This may sound like heresy, but I think some games are better on handheld consoles and some are better on the PC. Really depends on the vibe you’re wanting.
StarCraft for example. Definitely better on PC, almost impossible to play on console.
Mario Kart or Zelda or many of the Nintendo games. I just either want to play them with friends or just chill on my bed and play them. Sure you could make some kind of PC setup to work the same way, but consoles are very user friendly.
Steam deck. I’ve been floored by how great it is, and with a dock it’s easy to set up with multiple controllers or a mouse and keyboard. Literally all the benefits of a (handheld) console, and all the benefits of a PC, including the ability to play a huge backlog of old console games.
I switched to playing subnautica on steam deck because the full PC setup was too much for my phobias. Now I can actually enjoy the game instead of spiking my panic. But like Factorio, what a mess on controller imo it’s so much better with kb/m and the ability to quickly switch windows to look stuff up. I used to be team PC 100% but since I got the deck I’ve been branching out and even some PC games are just better on it
The only way I ever played StarCraft was StarCraft 64, the split screen multiplayer was cool but absolutely hands down the worst way to play it. I don’t know how they managed to make that work at all honestly, I know there woukd have had to have been a lot of concessions to fit it on the cart, but still, kinda impressive to me. I realised just how bad it was to play after playing wc3 a few years later.
Sunshine+Moonlight has taken over most of my console use, there’s so much less screwing around with games needed these days, if you’re not modding they tend to run well out of the box in my experience, seeing so many games with native controller support + local multiplayer is fantastic, steam input fills the gap on a lot of the others. That said though nothing really beats the pick up and go of a console, my GameCube still runs perfectly after 20 something years, I can emulate them (and do for some games, metroid prime trilogy is better on m+k, but that’s the Wii version of the trilogy) but I don’t feel the need to tweak things endlessly on the native hardware.
I played through the entirety of Hollow Knight on my Switch on the commuter train.
Now the Steam Deck exists and I could do the “PC” equivalent of this. But honestly the Switch is a bit lighter so given a game that runs fine on both I’d probably still pick the Switch.
Also I have played Mario Kart and Smash Bros 2 player in the middle of nowhere, using the detached joy cons. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened. I have a small adapter that mimics the Switch dock well enough to have it go into TV mode, and I sometimes carry that and an extra pair of joy-cons.
the Switch is a bit lighter
The Steamdeck needs an alternative version smaller and lighter. Hopefully we see a variant like this in the future releases
I’ll expand on this idea a bit, because I agree. Games are designed with a specific intention in mind, and part of that is 100% form factor. Some games are just made for portable consoles. Some games are just made to be played at a desk with a mouse and keyboard.
This doesn’t mean they can’t be played other ways, it just means the person’s subjective preferences may overlap best with the specific hardware and intentions the gamer has. For example, I’ve beaten Doom 2016 on Switch. It was enjoyable enough, but having played it on PC I just knew I wasn’t capable of achieving the same combos and inputs. Likewise, a game with ranked mode isn’t exactly ideal on Steam Deck, and a big part of that of course is that others have “better” input mechanisms.
When I was growing up I had a PS2 for a couple years (eventually got stolen) and then only had a laptop for a number of years that mostly played flash games. These indie games and a direct translation to indie games available today - typically made for specific styles of input, simple keyboard/mouse inputs. Then with the Wii there was a pretty big overlap between the NintendAA available games and indie games that were using the wiis specific style of inputs.
When I got a PC and started amassing a larger collection of games, I noticed that over the years I was shifting away from the simpler indie games that have consumed such a large portion of my gaming life. The Switch had some, and I’d have a short period from time to time, but I realized it was mostly because the PC at the desk is just not the greatest form factor for a lot of indie games. The portable aspect is a comfort, being able to sit back and relax on the couch, or in bed, versus having to sit in a chair and using a monitor that’s stuck in a mostly not very movable position (I even have a VESA mount). It’s just not quite the same.
I’m sure there are variations on this that can make it untrue, like having a console hooked up to a 75+ inch TV while relaxing on a chair or recliner. But I think for the most part, form factor in gaming is a huge aspect in game design. Like, Starcraft and Mobas aren’t really gonna be played on Switch, save a few exceptions and similarly, the multi-thousand dollar gaming PC isn’t usually the dedicated indie game computer.
