Comment by danso
3 days ago
Sounds like the Switch 2 might be a bit more powerful and similarly priced to the 3-year-old Deck. But even if Switch’s hardware feature set was substantially better, Steam’s much cheaper (and more expansive) library is still the killer feature. I don’t think the Switch 1’s Zelda launch title has ever been discounted lower than $40 despite being 8 years old. On Steam, virtually every top title will be 50% within 2 years, if not 1.
My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.
Even with a steam deck, I am probably going to get the Switch2, mostly because I can lower my head on in-game profiteering, which is increasingly prevalent on steam games.
> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.
My impression is that the general quality of games on the Switch (or Switch 2 or eShop) is sub par the quality of, e.g. Zelda. This is obviously because Zelda is a landmark title and it doesn't make sense to compare it with "the general quality" of games on Steam. It would make more sense to compare it with the quality of other landmark titles on Steam e.g. Baldur's Gate 3.
You can compare the general quality of games on Steam (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5") with the general quality of games on Switch (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5"), though I'm not sure it is that interesting of a comparison, since no one buys the "average" game but what they consider to be the best games on the platform.
I'd suspect that any attempt at an "objective" comparison (obviously, an impossible task) would land in favour of Steam simply because it has basically all of (core) gaming for most of history on it. Though obviously such an "objective" comparison would be meaningless for something like this where literally your subjective opinion should matter the most for your choice.
[dead]
I would agree that the Switch's really big feature at this point is that it is where Nintendo games appear, and in that family-friendly-but-still-high-quality niche they are still worth chasing if you want them.
I don't know how you get from there to "games on steam are sub par quality" because at this point, everything else is on Steam, so calling the rest of the Steam library "sub par" is effectively calling the entire rest of the industry, from top to bottom, "sub par", and I'd have a hard time with that one. Nintendo has a pretty good track record but they're just one company. And not because I love AAA, I'm pretty much out of the AAA loop entirely at this point, but because it's literally everything else. In particular, the XBox exclusive and PS exclusives are, if not dead, on life support. PS may still have a sort of "Japanese game that doesn't appear on Steam" niche, but even that's getting eaten into; every major Atlus release lately is showing up on Steam as a first-class citizen, for instance.
As far as quality goes, the main things steam looks for [0] to release is that it launches on the platforms you say it's available for, and that it matches the store page you've made for it. Presumably it'd have to be absolutely malicious for them to get involved past that
[0] https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/review_process
2 replies →
On the other hand, I've heard it said that the Steam Deck's sticker price is almost wholly justified as a single-purpose Baldur's Gate 3 device. Let alone Skyrim, Civ, etc.
Just because steam sells games that do in-game profiteering, doesn't mean you need to play them?
> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.
An impossibly high bar given that the Zelda games are some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
It's not impossible... it happened once already, in 1986 with the release of Legend of Zelda 1. And it keeps happening with every new Nintendo console release where a new Zelda comes along.
You can absolutely make a game to the quality of Zelda as an indie developer.
1 reply →
A lot of games need ui redesign for hand held controllers. That’s often the biggest issue.
Nintendo games have consistently disappointed me with their lack of depth in their stories. Breath of the Wild had an amazing open world, but the characters came off as two-dimensional and the final boss was completely disappointing. (there's something especially uncanny about having a protagonist who doesn't utter a word, even if it's meant to help players self-insert) Mario Odyssey was even more pitiful in how it retread the same surface level cartoonish villainy of Bowser kidnapping the princess. Nintendo certainly makes games that are fun to play, but as an adult, I've come to expect more from art, and plenty of the games on Steam actually respect the capability of their audience to not turn off their brains.
Ehh, sounds like it wasn't your genre or mood, not that you "need adult games That respect your brain". Do you expect Cuphead to have this rich lore or to recreate the feeling of playing a Fleischmen-era cartoon?
