 Hey, everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. I am Nathaniel Rumpeljantz, and hey, if you guys liked the news the last couple of days, it's been pretty cool. We had that awesome Nintendo Direct mini showcase, partner showcase yesterday. Ended up being a hell of a lot better than I think any of us anticipated. We had this Sparks of Hope event today as well, about 15, 16 minutes of goodness there. I really enjoyed that. But what we need to talk about today is an article by a writer at Games, almost like GameStop, GameSpot. This writer has really put a damper for some on the idea of being excited about Nintendo Directs. And this is because they happen to own another platform, which I find to be rather, rather fascinating. But we need to talk about this in earnest. And before we do, hey, if you enjoy this video, you enjoy the conversations and what we're talking about here, I would appreciate if you were subscribed to the channel. We are on our road to 80,000 subscribers. We have a massive giveaway planned at ADK, but that shouldn't be why you subscribe. You should actually subscribe, just because you actually enjoy what I have to say and you like our community. That being said, let's actually look at this article. And I think you'll instantly understand what we're talking about. But I want to read the article to you and then talk about it in earnest because I think context really matters when we're having conversations like this. And I don't want anybody actually going out and saying anything to this writer. It is his opinion. He's allowed to have it, even if we disagree. So let's go ahead and take a look. All right, so here's the article in question. It says, Steam Deck has ruined Nintendo Directs for me. I used to marvel at all the indie games I could finally play. Now I've already got access to them elsewhere. And again, this is written by Steve Watts. Please, please, I cannot repeat this enough. Do not go and attack the writer or anything like that. Grie or disagree. All right, so hope it comes to Switch. We've all seen or said or thought this countless times while finding interesting and experimental PC games that would feel great on a handheld. And developers have obliged us, transforming the Switch into a flourishing home for smaller, less hardware intensive games. The one drawback has typically been the wait. As these games often would hit in PC first and come to Switch months or even years later. That's still the case today, which is why owning a Steam Deck has made recent Nintendo Direct presentations feel a lot less exciting for me than they used to be. Since the earliest days of Nintendo Direct, I've loved the presentation style. Video game announcements and trailers wrapped up in a quick, snappy, visually appealing package. It's no wonder that they've become the standard for the industry as more publishers move away from live events. But the star of the show has always been the games themselves. And when most of those games are also appearing on a handheld PC, that looks and feels a lot like a Switch. And they were often coming to PC earlier and or cheaper. It's hard to get too excited. Take today's Nintendo Direct menu you saw about yesterday. For example, some of the games shown like Near Automata or Portal Companion Collection are already available on Steam, making the Switch version the latecomer. Right now, the Portal bundle on Steam is $3, while the newly launched Portal Companion Collection on Switch is $20. This is partly due to a Steam summer sale. That's another point in the Steam's favor. These deep discounts are much more common on Valve's store. Meanwhile, surprise drops like Little Noah, Scyon or Scyon of Paradise, surprise dropped on Steam right alongside the Switch. Even the big finish, the announcement that Persona 5 Royale is finally coming to the Switch was suddenly undercut by the announcement weeks ago that it's coming to PC and Xbox Game Pass. It used to be that when I saw a great looking indie game like Rogue Legacy 2 or Vampire Survivors, I would watch a Nintendo Direct with rapt anticipation, hoping to see that they were coming to my handheld of choice. Now I have them both and I've been enjoying them for weeks on my Steam Deck. I don't need to hope it comes to Switch anymore because I already have a device that with its access to the vast PC games library that often gets games first, renders that hope irrelevant. This isn't to say that the Nintendo Direct wasn't entertaining and full of great games. Nintendo is a big publisher and lots of developers like to show off their wares on a Nintendo Direct first. There were plenty of games I wasn't even aware of that were shown at today's Direct. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that the Steam Deck has rendered the Switch an exclusive only console for everything else. I'll likely play on Steam Deck sooner and or cheaper. That's because even for the games released simultaneously across PC and Switch, I have more confidence in my Steam library remaining with me. I would like to think that Nintendo has learned its lesson and is planning the Switch library to be forward compatible to the next one, but there's no guarantee. Not to mention, Steam often gets more aggressive sale prices than those on Switch. So by simply waiting a little while, I could probably get the same games on a similar device or cheaper. More so, the Steam Deck often offers better performance along with all of the Steam's community hooks, tools like mods and features like achievements. Game updates and patches often come to the Steam before they also come to Switch. And if I do ever graduate to a desktop gaming PC, I know my full library will follow me there. This all makes it even more vital for Nintendo to show off its first party exclusives or secure more cool looking indie exclusives like it did back in 2017. When it first launched, Golf Story or