Honestly, nintendo have plenty of exclusives, their hardware is powerful enough to do what it needs to do, and it has absolute command over their niche. Steam Deck is a nice alternative to a laptop though.

This honestly is more of an "Oh shit!" moment for the PS5 and Xbox. Nintendo scoots long just fine doing their own thing.

People say the Switch has inferior performance, but I haven't noticed. Probably because most of the exclusive titles from Nintendo embrace a more cartoonish style rather than high detail pre-rendered backgrounds. That said BoW has given me more playtime than most PS games.

Now with the Steam Deck, the switch looks anemic. Compared to consoles, it looks competitive. The real competitive edge is that the Steam Deck is a PC. You don't like what Valve is doing? Load your own OS and do anything a decent gaming PC could do. PC master race on the go.

With the switch, you could excuse the inferior performance compared to PS or Xbox because it was a portable. Honestly Nintendo fans would buy a new Gamecube if Nintendo pushed that out the door and only supported that for its future releases.

Exclusives? Yeah, I guess the Switch is baren of those... I'll just go slink back upstairs to play Breath of the Wild, Mario, Super Smash Bros, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing...

Steam Machine 2.0

~Copied from a discord server~
"Mom, can we get Steam games on the Switch?"
"We have Steam games on the Switch at home."
The Steam games on the Switch at home:

I'm looking at the Steam Deck as a portable computer. It is really cheap. Add a USB/wireless keyboard/mouse, use a hotel TV. Good to go. On top of that, I can use it for emulation.

Remember Steam Machine? Yeah, I'm sure their new console will be as successful.

(1/3) Speaking from my experience trying to use SteamLink on iOS for gaming: It will not measure up to the Switch as a primary device.

On a Switch, if a game is available, it <i>does</i> support controller input and has its assets and graphics optimized to run on the limited hardware.

(2/3) On the Valve machine, games will waste storage because they install texture resolutions, the device will never use, controller support will be spotty at best even when present on console versions (Torchlight 2, Diablo 3, ...), many games will run worse than on a switch, ...

(3/3) ... and never mind battery life. And don't be too optimistic about the Steam BigPicture controller support; I tried with Torchlight 2, but it was abysmal, and at best it will still be awful for handling a mouse-oriented inventory.

I've looked at getting a tablet or smart phone to do PC gaming/emulation away from home. I can see this competing with the home PC rather then the Switch. Nintendo is still competing mainly with Sony and Microsoft, not the PC master race.

If you look at Steam Deck as a PC and not just as a portable: its cheap. Seriously fantastic deal.

Also if I was going to get one, it has to be the top end model. Storage is that important. Valve gets that, wish Nintendo did too.

What gets me is that any hypothetical third party Switch port that I could think of is pretty much already on Steam Deck by default. Persona 4 Golden, KOTOR, assorted CoD/GTA/Madden titles, the Zero Escape series, Fire Pro Wrestling World. No more begging for scraps.

If by 'exclusives' you mean, 'ecchi that's too risque for the Switch', then I'm interested.