[der_rod]

> Also am I stupid for buying a switch instead of emulating it?

No, while the emulation is pretty good, it's not perfect, and new titles won't always run out of the box. And things like online multiplayer naturally don't work. A Switch is a guaranteed-to-work way to play those titles, and arguably more convenient if you actually use the portability of it.

There are of course non-piracy ways to use them. I own a hackable Switch and have dumped the games I purchased so I can play them in an emulator on my Steam Deck. But not every title will run perfectly that way, so sometimes the Switch is the only portable way of actually playing them.

[thaumasiotes]

> And things like online multiplayer naturally don't work. A Switch is a guaranteed-to-work way to play those titles

Online multiplayer won't work on a Switch either. It's a separate paid subscription service.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

Online technically works on yuzu - it emulates the same capabilities as switches connected to each others locally. This doesn't mean there are no issues. A PC and a Steam Deck running Mario Kart will have desync issues due to the Deck not hitting 60fps 100% of the time resulting in a quick connection loss.

[noirscape]

It doesn't, that's a different feature called LAN play.

LAN play mostly exists to be able to reliably connect Switches to each other at tournaments and such (which is why you find it more frequently in competitive games). It doesn't connect to Nintendo's servers, it just looks for other devices on the same network for local play purposes. Its not the same thing as regular local multiplayer, that's a different feature.

You can somewhat trivially intercept this using DNS if you want to do long-distance co-op, but it's absurdly jank from my experience.

Also both Ryujinx and Yuzu support connecting with LDN_mitm which well, man-in-the-middles the LDN sysmodule on hacked Switch devices to enable the same thing as LAN play interception but then for titles that don't support LAN play.