Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal felt like a lightning bolt delivered straight from Zeus himself for everyone except, well, most people. In fact, since the console – which fans have spent years clamoring for – looks so much like its predecessor, some analysts predict it’ll have trouble appealing to a general audience.
“I can imagine ‘normies’ being a bit confused,” gaming industry consultant Serkan Toto tells GamesRadar+. “The device is bigger than the original Switch, but not comically large. The form factor, button layout, and overall design are very similar to Switch 1, so I can imagine issues arising when potential mainstream buyers look at the new device.”
Those concerns are so super niche, I doubt they’ll be a big problem for Nintendo. I know it may not seem that way, but handheld PCs are not a widespread product.
Yet. There is a ton of models coming out, some more shown army CES, and the SteamOS news shows the direction of what low end gaming laptops are going to become over the next 2-5 years.
As an indsutry insider, I there is lots of people discussing this and more studios and publishers starting to look into the cost/benefit analysis of getting Steamdeck Verified.
Nintendo has been staunchly anti-emulation since even before the N64 launched, and it hasn’t hurt them yet.
I’m a proud Steam Deck owner, and I’ll be the first to admit that I predominantly use it to emulate my old games collection (PS1-3 & PSP), plus SNES out of sheer spite at Nintendo.
However, my relatively tech-savvy relatives (even those in their 20s), baulk at something as complex as SteamOS.
I think Nintendo’s safe for at least one more console generation, before the normies get on the portable-PC wagon.
