To put it in perspective there are 150 million Switches and 75 million PS5s out there. And 15 million Wii Us, if anybody is counting. This puts PC handhelds some ways ahead of the N-Gage and well behind the Game Gear.
I’m less concerned about who’s ahead in the handheld PC market and more interested on whether it’ll ever become a mass market space. I think a lot depends on prices for integrated GPUs not skyrocketing like their desktop counterparts and their performance stepping up a notch or two. We’ll see.
It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.
Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
You, by the way, are not in the majority in your usage pattern for the Switch. Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split. Which is surprising to me, because I see it as a handheld first and foremost.
I do agree that it’ll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 fares in a market where it’s not the only thing in its class, but if I had to place any bets, they have a humongous lead despite PC handhelds having been around for ages and the Deck having taken a very good stab at competitive pricing and performance a whole three years ago (what is even time, holy crap).
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop? I can see some use cases for it, I’ve had some NUCs and thin clients here and there, I just don’t think the value proposition is there to use them even as a media device. But hey, it’s a small but clearly competitive space, and if this gen APUs do indeed match a 4060 desktop level of performance when fed enough power maybe that starts to make sense next to a Xbox Series S or something as a gaming device. We’ll see.
For the record, I do have a PC plugged into a TV for gaming, mostly made out of spares and hand-me-downs built into a smaller, less garish case. I haven’t seen a mini PC that made me question that choice yet. I’m open to having my mind changed, it just hasn’t happened yet.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
PC gaming has mainstream appeal, measurably. There are lots of reasons to play games on PC, and this is an additional one, particularly compared to PlayStation and Xbox, moreso than Switch.
Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split.
I haven’t seen any reporting on that in a long time, since before this PC form factor existed, but I’d happy to peruse a link. I see some people playing Switch on the subway from time to time, but also anecdotally, most of my friends, all adults, play them docked just about exclusively. I’ve definitely seen children playing Switch Lites at the laundromat as a tool that parents use to keep them busy.
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop?
My use case is I have a very easily packed and unpacked local multiplayer machine, for emulators and fighting games especially. The Steam Deck is a bit of a pain to set up for this use case, and it can’t run Street Fighter 6 very well or at the resolutions I’d want it to, but the mini PC does all of that very well. That use case, and some interested fighting game tournament organizers I’ve been talking to, are admittedly very niche, but I think the alternative for a laptop has real legs. My friend just got one for her dad (in his late 60s) for a little north of $150. It runs Windows. It allows him to browse the web and run his office applications, plus whatever else he needs to run on x64. Most older folks I see using laptops only ever use them in a single place like a desk anyway, and they’d rather output them to a larger monitor. This is where I think this form factor will sing in the coming years, plus the real possibility of whatever living room PC game machine that Valve can put together for decent value. The other advantage is that not only can they be cheap up front and take up less space, they also use less electricity and produce less waste heat.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway. I find people tend to hedge on this. Either the Steam Deck is a consolized solution to PC gaming that makes the Switch obsolete or a bit of an experiment that doesn’t need to stack up to mainstream devices.
Yes, PCs (desktop PCs, laptops and handhelds together) are comparable to 4K home consoles these days and lead in some segments. But of those categories the handhelds are the smallest contributor while they are the largest portion of the console market. I love PC handhelds and I’d like to see those proportions shift, but it’s interesting that Valve has put a lot of resources behind having a competitive device at a very low price point and we haven’t seen more of a change.
On the docked vs handheld thing, Nintendo disclosed that info a few times. This is the first result I found just searching for it. It’s recent enough that there were already a hundred million of the things in the wild, so I don’t expect it’ll have changed much.
As for the mini PC thing… yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not sayng they don’t do the thing, I’m saying whenever I sit to look at the optimal solution for a problem the mini PCs never seem to come out on top. A PC for an older person taht doesn’t need a ton of computing power? I went with an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard last time, they are delighted at having a laptop-style thing and a tablet to watch media that works like their phone. A low power device to run some specific application? I can probably find some cheap SBC somewhere I can get running passively with a heatsink and will do the job. A portable gaming solution? I have laptops with dedicated GPUs around that are older but much faster than most mini PCs. Also, they have a screen, so there’s that. A set-top box? I can put something together for cheaper in the same performance range.
