Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

Eh, I'll stick to my proper PC for Steam stuff ..... Still, I'll keep an eye on that!

I like the idea.

Then I saw the screen resolution that's also 7 inches big with bezels.

Then I saw the battery life

Then I saw the internal storage. That's not even one decent PC game.

So it's a $650 machine that plays games for 2 hours.

Also how does it work docked (sold separately), is it connected to mains or is it doing that off of battery?

@nessisonett Only thing that really irks me is the face button placement but it already looks miles better than a Steam controller or any of the other Steam Machines or mock up PC handhelds

Ugly but looks really comfortable to hold. Not sure about the touchpads, they are very close to the stick, seems easy to accidentally touch them, but will have to try it to be able to tell.

Price is quite decent £349 for what is a much more powerful machine than the Switch is competitive but the £459 model makes much more sense to buy.

The steam handheld looks, actually pretty good for its price, I really don't think its going to compete with the switch in anyway as they both have different types of game, I mean one can play PC games, and who doesn't want that, the other plays nintendo games, and even with that said nintendo isn't the type to compete, BUUUUUUT i'm hoping That this might, And its a very big might, scare nintendo a little bit so they might want to up there game.

Ugh what I'm I saying, Nintendo is not going to do that in a million years.

@Snatcher Nintendo come up with a concept. Everyone tries to make the most powerful version of it. SONY usually wins (with their branding) meanwhile Nintendo are rubbing their hands together thinking 'the fools, they are all making Switches. Get ready to announce our next idea.'

(or something)

@GrailUK LOL.

@Aeon7 I remember reading something about this a few months ago. At the time I assumed it would be similar to all the other £1000 Switch style PC clones. It doesn't look too bad actually, but the price is the most attractive feature
I'll look forward to the reviews. It may even get me back into PC gaming.

Honestly that Steam handheld could get me into casual PC gaming.

It's interesting how Valve stuck with a 7" 720p (up to 800) screen. I remember when Bloomberg first reported on the OLED screen, there seem to be a lot of people who wanted Nintendo to produce a perfect PC port machine for them, at minimal cost, and anything less than full HD 1080p was a rip off/cowardice/evil-capitalist-plot etc

@TSR3 the last couple years over lapped with switch and it was pretty barren and unsupported.

@TSR3 I'm not ruling out Orin and explicitly said that they might if it gives them a chip that fits entirely with their needs. However, the point was that they're not in the least bit wedded to what Nvidia have on the shelf. It should really just be seen as a happy accident that the X1 had all they features they wanted, very few that they didn't, and the price was right.

I'm just of the opinion that, unless lightning strikes twice and Nvidia make another chip that's such a good fit to their requirements, they'll probably go with a custom solution. As such, trawling through Nvidia's roadmap looking to find the chip for the next generation Switch is probably going to turn up a blank, much in the same way as trying to work out what the Series X was going to use from looking at AMD's.

Steam handheld has a good pricing for the specs but the buttons layout looks really bad and altough powerfull (compared to switch) I am afraid the games won't run particularly well on it as I am not sure devs will put a lot of time on it and valve is also not known for curation (at all)

I like the price of the Steam Deck. Take that OLED Switch.

The things that put me off the it though are that it's running Linux, so bye bye to about 60% of my Steam library because it only runs on Windows or MacOS. Sure, there's Proton but that's a band aid solution that's only really worth doing for that one game that you really want to play and are prepared to put some effort into setting up right. Nobody's doing it for a library of several thousand games.

Running Windows on a handheld device is obviously far from ideal, but there's nothing about it that's bad enough to be worth trading that much of your Steam library for.

Other than that, the lack of a physical keyboard is disappointing. Having used the GPD Win for a number of years, there are a lot of games that mostly have controller support but just need an occasional button press. Working one into a design that's not a clamshell is going to be tough, but the Win 3 still managed it.

And yes, the mousepads on both sides layout seems weird and relegates the buttons and d-pad to awkward spots. I like the idea of having one mousepad on there, because navigating a desktop OS without one is a pain, and mouse aim is a serious boon for a lot of games. However, the left hand side one particularly seems like dead weight and they're both occupying valuable real estate that I'd rather see the buttons and d-pad in.

On the whole though, I'm mostly impressed. Its arrival may prompt developers to start designing more games that can be played entirely without a keyboard and supporting Linux, and I'll be interested to see what workarounds people come up with in the meantime.

I doubt it's likely to rival the Switch in terms of sales but it seems likely to become the biggest player in the handheld games PC market by some margin.

If we want to be pedantic the battery capacity is about 2.5x larger than the Switch. Their rated battery life is only marginally lower than the Switch (2-8hrs vs 4-9hrs) because of the significantly higher spec. And the cheapest SKU has 64GB of eMMC flash which is identical to the OLED model. For $50US more than the OLED model. But it also has raw GPU performance that's about 4X the Switch docked, double the RAM and double the memory bandwidth. All this for $50US more than the Switch OLED model

And there are 256GB and 512GB SKUs that drop the eMMC for an NVME SSD. Those are the SKUs you are quoting prices for. So yeah, hardware wise this is pretty compelling I think. Does it compete with the Switch? Maybe, maybe not. But whatever it does it definitely highlights how far behind the Switch is compared to what they could release at their price point.

Oh and yeah, the dock definitely has power passthrough. Why on earth would it not? It also supports HDMI 2.0, which the Switch could with little to no effort but does not, and Display Port 1.4
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech

FWIW, I'm definitely interested in this thing

It is not for me. I already have a powerful PC and I don't need another handheld console. But it is indeed a very impressive piece of kit.

Valve is also doing an amazing job to stop the scalpers. Only one reservation per Steam user is allowed and it also requires a purchase to have been made on the Steam account before June. Really impressed with Valve on this, they even timed the announcement perfectly after the disappointing OLED Switch reveal.

I will add that as hyped as I am about the concept in theory and at the very least a company of this level of influence taking this form factor semi-seriously? Valve has a history of getting bored of hardware ideas almost as soon as they're out the door. And I'm not a huge fan of the physical design.

The spec and price have me interested but. And the "linux only" doesn't worry me that much because there's always in-home streaming for the titles you can't run. It's more of a nice product to run indie titles that don't exist on Switch or struggle to run on Switch. And also legacy titles that have not and never will be ported to Switch. As well as the occasional newer title

I have prob around 400 games on Steam, if it's "only 60%" of that compatible with Linux we're still talking more games than I have on Switch, Wii U, 3DS, DS and Wii combined.... and if you really wanted to there'd be nothing stopping you from installing windows on it

(and you could easily run Dolphin on this)

@Matt_Barber I've always assumed Nvidia would develop a bespoke model for Nintendo (and their own Shield box too). Yes, you're right the original Tegra X1 was an off-the-shelf model. But Mariko (Tegra X1+) was just for Nintendo (& Shield!). I can't see Nintendo moving away from Nvidia for the next generation. They don't have the resources to go it alone like Apple, and the other players (e.g. Qualcomm and Samsung) have their own big customers or their own requirements to focus on. At least with Nvidia, Nintendo know they are an important customer.

One thing to note about Valve's Steam Deck - the dock is not included in the listed prices, and they don't have pricing or availability for the dock yet. And its weight is 271 grams more than the Switch.

Maybe make a Steam Deck thread? That way, I can avoid reading about it hee hee.