Battle Chef Brigade deserves sequels. I love Nintendo's games. I always have. There's nothing quite like the pinpoint platforming of Mario, the epic fantasy grand jury of Zelda, or the eerie isolation of Metroid. Like all Nintendo platforms, the Switch will remain the sole repository for Nintendo's unique game design sensibilities. Nintendo's own games themselves will be enough to keep the Switch in my gaming rotation for the foreseeable future. And there are still third party developers making exclusive Switch games like Dragon Quest Treasures or Mario Plus Rabbids Marks of Hope. Besides, but Nintendo hasn't had a big summer showcase like many of the other publishers. And this presentation was squarely focused on third parties. The days of hope it comes to Switch may be over. After years of not being a PC gamer, Steam Deck has opened a new world of early access to games that I so often had to wait for a console port previously. That means I can get it faster, cheaper, and more future-proofed on Steam. The Steam Deck won't ultimately be a Switch killer, but it has taken some of the luster out of what used to make Nintendo Direct's feel so special for me. Now again, I want to point out that I really don't want anyone going to attack this person. And this is their personal opinion. So their opinion can't be wrong because this is all about their personal taste and their personal excitement. I find it rather interesting of course that this article exists in a time when playing PC games in your hand isn't actually a new concept. We've had the GPD win, we've had the IA NEO, and many, many handheld PC gaming devices over the years. The reason the Steam Deck has really gotten all this pub isn't even the price point because look, the Steam Deck's really exciting. It sounds great at $400, but you got to buy a bunch of accessories for it to take advantage of everything. And you got to buy some pretty beefy micro SD cards if you actually want to get, by the way, you have to do the same thing on Switch if you're buying digitally. But the point is that by the time you're all done, that $400 system's now become a $600 to $700 system before you even bought a game. Now, I understand you can buy a game while the game just play it, but you know what I mean? To really take advantage of it, you're gonna need more. So the $400 system seems like a budget, but it's really not. And then even when you get the bigger one, I think it only goes up to 500 gigabytes. Am I wrong on that? Someone correct me in the chat if I'm wrong on the top end Steam Deck's 500 gigabytes. It's still for PC games, not much. I PC game, by the way, and I'm telling you right now, I know he's just getting into PC gaming, so he's probably dabbling more in the indie scene, but on my PC, I've literally got three terabytes of storage filled with games just from the last year. So yeah, Steam's gonna need a lot more than what it comes with, the Steam Deck, and it's gonna cost more and more and more for that storage and everything else. So look, this isn't me trying to attack the Steam Deck either. I think it's a great piece of tech, and obviously it has positioned itself to be more affordable, even considering all of that, then it's contemporaries. It's just not a new concept. And I'm pointing this out mostly because this person's opinion basically is, I've never really played games on PC. He fully admits I don't have a gaming PC, although I'm not sure if he's aware of the computer he's literally writing this from, which is probably some sort of laptop. He could probably already play some of these indie games I'm not sure how aware he is. I try to be conscientious of the fact that a lot of people that have grown up on console gaming don't really fully understand the PC gaming scene and that you don't need some powerful desktop PC to be a PC gamer. Like that's one of the beauties of PC is actually, there's a wide range of hardware out there that can adequately play games at some form of an enjoyable level. So, one welcome, by the way, to the PC gaming world I've been in since the 90s. I'm really glad to see another person partaking it. But also, I don't know that using this as an argument that the Nintendo Direct means less is fair. Now you could argue some of the big analysis, like ending with Persona, not as big of a deal if you game on PC or to be honest, any other platform. But okay, fine, you have a Steam Deck, cool. What I think is interesting is noting that some of the luster seems to be taken away of directs for this person, simply because the games are also gonna be on PC as an example, Harvestella, they didn't even mention that. We didn't even know this game existed till this Nintendo Direct. It was exclusively announced in this Nintendo Direct. It's going to PC and Switch, that's it. He's probably gonna end up playing it if he does on his Steam Deck. I understand that, but Steam doesn't have announcement. So you get the PC gaming show every year and the PC gaming show is great, but how and where are you gonna find out about all of these games? Like that's kind of my thing is even if the Nintendo Direct luster is taken away for your excitement for Switch, these games being announced should also heighten your excitement for your Steam Deck. It almost is like, if you're that excited over Steam Deck and you're finally realizing how amazing PC gaming truly is because it is an absolutely the point he makes about future compatibility and bringing your games forward to other devices. Oh, PC dominates in a way. PlayStation, Xbox and Switch can only dream of. But here's the problem. Here's the problem. You're still finding out about these games at a Direct. So even if it doesn't excite you for Switch, or should it take away the luster for the Direct itself? If you just stop viewing the Direct as it's only announcing things for Switch, then this is the way that I looked at it with the game