Nintendo can make sure their handheld has affordable hardware yet can play all their AAA games as they were meant to. Steam Deck can’t ever have that luxury. Some Steam Deck makers will make expensive ones that can play most of them, some will make cheaper ones that aren’t made for those games at all.
This is very difficult to explain to the casual buyer (think parents buying as a present for their kids).
I’m not sure most parents would be buying a handheld pc as a present for their kids. That’s a very expensive present to give a kid that could smash it on the ground or forget somewhere easily.
All the kids i know either have hand-me-down phones or new phones that’re at most mid-range or multiple generations old. I.E. the large majority of kids aren’t using 900 dollar phones
I’m not sure I follow. I have strange opinions about kids because I don’t think you should give a kid a 900€ phone/handheld when alternatives under 200€ exist?
I’m glad you can (and want to) buy a 900€ device for each of your 3 children, but I’m not sure how connected to the reality you are if you think that’s the norm.
If you think that giving a kid a 900€ phone when there’s a much cheaper alternative that does the same is/should be the norm, you are part of a problem called consumerism.
What’s a valid reason to buy an expensive phone to a kid when a much cheaper alternative can do the same?
Man, I just bought a refurbished Pixel 7 for $160 for myself. If you think I’m buying a $400+ Steam Deck – let alone some other handheld PC that’s even more expensive – for my kids, you’re outta your damn mind!
When a games developer make a game for Switch Nintendo has a say in how it must perform before you’re allowed to release it. Valve have no such requirements on games put on Steam - it’s up to the developers whether to require a lot of performance or not. Thus, while Valve sells the Steam Deck that doesn’t mean games on Steam necessarily run well on it.
There’s a lot of similarities and differences - the Steam Deck’s gaming mode is able to run a very barebones OS, similar to the very basic OS that the Nintendo Switch runs, with the game running in comparable sandboxes with stable software interfaces.
But Nintendo worked with Nvidia specifically to develop a variant of their hardware dedicated for gaming, while Valve essentially put a Linux laptop in a handheld console format (IIRC they did get help from AMD, but it wasn’t the same kind of deep collaboration), which notably may have different components between different hardware revisions.
When you try to maximize game performance that makes a difference, because on the Switch you can reliably push the hardware to the limits and expect it to keep working and on a Deck you have to test the hardware before pushing it. And if you find a trick that depends on architectural quirks you have to special-case it to not break on other hardware. There’s no guarantee that rarely used hardware features (both physical, and CPU/GPU instructions, etc) will stick around on a future revision of a Deck, while Nintendo guarantees forward compatibility (with help from Nvidia).
Nintendo even worked with Nvidia to emulate the Switch 1 GPU when running games for the first Switch on a Switch 2! They’re even going so far that they’re patching the emulation layer on a per-game basis to fix games where the default emulation method fails! And the ability to do this depends on knowing the exact properties of the hardware revisions of both the original and new GPU! (there’s architectural differences in the GPU that would break some games unless it was emulated)
Now Lenovo also has devices running SteamOS on different hardware, so games that runs on both either needs special cased optimizations for both, or only generic optimizations, or they simply have to decide to support one specific model better than others (which could end up with a game looking worse on better hardware because the dev didn’t try as hard with that hardware)
Nintendo can make sure their handheld has affordable hardware yet can play all their AAA games as they were meant to. Steam Deck can’t ever have that luxury. Some Steam Deck makers will make expensive ones that can play most of them, some will make cheaper ones that aren’t made for those games at all.
This is very difficult to explain to the casual buyer (think parents buying as a present for their kids).
I’m not sure most parents would be buying a handheld pc as a present for their kids. That’s a very expensive present to give a kid that could smash it on the ground or forget somewhere easily.
You have strange opinions regarding kids. Compare the price to a mobile phone.
/father of three
All the kids i know either have hand-me-down phones or new phones that’re at most mid-range or multiple generations old. I.E. the large majority of kids aren’t using 900 dollar phones
OK? Give it a couple more years and I bet you’ll start seeing that with handheld PC’s too
I’m not sure I follow. I have strange opinions about kids because I don’t think you should give a kid a 900€ phone/handheld when alternatives under 200€ exist?
I’m glad you can (and want to) buy a 900€ device for each of your 3 children, but I’m not sure how connected to the reality you are if you think that’s the norm.
The norm where? European middle-class, absolutely.
If you think that giving a kid a 900€ phone when there’s a much cheaper alternative that does the same is/should be the norm, you are part of a problem called consumerism.
What’s a valid reason to buy an expensive phone to a kid when a much cheaper alternative can do the same?
I think part of the issue here is that you believe that phones that cost 900 EUR really don’t offer anything cheaper alternatives don’t.
So answer me: what’s a feature that a kid needs and you won’t find in a cheaper phone?
Easy. Security (I work in cybersec) and performance (kids like to game).
Do you consider kids to be actual people?
Guy, this is Lemmy where the concept of a happy middle class EU/American is simply a lie that doesn’t exist.
Man, I just bought a refurbished Pixel 7 for $160 for myself. If you think I’m buying a $400+ Steam Deck – let alone some other handheld PC that’s even more expensive – for my kids, you’re outta your damn mind!
why cant valve optimise their new games specifically for their
hardwaresteam deck? why is that impossible?It’s not theirs?
valve can optimize their games for a steam deck. The steam deck isnt theirs?
When a games developer make a game for Switch Nintendo has a say in how it must perform before you’re allowed to release it. Valve have no such requirements on games put on Steam - it’s up to the developers whether to require a lot of performance or not. Thus, while Valve sells the Steam Deck that doesn’t mean games on Steam necessarily run well on it.
Still not sure why this is the case. Have yet to hear any clear argument why it will never happen for Valve.
There’s a lot of similarities and differences - the Steam Deck’s gaming mode is able to run a very barebones OS, similar to the very basic OS that the Nintendo Switch runs, with the game running in comparable sandboxes with stable software interfaces.
But Nintendo worked with Nvidia specifically to develop a variant of their hardware dedicated for gaming, while Valve essentially put a Linux laptop in a handheld console format (IIRC they did get help from AMD, but it wasn’t the same kind of deep collaboration), which notably may have different components between different hardware revisions.
When you try to maximize game performance that makes a difference, because on the Switch you can reliably push the hardware to the limits and expect it to keep working and on a Deck you have to test the hardware before pushing it. And if you find a trick that depends on architectural quirks you have to special-case it to not break on other hardware. There’s no guarantee that rarely used hardware features (both physical, and CPU/GPU instructions, etc) will stick around on a future revision of a Deck, while Nintendo guarantees forward compatibility (with help from Nvidia).
Nintendo even worked with Nvidia to emulate the Switch 1 GPU when running games for the first Switch on a Switch 2! They’re even going so far that they’re patching the emulation layer on a per-game basis to fix games where the default emulation method fails! And the ability to do this depends on knowing the exact properties of the hardware revisions of both the original and new GPU! (there’s architectural differences in the GPU that would break some games unless it was emulated)
Now Lenovo also has devices running SteamOS on different hardware, so games that runs on both either needs special cased optimizations for both, or only generic optimizations, or they simply have to decide to support one specific model better than others (which could end up with a game looking worse on better hardware because the dev didn’t try as hard with that hardware)