With Switch 2 on the horizon, where does that leave the Steam Deck?

Things are a-changing, now that Nintendo’s finally officially revealed its Switch 2 console. Even though we don’t yet know how powerful, exactly, Switch 2 might be, it’s absolutely going to be miles ahead of the original Switch. What does that mean for the Steam Deck and its ilk, though?

At face value, it shouldn’t mean diddly squat. The Deck, the ROG Ally, the Legion Go… these devices aren’t consoles as such: they’re handheld gaming PCs and laptops from a mechanical and functional point of view. Even the most popular of them all, the Steam Deck, doesn’t come even close to competing with Nintendo’s flagship device. To that end, comparing the two may well seem like a fool’s errand. Yet, the bit that has me a tad concerned, specifically, is that the perceived performance baseline of these low-spec devices is about to get turned upside down.

Here’s the jig: the original Nintendo Switch, and even its OLED refresh, came about when the video game industry was in a vastly different spot. The Switch is effectively the final surviving relic of a time when hardware requirements stayed the same for over half a decade: the eighth generation of ga🧸me consoles. This includes the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, most prominently, a♓s well as the aforementioned Nintendo handheld.

During that time, PC hardware pushed onwards to a ridiculous degree while console stayed the same. Heck, the Switch itself was painfully underpowered basically on launch day, but it still could somewhat reasonably keep up with the likes of PS4 thanks to extreme optimization efforts. Sony moved on to PlayStation 5 since, and Xbox did much the same with Series devices, and it’s entirely possible and even likely we’ll see a whole new generation of consoles by 2026-2027. In the interim, Nintendo Switch 2 is coming out this year, in 2025, and that is going to reverbate through the industry for sure.

This has two major implications in my mind. Firstly, it’s a given that Switch 2 will have a ridiculously large audience no matter what. Secondly, such a massive audience is something that many gaming companies will want to target by default. See where the potential new performance baseline comes into the picture?

If Nintendo releases its fancy new console on the tail end of the current generation, this means Switch 2 will remain relevant through much of Sony and Xbox’s next offerings’ life-span. Further, it also means that regardless of the home consoles’ respective hardware specs, a huge number of game developers will have Nintendo Switch 2 builds ready regardless.

Alright, that’s about all the context I need to make my actual argument: depending on how powerful the Nintendo Switch 2 mꦓay or☂ many not be, it may actually cause developers to start more-or-less ignoring the current-day PC gaming handhelds in lieu of it.

I see no feasible way for the Switch to be less powerful than the Steam Deck, just to make things as obvious as possible. Leaks (which I recommend considering with a whole chunk of Himalayan salt in hand) put it at right about PlayStation 4 Pro level in handheld mode, and that’s without taking Nvidia’s DLSS supersampler into account. Now, we don’t know whether the Switch 2 will actually ship with some manner of DLSS included, but it’s virtually impossible that it won’t, given Nvidia’s not-so-recent track record.

Combine all of the bits and bobs I’ve outlined above with the fact that Valve isn’t about to release a Steam Deck 2 anytime soon, and you’ve got a potential storm cooking. What I mean by this is that since the Switch 2 will inevitably be used as a “low-spec” baseline for many game developers, the likes of the Steam Deck are very possibly going to be left out of the performance considerations.

We’ve got to face the facts here: the entire PC gaming handheld niche is precisely just that: a niche. Even though hardware companies have taken after Valve to deliver a whole host of devices targeting this audience, this is still a very smalꦅl subsection of a subsection 🅠of the gaming industry. One that pales in comparison to the massive audience chasing after the next flagship Nintendo console.

The Steam Deck is already struggling to run modern AAA games, just to be perfectly clear, and it’s entirely possible that the Switch 2 won’t be able to do so either. Yet, the original Switch is at its core a severely underpowered Android tablet that held on through sheer force of will. Even if Switch 2 is “merely” at the rough performance level of the Steam Deck, you can bet that game developers will squeeze every single teraflop of power out of it in due time.

Reducing or even inverting the performance delta between the Steam Deck and Nintendo’s flagship device is the kind of precedent-setting development that could either help or diminish the current PC gaming handhelds. Up until now, it’s been very possible to competently emulate the Switch on the Steam Deck, but that won’t be the case at all with Switch 2.

It’s possible that the optimizations made for Switch 2 will end up helping our Decks, ROG Allies, and Legion devices to some extent. Yet, the relatively small number of people using these things may also preclude these optimizations from being worth porting back. If the vast majority of the gaming audience is on the Switch 2, after all, why bother with the small portion that’s sticking it out on lower-spec devices?

Am I being all doom-and-gloom well ahead of time? Oh, yes, certainly. As I outlined above, this whole situation could go either way for the PC gaming handheld scene, and there’s simply no way of knowing how the tides may turn just yet.

It’s worth being prepared for the eventuality that the Switch 2 will overtake a huge chunk of public gaming discourse in 2025 and beyond, however. There’s also the distinctive possibility that it overshadows much of the progress Valve is making in the PC handheld scene for a while, which could cause ripples for the ni✃che later down the line.

In summary, then, this is a very exciting time for the gaming industry that’s going to inform much of its focus for years to come. Nintendo’s April Direct should give us more context as to what to expect out of this device, though I don’t expect true performance benchmarks until actual gamers get to test Switch 2 properly. The bits and bobs I’m concerned about won’t unravel until well after that happens, so we’ve got to stay tuned until then.