awards or the Summer Game Fest or even Xbox. Xbox had a number of games, indie games announced in their thing that were also coming to Nintendo Switch. We need to stop viewing these events. And maybe this is a mentality we all have. We need to stop taking these individual events whether it's from Sony, oh wait Street Fighter 6 is announced. Guess what, it's going to other platforms as well. Go figure. Like we need to start, stop looking at these individual console first party hosted shows and stop looking at it as we only should watch this to be excited about that system. And if something is exciting is announced in that thing that I'm really interested in but I'm going to play it on a different platform, ergo, this thing is worse. I don't understand that mentality. And that's something I, just from a personal opinion stance, I struggled to wrap my mind around this mindset that the Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Showcase is worse because all the games that excited you in that showcase, some that you didn't even know about, some you admitted you didn't even know about until this Direct are going to be available on a different platform. Why would that make you less excited for the Direct knowing that you just got a bunch of games announced that you like. Remember what Nintendo Directs are. Let's remember what Summer Game Fest is. Let's remember what the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase is. Let's remember what those state of plays are. What are they? Glorified advertising. They're advertising games. And at these advertisements of games we get ads for new announcements for new games. And that's what people usually get really excited about is the prospect of new games getting unveiled at these events. It shouldn't matter what platform you're going to play the game on. If you found out about Harvestella at that Nintendo Direct Mini Showcase and you're excited for it and you want to play it, it shouldn't matter that you're going to play it on PC instead of playing it on Switch. That announcement should be exciting. Ergo, your excitement for that Direct I don't feel like should be lessened when something was announced you were looking forward to. He admitted in his article other games that were announced that he's looking forward to but it's dampened my excitement for the Direct because they're going to be on a different device. Here's what I think he's trying to get at. And he's trying to get at this without going this far with it because maybe he doesn't realize it yet or maybe he just doesn't want to upset Nintendo stuff. I actually went back and look at some of the articles he writes, he writes articles for all the platforms. So it's not like he's like a Nintendo writer at GameSpot. But he does secure interviews. He has an interview up right now for Sparks of Hope that we're probably going to cover a general podcast tonight. But what I find interesting in going through his stuff is I think he's very aware that if he goes to say the luster of Switch itself is lessened because of his enjoyment of Steam Deck, he's worried he's going to anger, I don't know, fanboys I guess. I think that's probably the concern. He doesn't want the fanboys coming at him. So instead of saying the luster of Switch itself is lessened, the luster of the Nintendo Direct is lessened. We'll probably get him a little bit less of that negative feedback. And I understand saying that. I just don't understand what the Directs, when they're announcing games that you're excited for, how can it be lessened just because you're gonna play them on a different platform? My excitement for Summer Game Fest wasn't lessened. My excitement for the Volvo Digital event wasn't lessened. My excitement for these events aren't lessened because I might play some of those games on other platforms. Like when TMNT Shredder's Revenge was shown off at Summer Game Fest and they clearly were shown on a different platform's version, it didn't lessen my excitement for it coming to Switch. It heightened my excitement knowing about all this new content, new features that were coming to Switch. And I think that's where I differentiate sometimes with these others is my excitement levels don't go down because I'm gonna play a game on something else. The announcement is what's exciting. It doesn't matter where the announcement happens at. Now I understand, he did make one really strong point in there and that is that obviously some of the bigger announcements, he repeated this a couple of times. So one of the things that he was watching DirectX for, because he clearly likes to play indie games, which is totally fine, is that he always hoped that this game would come to Switch or that game would come to Switch or this game would come to Switch because he wants to play it portably. And for him, the portal announcements or the near-automata or the persona announcements, like those were three really big announcements in this Direct, obviously didn't slap for him. They didn't hit, they didn't excite him because he can already play them on that Steam Deck. But again, personal opinions. He also said there was other games in that Direct that he didn't get excited for. So it's kind of weird, it's kind of weird. I'll just say this, I'll just say this, I wanna end with this, no shade at the Steam Deck. I think it's a wonderful platform, IPC game. I would like to have one to play some of my PC games on the go. And I do think in terms of its hardware capabilities and obviously the Steam platform that it's built upon, there are a lot of things it does better than the Nintendo Switch. There are still some things the Switch has some advantages on. The Switch Lite, as an example, is much more portable than a Steam Deck is. There is an OLED screen, which makes colors pop just that much more, which is a better screen technology than being used on the Steam Deck. There's obviously