Nintendo’s unbeatable advantage will always be its first-party games, but the Switch 2 — a device rumored to be a fairly light improvement over its predecessor — doesn’t quite feel like it’ll be as culturally dominant as the Switch was in 2017.
That remains to be seen. Back in 2016-2017, every gaming media was skeptical that the Switch would be anywhere near as much of a success like the DS or the GameBoy had been, or if it was going to be another failure like the Wii U.
Why buy a game on PS5 when you can get it on Steam and have access to it on any number of devices?
That has been one of the arguments for PC gaming in a long time, but it never quite reached the console players’ mindset. Not to mention that, despite its dominance in game distribution, Valve and the Steam brand are nowhere near as recognizable as any of the other ‘big 3’. The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays. I can’t see it take less than a decade for than a decade for that mindset to start changing change and competitors and regulation to get interested, and even that’s an optimistic estimate.
Still, it’s good to hear the platform exlusivity walls are finally breaking down.
That remains to be seen. Back in 2016-2017, every gaming media was skeptical that the Switch would be anywhere near as much of a success like the DS or the GameBoy had been, or if it was going to be another failure like the Wii U.
That has been one of the arguments for PC gaming in a long time, but it never quite reached the console players’ mindset. Not to mention that, despite its dominance in game distribution, Valve and the Steam brand are nowhere near as recognizable as any of the other ‘big 3’. The Steam Deck may have sold a few million copies (four or five from what I hear?), but it’s nowhere near the hundreds of millions of Switches, even in sale pace nowadays. I can’t see it take less than a decade for than a decade for that mindset to start changing change and competitors and regulation to get interested, and even that’s an optimistic estimate.
Still, it’s good to hear the platform exlusivity walls are finally breaking down.