Steam Deck game library now 29% larger than that of Nintendo Switch

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzmod to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 431 points – Steam Deck game library now 29% larger than that of Nintendo Switch
pcgamesn.com

This is just talking about games approved through Valve's verification process. There are a lot of games that work that are "unverified", not to mention the entire history of gaming available through emulation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21835717

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It plays way more than that, I play all sorts of "unsupported" games all the time - mostly they run fine or even great (never mind all the emulators lol)

The ProtonDB Decky plugin is so much more useful than the Steam Verified one.

I have not even begun to fuck with games outside of Steam yet. My backlog of stuff I want to play is insane. I probably could not play through even just the fully supported games before I died, never mind all the other stuff.

Does 29% include the 99% of switch games the deck can play?

Given that compatibility improvements can essentially only be expected from Ryujinx now though, does Ryujinx run as well as Yuzu on the Deck? Ideally I'd like to switch to it entirely unless a viable Yuzu successor emerges, but I've heard that it's not as resource efficient in comparison.

In my opinion it's not "as good" as yuzu, for now. That said it still runs about anything I throw at it, but yuzu did it better with higher frame rates.

There's suyu continuing yuzus work.

It doesn't seem like there's much ongoing work on suyu, which isn't surprising since emulators are difficult to develop. Not many people have the necessary knowledge and are willing to work for free.

So yes, suyu is there for people who need it for it's performance, but it seems likely that Ryunjinx continues to improve while suyu won't change much in terms of performance and compatibility.

It's great for the games that are already running well though, especially on low end hardware like the Steam Deck.

Yuzu is better overall, but Ryujinx works weirdly better for certain games. Like, Mario Wonder runs about 40% better for me on Ryujinx for some reason.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

It has some value as a comparison, some people might be worried about buying a deck because they've heard that some games don't work on it because of linux. But no one would think the Switch is lacking in games.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

You say that, but I can keep my deck in docked/gaming mode, and my son who's only 7 has been playing away it like its a switch.

I think people just like to make excuses for their spending habits, which isn't wrong at all. It just becomes disheartening when you say such blatantly wrong things.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

Generally speaking you're either playing docked, or sitting down. Not typically both, but I know what you mean. Even then though, any of the games he plays just automatically readjust the resolution to handheld mode and works just fine. Then when you plug it back in, it knows to stop using the steam as monitor 1 and switches the output to the TV.

Not sure how you're doing it, but its worked fine for me.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

What? Didn't realize it was such a draw, but irregardless as I said, you just unplug the screen. Its as easy as that with a hub, just like a switch. I do it daily.

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Given that most game developer don't even target the Steam Deck, it's quite impressive. The Switch and Deck have a lot of junk games too. And both are handhelds, capable of docking to the tv/monitor. While both systems are vastly different, they have lot of in common and people might buy only one of the systems. Therefore comparisons fair or not, are still comparisons people make and decide.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

That can be said about any console too. The fact is, people have limited money and time. Some people have to decide which of these devices to get and it makes lot of sense to compare them. Off course they differ, but that is why people need the comparisons. But in the end both machines are handhelds with screen, battery, controls and both are here to play games.

Lets do a car comparison! Imagine someone looking at two different cars, one traditional and the other electrical car. Both are vastly different, but both serve the same. And have lot in common, despite some of its technology is lot of different and the user experience also differs lot. But people still can afford only one car and need comparisons to decide which one. And that is a similar situation with the consoles or handhelds.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::

Switch and SteamDeck are consoles. Just in a handheld form. Like any other system, the experience will be different. That is exactly the reason why people do comparisons, to find the right system for them. The size of the library might not be important for you, but maybe for someone else. Games are the reasons why people buy these systems. It makes sense to compare different things about the games, including its number of available games.

It is very important to know, because SteamDeck is based on Linux and historically there were only a handful of games (we talk about a few hundred) playable. So for people who wasn't informed before, its a good information to know that the library of playable games grew significantly.

but this is truly apples and oranges.

For you maybe. But the fact is, which you still ignore, that people are here to decide which of these systems to get. Both are handheld gaming systems and it makes sense to compare them, regardless of your feelings. Because people need these comparisons to find the correct device.

But saying one is “better” is kind of difficult.

