Comment by tossandthrow
3 days ago
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.
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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
I would submit that in terms of whether a library is "sub par" we are generally looking towards the top end rather than the bottom.
The Nintendo Switch lowered the bar substantially for what it takes to get on that platform, and broadly speaking, I support that, I'm not complaining about it.
Malicious, or to have an anime school and get on the bad side of a particular reviewer.
No, I will never forgive the Chaos;Head NOAH . Especially since it only got through from blowback as being part of the famous Steins gate franchise and dozens of other games got quashed later.
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.
Can you really? Maybe, but I don't think it's cost effective. It requires a flawless art and tech pipeline, alone side masterful game design. You see how Nintendo can spend 2 years alone perfecting Mario's Jump and you realize the budget for that level of polish is enormous.
Not as enoirmouus as paying a studio in California to make a failed GaaS shooter service. But still a large step past a AA budget.
I'd say at the bare minimum you need a very solid staff of 5 to pull it off though. Hollow knight did it with a rough core of 3 devs + composer (and other support, of course). The very ambitious Toweers of towers of aghasba was reportedly 6 devs IIRC, but that's TBD and might have scaled up.
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?
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> 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.