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Comment by a13o | Hacker News Reader

The next generation of gaming platforms is really going to be heated. We basically have two philosophies in the field now. The Switch and the Steam Deck sacrifice high end hardware for portability and versatility. The PS5 and XSX are about as portable as a LAN party, but can theoretically push 4k@120hz for the cost of a graphics card.

Is there room for everyone next gen? Each of Valve, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have the expertise to field a machine serving one or both philosophies. But I don't think the customer base is there to support so many consoles. Which configurations will we see?

Is the next Switch as popular when the indie games can release on the much more open Steam Deck instead? Will Microsoft choose to compete with Sony, or with Valve? They've always been after Sony's market, but Steam Deck puts them on defense.

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Steam deck is an extension of the already existing PC gaming market. I suspect that almost all Steam Deck owners already have a PC they game on. Steam Deck just makes it so those PC gamers will care if a game runs well on Linux.

The point isn’t to take over the console market but to defend the PC gaming market from console exclusivity and Steam itself from e.g. Microsoft Store

I dont pc game. I dont have space for a giant tower, etc. My main computer is a laptop (x1 carbon). The steamdeck allows me to enjoy all the awesome pc games, stores in a drawer, its portable if i want it to, and i dont need 4k 1000fps, 1080p and 30 to 60fps is plenty to single play with q screen on my couch. I am not a professional gamer, i dont need a full desk worth of gear. I am also busy, its nice not to worry about hardware, just plug and play (i did upgrade the ssd myself though). Its a great device.

I'm considering getting rid of my PC in favor of just gaming on my Steam Deck no matter where I am. If they somehow figure out how to create a dock with an external GPU then I'd 100% buy it and sell my PC since I need to play some games on low to medium setting when I want to play at 1080 to 1440.

>I suspect that almost all Steam Deck owners already have a PC they game on.

I don’t know if I’m in the minority or not, but I have never owned a gaming PC, and have not had a console since I was a teenager with an Xbox 360. I’m now 30, and I bought the Steam Deck precisely because of its portability.

> Steam itself from e.g. Microsoft Store

That was initially the case for SteamOS/Steam Machines, but the MS Store has been a _resounding_ failure in the gaming market. It's use is largely limited to PC Game Pass subscribers, who use it as the download backend for the Xbox app (which is the primary interface for installing/managing games).

If anything, it's a way for Valve to hedge against streaming platforms.

Microsoft store is the annoying place where you get Minecraft. Maybe it can be bought in a different place now.

I think while Steam Deck is an extension of PC gaming market, but more specifically an extension of this market to wannabe casual PC gamers. There is just nothing out there that beats mouse and keyboard for more competitive sessions of dota, csgo, starcraft. For a very long time a €1000/$1000 nominal would buy a rather capable PC gaming rig. Then cryptocoins happened and suddenly it was 1k for graphics card alone.

I guess the target audience is those previously gamers with an extensive collection of games to play "someday" who now have kids that would like something to game on. The deck fills this market very nicely and Switch has already paved the initial road.

That’s a weird elitism to stake out.

Countless 1000+ hour per year players aren’t getting caught up in competitive-tier multiplayer content with high performance requirements and yet qualify as something besides “casual wannabe” gamers. The Steam Deck is a nice way to take their serious hobby down the hall or on vacation.

Where do you see elitism here? Some games are simply designed for competitive play with mouse and keyboard control. These games require a PC and Deck is not really a target for those games/gamers. Would me stating that keyboard players stand no competitive chance against players with steering wheel in Forza be elitism too?

There are people who want to play games, but cannot or do not want to spare the expense for a gaming rig. Rising component prices have expanded this category. There is very little overlap between competitive gamers and people wanting to be gamers, some of whom are caught by rising component prices. Again, nothing surprising here.

Steam Deck seems to be designed mostly for this market: people who want to play games, have a leaning towards PC games (possibly due to preexisting Steam library), but have no requirement for mouse and keyboard form factor. Steam deck captures the market of people who "would start playing games if cost of the rig was $(cost-of-steam-deck)" AND the market of people "would play PC games if the rig was more portable".

I'm pretty sure that if some compatibility layer, allowing to use Steam libraries on xbox/PhlashSpeed and Switch, existed the Deck would be dead on arrival.