There are valid use cases. Sure, if you need a dozen of these things to embed in desktops, or something you can mount behind a screen, or… something to run a FGC tourney for cheap, apparently, there are reasons to use them. I just haven’t found they provided a better alternative than other devices for most of the uses I personally have.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway.
I’d wager that the reason the PC market has grown is due to a million different reasons that, on their own, are quite small. Probably not many people would ditch their PlayStation just for mods. Or just for more freedom on controller choices. Or just for better performance. Or just for free online play. Etc.
If I might nitpick your link on the handheld usage, which by the way is dated approximately right when this handheld PC market was born, the thing that Nintendo was seemingly seeking to justify with that data is, “Do people switch with the Switch?”, but it would not answer the question, “How many people would buy the handheld-capable version if they already had a more powerful stationary machine that plays the same games?”
I’m confused on what your hypothesis is here. You think PC handhelds are massively shifting the modes of usage of the Switch towards being primarily docked? I’m not gonna dig for it, but my understanding was that the Switch usage was slowly drifting towards more handheld over time. Even if that wasn’t the case, the numbers just don’t match. Even if 10 million people had shifted from using the Switch as a handheld to a PC handheld, why would that impact the remaining 130 million users? PC handhelds are a rounding error in the space the Switch operates in.
If I had to guess the drift towards PC probably has a lot to do with software. PC ports weren’t a given until recently and they arguably still aren’t reliably great. With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware. PCs have always been backwards and forwards compatible, but with all sorts of devices able to run the same software across many device types and hardware generations that is becoming a big selling point.
Which on the Switch is a lot weaker, mostly because Nintendo is better at making a ton of first party games than Sony and Microsoft and because they have a younger userbase that is less likely to have three other gaming-worthy devices at their fingertips at all times.
Answering this post is difficult without writing an entire book, but I think the existence of this form factor, the iteration on it, and the cycles of hardware going out of date and being replaced will, in the long term, have more and more of a tangible effect on all consoles, and Nintendo will feel that last out of the three. Rumor has it Xbox has given up on being a console and will actually just be a PC going forward.
With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware.
This is basically the gist of my point, and long-term, I think it will apply to handhelds as well. As an example, on the current Switch, you can get compromised versions of the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal, or you could just get the better version of the game on PC; it will run perfectly at home, and you can run it at acceptable settings when handheld. Feel free to extrapolate that a few years into the future when there’s a new handheld PC out and the consumer is comparing the latest new game on PC against a Switch 2.
This has been true of Nintendo hardware for a long time, though. I wouldn’t discount their ability to sustain it through a steady feed of exclusives.
Whether they can do better at managing rising costs and complexity than others is anybody’s guess. And we’ll see what happens on PC with compatibility. With a handful of games that don’t run on SteamOS dominating the PC market there is a quiet conflict there and it’s not clear how it will resolve itself.
I look at the Steam Deck less as an end product and more of a means.
The Steam Deck is absolutely getting slaughtered by the Switch in terms of sales, but it gives Valve an alternative to the Windows ecosystem that is becoming more hostile as Microsoft tries to muscle in on gaming. I also think that Valve could have designed a Steam Deck variant to compete with the Switch 2, but hasn’t for various reasons
Already, Valve has the technology to create a console to compete with a PS5 and Xbox Series X, but doesn’t seem to want to.
I can’t imagine it would be that much harder to make a Chromebook equivalent, giving it access to the PC market without Windows.
Since Valve is using Linux, developing the tech stack is cheap. Also, Valve seems to be selling hardware for a profit, so it may be more comfortable with slimmer margins.
