Even with a steam deck, I am probably going to get the Switch2, mostly because I can lower my head on in-game profiteering, which is increasingly prevalent on steam games.
I don't know how you get from there to "games on steam are sub par quality" because at this point, everything else is on Steam, so calling the rest of the Steam library "sub par" is effectively calling the entire rest of the industry, from top to bottom, "sub par", and I'd have a hard time with that one. Nintendo has a pretty good track record but they're just one company. And not because I love AAA, I'm pretty much out of the AAA loop entirely at this point, but because it's literally everything else. In particular, the XBox exclusive and PS exclusives are, if not dead, on life support. PS may still have a sort of "Japanese game that doesn't appear on Steam" niche, but even that's getting eaten into; every major Atlus release lately is showing up on Steam as a first-class citizen, for instance.
You can absolutely make a game to the quality of Zelda as an indie developer.
No, I will never forgive the Chaos;Head NOAH . Especially since it only got through from blowback as being part of the famous Steins gate franchise and dozens of other games got quashed later.
Tastes will be different and I can respect that. But I feel there's no worse kind of criticism than one that is berating a game for something it was never targeting to do in thr first place. Why lambast a Mario game for it's lack of deep characterization instead of saying "I prefer a story-heavy game" and picking up the Last of Us?
Not as enoirmouus as paying a studio in California to make a failed GaaS shooter service. But still a large step past a AA budget.
I'd say at the bare minimum you need a very solid staff of 5 to pull it off though. Hollow knight did it with a rough core of 3 devs + composer (and other support, of course). The very ambitious Toweers of towers of aghasba was reportedly 6 devs IIRC, but that's TBD and might have scaled up.
My impression is that the general quality of games on the Switch (or Switch 2 or eShop) is sub par the quality of, e.g. Zelda. This is obviously because Zelda is a landmark title and it doesn't make sense to compare it with "the general quality" of games on Steam. It would make more sense to compare it with the quality of other landmark titles on Steam e.g. Baldur's Gate 3.
You can compare the general quality of games on Steam (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5") with the general quality of games on Switch (which includes games like "Hentai Waifu 5"), though I'm not sure it is that interesting of a comparison, since no one buys the "average" game but what they consider to be the best games on the platform.
I'd suspect that any attempt at an "objective" comparison (obviously, an impossible task) would land in favour of Steam simply because it has basically all of (core) gaming for most of history on it. Though obviously such an "objective" comparison would be meaningless for something like this where literally your subjective opinion should matter the most for your choice.
The Nintendo Switch lowered the bar substantially for what it takes to get on that platform, and broadly speaking, I support that, I'm not complaining about it.
The Store UI is disgusting and intrusive compared to all other competitors who actually have a decent overview and design..
You can collect gems, cards and other misleading virtual currencies.. Tons of misleading business practises and time-consuming bloatware distractions hidden behind that terrible UI.
Steam is first and foremost DRM. A game-prison. You don't own a single thing. Gamers have totally drunk the kool aid.. They forgot back when Steam was bloatware forced on Half-Life and Valve games and it was despised for a decade before they became complacent little worshippers.
What? Given that 99.9% of all games are published on Steam, what you are comparing is Zelda against gaming as a whole, not “the quality of games on steam”
Zelda is good, but it’s not better than literally all of gaming. If you are not a die hard Nintendo fan, I’d rather use Steam and enjoy saner pricing. There is always emulation for Nintendo.
Just because steam sells games that do in-game profiteering, doesn't mean you need to play them?