I’ve been really wanting to get a steamdeck. I’ve been playing a lot on my modded switch, but there is a lot I want to play that is not available on the switch.

Does anyone have both systems and still use the switch?

I imagine I can just dump my games and emulate them on the Steamdeck.

I don’t do anything online, so I can’t imagine I’ll miss out on anything.

Im an experienced Linux gamer, so im not worried about the Linux side of things.

  •  Matt   ( @Matt@lemdro.id ) 
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    1610 months ago

    Vague and unpopular opinion incoming:

    Despite the Steam Deck being better than the Switch at nearly everything, there is still something that keeps pulling me back to the Switch. The only things I can think of is how much thinner and lighter it is combined with the simplified software. I’m not saying the Switch software is good, because it’s not. It’s slow despite how slimmed down it is. Meanwhile the Steam Deck is much faster, smoother, and has many more features. But the Steam Deck still just feels clunky compared to the Switch. It might be due to the Steam Deck using a full desktop operating system with a modified UI while the Switch OS is made solely for playing games. Despite being very well designed and using optimized software, something about the Steam Deck makes it feel like a tech demo rather than a handheld game console. I still really like the Steam Deck, but I keep getting pulled back to the Switch.

    Put simply: Weight aside, the Steam Deck is significantly better at every individual factor than the Switch. But there is still something about the final product of the Switch that I enjoy using more than the Steam Deck.

    • Like the sibling comment it feels the opposite way round to me. The Switch feels like a child’s toy - light, small and not wildly comfortable to hold for a long period of time. The Deck feels much more ergonomic and solid to hold in my hands - I still enjoy the feeling of just picking it up (had it for 7 months) because it just feels like it fits.

      Some of this is because I have big hands and the Switch obviously has to work for kids hands and the Switch being lighter is actually better for longer sessions but when I got back to the Switch now it feels cheap and flimsy.

  •  beepnoise   ( @beepnoise@beehaw.org ) 
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    1310 months ago
    • maybe some games you don’t want to spend time tweaking the launch options, the graphics, the sliders, the mods etc and you just want to play the game as the devs intended. Switch is good for that.
    • maybe there are times you don’t want to deal with all the hassles of a handled pc as a gaming system. Switch is good for that.
    • maybe you want to play Nintendo games, but you don’t want to go through all the hassle of emulation (especially switch games). Switch is good for that.
    • maybe there is an indie dev you want to support, and you know their game is more expensive on switch than on pc, but it’s well within your budget and you want to give them extra coin. Switch is good for that.
    • while switch games are generally low fidelity and low frame rate, you know what to generally expect going in.
    • maybe your group of friends mostly own switch and play switch online compared to steam.

    Truth be told, once I got my steam deck, I sold my switch. Not because the switch was terrible by any means, but I realised that I missed my pc game library, I didn’t care for online multiplayer, and I didn’t care for Nintendo games. Also, I grew up with Linux and tinkering both Windows and Linux - it’s in my blood at this point, so getting a steam deck was just pure joy for me, even if I spent 90% of the time configuring the thing and 10% playing games.

    • know their game is more expensive on switch than on pc, but it’s well within your budget and you want to give them extra coin

      With the (probably doesn’t need to be stated but here I go anyway) caveat: how much of that coin is going to the dev, and how much is going to Nintendo? The game might be cheaper on (for instance) Epic, but Epic takes a smaller cut.

    • maybe some games you don’t want to spend time tweaking the launch options, the graphics, the sliders, the mods etc and you just want to play the game as the devs intended. Switch is good for that

      Is it? 2D indie stuff generally don’t have meaningful graphics options and defaults to the same thing either way. 3D stuff with settings is cut way down from the developer’s vision to run on the switch at all.

      • I didn’t really consider 2D indie games. For 3D indie games, some games are cut down while others are “good enough” to the average Switch end user.

        At the end of the day, if the ability to play 3D games from about 5-10 years ago in 30-60fps sounds like a dream to you and you are willing to jump through some Launch Properties/Proton version hoops for some games in order to get that perfect gameplay (for example, I have GTA 3/Vice City/San Andreas OG games, and I spent days modding the games on the SD to get it running close to flawlessly as possible) rather than settle for compromised ports - which for the average person playing video games, they wouldn’t care too much about framerates or graphical fidelity as so much as the convenience to push Play and just go), then Steam Deck is for you.

        Otherwise, Switch is perhaps preferrable. OR, if you care more about visual fidelity more than anything, maybe consider getting a PS5/XSX. I say this as I do love my Steam Deck for GTA5 sessions, but for RE games I often go to my XSX.

    • So far, I’ve been pretty lucky with switch emulation. When I really looked at it, just about all the games that are switch exclusive l, that I’m interested in work well.

      Plus, I still have my switch incase it will not run.

  • For me there isn’t. I already had a Switch and since I bought the Deck, it pretty much just sits there. The only time I’ve used it is when we were in a plane and both me and my partner wanted to play, so we brought both Deck and Switch. If there was some cross-play, I’d actually find a use, but since no one gives a fuck about it, we mostly can’t even play together (Fall Guys being the exception). And I’m very much over paying a fee for accessing servers with my console. I cancelled my Nintendo subscription because I don’t use it and recently wanted to play some level on Mario Maker, turns out you can’t do that without paying for subscription. So I just turned off the Switch again.