I think it’s very interesting to note that mainstream consoles like the Switch or PS5 have massive ad campaigns behind them, expensive television spots, and a constant churn of new exclusives that they’re using to keep themselves in the conversation. The Steam Deck certainly had an ad campaign, but it feels impressive to me that they managed to make those numbers happen mostly just through throwing up an announcement on the Steam front page and then having it review well once it found its way into critics’ hands.
Maybe handheld gaming PCs aren’t something that has mass market appeal? It feels like theres so many variables that depend on it. Exclusives? Price? Ease of use? Brand recognition? Advertising? Im glad Valve is happy with deck’s sales numbers becuase it means we will probably keep seeing more support for it and newer models down the line. It still feels like if Microsoft launched a handheld xbox, it would probably still be a console first experience without traditional PC functionality and probably sell more while directly competing with switch 2. Definitely will be interesting to see how handheld PC pan out in the next 5 years, right now it feels like a slowly emerging market.
As you say, it doesn’t seem that manufacturers are too unhappy with their sales here, but I’d also like to see scale grow to the point where we can start seeing devices launch cheaper, rather than more expensive. Besides the presumably heavily subsidized (or at least priced for scale) Deck the more interesting alternatives are luxury items. It’d be nice to see them find some room for more competitive pricing, and that probably requires adding a zero to the sales numbers.
I’m comparing unit sales. The Deck just happens to slot in between older handhelds in terms of unit sales. It also sold about as much as the Saturn and a little more than the Dreamcast, as far as I can tell. I may be ahead of both and on par with the Wii U now, but Steam isn’t super transparent with giving sales numbers.
I get that but saying it’s sold less than the game gear implies a pretty serious failure lol I just don’t think they’re even in the same product lineup and the comparison doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I’ll admit I’m being a little nitpicky I’m not trying to start a fight with you here or something
No, I get it, no animosity here. I’m just curious about why you think the bar is fundamentally different for the Deck than for consoles in general.
Hell, adjusted for inflation the Game Gear retailed for the equivalent of 300 bucks at launch, which is not far off from the lowest price for the Deck at 399. Plus 90s devices sold a lot less than modern devices. Why would meeting the Game Gear not be a reasonable target for the Deck?
It’s the most successful individual PC handheld, but it’s also not made it into the same range as most consoles so it hasn’t turned this product category into a mainstream device… yet.
I think where I struggle to compare them is that the game gear was meant to be a mass market device that would sell tens of millions of units if not upwards of a hundred million. Handheld PCs have a narrower audience and tend to skew more tech savvy, especially in the case of the Steam Deck. They have much lower expectations for units sold because they’re not trying to do the “sell a bazillion units -> sell a hundred bazillion games for our system” game. In valve’s case they’re clearly creating a steam-dominated ecosystem that expands well beyond their handhelds.
Hah. You’re overestimating the potential of 90s gaming devices. No game console, handheld or not, had sold a hundred million units. Hell, the Game Boy didn’t crack into the hundreds until the Game Boy Color came around, and it was certainly the first.
Anyway, mild exaggeration aside, I get what you’re aiming for, but I guess my question is why people read that positioning on Valve devices in the first place. There’s no obvious indication that Valve is any less ambitious than any other first party, or any reason why they would be. They went to AMD and comissioned a custom APU at scale, just like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft are doing. The only differentiating factor is they built the thing on top of a mostly usable pre-existing OS (which I suppose Microsoft also does, but hey). If anything their entire call to fame was to “consolize” Linux for SteamOS, which they’d been trying to do for a while anyway.
I agree that their goal is to set up an ecosystem that works for them, but I find it surprising that people assume they’re disinterested in hardware sales. If I had to guess I’d say it’s because they refuse to market too hard outside their own ecosystem, so their branding feels different than the more in-your-face releases of Sony, MS or Nintendo products and people assume that’s because they’re intrinsically or intentionally smaller, which I don’t think is true. I do think that image is projected on purpose, though.
