Okay now we're done.
I think I'm gonna have to play the Switch 2 somewhere before I know how to feel about it. I need to know all the things I can't be told directly. Outside of the game pricing, most of the conversations I see are about whether the Steam Deck is better. It's a better doorstop, for sure.
I mean, I love the Steam Deck. I had to get my hands on one of those to know what it was about, too. It's very, very large, comically so in comparison to either Switch. That doesn't keep it from being great, and if your primary mode of interacting with the medium is Steam - as it is for the vast majority of PC gamers - it enables as perfect a synergy as I've ever experienced. It proved the claim of the PC gaming handheld and when Microsoft drops a handheld Xbox, because that's what the Xbox will be now, and it has Game Pass and Steam, shit's gonna be fucking crazy. I have had the opportunity to take the Steam Deck all around the world, even going so far as to use it as a Linux PC, and it has been a stalwart companion.
Ronia drafts on all the stuff I have - she has unfettered access to all the same shit, but actively chooses the Switch when friends come over. She experiences PC gaming as a series of experiences, not any kind of coherent platform. The Switch is where she plays Just Dance, Jackbox, and Mario Kart, in the living room. It's conceivable I guess that I could set that television up to stream from a PC but it's just not the same thing. They are pulling off controllers that have been charged on the console sitting in the dock like ripe fruit. It's a dedicated custom experience and there's never gonna be a time where it gives her a message like, "this game might work fine but idk" or "here is a button layout somebody named Steve made" or "if you want the battery to last longer than an hour just make the game look like shit."
My Xbox and Playstation have been fucked up for so long and I just play games on my PC five feet away from them. If the Switch got goosed it would be a family emergency. 80 dollars seems like a lot for Mario Kart World - I might not pay that, and there are ways not to. But then, I remember when games went from fifty to sixty. I suspect digital delivery acted as a defacto price increase, and now that train has come into the station. I don't like this train, or the station! But Ronia wants to play this game with her friends; I've made worse decisions, and for worse reasons.
(CW)TB out.
