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Comment by tourmalinetaco | Hacker News Reader

The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck? It’s exclusives aren’t really that exclusive when emulation exists. And all things considered, buying a legal copy of the game and then pirating the game file is equivalent enough to satisfy most moral objections one may have.

The PS5 is really the only console with any amount of exclusives, and even then Sony is opening up to PC more and more.

So to answer OP, none are really worth by themselves. Online games obviously create different considerations though.

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> The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck?

One reason is that the cheapest steam deck is twice the price of the cheapest switch while being much less portable. If you want a Switch-like TV experience you need to spend an extra $150 on the dock and a controller whereas that comes in the box on a Switch OLED with a vastly better screen for $350. The Steam Deck is obviously more capable but it definitely has tradeoffs even for someone willing to go through all of the effort of piracy and emulation.

FWIW, you don't actually have to spend that much on a dock.

Since the docks weren't initially available, I purchased a $20 USB-C hub from Anker on newegg (with passthrough charging, SD card, USB/USB-C/HDMI) although there are even cheaper ones some as low as $10 for HDMI only. It fits pretty easily in the nylon bag with the charger so it's now a portable dock which I can also use for work due to the full linux desktop on the steam deck (I combine it with a collapsing BT keyboard and mini mouse when not at a desk).

Controllers you can get pretty good USB ones for $10 with better form factor than the switch and easier to replace.

The openness of the steam deck really helps with peripherals.

Oh... one thing I forgot to mention. I was concerned about strain on the USB-C connector, esp w/ the hub, so I added a magnetic USB-C connector. It's worked both to protect the port and break away if the hub was mispositioned and adding strain at an angle.

>>The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck?

Have you used the Steam Deck?

It's a janky experience if you try to use it in the living room. For one thing, the Bluetooth chip is terrible. I realized this when I emulated Donkey Kong, was doing terribly, then unplugged it from my TV and started winning in handheld mode.

The issue isn't the TV introducing lag, I followed instruction online to install the driver for the Xbox controller Dongle and the difference was night and day.

This is just an emblematic example. I had to buy a wifi extender because the Steam Deck literally crash itself (It will actually report "out of battery" when the battery is full) when it has a bad wifi signal, due to some sort of hardware flaw.

Steam Deck is a very janky experience, which perhaps isn't a surprise when you realize Valve has the highest profits per employee in tech, they accomplish a lot with a small staff, but they have huge resource constraints when producing products like the Steam Deck.

Because of convenience. I could do the whole dance fiddling with settings of yuzu and ryuxin or just press play on my switch.

Because I like Nintendo and would like to financially reward them for their efforts?

Did you miss the part where they said they bought the game before pirating it? Hardware doesn't make money, software does.

No I did not. Sales numbers matter. And Nintendo claims to make a profit on the hardware.

I don’t want the hardware, I want the games. The hardware is literally useless to me. A Steam Deck does everything I need it to do but better because it’s a Linux machine.

What you want is irrelevant here. If they wanted to sell it for the Steam Deck platform, they would have done so.

Because everyone can actually buy a Switch and it’s cheaper.

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