I’m not implying they are uninterested in hardware sales. It’s that the model is different. The handheld pc crowd is probably hoping for 1-2mill units on their first go arounds. That is not what previous generation hardware developers have targeted.
Current Nintendo does not care about an ecosystem. Each console/handheld they release has its slate of games they want to sell an average of per unit. They want to get as many units in as many households as possible and sell 6-8 years of games for that hardware with little library continuity between hardware releases. The switch 2 is the first departure from this tbh unless you count the Wii-u/wii which is valid but nuanced. This style best emulates all console/handheld releases pre-Gen 8 consoles.
Current iteration at Microsoft and Sony and valve is buy-in into an ecosystem that extends beyond singular hardware. Backwards compatibility, for instance. They want you gaming on multiple devices buying all games through their stores with your designated account that spans systems.
It’s a very different business model then what game gear et al were attempting.
Nintendo has done backwards compatibility before, pretty extensively. The Switch 2 isn’t a departure. They put a GBA cartridge slot in the first few Nintendo DSs (they lost it in the DSi), and the 3DS was backwards compatible with the DS. They also did GC to Wii and Wii to Wii U (but not GC to WiiU). They even put physical plugs for GC controllers and memory cards on the Wii.
And they’ve done weirder stuff, like the ability to use a GBA as a controller on the GameCube and some cross-save bonuses between games in some platforms.
The Game Gear is a weird example for that, specifically, since it was basically a repackaged Master System, so there was a lot of game crossover. Sega also had a widely advertised adapter that allowed the Mega Drive to play Master System games.
Anyway, nerdy retro gaming stuff aside, there is definitely a gradient across Valve, that is mostly driving a software platform across a ton of third party hardware, the 4K twins, which are relatively focused on service providing and Nintendo, which is somewhat more focused on a single platform, at least so far. It’s very much not black and white and very much not a new thing, though.
And in any case, the smooth gradient does mean that ultimately it should be fair to at least compare Deck sales to console sales.
To put it in perspective there are 150 million Switches and 75 million PS5s out there. And 15 million Wii Us, if anybody is counting. This puts PC handhelds some ways ahead of the N-Gage and well behind the Game Gear.
I’m less concerned about who’s ahead in the handheld PC market and more interested on whether it’ll ever become a mass market space. I think a lot depends on prices for integrated GPUs not skyrocketing like their desktop counterparts and their performance stepping up a notch or two. We’ll see.
It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.
Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
You, by the way, are not in the majority in your usage pattern for the Switch. Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split. Which is surprising to me, because I see it as a handheld first and foremost.
I do agree that it’ll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 fares in a market where it’s not the only thing in its class, but if I had to place any bets, they have a humongous lead despite PC handhelds having been around for ages and the Deck having taken a very good stab at competitive pricing and performance a whole three years ago (what is even time, holy crap).
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop? I can see some use cases for it, I’ve had some NUCs and thin clients here and there, I just don’t think the value proposition is there to use them even as a media device. But hey, it’s a small but clearly competitive space, and if this gen APUs do indeed match a 4060 desktop level of performance when fed enough power maybe that starts to make sense next to a Xbox Series S or something as a gaming device. We’ll see.
For the record, I do have a PC plugged into a TV for gaming, mostly made out of spares and hand-me-downs built into a smaller, less garish case. I haven’t seen a mini PC that made me question that choice yet. I’m open to having my mind changed, it just hasn’t happened yet.
PC gaming has mainstream appeal, measurably. There are lots of reasons to play games on PC, and this is an additional one, particularly compared to PlayStation and Xbox, moreso than Switch.
I haven’t seen any reporting on that in a long time, since before this PC form factor existed, but I’d happy to peruse a link. I see some people playing Switch on the subway from time to time, but also anecdotally, most of my friends, all adults, play them docked just about exclusively. I’ve definitely seen children playing Switch Lites at the laundromat as a tool that parents use to keep them busy.
