It’s silly to compare Switch 2 sales to Steam Deck sales.
The Switch 2 is a locked-down, vertically integrated platform. There are no ROG Switch 2s. No Lenovo Switch 2s. No Switch laptops or tower PCs with discrete GPUs. If you want to play Mario Kart World, your only option is to buy a Switch 2. Period.
Steam Deck, by contrast, isn’t a platform. It’s just one hardware option—one entry point into the sprawling, open ecosystem known as PC gaming.
Every year, around 245 million PCs are shipped globally. If even 20–25% of those are gaming-focused, that’s 49–61 million gaming PCs annually. Steam Deck is a sliver of that. So of course it won’t outsell a console that’s the only gateway to a major IP.
But that’s exactly the point.
PC gaming is too decentralized for any single device to dominate. The last “PC” that did was the Commodore 64, which sold 12.5–17 million units over 12 years because it was a self-contained platform, unlike modern Windows, Mac, or Linux machines.
That the Steam Deck has sold 4 million units despite competing with every other gaming PC in existence is remarkable. It didn’t just sell—it legitimized a category. Handheld PC gaming is now a thing. That’s why Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI have followed. Even Microsoft is getting in, optimizing Windows for handhelds—something they would never have done if the Steam Deck didn’t hold their feet to the fire.
So no, Steam Deck didn’t outsell the Switch 2. It didn’t need to.
It won by changing the landscape.
Personally I thought botw was pretty mid overall. The world is so empty and there’s no reason to really ever fight anything for the most part. The weapons breaking so easily just cements that. Haven’t played the second tho.
There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest. TotK mostly fixed the weapon breaking mechanic in my eyes. They’re much more durable now and last longer when fused (there is generally no reason to not do fusion). The only thing that’s more fun in BotW than TotK is riding a horse through Hyrule field while dodging tons of guardian lasers.
Hmmmm… that’s a thinker.
In the older zeldas, you didn’t especially need to fight stuff on the overworld. I’d usually just run by, or kill the ones that were in my way.
In most FromSoft games, you can run past enemies but that can quickly spiral out of control. Killing them gives you time to explore safely, on top of the XP rewarded.
In shooters like Doom, you could probably run past most enemies, but they’ll keep attacking. Clearing them makes you safer.
Monster hunter it’s the whole point of the game.
What games are you thinking of where fighting is pointless? I don’t think it’s “most” games.
Ah, I see you haven’t played undertale yet!
I don’t get this line of thinking… If you’re using arguments like “you can run past them but it’s safer to kill them so they stop attacking” how does that not apply to BotW/TotK? Obviously some eneny camps you ignore because they’re irrelevant, it is an open world game after all, all open world games are like that (many learned the hard way why you should ignore giants in Skyrim lol). But in areas where you’re trying to accomplish something, you “need” to kill them because they’re attacking. That’s still true.
You can’t say “I dislike the game because it doesn’t give me a reason to kill enemies” while saying “in Doom you don’t need to kill enemies but it’s easier if you do” when BotW/TotK are both easier if you kill enemies. And I know you’re not the one who said it, but you’re changing the context of the conversation.
I was hoping you would explain what you meant by “There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest”. I don’t think that’s a true statement. I think most games do give reasons to fight enemies.
I haven’t played enough BotW to really weigh in on it, specifically.
In Zelda One you definitely needed to kill them because there were several good items to purchase with the rupees.