The elitism is in calling what is absolutely the largest market for gaming "wannabe". I have sunk tonnes of money and time into gaming, and I spend a lot of time helping friends get familiar with games so they can play with their kids. But I am absolutely not competitive. It's ridiculously insulting for you to call me a "wannabe".

> I'm pretty sure that if some compatibility layer, allowing to use Steam libraries on xbox/PhlashSpeed and Switch, existed the Deck would be dead on arrival.

And if my gramma had wheels she would be a bicycle.

The hole point of the Steamdeck is that existing consoles are locked down and would never allow running your existing steam library.

> here is just nothing out there that beats mouse and keyboard for more competitive sessions of dota, csgo, starcraft.

I'm not sure that it's close enough for truly competitive play, but look into flick stick and gyro mouse. For first person games it's good enough that I've been able to hop online in a couple of older first person shooters without aim assist and get roughly (or at least close to) the same performance I would get from a mouse today. It's certainly good enough for the vast majority of single-player campaigns to the point where you wouldn't be missing much if anything by not using a mouse.

Gryo mouse isn't quite as good, it's fine for menus and point-and-click games, but falls down a bit more for stuff like RTS games. I've been trying to figure out control schemes to make it perform better for faster movements without losing precision. It's comfortable enough to use as a general mouse, but I don't think I could use it competitively in an RTS (although I do think I could probably get through a single-player campaign).

I'm mildly hopeful that those control schemes will get better in the future, but even today as someone who pretty much only ever played PC games with a mouse, it's switched me from thinking of the Steam Deck as a primarily 2D/3D/platformer device where I could maybe pick up an FPS if it had really good aim assist, into a device where I wouldn't hesitate to load up pretty much any FPS on it without aim assist. I'm not getting 100% of the performance I used to get with a mouse in older high-precision aiming games like Sauerbraten, but I'm not sure how much of that is that I'm generally out of practice using a sniper rifle and that I haven't put hundreds of hours into practicing with gyro controls. I am still getting kills in those games.

Gyro controls have a couple of issues to work out, mainly stability when you're trying to hold the cursor still, but there's potential there to get (very close to) mouse-like precision for the majority of players who aren't investing hundreds of hours into getting competitive -- especially if games start to take advantage of them natively instead of forcing players to hack them together with mouse emulation.

It’s important to recognize that while the Steam deck is awesome, it’s sold 1 million compared to the 100 million of the Switch. Nintendo has massive name recognition and exclusives of course, but also price. The cheapest Steam Deck is 400 dollars, whereas the Switch is 300. For people who don’t already have big steam libraries and don’t care about open hardware, the Switch is where they’re going to go for a mobile console.

Then Sony and Xbox compete on exclusives but ultimately I think there’s room for everyone in the space regardless. Gaming is probably the most lucrative entertainment sector at this point, and mobile gaming hasn’t eaten console gaming yet. A generation or two more from the next one…harder to say.

The price argument is completely reversed if you factor in that you need to buy games to play. Nintendo games prices are horrendous even for very patient gamers while Steam has big discounts on the regular. The same game on Switch vs Deck will routinely be 4-5x more expensive.

Not really. Nintendo first party titles hold their value well but you're not playing those on Steam either. 3rd party titles will often be the same price or close enough with the exception of super recent ports of old PC games. Definitely NOT 4-5x more expensive unless you're only comparing to full price not on sale eShop titles to best possible discount on Steam.

If you want to play Nintendo 1st party, you have no choice but Switch. But if you want to play any of the many AAA games that release every year, you can do that on Deck.

If we ignore that each is exclusive to the other's platform (i.e. Switch 1st party don't go to Deck, many huge games Deck can play Switch never gets), and just compare the average cost with sales of those "exclusive" games, you high quality games on Switch (Nintendo 1st party) cost way more than you high quality games on Deck (most AAA games Switch doesn't get).

That may be true but they did say that the same game will be 4-5x more expensive on Switch which is just rubbish.

> Nintendo 1st party, you have no choice but Switch

ahem, I hear that Switch emulation works quite well on the Deck.

Yeah that's the point, why would I not take the best price on Steam? eShop sales are like 20% off max, with a base price already often higher than the pc version. With a wishlist on steam you will build your collection at 4-5x lower cost than Steam if you are a bit patient (or go to key resellers if you're not).

> The cheapest Steam Deck is 400 dollars, whereas the Switch is 300.