My use case is I have a very easily packed and unpacked local multiplayer machine, for emulators and fighting games especially. The Steam Deck is a bit of a pain to set up for this use case, and it can’t run Street Fighter 6 very well or at the resolutions I’d want it to, but the mini PC does all of that very well. That use case, and some interested fighting game tournament organizers I’ve been talking to, are admittedly very niche, but I think the alternative for a laptop has real legs. My friend just got one for her dad (in his late 60s) for a little north of $150. It runs Windows. It allows him to browse the web and run his office applications, plus whatever else he needs to run on x64. Most older folks I see using laptops only ever use them in a single place like a desk anyway, and they’d rather output them to a larger monitor. This is where I think this form factor will sing in the coming years, plus the real possibility of whatever living room PC game machine that Valve can put together for decent value. The other advantage is that not only can they be cheap up front and take up less space, they also use less electricity and produce less waste heat.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway. I find people tend to hedge on this. Either the Steam Deck is a consolized solution to PC gaming that makes the Switch obsolete or a bit of an experiment that doesn’t need to stack up to mainstream devices.
Yes, PCs (desktop PCs, laptops and handhelds together) are comparable to 4K home consoles these days and lead in some segments. But of those categories the handhelds are the smallest contributor while they are the largest portion of the console market. I love PC handhelds and I’d like to see those proportions shift, but it’s interesting that Valve has put a lot of resources behind having a competitive device at a very low price point and we haven’t seen more of a change.
On the docked vs handheld thing, Nintendo disclosed that info a few times. This is the first result I found just searching for it. It’s recent enough that there were already a hundred million of the things in the wild, so I don’t expect it’ll have changed much.
As for the mini PC thing… yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not sayng they don’t do the thing, I’m saying whenever I sit to look at the optimal solution for a problem the mini PCs never seem to come out on top. A PC for an older person taht doesn’t need a ton of computing power? I went with an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard last time, they are delighted at having a laptop-style thing and a tablet to watch media that works like their phone. A low power device to run some specific application? I can probably find some cheap SBC somewhere I can get running passively with a heatsink and will do the job. A portable gaming solution? I have laptops with dedicated GPUs around that are older but much faster than most mini PCs. Also, they have a screen, so there’s that. A set-top box? I can put something together for cheaper in the same performance range.
There are valid use cases. Sure, if you need a dozen of these things to embed in desktops, or something you can mount behind a screen, or… something to run a FGC tourney for cheap, apparently, there are reasons to use them. I just haven’t found they provided a better alternative than other devices for most of the uses I personally have.
I’d wager that the reason the PC market has grown is due to a million different reasons that, on their own, are quite small. Probably not many people would ditch their PlayStation just for mods. Or just for more freedom on controller choices. Or just for better performance. Or just for free online play. Etc.
If I might nitpick your link on the handheld usage, which by the way is dated approximately right when this handheld PC market was born, the thing that Nintendo was seemingly seeking to justify with that data is, “Do people switch with the Switch?”, but it would not answer the question, “How many people would buy the handheld-capable version if they already had a more powerful stationary machine that plays the same games?”
I’m confused on what your hypothesis is here. You think PC handhelds are massively shifting the modes of usage of the Switch towards being primarily docked? I’m not gonna dig for it, but my understanding was that the Switch usage was slowly drifting towards more handheld over time. Even if that wasn’t the case, the numbers just don’t match. Even if 10 million people had shifted from using the Switch as a handheld to a PC handheld, why would that impact the remaining 130 million users? PC handhelds are a rounding error in the space the Switch operates in.
If I had to guess the drift towards PC probably has a lot to do with software. PC ports weren’t a given until recently and they arguably still aren’t reliably great. With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware. PCs have always been backwards and forwards compatible, but with all sorts of devices able to run the same software across many device types and hardware generations that is becoming a big selling point.
Which on the Switch is a lot weaker, mostly because Nintendo is better at making a ton of first party games than Sony and Microsoft and because they have a younger userbase that is less likely to have three other gaming-worthy devices at their fingertips at all times.
