Comment on The Steam Deck's budget price tag is the reason I still rate it nearly two years on
Telorand@reddthat.com 1 year agoRight, but the original statement was whether other companies have made a competing and profitable “Deck,” and the Switch is already such a device. Portable, plays games locally, has a thriving software ecosystem…
Whether those games within that ecosystem are “quality” or not is irrelevant. Both platforms have examples of good and bad games. My point was that if you buy a Switch, you are forced into their ecosystem. On the Deck, you do not have such a limitation (with a bit of effort, you can access anything a regular Linux machine can). Nobody is coerced in, sure, but that wasn’t the point I was making.
So where you see apples and oranges, I see a small, dry apple vs. a big, juicy apple. A better analogy might be Apple vs Windows.
conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 year ago
No, the Switch is not such a device.
The article is very obviously about PCs. The Switch is not a PC.
SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just because the switch runs a proprietary OS does not mean it isn’t a personal computing device. It can run Linux, it has a CPU and memory, it runs software, its a personal computer for sure.
conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yes, it does. It cannot possibly be described as a PC if the end user can't install arbitrary software without restriction.
Calling a Switch a PC isn't slightly incorrect. It's complete and utter horseshit.
SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The ability install “arbitrary software without restriction” is what defines a PC? Now that is complete and utter horseshit. A Chromebook isn’t a PC? A laptop with account restrictions to prevent the end user from installing software isn’t a PC? A desktop running an immutable linux distro isn’t a PC? Quit your bullshit.
Telorand@reddthat.com 1 year ago
If you jailbreak the Switch, you can do all of those things. But by your definition, because I can’t arbitrarily install Windows software on an Apple computer, it is not a PC.
Just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean the Switch isn’t a personal computer. It is a device you can personally own that takes bits and bytes and performs computations with them that results in things like saving a game (data storage), internet communication (network computing), and video rendering (video stream computation).