The gaming market cannot grow chasing new technology and graphics alone. Expensive next generation GPU’s and “Pro” consoles might be fun toys for those users with more disposable income than sense, but real mainstream growth comes from a blend of powerful new tech and enhanced accessibility.
Nintendo has proven this time and again. The Wii brought console gaming to a level of mass market appeal not seen before — a feat they then somehow miraculously repeated with the incredible success of the Switch. Nintendo’s hybrid console blends all the interesting parts of home and portable gaming into one relatively affordable thing, and it has done so well that they’ve been in no rush to release their long-in-development sequel machine.
The only other zone within the gaming market that seems to have actually seen that success and learned these lessons is the portable PC space. Valve boldly stepped out there a couple of years ago with the Steam Deck, and took the Nintendo model of “play anywhere” accessibility into a more powerful arena with miniaturized AMD hardware, combined with their huge software ecosystem. It kicked off a firestorm of awesome competing hardware, and so now there’s suddenly a vibrant collection of handheld PCs that offer so much more to users than a console in terms of both scope of game library and capability to do different…
