I can’t plug the Steam Deck into my TV, pop in a cartridge, and start playing with four players on excellent controllers, all with almost zero screwing-about. And have that all keep working for years with no intervention on my part.
And my kids can operate a switch, easily.
(I do own both a steam deck and a switch—I can’t let my kids use the deck at all because of some of the games I have on it, with no ability to hide them, even if their account can’t play them; overall the Deck is more a toy for the at-least-slightly tech-“literate”, I’d say. I do like it, in fact, but it’s not a switch replacement, at all)
The controllers on the switch are outright terrible, they all get the damn drift. The design of the controllers, while, small, are improperly shaped for small hands. The impossibility to tell which controller button to press due to having no letters on the left stick (the only one that fits small hands).
Then, the fact that changing controller order can put the switch in a state where only putting it to sleep allows to go back to the home and fix the order.
The thing the Switch has are extremely easy games, which is indeed good for young children. And some couch coop, which is great for brothers.
But the whole "change cartridge" is not helpful, children lose them (as they did with one of mine) and I had to withdraw access to those, since it's 50$ each. They now have to ask.
For the steam deck, set family view, parental controls and you CAN hide any games you want now.
If you connect the wireless controllers once to the steam deck (which can be connected to a tv), you are good to go, but you won't have games for them to play until they can properly read (6 or 7).
We are in a limbo where the gaming universe (not the tablet crap) is not properly developed for children yet.
lucky the accessibility options are moving things forward, but the reading requirement is really a big blocker.
I don't know why some games are tagged 3+ when the reading age for school is 6 (yes you can read earlier, but 6 is when you should be able to read)
Or just a description of my experience with both. Incidentally, the switch pro controllers are excellent, among the best I’ve used, period.
> For the steam deck, set family view, parental controls and you CAN hide any games you want now. If you connect the wireless controllers once to the steam deck (which can be connected to a tv), you are good to go, but you won't have games for them to play until they can properly read (6 or 7).
Oh, that’s great. Last I checked was like November and it was still crickets. All I want to do is hide all the games for one account on it that’s not even any part of our family sharing. Which I’d have thought would be default? It’s a weird choice they made, there. [edit] like, setting aside the hiding-games use case, having games show up in your library, as if they were yours, but that you can’t play without buying them be the default thing that happens is a strange choice.
Can I share with local-only accounts (does the steam deck have such a thing?) or will I need to go through an email address confirmation flow to sign up Stream accounts for each kid? I haven’t done much with this since there was no way to hide games, before, so there was no reason to.
You CAN hide games on account independently of the family sharing now, It's in properties of each game. Of course these games are still accessible in the hidden section, but i don't know where that is.
You do need one account per child, or you let them play on your account. You will need to hide the games on your own account in that case.
I like the Switch Pro too, those are a bit better than xbox one for the small hands. Still enormous, my 3 years old started being able to use it only recently, while the basic switch controller was usable earlier (2 years old).
And yeah, sorry for the tone, I'm frustrated with the switch controller configuration handling. If it wasn't for that I would get less meltdown when mario party messes up the whole configuration
And my kids can operate a switch, easily.
(I do own both a steam deck and a switch—I can’t let my kids use the deck at all because of some of the games I have on it, with no ability to hide them, even if their account can’t play them; overall the Deck is more a toy for the at-least-slightly tech-“literate”, I’d say. I do like it, in fact, but it’s not a switch replacement, at all)