MudMan

They used a code-in-box for that on physical releases, IIRC. The carts are identifiable, but they´re not tied to an account, that I know of.

Just going from the first couple of replies I'm going to go get the popcorn started to count how many people respond without watching the video first.

Eh... I am going to be on the Doubt column on this one until someone gets more information and other cases.

From my understanding of the way Switch carts are made there is no difference at all between a cart used on a console and the same cart resold for a different console. Nothing is stored to tie carts to hardware or accounts. Carts are meant to work with the multiple accounts on the Switch and with multiple Switch consoles at once, given that Nintendo very much expects to upsell you on a Mini/OLED/Switch 2 whatever.

This guy either a) did something else to trigger the ban, b) bought a bootleg cart somehow, although that doesn't seem like it'd be particularly profitable to sell on Switch, or c) hit a seriously weird bug.

Or, I guess d) is lying about it?

Nintendo is definitely not looking to ban used Switch 1 carts. They literally have no way to do so. There is no tool in the toolset to distinguish a cart someone else bought at the store from your own carts you bought at the store and then moved from a Switch 1 to a Switch 2.

At the absolute most I could entertain that the used cart had been used to make a backup and then the backup got flagged in a different jailbroken console or something, but I don't even know that Nintendo would be able to tell or that it would trip up their banhammer.

That doesn't mean I'm on board with their remote bricking policy, and if this turns out to be a bug or weird edge case it's just another thing to show that their overreach is not gonna play the way they thought it would.

But it is almost definitely not an attempt to ban users for buying used games.

EDIT: Looking at other reporting, it seems the user in question themselves hypothesized that the cart must have been dumped and said Nintendo requested proof of purchase to un-ban them, so I guess that's the most likely scenario?

Cool. But that's not the conversation we're having an five-ish million people clearly don't share that concern.

Sure, and with the GPU sucking up a bunch of juice that's plenty to get toasty.

It's just I haven't been using laptops that do that in the past few years and coming from desktop world it feels so wrong now.

On a 1660 Ti (MaxQ, I presume)? I can believe it. It's the exact range of game that card is made for. At a glance I don't see Skyrim AE benchmarks, but notebookcheck has it running Monster Hunter World, MGS V and Rise of the Tomb Raider maxed out at 1080p60ish.

Maybe I'm spoiled by just assuming Windows and Linux benchmarks are comparable by default? I guess it's no longer a surprise now, so... congrats, everybody?

Also, man, is there something you can do about those CPU temps? It makes me nervous just to look at that 28% utilization at 90C. I've been away from gaming laptops since handhelds are a thing and I'm not used to that anymore.

I don't think I can agree. I mean, I'm sure being in Latin America and being at the tail end of support for less global products skews this a bit, but ultimately these are two big global publishers selling globally.

For what it's worth, Steam is willing to sell me any currently available Steam Deck in my region with 3-5 day delivery. There currently isn't any Switch 2 stock on Amazon or the local top specialty game retailer. Checking a couple other major retailers it sure seems to be sold out everywhere for now. You'd probably have a better shot at a physical retailer.

So I'm saying that Valve has stock of the Deck and has for ages, at least in the territories it supports through direct sales. Which is expected, the thing is not new anymore, but it suggests that if it needed to ramp up production it could, it just doesn't have to.

You could argue that this is not apples to apples, and it may not be, but the difference is so large it may not matter. The Switch 1 by itself was about as large as all of Steam combined, let alone the Deck by itself. The Switch 2 did in weeks what took the Deck years to do, crucially at the same price point (the Switch 2 is cheaper than the OLED but more expensive than the LCD). Considering how much of the marketing and the community focused on the Deck being a Switch killer based on the performance advantage it had, I'm going to say they are close enough competitors and the gulf between them is large enough that whatever differences you want to account for are accounted for.

Which, again, doesn't speak to the quality of either piece of hardware, but it does to the notion that the Deck has been a runaway success or that it has overwhelmed Valve's expectations.

I forget what wave I was on. I know I wasn't there day one, but it also wasn't that long of a wait.

My best guess is Valve was making very few of these. It's pretty impressive that Nintendo has been able to move this many consoles while keeping stock up, but Valve was clearly not operating at that volume for both cost reasons and to create some hype.

For the record, I do own both a Switch 2 and a Deck. It wasn't that hard to get either, but the Switch 2 was available on day one in a way the Deck was not.

I am very glad it exists. I may have a problem with owning handhelds. I am the perfect mark for this stuff. I have multiple upcoming boutique handheld PCs I'm actively trying not to overspend on.

But they are competitors. If anything, they are about as similar as they've ever been, honestly.

I'm only reacting to they weird Valve mythmaking that presents them as being extremely successful in the meme up top. Yes, the Deck is a very popular PC handheld, it is supposed to account for half-ish of the entire segment and it's been very well priced for what it is, but it isn't a runaway hit in the large scheme of the game industry and game hardware manufacturing.

Weirdly so is Nintendo these days.

In any case I'm not sure what "percentage of units sold/manufactured" implies there. Everybody has some stock of their products. Selling through your stock isn't much of a metric unless you're doing limited runs on purpose. If Valve was selling these faster they'd manufacture them faster.

I mean...

Not to take anything away from the Steam Deck, it's a very cool piece of hardware, but the Switch 2 beat its lifetime sales in what? Three weeks? I'm not even saying it's better, but I think people should get a sense of the scope of PC handhelds in general compared to consoles and the Switch specifically. And I say that as the owner of multiple handhelds, the Deck included.

I mean, for all the quotes you missed the one that explicitly does "all you ask".

I know that's not universal, and some people with similar accessiblity problems have the opposite experience. I don't question that.

The thing with talking to each other on the Internet while disagreeing (respectfully) is that we end up having to parse which of the parts we disagree in to even have an argument about. I don't mind people liking the Steam controller, but I'm also not shy at calling out the ways in which its rough edges are not a me thing.

I think it's undeniable that it's pretty plasticky. I think I can make a pretty solid argument about its setup and usability being overengineered while not getting to the ostensible goal (mouse and keyboard on a controller format, presumably). And for what it's worth, I think the fact that it's a pretty niche thing goes to show this is the consensus reaction to it.

All of that can be said without taking anything away from the people that like it, I think. But... you know, that doesn't mean I don't think they're wrong about it or that those are all entirely subjective observations about it.

I'll say that my "hate it with a passion" stance is less about the Steam Controller itself and more about how it keeps sneaking into all of Valve's hardware. I've said this before: I don't know who's still stuck on making touchpads happen, but it made my time with the HTC Vive much harder than it had to be and the Steam Deck didn't need to have Dumbo ears, so I do think there's a value to reminding people (and Valve specifically) that this isn't going to happen and everybody else is not jumping into their touchpad fetish for a reason.