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Should Xbox and PlayStation make a handheld console? | Opinion
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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What doesn't get talked about enough in this conversation is how these devices are expected to be used and how that influences game design. Most crucially- exit points.
I remember taking my Gameboy, GBA, and DS everywhere. The school bus, recess, boy scout meetings. Always in my backpack as I walked around campus in college. In my locker when I worked retail and got 15 minute breaks. It was part of my every day carry, and most of the games were designed with that in mind. Really short load times, plenty of check points or opportunities to save. Very rare to get into a battle or dungeon that would take more than 10 minutes to get to a spot where you can leave without losing progress. Very rare to have to hold ton of information in your brain's working memory for long periods of time to really enjoy it.
Console games can have long build-ups. More complicated plots. Bigger dungeons. Long cutscenes. A wider range of pacing available. There are some truly great experiences that are possible if you can make the assumption that you have most of the player's attention for a solid 60 minutes or more.
Imagine trying to play Death Stranding or Metal Gear Solid 4 on a 15 minute break at work and entering a cutscenes that is 25-30 minutes long, for example.
That being said, the Switch really started the trend of handheld gaming in the home. Perhaps families where someone is is using the main TV. Dorms or small apartments where it's hard to get a good couch setup. Personally I love using the Deck to play in bed, or outside on my covered porch, or even just on the couch while my wife is using the main TV. Or sometimes I just don't want to put my glasses on because my eyes are tires. Those situations can easily lend themselves to longer playing sessions. This is where the PlayStation Portal falls, for example.
So if Sony or Microsoft were to make a new handheld they would have to target one of those two use cases. Essentially, they would either be competing with Consoles/PC's in that space or the mobile gaming space.
The retro handheld scene is still pretty niche, but most of them are small, cheap, and lightweight which makes them great for the mobile space. They can emulate games that were designed for handhelds, and even adding things like save states is at least a feasible workaround for some other games.
I think the answers to those questions are that you can pause cut-scenes these days, and you can put a handheld like the Steam Deck or Switch into sleep mode and pick up exactly where you left off. If you're trying to make games specifically for the handheld use case, I think the customer will recognize those are preferable on a handheld.
But that's still a janky workaround compared to the elegance of design.
What about if you don't get to resume play for a while? Hours, days, weeks, months? If you stopped in the middle of a cutscene, a battle, a puzzle... Just because it's mechanically possible doesn't mean it's a good experience. Games typically require the player to temporarily store information in their own minds to be used later. One of my own personal rules I have learned from experience is to never quit Skyrim in the middle of a dungeon. Because inevitably a month later I'll get the itch to go and organize my house, only to get disheartened and change my mind when I see i left myself halfway through a draugr crypt.
There are also hardware considerations. I love a big, high-res screen. One of my biggest problems with the Deck is that it's not 1080p. But big screens, more pixels, better refresh rates, more brightness, and better graphics settings has tradeoffs. More weight, more volume, more heat, more fan noise, worse battery life. Around the house I usually don't care because I have decent chargers in key locations.
But if I'm out and about traveling, or if I had to go somewhere for work where I only got 15 minutes in the break room, I would just use a different device. Something small, light and power efficient. Like the 3DS or my Powkiddy RGB10Max. Typically just 2D or very lightweight 3D games, and if I'm emulating I can settle for lower resolutions and framerates. It's an entirely different experience and use case.
And that's why I said that it's really two different markets- those smaller devices are more directly competing with smartphones than consoles, while the big boys like the Deck are competing with laptops, desktops, and console setups. The Switch is probably closer to the deck, although the Lite version really toes that line.
I mean, the supply side of things is very different now though. Neither Nintendo nor Sony can really afford to make "handheld games" separate from "console games". It splits their resources too much. The #1 most played game on Steam Deck is Balatro, and #4 is Stardew Valley; both are immensely popular and available on the Switch, but they're disproportionately popular on Steam Deck compared to Steam at large, and that's what I mean by some games just naturally floating to the top. I don't think it's enough of a hindrance to the customer to figure that out themselves such that it makes sense to spend time, money, and effort on making games specifically for handheld.
Once again: mobile space vs console space. There are plenty of revenue streams and opportunities for profitable ventures here.
The article itself points out one of the reasons that Microsoft might be interested is to maximize the utilization of King, a studio they got as part of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, makers of Candy Crush and Bejeweled. That's just one example- off the top of my head I remember Ratchet and Clank had "Going Mobile", Knack had a tie-in mobile game where you could earn extra currency and transfer it to the PS4 games. Nintendo has done tons of stuff like Pokemon Go, Sleep, TCG, Cafe, Mario Runner, Fire Emblem, and more. And Microsoft owns more than just King.- Bethesda has done a handful of Slder Scrolls mobile games, and Fallout Shelter was an incredible award-winning game that was so good it goy ported to PC. It wasn't long ago people were speculating that AAA single-player experiences might be getting killed off in favor of these smaller, cheaper, much more profitable mobile games.
The article also mentions cloud gaming- the Portal and Logitech G-cloud are already exploring this space a little bit and I expect that to continue (personally I love using my Deck to stream from my PC or PS4 to save battery, reduce heat and noise, and have better graphics settings, albeit only when I'm on my home network). These companies absolutely love subscription services, so I could see that even subsidizing the hardware. Xbox is trying to push gamepass onto every device it can- what if they could subsidize a low-powered handheld with excellent battery life that could be another avenue for that? I know things like NVIDIA GeForce Now and Stadia have failed, but I think it's only a matter of time before global Internet bandwidth and latency gets good enough for that to make sense. I hate the idea of cloud gaming personally, but it seems like what the market is trending towards.
I'm not disputing that subscriptions for Game Pass is how Microsoft wants to make money off of a handheld, but that doesn't seem to support your argument. Gears of War isn't really built for the mobile use case. I don't really see cloud gaming taking off the way these companies pitch it to their investors. I think Microsoft's on the right track with making it a value add rather than mandatory, but Stadia didn't take with the market for a reason. I don't see the author's vision for cross-pollination between "traditional mobile games" like King's output and what we think of as Xbox games; I feel like those markets have thoroughly evolved into pushing out the customers that don't like what they offer. I don't want touch buttons on my screen, nor do I want to be nagged by microtransaction prompts, and I don't think mobile gamers want to pay $70 for a challenging prestige story experience up front.