A blog for Steam players, who are thinking about buying a Switch

What You Need to Know

• Nintendo has something Steam can't really replicate: its own pile of weird, wonderful first-party games.
• A Nintendo account can switch eShop regions, which opens up a very different way of shopping for games.
• I built the site around that idea: compare Switch prices across countries, then compare them with Steam in your own region.

A Steam Deck starts at $789, and yes, I'm still going to buy one someday.

I know, I know. What kind of Switch guy am I?

The answer is a guy who likes games more than platforms.

A lot of games still show up on Steam first, Steam's sales can be ridiculous, and having a giant PC game library in a handheld is hard to argue with. I'm not a PC enthusiast, but I can absolutely see myself sitting on the sofa with a Steam Deck and wondering why I didn't buy one sooner.

So this isn't a Steam-versus-Switch fight.

I'm actually here to tell you why, if you're already a Steam person, you should probably spend a little more time looking at Nintendo.

Nintendo has its own little universe

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first.

Nintendo has the games.

Mario. Zelda. Pokémon. Metroid. Animal Crossing. Splatoon. Kirby. Pikmin.

You already know the names. That's the problem with trying to explain Nintendo's biggest advantage. I can list the franchises for three paragraphs and you'll probably start thinking about something else.

The interesting part is how many different kinds of games live inside those franchises. You can have a ridiculous platformer, a giant adventure, a cozy island simulator, a tactical RPG and a game about throwing ink at people, all sitting under the same roof.

That's one reason I like the Switch so much. It doesn't feel like a machine built around one particular type of player.

Some days I want to spend 40 hours exploring Hyrule. Other days I want to play something stupid for 20 minutes. Then there are the games that make you wonder why Nintendo was allowed to put this much personality into a piece of software.

I've got a dedicated /exclusive page for the games I consider part of that Nintendo-only world. It's probably the easiest place on the site to see what you're missing if your library has mostly lived on Steam.

And honestly, this is the part of the Switch proposition that Steam can't solve with a bigger sale.

The eShop has a strange little pricing trick

Here's where things get more interesting.

Nintendo lets you change the storefront region attached to your account. That means the price you see for a game doesn't necessarily have to be the price you pay in your home country. Steam doesn't work that way. Your Steam region is tied to where you actually pay, so a Steam price comparison only makes sense when you're looking at your own region.

On Switch, the situation is different.

A game that's expensive in one country can be considerably cheaper somewhere else. And because the eShop operates across a whole collection of regional storefronts, those differences can get pretty interesting.

This is basically regional arbitrage, if you want to give it the fancy name. I just call it shopping around.

There is one important thing here: region switching has account and payment implications, so don't treat it like a magic button you can smash without checking Nintendo's current rules and your payment method first. I keep the jokes for the prices. Your account is where I suddenly become boring.

But once you understand how the system works, the pricing differences become fascinating. That's actually one of the reasons I built this site.

I wanted one place to see the whole mess

Imagine you're looking at a game that costs $30 in your local eShop. You could just buy it. Or you could check what it costs in the other Nintendo storefronts I track, where maybe another country has it for $18. Then there's Steam, where maybe it's $12. Or maybe, somehow, the Switch version is cheaper than both. Yes, that happens too.

That's what the /switch-vs-steam page is for. Pick your Steam region and it puts the Steam price next to the Switch prices, including the cheapest Switch price across the countries I track. The page is built around current prices pulled from both storefronts.

I like this because it answers a question I ask myself constantly: where should I actually buy this game? Not where should I buy it because one platform is "better." Just where is the better price today. That's a much more useful question.

And yes, this is the 30-second advertisement

I promise this is the only sales pitch. The /all-time-low page is for the other kind of question: is this price actually good? When a game carries the ATL badge, it means the price is the lowest I've recorded for that game in that country.

That's useful because a 40% discount doesn't automatically mean much. A game can be 40% off and still have been cheaper before. Or it can be sitting at the lowest price I've recorded and suddenly become very interesting. I wanted the site to answer that question without making you open twelve browser tabs and start keeping a spreadsheet like a man who has completely lost control of his weekend.

So why did I build this for Switch?

This is the part that's harder to explain with numbers. If I cared only about finding the cheapest place to buy games, I'd probably build the whole thing around Steam. Steam has an enormous library, regional pricing, and frequent sales. If you're already on PC, you don't need another piece of hardware sitting under your television.

But I like the Switch for a different reason. There is something about the machine itself that makes games feel a little more playful to me. I can pick it up, put it in my bag, sit somewhere stupid and play Mario for twenty minutes, then put it down and forget about it.

I've tried the other handheld PCs. I've looked at the ROG Ally and the Chinese handhelds, and they're impressive machines. They just don't give me the same feeling, and I can't really prove that with a spreadsheet.

Steam is still coming home with me

So, Steamers, don't take this as an intervention. I'm still buying that Steam Deck. I'm still going to look at a Steam sale and think, "Oh, that's $4. I should probably buy it." Then I'll look at my backlog and remember that I already have 47 games I haven't finished.

But if you've spent years living inside Steam, I think there's something fun about looking over the fence once in a while. Nintendo has its own weird little universe of games, and the eShop has a pricing system that's much more interesting than it first appears. I built this site because I wanted to see all of that in one place.

You might find something you didn't know you wanted. Or you might just discover that the game you've been staring at on Steam is cheaper on a Switch in another country. Either way, welcome to the other side.

Just don't sell your Steam Deck yet.

FAQ: Steam players looking at Switch

Why would I care about Switch prices if I already buy on Steam?

Because a game that costs $30 on Steam might cost $18 on the eShop in another country, or $12 in a different one. The /switch-vs-steam page puts both prices side by side so you can see which platform has the better deal today. Sometimes that's Steam. Sometimes it's Switch.

Can I really change my Nintendo eShop region to get cheaper games?

Yes, but with caveats. Nintendo lets you change the region attached to your account, which changes which storefront you see and what prices you pay. It has account and payment implications, so check Nintendo's current rules and your payment method before you try it. In fact, most of regions accept debit/credit cards and eShop gift card.

What does the all-time low badge actually mean?

It means the price is the lowest I've recorded for that game, in that country. A 40% discount doesn't automatically mean much because a game can be 40% off and still have been cheaper before. The ATL badge cuts through that and tells you whether the price right now is genuinely the low.

Are Switch games generally more expensive than Steam games?

Sometimes, but not always. Nintendo first-party titles tend to hold their price longer, but third-party games on the eShop can drop lower than Steam depending on the country and the sale. That's the whole reason the comparison page exists. The answer changes per game, per country, per day.

Do I need to own a Switch to use this site?

Nope. The price data is all public, and the comparison pages work whether you own the hardware or not. If you're a Steam player curious about what's happening on the other side, you can browse Switch prices, check the exclusives list, and decide whether a Switch is worth it before you spend a cent.