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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Wait, what?
First of all, PC gamers don't buy a ton of games.
PC is the number one piracy platform for starters, seeing as it requires no jailbreaks and the like.
Secondly, PC gamers tend to own a lot of games legitimately because our gaming library doesn't expire with a console generation, and because our steam libraries consist of many many indie games that cost a few bucks each, not a few $50 AAA releases.
My steam library is about 435-ish games. But that's since 2013.
The total value of the account per steamdb is like £1080, this is a vast over-estimate because I used to live in a country where the entire GTA series before 5 cost £0.20, but let's go with £1080.
If I bought £1080 worth of standard £60 games, I'd only have 18 games. That's actually less than I even had for the PS Vita, and most people would be surprised to know that platform even has that many games.
Between the online fees and subscriptions to PS Plus etc., lacking discounts compared to steam, and the inability to pirate even an extremely high end PC tends to be far, far cheaper in the long run than a console, especially since it also doubles as the TV, the music player, the work and hobby computer, etc etc.
Never heard of a steam backlog? PC is the number one piracy platform, but it's also the only platform where people buy whole bundles of games in a sale or where you get at least one game for free every week.
Have a look at Nintendos sales figures: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html
Take for example the switch: 152 mio devices sold, vs 1391 mio units of software sold. That's roughly 9 titles per device since 2017, or roughly one game per year.
Compare that to your 435 titles over 12 years, which equals roughly 36 titles per year.
You are a heavy buyer of games, in the order of 36x of what's the average for a switch user. You just proved my point.
Btw, these 9 titles would have cost a switch user just €540, if all of them were AAA games at full price. That too doesn't factor in that the figure from Nintendo includes massively popular cheap indie titles or the fact that even Nintendo games sometimes go on sale.
Yes, I'm a heavy buyer of games, but those games cost £12 on average, not £60, nor anywhere near to that amount, even if it's lower due to the few indie games that get console releases.
€540 for those 9 games is roughly more than half of what I spent in the last decade on 430-ish PC games. It's literally why I even have more games in the first place.
So even though I have more games on paper, I don't spend more paper, capische?
And I certainly don't spend more per game than the switch user, which makes your claim misleading.
In fact the opposite is true and most PC gamers are notoriously stringent in spending on games.
You are fighting windmills, capische?
You made up an argument that I never made and now you are fighting against it.
Well done, Don Quijote, the windmill is destroyed and you can go home claiming you defended the land from evil giants.
Original comment I'm responding to states:
That point is incorrect. That is the point I'm disputing.
Maybe chill out bro it's ok to be wrong on the internet, the world goes on.
Price of the middle version of the Steam Deck: €569
Price of the middle version of the Switch 1: €284
So we got a price difference of €285 here.
€50 for the bundled Mario Kart upgrade plus 3 other full price titles, leaves us €55 to spend on another 5 indie titles, and then you got the average total cost of ownership for a switch for just about the price of the Steam Deck with a whopping 0 games on it.
The difference becomes starker if you go for the top-spec version: €679 for the Steam Deck, vs €329 for the Switch, a whopping €350 difference. For that difference you can afford Mario Kart plus 4 full-price titles and have another €60 remaining for a few indie titles.
Lmao so you include all the deals for the switch with your "mario kart upgrade", but not the steam deck?
Ironically enough a steam deck with zero games on it is still a way more compelling device if we're describing a generic gaming device,, because all games on PC are free if you want them to be, and that's a library of hundreds of thousands of games. Then you consider it's also your laptop/main PC too...
Plus, if you must buy games, you're only a few quid away from one, not £60 + online fees etc etc.
We can go in circles forever though, but over the long term of course a PC or any Steam Deck will win in terms of ownership cost due to cheaper/free games. The issue is that we can't really calculate an objective metric of value there.
That also isn't the point I was even disputing, it's precisely that the ownership is more expensive because PC gamers buy more games, but either way you're wrong.
But if we keep going, we'll run into problems because of course it's apples to oranges to compare the value because these are largely mutually exclusive target audiences I'd imagine.
If you include piracy, that's available on the Switch too. Worst case you have to chip in €10 for a mod chip, but that's it.
Yeah, find me a deal to get Mario Kart for the steam deck legally.
You want to use a steam deck as a laptop? Do you really have no self respect?
That was exactly my point. Steam Decks/PCs and consoles are used differently by different people, and in the end a Steam Deck is not cheaper than a console, even if you never pay a cent for a game (but then again, why are you buying a Steam Deck?)
I get the feeling you don't actually want to discuss or talk about the topic, you just want to win. So yeah, no point in continuing the discussion.