the motion controls and getting to play things like Nintendo Switch Sports. You just aren't gonna kind of get that experience on Steam Deck. But on the flip side, Steam Deck can play all your PC games pretty much all of them. And yeah, some people do emulate Switch games on it to varying levels of success. Some games run better on Steam Deck than others when it comes to that emulation aspect. And emulating games in general is an advantage of PC gaming. Whether or not you guys agree with game emulation or not, that's your personal choice, but it is an advantage. So I look at it like this. We're all gamers. I'm really glad this person has finally discovered PC gaming and all of its amazing values, the sales. I mean, I know Switch is having one of its best sales it's ever had right now, but it's a true wonder to me that a lot of us base our excitement for things seemingly around what I think is console loyalty. And I think up to this point, this person was really, really loyal to Switch as a portable gaming machine, not realizing there's been other portable gaming machines this entire time, long before Steam Deck. Steam Deck's not even a readily available platform. So his opinion's not gonna be applicable to a majority of the readers. It's gonna be applicable only to a small subset of Steam Deck owners that happen to own Switch. And I don't know how big that crossover is. I don't know how many Steam Decks are out there. I just know I can't go online right now and buy one without going to the second hand market. I have to pre-order to get in a list to pay for it later this year and then get it. And that's fine. I guess you can argue that's better than how PlayStation 5 is being handled, I suppose. I don't know that it's better. I think it's just different. That's just my personal opinion. But there's me and Sculpt. Like if I just glance at eBay right now, I'm pretty sure that the Steam Decks are me. So let me just type Steam Deck in and on eBay because people are like, oh well, it's not being as Sculpt. I'm like, I'm seeing $830 right now. Let me go to buy it now, though. Let's go to buy it now. That's not gonna look at auctions. Yeah, I've seen $829 just for the 64 gigabyte version. That's double price. That's double price. For the 256, I'm seeing $1,900, $925, one thou. For the 512 gigabyte version, which I believe is the largest internal capacity. That's $1,200. I'm seeing that listed for. I'm seeing some of them as high as 1,500. And this person's actually sold 38 of them. Get this, get this, get this. This person selling the Valve Steam Deck, 512 gigabyte brand new sealed unopened in-hand, five-star seller for $1,500 has sold 38 Steam Decks. 38 of them. And we're supposed to sit here and pretend it's not being Sculpt? That Steam's way of handling this is even better? That you can't just make unlimited accounts and get unlimited pre-orders in? It's, you know, not a beautiful, I mean, how many total listings are here for buy it now? Does it, let me see, there are, gosh, I forgot. I thought eBay gave me total listings, but there's 1,500 plus results. So thousands of these, thousands of these available with 836 right now available to buy now, which isn't as bad as PlayStation 5, by the way. There's a lot more PlayStation 5s, but it's because there's a lot more PlayStation 5s being made. I don't know what percentage of this this is on the secondhand market versus people in hand that actually wanted them, but clearly Sculptors are taking advantage at least here in the United States. I can't speak for other countries besides my own. So, look, the Steam Deck's great. I think it's a great piece of tech. I think it shows a bright future for Nintendo because I absolutely think Nvidia's gonna have some sort of response with Nintendo. I think Nintendo's next platform is going to attempt to outdo what Steam Deck is doing. And I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's just DLSS, which obviously Steam Deck can't use or what it's gonna be, but there's gonna be something that I think Nintendo and Nvidia are working on that's going to remind people who the handheld king is because Nintendo's been challenged before, guys. Nintendo has been challenged many times. The Game Gear was a more powerful system. There were some drawbacks to that. Battery life, battery life's also not that great on Steam Deck either, but some people, in the PC gaming enthusiast community, they don't really care, they'll just plug that thing in. It's kind of interesting because a lot of people aren't actually using the Steam Deck on the go. They're just using it in other places in their house where their PC isn't, which fun fact, I think that's the most common use case for Switch. I do see people playing Switch out in public, but I think a lot of people that play Switch portably and correct me if I'm wrong, you guys are a lot, most of my audience plays Switch. When you guys play a portably, are you just still in your house or just outside in your backyard or something? I think it's kind of common that we do play portably, but we're still mostly playing at home. I don't know, the article's fine. His opinions are fine, his opinions are his own. He's brand new to PC gaming, so he's finally seeing all the benefits of it, and that probably makes him think a little bit less of Nintendo because PC gaming is a very, very wonderful thing and I will never attack PC gaming. I just think it's a little weird to say the directs are less exciting when there's games being announced that you're gonna play. You're just gonna play them elsewhere. Okay, so call it a Valve Steam Direct then because they ain't giving you one. Valve ain't out here giving you a directs, so. Anyways, folks, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I end with a little bit of a dance from Nintendo Prime. Let me know what you think down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video.