Steam Deck challenges Nintendo’s empire in handheld video games

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A leader in selling PC games, Valve launched the Steam Deck in the US at the end of February, a low-cost portable computer designed to play high-end games. With this, the company enters into direct competition with Nintendo for dominance in the portable market.

It is not the first time that the Japanese company faces competition in this sector. For at least 30 years, since the first Game Boy (the one that looked like a gray “brick”), Nintendo has seen challengers to its domain appear and disappear, but it continues to reign supreme.

Today, the Switch is the device to beat. By the end of last year, 103.5 million units of the hybrid console (which can also be connected to a TV) had been sold. It is the third best-selling device in the history of Nintendo, only behind the also portable Nintendo DS (154 million units) and Game Boy (118.7 million).

Although it is a commercial success, the device has received criticism since its launch for its technical specifications being inferior to those of consoles on sale at the time, such as the PlayStation 4 (Sony) and Xbox One (Microsoft).

In recent years, much has been speculated about the launch of a more powerful version of the Switch, capable, for example, of playing games in 4K resolution. At the end of last year, Nintendo even released an updated version of the console, but the only changes were the bigger storage (from 32 GB to 64 GB) and the improvement of the screen, a little bigger and with OLED technology.

“A lot of people think there’s no such thing as great portable gaming hardware. If I’m a consumer, I have to deal with touch controls. [em celulares e tablets]which for FPS games are horrible, or do I have to go in the direction of a [hardware] owner [leia-se, o Switch]which has really limited access to some titles,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve, in an interview with IGN, explaining what led the company to create the Steam Deck.

In addition to being more powerful than the Switch, Valve’s new hardware has the advantage of working more like a portable computer than a proprietary console (where the manufacturer controls the software that can be installed on the device).

It is also designed so that most games ever released for PC can be used with little or no need for adaptation by their developers.

Despite its history of market leadership, there are plenty of reasons for Nintendo to be concerned. Still, Valve’s goal doesn’t seem to be to get into a short-term dispute with the Japanese company, but rather to compete for consumers’ free time in a landscape saturated by social networks and streaming services.

• With the Steam Deck it will be possible to do it in bed before bed, on the bus on the way to work or during a business trip. And the more time consumers spend playing games, the more games they tend to buy from the store.

“If we do this right, sell the millions of units we expect, and establish a product category that we and other PC makers can take advantage of, that will have long-term benefits for us,” Newell predicted in the same interview with IGN.

Brazilians, however, will have to wait to buy the Steam Deck. There is still no date set for the launch of the device here.

Check out the specs of the two consoles:

*The consoles were not officially released in Brazil

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game tip, new or old, for you to test

The Battle of Polytopia

(PC, Android, iOS, Tesla)

In an interview with Vanity Fair, billionaire Elon Musk recently bragged about having one of the best scores on “The Battle of Polytopia”, a game he described as “a much more complex version of chess”. Not for that much… “Polytopia” is a turn-based strategy game similar to “Civilization”, but much more simplified. Still, it’s a fun hobby. With a free initial version for mobiles, it’s worth a try. Oh, and if you happen to have a Tesla, you can play the game on the car’s operating system too.

update

news, launches, business and what else matters

• FromSoftware announced that 12 million copies of the game “Elden Ring” were sold in the two and a half weeks after its release. As a comparison, “Dark Souls 3” took four years to reach 10 million copies sold.

• CDProjekt announced that it is starting the development of a new title of the series “The Witcher”. In the announcement, the Polish studio states that “a new saga begins” and that, for now, it cannot give more information about the game’s release date.

• Supermassive Games, the developer of “Until Dawn”, announced that it is producing a new horror game, “The Quarry”. The title, inspired by teen horror films, will feature actors such as David Arquette (“Scream”), Ariel Winter (“Modern Family”) and Lance Henriksen (“Alien”). The game will be released for PC and Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

• After the start of the 2022 F1 season last Sunday (20), the console version of the official game of the category, “F1 2021”, will be available on EA Play and Xbox Game Pass subscription services from Thursday (24). ).

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games that will be released in the next few days and promotions that are worth it

22.mar

• Kraken Academy: BRL 73.59 (Switch), price not informed (Xbox One/X/S)

• Rune Factory 5: BRL 249.95 (Switch)

24.mar

25.mar

• GhostWire: Tokyo: BRL 209 (PC), BRL 299.90 (PS 5)

• Kirby and the Forgotten Land: BRL 299 (Switch)

• Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands: BRL 299.90 (PC, PS 4/5, Xbox One/X/S)

Promotion of the week

• After the success of “Bundle for Ukraine” (cited in the last newsletter), which raised US$6.4 million for humanitarian aid institutions in Ukraine, Humble Bundle started a new action to help the victims of the war. The “Stand with Ukraine” collection consists of 123 items, including games such as “Back 4 Blood”, “Metro Exodus”, “Max Payne 3”, “This War is Mine” and “Kerbal Space Program”, and can be purchased with a minimum donation of US$ 40 (R$ 200). The promotion runs until Friday (25) and all the money raised will be sent to institutions that help care for people wounded in war.