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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If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.
For now.
Sure, if it doesn’t bother someone to wait 3-5 years. It’s no Problem. You can say this too all kind of Games. You don’t want to pay 100$ for GTA VI? No Problem, just wait 5 years and it will be 20$ on sale.
Gamers do be a patient bunch sometimes
I’m still playing AOE 2/3, civ v and endless space after all these years
Yuup. Nintendo’s biggest advantage has always been their intellectual property, and even that hasn’t always saved them. glances at the Wii U
Fuck $80 mario you can get Garfield Kart for $5
What I like about the deck is I bought it and I instantly already owned >1000 games for it where a good majority of those are playable out of the box.
So ya, I ain’t paying $120 CAD per game. Fuck that.
Also my controllers basically all work for it so I don’t need to buy these overpriced joycons again for a new system.
Already have webcams if I cared for a silly camera that streams at 2FPS.
It’s unfortunate that theres been a lot more attention for optimization from some developers for the switch 2 though, not much we can do about that. Some games I own the deck is screaming and barely handling it and apparently the switch 2 runs it no problem.
I ain’t paying $120 CAD per game.
You are correct. If you want Tears of the Kingdom, it is $130 ($115 plus tax). I am stunned that this is the launch price of Switch 2 games. How high will they go in the future?
The Switch 2 makes even the new ROG Ally X seem like a good deal (assuming it is around $1000 CAD), since you can just play any of your Xbox Play Anywhere games that you have acquired on sale, or have access to via Game Pass. You don’t even need a subscription to access online play, and it has free cloud saves.
I’ll emulate Nintendo games till the day I die because fuck Nintendo and their greed.
They make great games and they’re a super anti-consumer company. Perfect combination for going out of your way to pirate their games.
Meh, personally I haven’t enjoyed a Nintendo game since the GameCube. Every new game they release feels like a rehash of the same shit they’ve been shoveling down our throats since the Wii. Nintendo forgot how to innovate.
BotW and TotK were both really good. Don’t mistake this as me saying “Nintendo is good actually”, more like a broken clock is right twice a day sort of statement.
BotW and TotK are by far the worst Zelda games ever made. What’s the point of having a huge open world if there’s nothing to do in it? Plus there are no real dungeons and there’s barely a plot. It honestly blows my mind that people enjoy those games. Hell, TotK was so lazily slapped together that they couldn’t even bother creating a new map.
The funniest thing is that Nintendo buyers are not even part of this conversation LMAO 🤣