Without comparing them, it will be impossible to answer which system is better. And I know which one is better for me, because I informed myself before purchasing stuff. And I'm sure there are lot of people who don't know how many games are playable on the Deck.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas ::: \

You are disrespectful, not me. Just like you I do not agree and tell you the reason why I think you are wrong. I'm sorry if you feel in any kind of personally attacked by me, that's not my goal. But with the kind of attitude you give me here with this reply, its probably the best we stop arguing.

Edit: And yes, you was ignoring the points I brought you up, because you kept saying the same without explaining why it was wrong. But I was explaining to you multiple times. Have a good day.

I dont see why not. Especially with the switch 2 coming out eventually, I think the value proposition of the deck goes up for consumers who might want to make a choice

Well I think neither of the numbers mean much since in my opinion a majority of those games on both systems are just slop. So the numbers of available games is irrelevant to anything to me. It would be like stating or bragging about how many words can be made from the alphabet.

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I wanted to buy a switch for the longest time, but after Nintendo being cunts, I will buy the deck and simply emulate any and all Nintendo games. They don't deserve any less

My wife adamantly refused to get a Steam Deck for herself, saying that she would never give up her Switch.

Cut to one year out from buying one for her, and the Switch has been in a bin almost the entire time.

The steam deck library includes the entire switch library via emulation, so Yeah Obviously. (Ik they're not counting emulation, but my point is that the steam deck is a PC, which makes it much more versatile)

They just talk about Steam games that were verified by Valve's process. So yeah, as you said, it's much larger for people who are willing to do a tiny bit of tinkering 👍

@Fubarberry My one wish is they (Valve, Nintendo, etc.) could make discovery easier and more useful. It takes a lot of effort finding new games to play that aren't the usual major releases and obvious indie titles.

Edit: The two resources I use are https://bestofsteam.com/ and https://steam250.com/

Valve actually does a lot to make discovery easier, compared to Nintendo:

You really can't say Valve wouldn't do a lot to help with discovery.

@thingsiplay I've only been actively using Steam for about a year and wasn't aware of everything you mentioned. I appreciate the detailed reply. That's all very helpful.

Guess Valve needs a discovery for the discovery tools.^^ Glad it helped.

I'll check those out. I've been doing the "steam discovery queue" for awhile now though, and it feels like if you do it enough you won't ever miss anything of interest. I think it can work pretty well for game discovery, you just need to invest some time in it every day to get through all the more "common" recommendations.

Thanks for these links!

Steam has a built in discovery queue that contains a list of games it thinks you might like (and it it infinite, so it technically contains every game on the platform)

I don't game much anymore but when I do, I grab my Deck and go snuggle next to the fam while they watch dumb TV and I play dumb old single player games that run beautifully on the hardware.

I haven't touched my desktop in months, but my steam deck usually gets a little love every few days, it really does make it easier

Only 29%? The fuck does Nintendo even have on there?

A tremendous amount of bloatware and ports of iOS games.

That's not fair. The switch is a great console for indie games.

Obviously, so is the Steam Deck, but that doesn't discount the Switch for having a solid library of games outside of the usual Nintendo shite.

To be fair, some of the mobile ports are improved with controller support added to them. It's just frustrating that some of them aren't subsequently ported to PC as well.

According to Wikipedia, there are less than 5000 games for nintendo switch, while the Steam Deck is far beyond 10k games.

According to this website, there are about 11k switch games. There are some duplicates on that list though, games which have multiple "editions" will have an entry under each version. For example, Xenoblade Chronicles DE is listed 4 times to cover different regional collectors editions.

Thanks you for the clarification!

I like the Deck, but lately been using my Switch again because I like the battery life and the smaller form factor sometimes. I hope Valve releases a Deck that is a little easier to slip into a bag and that can do a bit better than 1.5-2.5 hours of battery life.

I’ll still use my Deck, but in some cases where the same game I want is available on Switch and I am traveling, I will choose the Switch for its form factor.

For me, I have come to appreciate switch lite form factor to be honest. I like the deck too but its too bulky for me personally. I fucking love vita and 3ds lite but small size has it cons such as underpowered cpu, battery etc but damn it i like it fit enough on most pocket and easily slid into bag.

