Comment by coder543
We already have a good sense of what SoC Nintendo will likely be going with for the Switch 2.
Being so dismissive of the Switch shows the disconnect between what most gamers care about, and what some tech enthusiasts think gamers care about.
The Switch 1 used a crappy mobile chip, sure, but it was able to run tons of games that no other Tegra device could have dreamed of running, due to the power of having a stable target for optimization, with sufficiently powerful APIs available, and a huge target market. The Switch 1 can do 90% of what a Steam Deck can, while using a fraction of the power, thickness, and cooling. With the Switch 2 almost certainly gaining DLSS, I fully expect the Switch 2 to run circles around the Steam Deck, even without a “high end chip”. It will be weaker on paper, but that won’t matter.
I say this as someone who owns a PS5, a Switch OLED, an ROG Ally, and a fairly decent gaming PC. I briefly had an original Steam Deck, but the screen was atrocious.
Most people I see talking about Steam Deck’s awesomeness seem to either have very little experience with a Switch, or just have a lot of disdain for Nintendo. Yes, having access to Steam games is cool… but hauling around a massive device with short battery life is not cool to most gamers, and neither is spending forever tweaking settings just to get something that’s marginally better than the Switch 1 can do out of the box.
The Switch 1 is at the end of its life right now, but Nintendo is certainly preparing the hardware for the next 6 to 8 years.
> Being so dismissive of the Switch shows the disconnect between what most gamers care about, and what some tech enthusiasts think gamers care about.
What makes you think I am? Hardware wise it's an equivalent of a unremarkable ancient Android tablet, yet it's pretty exceptional what Nintendo manage to achieve despite of that.
> The Switch 1 can do 90% of what a Steam Deck can
That's highly debatable and almost completely depends on what games specifically you like/play. IMHO PC gaming and Nintendo have relatively little overlap (e.g. compared to to PS and Xbox at least).
> Steam Deck’s awesomeness
I never implied that the Switch was/is/will be somehow inferior (besides potentially having a slower CPU & GPU).
> but Nintendo is certainly preparing the hardware for the next 6 to 8 years
It's not obvious that they were the first time and still did fine, why would they change their approach this time (albeit there weren't necessarily that many options on the market back then but it was still an ~2 year old chip).