Good that Nintendo lost the lawsuit. They should have to compete. But honestly everyone in here calling for Nintendo to port their games to PC is being ridiculous. Nintendo as a company would be stupid as hell to ever do that. As soon as you can buy their stuff on steam, there is immediately no reason to ever purchase their hardware.
Microsoft was the perfect example of this. Xbox embraced putting their games on PC and it was one of the worst mistakes they ever made. It’s one of the biggest reasons Xbox is on life support right now. Nintendo doing that would basically be suicide. As nice as it would be for them to do it, it will never ever happen as long as they still make hardware.
Microsoft (and Sony) have done a terrible job of understanding the console market.
They sell consoles so they can loss-leader you into making it up on licensed games.
You buy a console so you can get a canned consistent experience for less than a PC. In the past, it was also for bespoke hardware that could do something a random PC couldn’t easily and exclusive titles.
In 2026, these advantages are gone. Since Xbone/PS4, you’re just looking at a standard AMD desktop in a funny box. It comes in too many flavours with real performance differences. Only a few titles are still exclusive. You can spend $500 and still not have the Best Console Experience, so why not spend $700 for a PC?
Of course Xbox and PS are flailing in that market.
Nintendo hardware avoids those pitfalls. There’s no “Switch 2 Pro” scenario where some games are meaningfully jankier. The hardware is profitable, and it’s still comfortably less than a basic dGPU computer. So there’s still a niche for it below the full gaming PC buyer.
They’ve also been more willing to exploit “we control the hardware and software together” opportunities for only-here experiences. Since the Kinect died, has there been a major gameplay paradigm that required an Xbox or PS to deliver?
Nintendo could port games to the PC but they won’t exploit the detachable controllers or portable aspects of a Switch, so many of the ports would be lesser.
my nephews just built low-mid end gaming PCs and both their setups came up around $1500, no idea where you are getting this $700 figure for in 2025/26. Their low/mid CPU and GPU alone was well over $500.
That doesn’t sound low-mid to us, but maybe we’re Just Poor™. Our CPU was like $100 and our GPU was like $250, used (only used part in the whole build). All told, maybe $600? It’s not a very fancy computer. It’d certainly cost WAY more now though, with the explosion of prices.
A handheld and highly integrated device where games released for are basically guaranteed to run still has some appeal over the wide sea of PC s. Especially since the share of handheld PCs like the Steam Deck is still comparably small.
I’d also argue that one can get more customers by supporting PC due to those who wouldn’t buy a console anyway. It sounds reasonable though that the incentive for buying a console is gone if you already have a sufficient PC where you can play the game on.
But I wonder whether this is really the case. Do we have actual numbers from market studies or alike on this?
I usually detest exclusive releases, as it feels anticonsumer to make people use a console/UI that they don’t like in order to have a chance of buying/playing a game they might like, but I’ve recently thought about a good copiumcoded excuse for it: Exclusives incentivise me to not keep all my games with one supplier, so when one corporation inevitably crosses a moral line that I cannot accept, I don’t have to sacrifice all my purchased games licences.
That and I honestly believe that owning games developed initially for x platform, on that platform, usually results in the best experience. Usually.
People who like handhelds will buy handhelds. People who like consoles and people who like PCs will buy PC. It is stupid to lock software to one specific type of hardware.
Instead they should force you to destructively collect a bunch of rare earth minerals and plastics and throw them all in the dump after a few years. It just makes sense!
Game exclusives are, by a given measure, anti-consumer; in the same way that charging consumers for games is. It is honestly a very effective way of building up a gaming community world.
We just okay it when we like the contender. No one faulted Valve for not bringing Half-Life elsewhere.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it was often stated that Nintendo had enough cash reserves to operate at a loss for 50 years and still be fine.
Good that Nintendo lost the lawsuit. They should have to compete. But honestly everyone in here calling for Nintendo to port their games to PC is being ridiculous. Nintendo as a company would be stupid as hell to ever do that. As soon as you can buy their stuff on steam, there is immediately no reason to ever purchase their hardware.