Answering this post is difficult without writing an entire book, but I think the existence of this form factor, the iteration on it, and the cycles of hardware going out of date and being replaced will, in the long term, have more and more of a tangible effect on all consoles, and Nintendo will feel that last out of the three. Rumor has it Xbox has given up on being a console and will actually just be a PC going forward.
This is basically the gist of my point, and long-term, I think it will apply to handhelds as well. As an example, on the current Switch, you can get compromised versions of the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal, or you could just get the better version of the game on PC; it will run perfectly at home, and you can run it at acceptable settings when handheld. Feel free to extrapolate that a few years into the future when there’s a new handheld PC out and the consumer is comparing the latest new game on PC against a Switch 2.
This has been true of Nintendo hardware for a long time, though. I wouldn’t discount their ability to sustain it through a steady feed of exclusives.
Whether they can do better at managing rising costs and complexity than others is anybody’s guess. And we’ll see what happens on PC with compatibility. With a handful of games that don’t run on SteamOS dominating the PC market there is a quiet conflict there and it’s not clear how it will resolve itself.
I look at the Steam Deck less as an end product and more of a means.
The Steam Deck is absolutely getting slaughtered by the Switch in terms of sales, but it gives Valve an alternative to the Windows ecosystem that is becoming more hostile as Microsoft tries to muscle in on gaming. I also think that Valve could have designed a Steam Deck variant to compete with the Switch 2, but hasn’t for various reasons
Already, Valve has the technology to create a console to compete with a PS5 and Xbox Series X, but doesn’t seem to want to.
I can’t imagine it would be that much harder to make a Chromebook equivalent, giving it access to the PC market without Windows.
Since Valve is using Linux, developing the tech stack is cheap. Also, Valve seems to be selling hardware for a profit, so it may be more comfortable with slimmer margins.
I think it’s very interesting to note that mainstream consoles like the Switch or PS5 have massive ad campaigns behind them, expensive television spots, and a constant churn of new exclusives that they’re using to keep themselves in the conversation. The Steam Deck certainly had an ad campaign, but it feels impressive to me that they managed to make those numbers happen mostly just through throwing up an announcement on the Steam front page and then having it review well once it found its way into critics’ hands.
Maybe handheld gaming PCs aren’t something that has mass market appeal? It feels like theres so many variables that depend on it. Exclusives? Price? Ease of use? Brand recognition? Advertising? Im glad Valve is happy with deck’s sales numbers becuase it means we will probably keep seeing more support for it and newer models down the line. It still feels like if Microsoft launched a handheld xbox, it would probably still be a console first experience without traditional PC functionality and probably sell more while directly competing with switch 2. Definitely will be interesting to see how handheld PC pan out in the next 5 years, right now it feels like a slowly emerging market.
Maybe? That’d be a shame, I do like PC handhelds.
As you say, it doesn’t seem that manufacturers are too unhappy with their sales here, but I’d also like to see scale grow to the point where we can start seeing devices launch cheaper, rather than more expensive. Besides the presumably heavily subsidized (or at least priced for scale) Deck the more interesting alternatives are luxury items. It’d be nice to see them find some room for more competitive pricing, and that probably requires adding a zero to the sales numbers.
Comparing 90’s handheld gaming to 2020’s handheld PC’s doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I’m comparing unit sales. The Deck just happens to slot in between older handhelds in terms of unit sales. It also sold about as much as the Saturn and a little more than the Dreamcast, as far as I can tell. I may be ahead of both and on par with the Wii U now, but Steam isn’t super transparent with giving sales numbers.
I get that but saying it’s sold less than the game gear implies a pretty serious failure lol I just don’t think they’re even in the same product lineup and the comparison doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I’ll admit I’m being a little nitpicky I’m not trying to start a fight with you here or something
No, I get it, no animosity here. I’m just curious about why you think the bar is fundamentally different for the Deck than for consoles in general.