Tastes will be different and I can respect that. But I feel there's no worse kind of criticism than one that is berating a game for something it was never targeting to do in thr first place. Why lambast a Mario game for it's lack of deep characterization instead of saying "I prefer a story-heavy game" and picking up the Last of Us?
[dead]
> My impression is that the general quality of games on steam is sub par the quality of, eg., Zelda.
What? Given that 99.9% of all games are published on Steam, what you are comparing is Zelda against gaming as a whole, not “the quality of games on steam”
Zelda is good, but it’s not better than literally all of gaming. If you are not a die hard Nintendo fan, I’d rather use Steam and enjoy saner pricing. There is always emulation for Nintendo.
Totally. Steam store looks like a god damn aliexpress marketplace and is tasteless design.
The Store UI is disgusting and intrusive compared to all other competitors who actually have a decent overview and design..
You can collect gems, cards and other misleading virtual currencies.. Tons of misleading business practises and time-consuming bloatware distractions hidden behind that terrible UI.
Steam is first and foremost DRM. A game-prison. You don't own a single thing. Gamers have totally drunk the kool aid.. They forgot back when Steam was bloatware forced on Half-Life and Valve games and it was despised for a decade before they became complacent little worshippers.
People buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, generally. It's actually baffling how other AAA game studios release games at full price in a buggy state, then are heavily discounted months later with enough patches for them to finally be playable. I don't like how Nintendo games rarely get decent discounts but I understand why they're preserving the image that their games are worth the price.
This is neither here nor there, but you can emulate a good amount of Switch games on the Steam deck which I find pretty comical. Better hardware was sorely needed.
Yeah; the Steam Deck still runs a Zen 2 chip, while handhelds like the Ally X are on Zen 4. We'll likely start seeing some handheld PCs begin upgrading to Zen 5/Strix Point this year, and IMO that may be the point where these devices start actually being able to replace desktop gaming PCs for some gamers.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAu7L1hezJA
I wonder whether this kind of discounting is healthy.
It's surely healthy for Valve's bottom line, but it introduces an element of unpredictability into pricing, creating an inconsistent reinforcement regimen, which is the kind that most effectively reinforces a behavior (namely the purchase of games).
Discounting also debases the perceived value of something, which, in addition, I suspect, to reducing the joy of ownership and use, should further encourage consumption.
I find myself more and more bored of video games, and I wonder whether this is partly because Steam and Humble Bundle's discounting practices have ruined the experience of acquisition and ownership, reducing it to a kind of gluttony and buffer-style gorging.
I also wonder whether Nintendo's pricing does a better job of maintaining the integrity of the experiences they want to offer players.
It's a trickle down effect for sure. Where indies suffer the most. You have games getting away with $70 price tags, but your indie game you spent 2+ years on better no cost more than 15-20 a pop and better have a 50% launch discount. You really can't sustain yourself even as a true solo dev in western countries (let alone if you need to commission/hire an artist/composer).
And when I say "sustain in western countries" I'm talking the bog bottom line of "us federal minimum wage", coming down to approx. $15k/year. That's 1000 copies of a $15 game that is probably upped to 1800 copies after valve and other's cuts. Even that paltry marker is hard just becsuse the market is so saturated (and not in a good way).
It's only gonna get worse as a generation that is raised on mobile games and game pass settle in. The idea of spending money upfront from a game may be lost entirely.
>I also wonder whether Nintendo's pricing does a better job of maintaining the integrity of the experiences they want to offer players.
That was indeed an explicit strategy of Nintendo. Keep a premium brand and a price thst reflects that. Sales are rare to maintain this idea of an evergreen title that is always selling.
One of the most successful indie games (Factorio) has had a strict policy of no sales ever. Of course, this is not the norm, but it is not necessary to sell for pennies unless your game is explicitly limited in scope or playtime. Factorio and a number of other indies have also loudly raised their prices and this too hasn't hurt them. At the least, there isn't a one-size-fits-all rule here.