The Steam Deck is coming and Nintendo needs to beef up its support for classic games before the portable gaming PC comes out.
The Steam Deck has been announced and preorders are open, which means people are going to be able to buy the handheld device (assuming it’s not sold out until 2030), and play their entire Steam Library, that likely has games going back to the 90s. But there are going to be some unscrupulous users who aren’t just going to play Steam games – they’re going to use the platform’s open software to run all their favorite classic games from other platforms. That means that people who have been wanting to play their favorite N64, GameCube and even NES and SNES games will have a way to do it on the go through an emulator, even if it’s probably not the way Nintendo wants people to do it. The Nintendo Switch launched more than four years ago now, and it still has fewer classic games than the significantly weaker Nintendo 3DS. Right now, you can only play the handful of NES and SNES games that Nintendo includes with its online membership. There are 120 games total between these two consoles, and nothing from the N64 or GameCube.