The Switch's entry price is actually $200 for the Switch Lite. I think it's even had small discounts on occasion too.

The Lite is the portable-only version that's mainly for solo play. Doesn't come with a cradle, can't slot into a cradle and TV output is disabled, so no TV out, integrated controls (no detachable joycons, so you can't do that thing where you take your switch somewhere then pop the joycons off and play 2-player games)

Not countering what you wrote, just clarifying what that device is.

(personally, if they didn't deliberately cripple its ability to do TV out at all, I'd buy a lite instead of the regular Switch—I hate using joycons so we have like three pro controllers anyway, and the joycon dock points have proven a highly-breakable weak spot on my Switches so far, under actual use by kids)

Hasn't console gaming always outperformed PC gaming marketshare?

I'm not sure people even really compare costs for videogames. If they did, they'd notice that everytime you buy a new Nintendo system, you have to re-purchase all of your old games if you want to run them on the new platform. You don't have the same problem with PC games.

I'm finding that even 10+ year old PC games are still enjoyable today. Maybe more so than originally because my own hardware has advanced and I can pump up the graphics quite a bit. My back catalog of games in Steam isn't something you get from traditional console makers.

Historically it’s believed PC underperformed Consoles, but at this point it’s estimated that PC revenue is equivalent to the entire console market combined (for what it’s worth, both combined pull in less money than mobile gaming world wide).

As for the price thing, I suspect it’s the big vs small purchase mentality. Same reason it’s easier to get someone to buy a 10 dollar monthly subscription than a 100 dollar flat out purchase. Most people compare instant costs and ongoing ones in different ways.

Personally though, agreed on the value of having a massive backlog of games to play on PC. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s part of why PC revenue has caught up to consoles.

The Steam ecosystem has devices in both categories.

It's the only ecosystem in the list where you can buy a game and have your progress synced between a performance device and a portable device.

Sony used to have hardware and software for this, as you could cross-buy a title for a PlayStation 4 and a PlayStation Vita, and then sync the save data through the cloud. Unfortunately Sony abandoned the handheld gaming market just before the Switch and Steam Deck blew it up.

RIP PS Vita, the device was far ahead of its time; but Sony didn't abandon it "just before" the Switch and Deck blew up the handheld market again, they had shot it and left it to bleed somewhere between year 1 and year 2 on the market. Frankly it's amazing it has the library that it does considering Sony basically stopped supporting it or marketing it in any way long before they stopped producing the system.

Yeah, how Sony has managed to never build any synergy between all of their offerings is mind numbing. The success of making the PS2 backwards compatible with the PS1 was a huge thing that looked so promising. And then they just never bothered leaning in on that as a full strategy. Imagine if they had made it so you could play PSP games on any of the home consoles? Could have been amazing.

Handheld gaming has always been extremely lucrative (unlike their TV consoles which have a spotty record, the worst selling mobile console Nintendo sold was the 3DS at 70+ million.) Sony just couldn’t capture that market, so gave up.

> It's the only ecosystem in the list where you can buy a game and have your progress synced between a performance device and a portable device.

Just a reminder that console streaming exists, which can work really well. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/remote-play

The same seems to be true with the Quest and the Valve Index, the Quest seem to optimize on portability and convenience

>but can theoretically push 4k@120hz for the cost of a graphics card.

While a desktop computer can't get anywhere near that price range for similar performance (because, other than Intel ARC, video card prices are still ridiculous across the board...), the cost of a decently performant desktop computer actually isn't as high as most would think if you just use low- to mid-tier hardware instead of going for the high-end stuff.

Anyway, as far as the question of market share space: It's still the same players, with the small addition of Valve potentially carving a niche for itself. Sony hasn't delved into mobile since the PS Vita, and Microsoft has flat out never bothered with mobile gaming. As for Nintendo, they'll do Nintendo things as they always do.

There is a third category worth considering and that’s cloud gaming with a thin client.

Since January GeForce now supports 4k@120 and the hardware required to render that is probably going to be much less than the next gen kind of switch will have. I would not be surprised to see tv sticks + controller given away for basically free. Like stadia but properly this time.

It won’t be for everyone and I have no idea how quick they can scale this but it’s nonetheless an interesting development.

Currently there’s a bit of a hybrid thing going on with ideas that combine cloud gaming with Xbox or PlayStation but here the consumer still has to pay for more hardware than necessary for streaming only

Nintendo has always been about first party games.

