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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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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.