Microsoft was the perfect example of this. Xbox embraced putting their games on PC and it was one of the worst mistakes they ever made. It’s one of the biggest reasons Xbox is on life support right now. Nintendo doing that would basically be suicide. As nice as it would be for them to do it, it will never ever happen as long as they still make hardware.
Microsoft (and Sony) have done a terrible job of understanding the console market.
They sell consoles so they can loss-leader you into making it up on licensed games.
You buy a console so you can get a canned consistent experience for less than a PC. In the past, it was also for bespoke hardware that could do something a random PC couldn’t easily and exclusive titles.
In 2026, these advantages are gone. Since Xbone/PS4, you’re just looking at a standard AMD desktop in a funny box. It comes in too many flavours with real performance differences. Only a few titles are still exclusive. You can spend $500 and still not have the Best Console Experience, so why not spend $700 for a PC?
Of course Xbox and PS are flailing in that market.
Nintendo hardware avoids those pitfalls. There’s no “Switch 2 Pro” scenario where some games are meaningfully jankier. The hardware is profitable, and it’s still comfortably less than a basic dGPU computer. So there’s still a niche for it below the full gaming PC buyer.
They’ve also been more willing to exploit “we control the hardware and software together” opportunities for only-here experiences. Since the Kinect died, has there been a major gameplay paradigm that required an Xbox or PS to deliver?
Nintendo could port games to the PC but they won’t exploit the detachable controllers or portable aspects of a Switch, so many of the ports would be lesser.
my nephews just built low-mid end gaming PCs and both their setups came up around $1500, no idea where you are getting this $700 figure for in 2025/26. Their low/mid CPU and GPU alone was well over $500.
That doesn’t sound low-mid to us, but maybe we’re Just Poor™. Our CPU was like $100 and our GPU was like $250, used (only used part in the whole build). All told, maybe $600? It’s not a very fancy computer. It’d certainly cost WAY more now though, with the explosion of prices.
– Frost
deleted by creator
A handheld and highly integrated device where games released for are basically guaranteed to run still has some appeal over the wide sea of PC s. Especially since the share of handheld PCs like the Steam Deck is still comparably small.
I’d also argue that one can get more customers by supporting PC due to those who wouldn’t buy a console anyway. It sounds reasonable though that the incentive for buying a console is gone if you already have a sufficient PC where you can play the game on.
But I wonder whether this is really the case. Do we have actual numbers from market studies or alike on this?
Also, consoles are historically loss leaders. Lose a little money on the console, but make it back with the margins on your games.
Could be that modern game studios have just gotten too expensive for that model to continue, though.
I usually detest exclusive releases, as it feels anticonsumer to make people use a console/UI that they don’t like in order to have a chance of buying/playing a game they might like, but I’ve recently thought about a good copiumcoded excuse for it: Exclusives incentivise me to not keep all my games with one supplier, so when one corporation inevitably crosses a moral line that I cannot accept, I don’t have to sacrifice all my purchased
gameslicences.That and I honestly believe that owning games developed initially for x platform, on that platform, usually results in the best experience. Usually.
People who like handhelds will buy handhelds. People who like consoles and people who like PCs will buy PC. It is stupid to lock software to one specific type of hardware.
Instead they should force you to destructively collect a bunch of rare earth minerals and plastics and throw them all in the dump after a few years. It just makes sense!
It’s a dismal thing for me to say to people:
Game exclusives are, by a given measure, anti-consumer; in the same way that charging consumers for games is. It is honestly a very effective way of building up a gaming community world.
We just okay it when we like the contender. No one faulted Valve for not bringing Half-Life elsewhere.
They ported Half-Life to PS2. And the sequel was on everything.
This is what want. Nintendo not deserve to live after how they treat community.
The community you’re talking about is not their target audience and catering to them makes no sense.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it was often stated that Nintendo had enough cash reserves to operate at a loss for 50 years and still be fine.
And that was before the Switch came out. I’m sure they’ll still be doing their thing in another 50 years.
So it would not suicide at all. Can not win all.