So I wanted to get Switch 2 for my mom on Black Friday. She loves Mario, Yoshi and especially Zelda games.
Month ago, I bought the Steam Deck OLED and put pirated games on it including switch 1, WiiU and PC games. She now mentions she wants the Steam Deck too.
Problems is, she’s kind of not so technical. She gets stressed when things go wrong and has no idea what to do and waits for me. So which of the two would you purchase knowing this?
Note; I’ll be the one doing everything for her. Putting games, emulation, updating and problem solving if things go south.
Money isn’t the issue, just don’t know which to get.
P.S: was not sure whether piracy is allowed in this community. Sorry in advance if it is not.
If the wants the Steam Deck, and she’s used it before, I’d say get her the Steam Deck.
Get whichever platform has the games she wants to play.
Emulation ≠ Piracy (pirating ROMs is another story…)
But if you’re using EmuDeck, if you install it for her, it’s pretty simple after that - all the games just show up as games in Steam Library.
You might just want to update it from time to time for her.
Emulation ≠ Piracy (pirating ROMs is another story…)
Oh yeah, I know hah. But considering the instance I’m on, you can, I assume already know how I obtain most of the games.
But if you’re using EmuDeck, if you install it for her, it’s pretty simple after that - all the games just show up as games in Steam Library.
Yeah, I use EmuDeck on my own Deck but there are some hiccups when it comes to using the emulators thru Gaming Mode (bit of laggy, sometimes the games won’t start). Usually start the games through Desktop Mode. Did not manage to get the game to show up on the Steam Library, for some reason I just could not get that to work and due not enough time (work…) got a bit lazy and thought ‘never mind’ lol.
Can you remote into a Steam Deck? I’m guessing yes but I’m not sure.
Switch 2 is an easy win in your mother’s case, though. People see emulation but they don’t see the hoops you have to jump through, and the Switch 2 is a solid machine, it just doesn’t have the breadth of games.
I kinda want a Deck (I only have a 3DSXL and Switch 1 for mobile gaming, not counting phones) but I’m also not discounting the Switch 2. On Switch, I almost exclusively play Animal Crossing, and the performance gains of the Switch 2 upgrade alone make it almost worth it for a game I play almost daily. But I’ve been playing for a year, I’m on my third island, and I’m afraid I’m starting to get tired of it. I know about the free hotel DLC/update coming in January, it’s basically a lite/free version of the Happy Home Paradise DLC (same mechanic), but I think it’ll be too little too late for me, let alone people who have been crossing since ACNH came out in 2020 — or longer, with previous titles. (I have the modded HShop version, Welcome Luxury, which supposedly fixes a lot of stuff, but I’ve had a hard time getting into it after being spoiled by New Horizons.)
Switch 2 will be a better user experience for someone who knows nothing. Steam Deck is great, but you’ll need to find which games work well on it. All Switch 2 games work on the Switch 2 (assuming they aren’t crappy ports).
Using the deck to just play steam games is pretty straightforward. Sure you can do a bunch of advanced stuff with the deck, but you don’t have to.
True, true but most games she likes are emulation. The Switch games, a PS2 game and Cemu (Zelda).
even better. i don’t think any other platform is as good for emulators.
Once you setup the emulators (which does take me ages sometimes), the only problems I had were Gamecube and Switch emulators not letting me open emulator options in game mode without things getting fucked up.
But she probably won’t care, and I probably needed an extra 30 minutes to get it fixed, which’d be your problem. I grabbed NSO on Switch 2 because the setup was a pain and I am fine with paying ~4€ a month to skip it, but Steam Deck sounds better for you. (And is also just better in general)
Has she tried playing on your steam deck?
I got the OLED Deck this year to replace my Switch, and the first thing I noticed was that my hands are not quite big enough. I can’t reach the Y button with my thumb quickly, and I cannot comfortably put my index and middle fingers on the bumper and trigger buttons. I ended up mapping the bumpers to the back buttons and got used to pressing trigger with my index finger, but it took a while to get over my muscle memory.
Has she tried playing on your steam deck?
Yeah, she plays a lot on it. But she usually wants me to turn on the games when it’s emulation.
She really likes how the Deck feels (ergonomically).
As long as you’re comfortable setting up the emulations, Steam Deck seems like a better choice then.