  •  T (they/she)   ( @Templa@beehaw.org ) 
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    10 months ago

    I’ve been using more my switch lately than my deck, but that’s due to the fact I have a local library with many switch games available. While me and my spouse are super pro emulating we don’t want to bother with emulating switch because:

    • We’re not willing to hack our Switches yet.
    • I’m extremely uninformed on where to find another bios

    In addition, the steam deck display isn’t as pretty to look at as the OLED.

  •  Ninmi   ( @Ninmi@sopuli.xyz ) 
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    10 months ago

    Steam Deck does feel like a superset of Switch. It offers almost all of what Switch offers in a bit heavier and a lot more comfortable package. You get absolute freedom to do what you want with the device (I buy almost all my games from GOG), the trackpads become pretty much mandatory once you get used to them. You have the option of playing AAA titles with shorter battery life, but don’t actually compare that badly agaist a Switch if you play games that Switch can run. You gain access to a lot more games, a lot cheaper games.

    People convince eachother that the two devices somehow serve different functions and audiences, but that just feels like unwarranted courtesy towards Switch. I don’t have a Switch, to be clear, but it does seem like an obvious upgrade from what I can tell.

    • Yeah, it seems that the switch can easily be replaced by the steam deck.

      I think all the switch exclusive games that I care for emulate perfectly or at least good enough. I think the only game I’m not too sure about is tears of the kingdom, but I imagine the emulator devs give that game a lot of attention. So I’m sure it will be a very compatible game.

  •  uzay   ( @uzay@beehaw.org ) 
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    410 months ago

    I don’t really bother with emulating Switch on my Steam Deck because my Switch is lighter, quieter, has better battery life, and a far better (OLED) screen. I do love my Steam Deck as well though.

  • I have both. I had the switch long before the steam deck was available. I will say that I have not touched my switch to play games since I received the deck. I got my deck in the second big batch of deliveries when it first released, so I have had it for more than year at this point.

    When I want to play Nintendo exclusives, I purchase them and then use my switch rip them to play using yuzu on my deck.

  • I don’t use my switch since getting the steam deck. I played a little of tears of the kingdom but the fact that it wasn’t on the deck (without effort to emulate and move saves) is most of the reason I stopped playing.

    The switch created the handheld real console revolution, but it also kind of sucks to use. Joycons are awful, the ergonomics of joycons are awful, and while you can get third party replacement options for the joycons, they all still have really awful sticks that make playing anything that uses them painful.

    • My hands cramp and my thumb joints hurt with certain games on the switch. The left joycon broke (not stuck drift) so I replaced it and then like a week later the right joycon broke.

      I am still kinda pissed at how expensive the joycons are. If I knew they were both going to break, I would have just bought a Steamdeck instead.

      • Binbok on Amazon were the least bad ones I found. They’re shaped about like half a normal controller, and the joysticks were almost tolerable compared to the joke the hori Nintendo licensed ones are.

        But they’re still a lot worse than a real controller. The steam deck isn’t.

  • I’m in a similar boat, I have a steam deck and a modded switch that I can transfer games/saves over to my PC and deck.

    The switch still gets use for the following reasons:

    • online play (when the deck is not booted into custom firmware)

    • some games don’t run well when emulated. This is getting better all the time, but is still an issue, especially with newly released games. I wasn’t satisfied with ToTK performance on release for my deck so I ended up playing it exclusively on my switch. Also you need shader caches for games to run well, and the games stutter and hang a lot while generating those in new areas.

    • the games that do run well still aren’t very efficient in terms of power consumption, and you’ll get longer battery life out of the switch for most emulated titles.

    The Deck does have significant advantages over the switch, like bigger screen, bigger storage, more comfortable to hold, PC games, etc. If there’s a PC port of a switch game it will run better on deck than on switch, with comparable battery on comparable graphics levels.

  • The only use my switch has now is for my girlfriend playing animal crossing, I haven’t used it myself since I bought the steamdeck. I was tempted to buy TOTK when it came out, but I’ve got too many games in my backlog already

  •  Jaxseven   ( @Jaxseven@beehaw.org ) 
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    110 months ago

    If you’d like to play Nintendo games without emulation whatsoever. Tracking down a Switch that is easy enough to hack, and dumping all your games and saves can be a big ask for your average Switch/Deck fan. I only use my Switch to dump new releases I buy to play on either my Steam Deck or main rig. I beat ToTK fully through emulation, though that was on my main rig. I also could absolutely not live without the massive backlog that is the Steam library.

          • For switch emularion, I only really got around to TotK so far. In general I play singleplayer RPGs, such as Witcher 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn, as well as some Cult of the Lamb. The Deck handled all of these very well at medium to medium-high settings. Emulation just adds a considerable performance overhead.

          •  Jaxseven   ( @Jaxseven@beehaw.org ) 
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            110 months ago

            I truthfully emulated ToTK on my main rig, then streamed it to my Deck with Moonlight. At the time (launch week) I had a bit of issue emulating it on Deck to my liking, but I know at this point it’s not bad around 20-30. I played a lot of Street Fighter 6 on my Deck, with only World Tour mode running at 30, everything else is 60. I’m also working my way through Transistor, picking short indies to hammer out one at a time. Pretty much everything I want to run on the Deck will run, with the exception of Xbox 360 games, but I’m still able to run the unreleased Goldeneye 007 XBLA remaster without issue.

            • I played that unreleased remaster a couple years so. It’s so fun. I played the original as a kid and this was the first time I was able to complete the game in the hardest difficulty.

              I did not bother trying to unlock cheats. That game got really hard on the hardest mode.

              It took me hours and hits to beat Aztec on the hardest mode. Somehow I still remembered the secret path for the golden gun and was able to beat the final level on the first attempt.