Battery life seems a tad low unless you're playing somewhat demanding games. The Steam Deck does have some power optimization settings you can use to up your battery life, and you can set them on a per-game basis. I haven't played with them myself, but I think they're in the menu that comes up with the ... Button on the right side.

I just hope this kicks off a revolution of not needing stupid GPUs requirements.

This is just talking about games approved through Valve's verification process.

I was gonna say that number sounded VERY low.

I really hope to get one of these at some point

I'm tired of waiting for valve and soon will be getting one on the grey market.

Waiting for what?

The Deck is not sold in most parts of the world. This includes certain parts of Asia, Latin america, Australia, some European countries, and most of Africa. Essentially, if you're not from the US, Canada, China or western Europe, buying a Deck directly from Valve is impossible. Import and distribution is also an impossibility. Region locking it still one of Valve's biggest hurdles.

So, to acquire one I have to pay an overhead to a reseller willing to sell it to me, foot the import bill, the local tariff, pay the courier, and at the end of all the device will be under no guarantee, support or protection. I have to pay more for a device that Valve could decide to block, the only reason I'd still do it is because I trust they won't. But they could if they wanted to.

They really couldn't, it's just a Linux PC. Worst case scenario you could format the drive and install regular arch Linux on it (SteamOS is arch based, and you can add the repos for all of the custom steam packages to a standard arch install). Unlike the switch, you have direct, firmware level control over the hardware, which is why I bought it. I want to encourage more manufacturers to not lock down their hardware

Hell, you could install Windows on the thing if you really wanted to.

If they were Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo or any other shitty company they could block access to the Steam account or ban it outright, cutting me off a library with hundreds of games. Hopefully, Valve is not like that yet. So, yes. I trust they wouldn't do anything fucky when they notice that I'm connecting my Steam account to a device, theoretically, blocked in my region. But there's some really intrusive shit you could do to prevent access or force it to be a piracy only machine.

I mention it because I remember some friends tried to grey import a PS5 and the device soft locked them when the IP didn't match the region they chose. And Nintendo has done way worse, up to outright destroying accounts.

True, but they at least can't brick the hardware itself, and if you were concerned about your steam account there's always VPNs.

@gh0stcassette @dustyData or Manjaro + KDE as they recommend for their dev environment.

I don't like Manjaro very much, it's Basically just EndeavorOS with extra hassle imo (delayed updates leading to AUR packages breaking), but you can 100% do this if you like Manjaro.

@gh0stcassette @dustyData the only thing that concerns me is how long they will support the OS. Since they do not allow you to install another Linux distro. If that would even work with their hardware.

This is false. All of the device drivers for the steam deck hardware are open source and included in the Linux kernel, and you can Literally just boot directly from a live USB and install whatever distro you want, it's just a very small laptop inside a console shell essentially. I think Valve even worked with Microsoft to get the hardware working correctly under windows because from what I've heard, the Steam Deck experience under windows is much better than at launch (I'm not 100% confident on that tho).

It's literally just a PC.

They don't allow you to install other OSes?

The worst thing that Valve has done is "the main kernel tree hasn't gotten around to merging some of the Deck's EC bits yet". You could run Batocera or Bazzite on your deck today if you want. You probably don't want to, those distros aren't as good an experience as SteamOS yet.

That difference seems far lower than I would have guessed.

Oh. The "verified" status accounts for the difference. That's fair.

My initial mental math was including unverified Indie games I already bought for my PC, most of which happen to work perfectly.

I expect that difference to go up fast over the next few years as more indie devs discover that they don't actually need to change many of their old games to get verified.

Yeah, even the "playable" tag i have to check what they mean by that. Psychonauts 1 and 2 are "playable" but both need you to manually pull up the keyboard and show xbox controls... Like okay? That's all? They play perfectly.

I also downloaded an indie game "tonight we riot" and its not even tested. Want to geuss how well it plays? Spoiler, perfectly fine.

I'm genuinely greatful for steam personally pushing for more games to work well in linux even if the game needs a compatibility layer like Wine or proton.

It doesn’t matter that much as long as Nintendo switch is considered more cool for general public which it still is due to deck being kinda black and nerdish

Is deck objectively better? Sure but the power of social conformity is near limitless as we can see from apple stock valuation