The reason for my question: I don't want to own obsolete hardware in 10 years. Lately most games seem to depend on a "phone home" feature, which is not really an issue for my pc because it is always connected, but a console is something I want to play always and everywhere.

I already did some searching and found that games can be played offline fine (most of them, some exceptions are there like Multiplayer and Mortal Kombat), but:

There is something like the paid Nintendo Online Account. I am not planning on having a paid account. How much of the system depends on the account?
Can I have progression in a game (let's say: one of the Zelda franchise) and will my Wife and Kids all have their own progression, without having to pay for X accounts?
People who own a Switch, let's take this to extremes, do you feel like in 20 years from now you can still do the same things on your hardware as you can do now? (No multiplayer is fine)

Also, feel free to rant about "paying is not owning", the state of the gaming industry is horrible.

edit: Thank you all for the comments! I don't post a lot, so it was kinda overwhelming :)

For clarity:

I meant I want to "buy for life" (not really "life", but, if the hardware survives you can play on pre-internet consoles forever - you can even buy more games if you can find them)
I want to buy a physical copy of the games, not download them

I've decided to go with the Nintendo DS for now (I have a DSi - this week I bought a couple of games, 2nd hand). Reasons:

I already had it
Joycons on switch. Multiple people mentioned having problems with them. I don't count on being able to buy them new in 10 years, meaning they will have to last.

Again: thank you all for the useful input!

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[–] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The switch is very weak hardware wise but also very reliable I feel. For being a handheld device they're surprisingly tough and cartridges do have a much better chance at longevity than disks so I'd say of all consoles I'd put Switch on the top for longevity and best odds of working well 20 years from now. Do note this is ONLY true of cartridge games. If you have Nintendo eShop games I don't expect them to work 20 years from now because that eShop might not be around and I'm confident it uses some form of phone home checkin to verify DRM. That is likely fixable but out of scope for this discussion.

As for Steam Deck / other handheld PCs the games are less likely survive 20 years, games have already started to disappear from Steam (unpopular ones) and I very much doubt every game I have today will be available/playable. Because Steam will be dropping support and not every game is DRM free in ways that mean you can run them once they're dropped from Steam. The PC handhelds also tend to work very poorly without Internet since Steam wants to phone home from time to time. As for the hardware I think the Steam Deck might last 20 years given it's Linux based. Stuff like the ROG Ally will be hard to make work due to the outdated Windows on it and the likelihood that you can't upgrade it and games/steam won't work without an upgrade.

[–] roadkill@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

Unfortunately there is a fair number of games with a physical release that require downloads to be playable as they are not complete on the cartridge.