I thought Switch 2 would kill my Steam Deck, but it's actually made me play it more

In the days leading up to the Switch 2 launch I couldn’t help but feel sad for my Steam Deck. Once my pride and joy, a delight I’d take great pleasure in telling people about and even demonstrating, it had started to gather dust. I was about to enter the age of the Switch 2, and I didn’t think I needed two handhelds in my life. So certain I was of the Deck’s move down the pecking order, I even looked into how much I’d get for selling it. Goodbye my chunky boy, you served me well.

Steam Deck: Feb 2022 – June 2025.

June rolled around and I was, as predicted, Switch 2 enveloped. Mario Kart World every day, every evening, every weekend. Fast Fusion in-between, a bit of Welcome Tour, some Cyberpunk 2077. In my house the Switch 2 had quickly become the most-played console, with even my son choosing to play his mammoth Fortnite sessions on it instead of the Xbox (if you’ve not seen it on Switch 2, it’s a huge improvement over the game on OG Switch). My daughter, only four years old and not really able to play games yet, even felt the excitement, wanting to pose for a photo alongside the Switch 2 – not even the console, but the cardboard box it arrived in!

This kind of enamourment happens all the time, of course, but I really did get a wonderful sense of something new and exciting from the Switch 2, the kind you get when you just know you’re holding something supremely cool. Having something new that you like tends to make you want to do more with it. Something that happens to me all the time is how I might not touch a console for a while (let’s say, the PS5), but then a new game will arrive for it (Astro Bot was this game for me last year), and suddenly I’ve finished it and then find myself working through Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and firing up whatever is on PS Plus.