After the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve's take on a handheld PC that can play anything in your Steam library without port work, I'm running out of reasons to ever give Nintendo money again. With everything the Steam Deck purports to do, the reasons I maintain for owning a Switch are dwindling, to the point where I just wouldn't buy one if I didn't already have one. We're down to three: Mario, Metroid, and Zelda. Before the Steam Deck, I might've included the novelty of playing a few choice indies in bed or on some cool grass. But based on what we know about it so far, nothing else about the Switch stands up to the Steam Deck, and the open nature of the Deck only highlights how slow and stubborn Nintendo's hardware, software, and online networking have been for about as long as I can remember. A new Zelda game every couple years just isn't worth buying a low-spec tablet for anymore, so if the Deck does everything Valve says it will and well, I'm putting Nintendo on ice for good.
After the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve’s take on a handheld PC that can play anything in your Steam library without port work, I’m running out of reasons to ever give Nintendo money again. With everything the Steam Deck purports to do, the reasons I maintain for owning a Switch are dwindling, to the point where I just wouldn’t buy one if I didn’t already have one. We’re down to three: Mario, Metroid, and Zelda. Before the Steam Deck, I might’ve included the novelty of playing a few choice indies in bed or on some cool grass. But based on what we know about it so far, nothing else about the Switch stands up to the Steam Deck, and the open nature of the Deck only highlights how slow and stubborn Nintendo’s hardware, software, and online networking have been for about as long as I can remember. A new Zelda game every couple years just isn’t worth buying a low-spec tablet for anymore, so if the Deck does everything Valve says it will and well, I’m putting Nintendo on ice for good. Steam Deck plays more games, better games, and for less money Nintendo will always have its first-party games to lean on, but that’s literally all it has anymore, not just in the console market but in the handheld market, which has been Nintendo’s turf for decades. The Steam Deck even mirrors Nintendo’s usual hardware gimmickry, slotting into a dock for play on TVs or monitors. Your Steam purchases will always be there too, playable from here into the end of modern civilization on whatever can run SteamOS. Just think about it: the Deck can run every Steam game. Do some rough math and add up the cost of every game in your Steam library. That’s how much you don’t have to spend on the Switch to take those games with you. I’ll have over 1500 games to play in bed or at the park or at bar, day drinking while noodling around with the latest Baldur’s Gate 3 update, from day one. It makes the thought of buying Skyward Sword a second time, a 10-year-old game and one of the lesser 3D Zeldas, at $60 truly sting. It’s straight up mean, especially when you think about all the classic games Nintendo is sitting on that you can’t play on the Switch today. Wild, to think that I’m better off emulating Metroid Fusion on a PC—also possible on a Steam Deck, more on that in a minute—than ever expecting it to release on a Nintendo system ever again The people that grew up playing Nintendo games are just making their own now.
