I am trying to choose between buying a Nintendo Switch or a Nintendo DS.
This may not be the perfect community to ask - but I can’t think of any better place.
The reason for my question: I don’t want to own obsolete hardware in 10 years. Lately most games seem to depend on a “phone home” feature, which is not really an issue for my pc because it is always connected, but a console is something I want to play always and everywhere.
I already did some searching and found that games can be played offline fine (most of them, some exceptions are there like Multiplayer and Mortal Kombat), but:
- There is something like the paid Nintendo Online Account. I am not planning on having a paid account. How much of the system depends on the account?
- Can I have progression in a game (let’s say: one of the Zelda franchise) and will my Wife and Kids all have their own progression, without having to pay for X accounts?
- People who own a Switch, let’s take this to extremes, do you feel like in 20 years from now you can still do the same things on your hardware as you can do now? (No multiplayer is fine)
Also, feel free to rant about “paying is not owning”, the state of the gaming industry is horrible.
edit: Thank you all for the comments! I don’t post a lot, so it was kinda overwhelming :)
For clarity:
- I meant I want to “buy for life” (not really “life”, but, if the hardware survives you can play on pre-internet consoles forever - you can even buy more games if you can find them)
- I want to buy a physical copy of the games, not download them
I’ve decided to go with the Nintendo DS for now (I have a DSi - this week I bought a couple of games, 2nd hand). Reasons:
- I already had it
- Joycons on switch. Multiple people mentioned having problems with them. I don’t count on being able to buy them new in 10 years, meaning they will have to last.
Again: thank you all for the useful input!
A steam deck can run all the games those two can and it runs Linux which means it will probably never be obsolete
It’s pretty repair friendly as well.
The battery is a notable exemption from this (as is the display), which is also the most likely to fail multiple times over a span of 20 years. It’s certainly doable, just not as simple as swapping out the thumb sticks for example.
Isn‘t the battery simply mounted with sticky tape and thanks to the case being screwed in still fessibly replaceable by the user?
Check this iFixit guide: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Battery+Replacement/149070
It’s listed as “Difficult” and “2-4 hours”.
In comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro battery replacement guide is listed as “Moderate” and “1-2 hours”.
One of the problems with the Deck’s battery is that it’s glued in place so well you have to heat up the adhesive, and applying heat close to a battery is something you have to be quite careful about.
sticky tape is the bane of battery repair.
you gotta destroy it to remove it sometimes.
Acetone and/or floss (“sawing” through the glue under the battery). That’s how iFixIt instructed to remove a battery from a 2016 MacBook Pro that was also fixated using nasty sticky tape.
thats a great tip, but some manufacturers have the battery on a recessed chassis, making this technique way more difficult to use.
Second that. It is a bit of a hassle to get all the games and to access them on the deck, but once you set that up, it runs great and you also are much less limited :)
The hassle is “search Pirate Bay for the game > download it into your games folder” after initial setup of emulators using emudeck
I would still steer clear of the Pirate Bay but depending on what you are looking for there’s likely a repacker or site that has what you need. FitGirl for example has some Switch games bundled with the keys that you need for Ryujinx. If you just needs ROMs I’d recommend checking out the /r/ROMs megathread.
Playing Nintendo first party games on Nintendo consoles is superior for many Nintendo first party games lover. It is just as it was when one was small 😄 that’s why right now, I go for 3ds.
Exact same game;
Switch: 30fps
Steam deck: 60fps
How is the switch superior?
There is a single aspect in which the Switch remains superior: Simplicity. Sure, you could take the time once to set up Yuzu and your Switch games and be rewarded with superior performance.
But the technically less experienced user might be put off by the fact that you can‘t just plonk in the game and play it. That‘s however not exclusive to the Switch.
I tried downloading Switch games from uuuuh… rather bespoke sites and they had a rather uuuuh… curious idea of what ads you could throw into the users face. Vivaldi‘s integrated adblocker simply couldn‘t handle those sites. That discouraged me from downloading games for now. Luckily MIG-Dumper is there to save the day and allow me to back up my games to later play them in Yuzu.
Is the Steam Deck emulating Switch games that much better? I’ve been thinking about setting up a few but I wasn’t sure if I would see a lot of performance dips with more demanding games.
Yes, many games run smoother and better on the deck, it just is very big and heavy achieving this.
Honestly, emulation is pretty nice and you can backup your saves without a subscription, unlike with Switch.
I talking modded Nintendo hardware, because it is the hardware style that the games are designed for, talking form factor and input devices. Especially in handheld mode, on the TV, it does not matter on what the game runs, at least for me