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.
Thereās not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest. TotK mostly fixed the weapon breaking mechanic in my eyes. Theyāre much more durable now and last longer when fused (there is generally no reason to not do fusion). The only thing thatās more fun in BotW than TotK is riding a horse through Hyrule field while dodging tons of guardian lasers.
Hmmmmā¦ thatās a thinker.
In the older zeldas, you didnāt especially need to fight stuff on the overworld. Iād usually just run by, or kill the ones that were in my way.
In most FromSoft games, you can run past enemies but that can quickly spiral out of control. Killing them gives you time to explore safely, on top of the XP rewarded.
In shooters like Doom, you could probably run past most enemies, but theyāll keep attacking. Clearing them makes you safer.
Monster hunter itās the whole point of the game.
What games are you thinking of where fighting is pointless? I donāt think itās āmostā games.
I donāt get this line of thinkingā¦ If youāre using arguments like āyou can run past them but itās safer to kill them so they stop attackingā how does that not apply to BotW/TotK? Obviously some eneny camps you ignore because theyāre irrelevant, it is an open world game after all, all open world games are like that (many learned the hard way why you should ignore giants in Skyrim lol). But in areas where youāre trying to accomplish something, you āneedā to kill them because theyāre attacking. Thatās still true.
You canāt say āI dislike the game because it doesnāt give me a reason to kill enemiesā while saying āin Doom you donāt need to kill enemies but itās easier if you doā when BotW/TotK are both easier if you kill enemies. And I know youāre not the one who said it, but youāre changing the context of the conversation.
I was hoping you would explain what you meant by āThereās not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honestā. I donāt think thatās a true statement. I think most games do give reasons to fight enemies.
I havenāt played enough BotW to really weigh in on it, specifically.
In Zelda One you definitely needed to kill them because there were several good items to purchase with the rupees.
Ah, I see you havenāt played undertale yet!