this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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What people miss about Steam Deck's "loss" to Nintendo (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by atomicpoet@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
14 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] yesman@lemmy.world 32 points 5 days ago (3 children)

One day, a handheld running Linux will emulate Mario Kart Wold. A Nintendo product will never run a Steam game.

[–] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

A Nintendo product will never run a Steam game.

What do you mean by "Steam game"? Because I can go on Steam right now and purchase No Man's Sky, then hop onto both a PS4 and a PS5 and do the same thing, and then within the same session purchase NMS on Switch 1 and Switch 2.

Either I'm dumb, or we're dumb.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Many indie games are PC only and are unlikely to ever be ported to a Nintendo platform -- mostly because it's a lot easier to play them on new PCs. As Nintendo products age, emulation can be one of the only ways the games stay playable.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago

I would not say never, as soon as we have Linux running on it, the floodgates will open

It was the same with the OG switch.