Itās silly to compare Switch 2 sales to Steam Deck sales.
The Switch 2 is a locked-down, vertically integrated platform. There are no ROG Switch 2s. No Lenovo Switch 2s. No Switch laptops or tower PCs with discrete GPUs. If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.
Steam Deck, by contrast, isnāt a platform. Itās just one hardware optionāone entry point into the sprawling, open ecosystem known as PC gaming.
Every year, around 245 million PCs are shipped globally. If even 20ā25% of those are gaming-focused, thatās 49ā61 million gaming PCs annually. Steam Deck is a sliver of that. So of course it wonāt outsell a console thatās the only gateway to a major IP.
But thatās exactly the point.
PC gaming is too decentralized for any single device to dominate. The last āPCā that did was the Commodore 64, which sold 12.5ā17 million units over 12 years because it was a self-contained platform, unlike modern Windows, Mac, or Linux machines.
That the Steam Deck has sold 4 million units despite competing with every other gaming PC in existence is remarkable. It didnāt just sellāit legitimized a category. Handheld PC gaming is now a thing. Thatās why Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI have followed. Even Microsoft is getting in, optimizing Windows for handheldsāsomething they would never have done if the Steam Deck didnāt hold their feet to the fire.
So no, Steam Deck didnāt outsell the Switch 2. It didnāt need to.
It won by changing the landscape.
Anyone can release a cartridge though? This part youāre ignoring.
Why move the goalposts? Youāre also now suggesting we gatekeep devs? Why is releasing something on pc fine, but wouldnāt be fine if it was āhomebrewā? Because it doesnāt fit your bias?
A game release is a game release, or do these limitations only apply to one side unevenly?
Pc is FULL of shovelware, so that shouldnāt be the metric we use? Yeah?
Why do you keep insisting Iām moving the goal post? Iām not disagreeing with you. Iām just pointing out the process is not easy as you claim it is.
I never said it was easy?
You said it was a walled garden, so it sounded like you werenāt aware that homebrew and modern cartridge releases exist. And are now arguing why those arenāt applicable to your āwalled gardenā comment.
Prove to me that there isnāt a walled garden.