch oled version doesn't even support DLSS. the absolute minimum u could expect. There is a reason why even nitnendo's PR machine is starting to shit the brick while the entire market is laughing at them.

Switch has what 0.2 tflops on a old architecture, vs 1,6 new architecture + fsr = 3,2 tflops Its probably more in line with 2 - 4 because of the new architecture. how much times is it better? almost 20x just on the gpu front ( and that's lowballing it ) cpu front is in another dimension also, memory front same thing, 4gb slow as shit memory vs 16 fast as hell next gen speeds memory that equals current gen consoles if not better for its resolution. storage speed on the switch is like what 30mbps vs 2000mbps

Nintendo is runned by a bunch donkeys and it shows.

And no this is not a psp/vita vs nintendo kind of argument.

What brought failure to the PSP and Vita was zero games and not being able to play console games like they advertised.

This thing plays everything, and has a library of 100.000 of games if not a million games straight out of the gate and will get all games that releases on PC which is practically 95% of the game market without effort. it will also be able to emulate mobile games without problems.

And that for 50 bucks more then the switch oled. while valve has no interest to sell it to the console crowd by selling it on steam where u gotta have games already bought on your account to even buy it. He made it as hard as possible to get and doesn't throw it into stores or advertise it other then to steam users. Which makes the price of 399 even more embarrasing for nintendo which could easily eat the cost and go further.

350 for switch oled is a joke, its so bad even journalist outlets like bloomberg shit on it, which triggers nintendo to no end because investors get worried so they have to respond.

@casey-wegner: The Switch has already well established itself in the market with 85 million units sold. It has become the best selling console of all time in multiple countries. I don't think the Steam Deck is going to make a dent on the Switch overnight. Gabe Newell is right the audience for the Steam Deck is pretty different from the Nintendo Switch audience. But that doesn't mean the Steam Deck doesn't have advantages over the Switch that can be ignored. Even though the Switch is selling really well it doesn't mean it's a perfect device either. The Steam Deck shows the imperfections of the Switch such as the sub par online network that is on par with OG Xbox live at best. You have to do voice chat through an app on your phone. I see Sheep talk about the Steam Deck lacking an NFC reader when all that thing is good for is scanning Amiibo's on the Switch, meanwhile the Steam Deck has bluetooth which the Switch lacks which makes it easy to connect a variety of wireless devices to the Deck. The Steam Deck makes the flaws of the Switch more apparent because they're no longer the only handheld hybrid on the market so people aren't going to overlook the Switch's downsides as much now that there is something similar on the market.

For people that want to play games other than nintendo games on the go they're likely going to get a Steam Deck over the Switch. That demographic is likely pretty small though considering hardly any 3rd party titles other than Monster Hunter Rise have gotten over a million copies sold on the Switch. Or possibly it can be a big market and people don't buy 3rd party titles other than 2d indies on the Switch because the performance and visuals are very sub par in most of them. Steam Deck could be the next PSP.

From a business perspective, it really is.

When I first started studying financial statements in college, some of the students in our class were surprised that places like Subway or even more sit down places like Applebee's were considered competitors of Wendy's and McDonald's.

"If I want a greasy burger I'm not going to Subway, and if I want to sit down then I'm not going to McDonald's!"

But people make these decisions every day based on their parameters at the time, and in the end if you're eating at any one of them then you're not eating that same meal at another. There are gradients of competition - McDonald's is more a competitor of Wendy's than Applebee's is, but they're still competitors - because they're all fighting over the same finite resource. That is the limited space in their customer's stomachs, and opportunity cost pits them against each other.

Just like if you go on a date with Mary, you cannot spend that same time with Jill (unless you're a badass).

The same principle applies here. While not as direct competitors as a Switch and new PSVita would be, they are certainly competitors fighting over the finite resources of gamers' time and money.

Valve and IGN both imply as much in their comments:

In the end, whether someone prefers a Switch or a Steam Deck is down to trade-offs, Newell said, referring to the "supernatural feeling" of being able to play Resident Evil Village on Valve's device. Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais added that Valve is focused on providing the "best solution" for enhancing how players engage with Steam's library.

"Let me put it this way," Newell said. "If you're a gamer, and you pick up a Switch, and you pick up one of these, you're going to know which one is right for you, right? And you're going to know it within 10 seconds."

For more than a few gamers, the answer could very well be "both."

Every day i am reminded of the Deck specs, and i cringe at Switch gpu/cpu/ram. It really is in a pathetic state, and because the system sells to people that don't play video games, actual gamers close their eyes on the performance of their games and just respond with "but look at Switch sales, bruh" when Switch specs are being questioned. Pathetic.

The system sells because of the games. lol. People care more about the actual games than of specs. It's not pathetic and the Switch is in a great state. This is one of the best Nintendo consoles released, like if you count handhelds, this is top 5 of all time Nintendo platform. This is what people recognize, which is why it's selling. There are very few Nintendo platforms that are on the level of this.

Of course there is criticism to be made. Where is Bayonetta 3? Metroid Prime 4 and Breath of the Wild 2, what's the progress there? If remaking a Zelda game, why not remake Ocarina of Time from the ground up in glorious HD, using the art style of the techno demo of 2011 for the Wii U? I'm pretty sure Zelda fans have been waiting for that for a while now. Improve online please? Like the entire infrastructure of that. However, despite those things, Nintendo has been doing well overall.

What are you going to say when the Switch Oled alone steamrolls "the deck" this December?

Who's going to bump all these threads so we can have a laugh?

@hardwenzen: Yeah, I guess all those copies of Pokémon, Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing just collecting dust.

@Gatygun: All that tech and it's still gonna fail 😂

Collecting dust since the first two months they were released, yes. What a disaster.

Deck is focused on PC enthousiasts, Switch is focused on the entire earth market.

Obviously the switch oled will sell more, its not even a question. nobody is even arguing this. As valve isn't even advertising it anymore because its probably already sold out for a good half year by now and they quit taking orders from what i saw.

While nintendo is pressing millions of those oled devices before its release + advertise it on any channel under the sun and every shop.

Still, the steam deck for a PC gamer is by far the best option, the switch isn't even relevant for somebody like that anymore as it offers nothing at all.