Hell, adjusted for inflation the Game Gear retailed for the equivalent of 300 bucks at launch, which is not far off from the lowest price for the Deck at 399. Plus 90s devices sold a lot less than modern devices. Why would meeting the Game Gear not be a reasonable target for the Deck?
It’s the most successful individual PC handheld, but it’s also not made it into the same range as most consoles so it hasn’t turned this product category into a mainstream device… yet.
I think where I struggle to compare them is that the game gear was meant to be a mass market device that would sell tens of millions of units if not upwards of a hundred million. Handheld PCs have a narrower audience and tend to skew more tech savvy, especially in the case of the Steam Deck. They have much lower expectations for units sold because they’re not trying to do the “sell a bazillion units -> sell a hundred bazillion games for our system” game. In valve’s case they’re clearly creating a steam-dominated ecosystem that expands well beyond their handhelds.
Hah. You’re overestimating the potential of 90s gaming devices. No game console, handheld or not, had sold a hundred million units. Hell, the Game Boy didn’t crack into the hundreds until the Game Boy Color came around, and it was certainly the first.
Anyway, mild exaggeration aside, I get what you’re aiming for, but I guess my question is why people read that positioning on Valve devices in the first place. There’s no obvious indication that Valve is any less ambitious than any other first party, or any reason why they would be. They went to AMD and comissioned a custom APU at scale, just like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft are doing. The only differentiating factor is they built the thing on top of a mostly usable pre-existing OS (which I suppose Microsoft also does, but hey). If anything their entire call to fame was to “consolize” Linux for SteamOS, which they’d been trying to do for a while anyway.
I agree that their goal is to set up an ecosystem that works for them, but I find it surprising that people assume they’re disinterested in hardware sales. If I had to guess I’d say it’s because they refuse to market too hard outside their own ecosystem, so their branding feels different than the more in-your-face releases of Sony, MS or Nintendo products and people assume that’s because they’re intrinsically or intentionally smaller, which I don’t think is true. I do think that image is projected on purpose, though.
I’m not implying they are uninterested in hardware sales. It’s that the model is different. The handheld pc crowd is probably hoping for 1-2mill units on their first go arounds. That is not what previous generation hardware developers have targeted.
Current Nintendo does not care about an ecosystem. Each console/handheld they release has its slate of games they want to sell an average of per unit. They want to get as many units in as many households as possible and sell 6-8 years of games for that hardware with little library continuity between hardware releases. The switch 2 is the first departure from this tbh unless you count the Wii-u/wii which is valid but nuanced. This style best emulates all console/handheld releases pre-Gen 8 consoles.
Current iteration at Microsoft and Sony and valve is buy-in into an ecosystem that extends beyond singular hardware. Backwards compatibility, for instance. They want you gaming on multiple devices buying all games through their stores with your designated account that spans systems.
It’s a very different business model then what game gear et al were attempting.
Nintendo has done backwards compatibility before, pretty extensively. The Switch 2 isn’t a departure. They put a GBA cartridge slot in the first few Nintendo DSs (they lost it in the DSi), and the 3DS was backwards compatible with the DS. They also did GC to Wii and Wii to Wii U (but not GC to WiiU). They even put physical plugs for GC controllers and memory cards on the Wii.
And they’ve done weirder stuff, like the ability to use a GBA as a controller on the GameCube and some cross-save bonuses between games in some platforms.
The Game Gear is a weird example for that, specifically, since it was basically a repackaged Master System, so there was a lot of game crossover. Sega also had a widely advertised adapter that allowed the Mega Drive to play Master System games.
Anyway, nerdy retro gaming stuff aside, there is definitely a gradient across Valve, that is mostly driving a software platform across a ton of third party hardware, the 4K twins, which are relatively focused on service providing and Nintendo, which is somewhat more focused on a single platform, at least so far. It’s very much not black and white and very much not a new thing, though.
And in any case, the smooth gradient does mean that ultimately it should be fair to at least compare Deck sales to console sales.