That's right. Nobody cares about how powerful the hardware is, as long as they know it's where they will play the next Mario and Zelda games.

Ironically, the Steam Deck emulates Switch games better than the Switch runs them.

Super exciting to see where this all goes. As consumers, having the big boys competing for our attention is great place to be.

I think there is enough room for each. The switch basically exists because there is no reason not to have a portable form factor if your console is going to be so underpowered (compared to Xbox, PlayStation).

Both Nintendo/Sony sold ~3x more than Microsoft last month

Steam Deck numbers are nothing compared to what these 3 are selling, if i remember correctly, it was 1 million reservations total for a whole year, that sounds like a flop to my book when you compare with the 3 existing players

I think next gen we'll see Sony getting back into the handheld market, Nintendo coming up with a second version, and Microsoft coming up with a cloud stick

Microsoft doubling down on cloud gaming might kill their Xbox brand, it's too early for that, they'll miss the handheld market just like they missed the smartphone era

https://www.vgchartz.com/

> that sounds like a flop to my book

It would be a flop for a traditional console, but the Steam Deck isn't a console, it's a PC. The reason that consoles need massive sales is because consoles have a limited repertoire of games (at best, they might be backwards-compatible with the previous-generation console), so they need large sales to demonstrate an install base and convince developers to make games for the platform. But if you're compatible with PC software, you don't care about that. Valve doesn't need to entice anyone to make PC games; the install base for the Steam Deck is the entire PC market. And with the help of emulators, a PC has access to multiple orders of magnitude more games than any existing console.

So the metric for success for the Steam Deck isn't to compare it to a console, rather it's to compare it to other specific PC form factors (e.g. a specific model of laptop).

> It would be a flop for a traditional console, but the Steam Deck isn't a console, it's a PC

I don't think people use it as a PC, but more like as a portable media center, the Switch and the PSP do that as well (even the PSP had a web browser!)

So it's wrong to picture the Deck as the exception, even thought it can and is a supported use case

They sell it and market its gaming capabilities

https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

You see games, not office apps, emails or social media apps, you don't have front facing camera so you can't use it for your meetings

You've misunderstood the point. It's not that people use it like a PC that matters, it's that it's compatible with PC games.

Flop is a strong word. I think they sold 1M in ~6 months, with a lot of supply side constraint. That being said, I they're nowhere near the tens of millions of Switches sold last year. But I don't think Valve was trying to. They've done very little advertising, you can only buy it through the Steam store, and (I own one by the way) it feels a bit like it's still aimed mainly at the enthusiast crowd right now. Then again, it was the top selling item in the Steam store for most weeks since launch.

My take is that Valve is using the early adopter crowd to help iron out the kinks (of which there were many at launch) and will then push harder later. Whether later means later in this console's lifetime, or in a few years with a new iteration I'm not sure.

I'm convinced that value has a few directions they want to go down: 1. They are still very excited by VR, additionally, there is no real breakout int he VR gaming space. Yes the Quest 2 is massively popular but Meta is doing their best to run from games on it. Valve is all about games and HL:Alyx is obviously the best VR game ever made. The next Value hardware will be a standalone VR headset. I would guess it has a seperate console portion that hooks onto a waist belt. 2. I wouldn't be surprised to see them do a laptop. The software is ready. Building an affordable SteamOS gaming laptop of their own design would be a successful product. (e.g. under $500) 3. The Steam Deck will absolutely get a successor of sorts. Likely a more mass-market take. That will tie in with Brick and Mortar launch plans. 4. Bonus points: SteamOS is designed around AMD hardware. AMD makes the hardware in the PS5 and XSX. It is not a stretch to consider Valve just diving deep into a $499 non-portable console/PC hybrid with custom silicon by AMD. Hell, even Tesla did it.

Sony building a Switch competitor for the next generation, in addition to a PlayStation 6? That sounds very unlikely to me. With the Switch form factor, it would have to be a lot closer to the PlayStation 6 than the small PSP was to the PlayStation 3. I don't think Sony wants to have two similar consoles on the market; they would compete with themselves. And the memories of the PSVita misfortune will deter them further.

No, I think they just do an ordinary PS6 and nothing else. They could, theoretically, make the PS6 itself a hybrid like the Switch, but that would be a really bad strategy, since they'd give up their stationary dominance to Microsoft just to compete with a market where Nintendo is dominant.

