Since its 2022 launch, the Steam Deck has consistently been at or near the top of the company's "top selling products by revenue" charts, with brief dips outside of the top 10 treated as newsworthy events. But sales of the popular handheld gaming PC have apparently been on a steep decline since the system relaunched at a higher price in May.

Linux-focused gaming site Boiling Steam breaks down the historical data, showing how the Deck's chart position has fallen from fifth place immediately after orders resumed in late May down to 14th place for two weeks in early July (the hardware sits at 12th place in the current edition of those charts).

That's in sharp contrast to 2025, when the Steam Deck never dropped below seventh place on the bestseller charts and was only rarely outside the Top 5. Then Valve warned of "intermittent shortages" for the Steam Deck starting in February, leading to weeks of lower chart positions before the Deck became completely unavailable until May.

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On Monday, Nintendo announced that it will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next February. That decision comes in response to European regulations that will soon require easily replaceable batteries in most consumer electronics. Rather than redesigning multiple original Switch models to comply with that regulation (as it is doing with the Switch 2), Nintendo has decided it will just stop selling the older console in the region.

Those new battery rules won't affect the availability of the Switch outside of Europe, of course. But the move got us wondering how much longer Nintendo might keep selling the 9-year-old Switch now that the Switch 2 is drawing the focus of both the company and the market.

An Ars analysis of Nintendo's recent history (as documented in its annual earnings releases) shows that sales for even the company's bestselling hardware tend to decline to zero after nine years on the market. But the data also shows the Switch being a relatively resilient market force that could sustain its commercial life well into its second decade on the market.

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