Sony will have to prepare for the cloud gaming revolution once network infrastructure will match the grid network infrastructure

A handheld will be the catalyzer for cloud gaming market, just like what smartphones did to landline telephones

I can see a PS6 with a handheld as companion, it perfectly make sense, if they don't then that'd be a missed opportunity

It definitely is better than Xbox X/S, Microsoft missed a huge opportunity there, they have to manufacture 2 different SKU (sony will soon have just one with their modular design)

I can't be the only one to sense this signal?

If they don't do a handheld then that could only mean they got pressured to not do it, by whom? shareholders? insiders? 3rd-party?

The PSVita story is unfortunate, but lot of solid reasons why it didn't do as good as they'd have hoped, it sold ~ same as the WiiU and yet Nintendo doubled down and were successful with the Switch, it could have been PSVita2 or PSP2 and Sony would have found similar success, even thought Switch took some time before going mainstream, that's another evidence that the market is demanding it, you can see it with the boom of the handheld retro consoles that all are running android/linux

Successful games like CoD Mobile and Genshin Impact, as well as the countless of games getting ported to the Switch and Smartphones is a better evidence than my comment, smartphone users are demanding premium games, and that played a big role in the Switch success

The PS Vita was ahead of its time. I own a secondhand OELD model and the hardware is AMAZING, considering it is a decade old. The home brew community added lots of value with the emulation ability and the fact that sony abandoned the console.

Yes, the vita was a flop at the time but i am convinced that if sony released a modern equivalents, it would sell like hotcakes. Where i am less certain is of what this means for sony’s strategy - and there i agree with you. Two consoles with two different graphical capabilities could be a disaster. Or it could not? I don’t know.

They even released the Playstation TV, which was a tiny little box (smaller than most portable hard drives) with the Vita internals and an HDMI port. Plays most Vita games, you just use PS4 controllers with it (and maybe also PS3? Can't recall for sure).

Really, take a Vita and add a cradle for TV, and you've basically got a Switch. And the Vita was developed and sold in parallel to a full Playstation console, so it's not unprecedented. Normal, even, except for Microsoft, until very recently when having a separate handheld system seemed to die a sudden death, I assume due to the rise of phone gaming—Nintendo, Gameboy series; Sega, Gamegear et c.; Sony, PSP/Vita.

The rise of phone gaming was probably the reason why 3DS and Vita sold so much worse than DS and PSP. There is no big market for small handheld consoles anymore. The Switch sold well, but probably just because it is a bigger system which is more similar to a stationary console than to a phone. Which makes it unlikely that a company would release both a mobile and a stationary system again.

And so they did. I’d never heard of PSTV but that’s really cool. You can buy them brand new here on Amazon Japan, currently going for JPY50,000.

Microsoft is definitely pivoting towards making most of their money from their subscription game pass, with the idea that even if their consoles do sub-par they can also gain money from PC users and try and eat into Steam’s market share. Given how many game studios they’ve been buying, I don’t know whether it’s smart to bet against them (even considering their spotty history with studio acquisition).

While I have a hard time imagining Sony making another play at the handheld market after two failures, maybe they’ll realize that if they actually market it well and don’t use weird non-standard hardware like the PSP’s did they’d stand a better chance.

> Microsoft is definitely pivoting towards making most of their money from their subscription game pass

I'm not convinced this is going to be a winning strategy. It clearly doesn't work for TV/Movies. I'm not kidding. The model of "grow as fast a possible" means low prices and lots of content. Once the bean counters show up, the prices go up and content development becomes a trickle. Look at Netflix. By that point, it is way easier to launch a product with preorders to pay off investment. Microsoft's key play will be that they own the console and can force game pass/etc but seemingly, gamers prefer the other platforms so they may run. If Valve builds a living room next-gen console from Steam OS, they may have the most well-liked platform for devs.

I don't think it's fair to categorize the first PSP as a failure. It did very well market-wise, even though it did not sell as much as the DS.

You’re right, actually even the PS Vita sold more than 10 million which is better than I expected (It was a WiiU, not a Sega CD/Virtual Boy) . I’ll have to remember that in the future.

Look at the Xbox Series S. Microsoft has already fragmented the target hardware for consoles. Sony or Microsoft could conceivably make something akin to a portable Series S in four to five years. The delta between the TV console and the portable one would be greater however.

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