It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.
Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
You, by the way, are not in the majority in your usage pattern for the Switch. Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split. Which is surprising to me, because I see it as a handheld first and foremost.
I do agree that it’ll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 fares in a market where it’s not the only thing in its class, but if I had to place any bets, they have a humongous lead despite PC handhelds having been around for ages and the Deck having taken a very good stab at competitive pricing and performance a whole three years ago (what is even time, holy crap).
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop? I can see some use cases for it, I’ve had some NUCs and thin clients here and there, I just don’t think the value proposition is there to use them even as a media device. But hey, it’s a small but clearly competitive space, and if this gen APUs do indeed match a 4060 desktop level of performance when fed enough power maybe that starts to make sense next to a Xbox Series S or something as a gaming device. We’ll see.
For the record, I do have a PC plugged into a TV for gaming, mostly made out of spares and hand-me-downs built into a smaller, less garish case. I haven’t seen a mini PC that made me question that choice yet. I’m open to having my mind changed, it just hasn’t happened yet.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
PC gaming has mainstream appeal, measurably. There are lots of reasons to play games on PC, and this is an additional one, particularly compared to PlayStation and Xbox, moreso than Switch.
Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split.
I haven’t seen any reporting on that in a long time, since before this PC form factor existed, but I’d happy to peruse a link. I see some people playing Switch on the subway from time to time, but also anecdotally, most of my friends, all adults, play them docked just about exclusively. I’ve definitely seen children playing Switch Lites at the laundromat as a tool that parents use to keep them busy.
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop?
My use case is I have a very easily packed and unpacked local multiplayer machine, for emulators and fighting games especially. The Steam Deck is a bit of a pain to set up for this use case, and it can’t run Street Fighter 6 very well or at the resolutions I’d want it to, but the mini PC does all of that very well. That use case, and some interested fighting game tournament organizers I’ve been talking to, are admittedly very niche, but I think the alternative for a laptop has real legs. My friend just got one for her dad (in his late 60s) for a little north of $150. It runs Windows. It allows him to browse the web and run his office applications, plus whatever else he needs to run on x64. Most older folks I see using laptops only ever use them in a single place like a desk anyway, and they’d rather output them to a larger monitor. This is where I think this form factor will sing in the coming years, plus the real possibility of whatever living room PC game machine that Valve can put together for decent value. The other advantage is that not only can they be cheap up front and take up less space, they also use less electricity and produce less waste heat.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway. I find people tend to hedge on this. Either the Steam Deck is a consolized solution to PC gaming that makes the Switch obsolete or a bit of an experiment that doesn’t need to stack up to mainstream devices.
Yes, PCs (desktop PCs, laptops and handhelds together) are comparable to 4K home consoles these days and lead in some segments. But of those categories the handhelds are the smallest contributor while they are the largest portion of the console market. I love PC handhelds and I’d like to see those proportions shift, but it’s interesting that Valve has put a lot of resources behind having a competitive device at a very low price point and we haven’t seen more of a change.
On the docked vs handheld thing, Nintendo disclosed that info a few times. This is the first result I found just searching for it. It’s recent enough that there were already a hundred million of the things in the wild, so I don’t expect it’ll have changed much.
As for the mini PC thing… yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not sayng they don’t do the thing, I’m saying whenever I sit to look at the optimal solution for a problem the mini PCs never seem to come out on top. A PC for an older person taht doesn’t need a ton of computing power? I went with an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard last time, they are delighted at having a laptop-style thing and a tablet to watch media that works like their phone. A low power device to run some specific application? I can probably find some cheap SBC somewhere I can get running passively with a heatsink and will do the job. A portable gaming solution? I have laptops with dedicated GPUs around that are older but much faster than most mini PCs. Also, they have a screen, so there’s that. A set-top box? I can put something together for cheaper in the same performance range.
There are valid use cases. Sure, if you need a dozen of these things to embed in desktops, or something you can mount behind a screen, or… something to run a FGC tourney for cheap, apparently, there are reasons to use them. I just haven’t found they provided a better alternative than other devices for most of the uses I personally have.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway.
I’d wager that the reason the PC market has grown is due to a million different reasons that, on their own, are quite small. Probably not many people would ditch their PlayStation just for mods. Or just for more freedom on controller choices. Or just for better performance. Or just for free online play. Etc.
If I might nitpick your link on the handheld usage, which by the way is dated approximately right when this handheld PC market was born, the thing that Nintendo was seemingly seeking to justify with that data is, “Do people switch with the Switch?”, but it would not answer the question, “How many people would buy the handheld-capable version if they already had a more powerful stationary machine that plays the same games?”
I’m confused on what your hypothesis is here. You think PC handhelds are massively shifting the modes of usage of the Switch towards being primarily docked? I’m not gonna dig for it, but my understanding was that the Switch usage was slowly drifting towards more handheld over time. Even if that wasn’t the case, the numbers just don’t match. Even if 10 million people had shifted from using the Switch as a handheld to a PC handheld, why would that impact the remaining 130 million users? PC handhelds are a rounding error in the space the Switch operates in.
If I had to guess the drift towards PC probably has a lot to do with software. PC ports weren’t a given until recently and they arguably still aren’t reliably great. With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware. PCs have always been backwards and forwards compatible, but with all sorts of devices able to run the same software across many device types and hardware generations that is becoming a big selling point.
Which on the Switch is a lot weaker, mostly because Nintendo is better at making a ton of first party games than Sony and Microsoft and because they have a younger userbase that is less likely to have three other gaming-worthy devices at their fingertips at all times.
Answering this post is difficult without writing an entire book, but I think the existence of this form factor, the iteration on it, and the cycles of hardware going out of date and being replaced will, in the long term, have more and more of a tangible effect on all consoles, and Nintendo will feel that last out of the three. Rumor has it Xbox has given up on being a console and will actually just be a PC going forward.
With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware.
This is basically the gist of my point, and long-term, I think it will apply to handhelds as well. As an example, on the current Switch, you can get compromised versions of the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal, or you could just get the better version of the game on PC; it will run perfectly at home, and you can run it at acceptable settings when handheld. Feel free to extrapolate that a few years into the future when there’s a new handheld PC out and the consumer is comparing the latest new game on PC against a Switch 2.
This has been true of Nintendo hardware for a long time, though. I wouldn’t discount their ability to sustain it through a steady feed of exclusives.
Whether they can do better at managing rising costs and complexity than others is anybody’s guess. And we’ll see what happens on PC with compatibility. With a handful of games that don’t run on SteamOS dominating the PC market there is a quiet conflict there and it’s not clear how it will resolve itself.
It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.
Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.
Yeeeah, I don’t know that “it’d slot in next to the Nomad” is a ringing endorsement of mainstream appeal.
You, by the way, are not in the majority in your usage pattern for the Switch. Every bit of info available suggests that handheld vs docked use of the Switch is pretty much evenly split. Which is surprising to me, because I see it as a handheld first and foremost.
I do agree that it’ll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 fares in a market where it’s not the only thing in its class, but if I had to place any bets, they have a humongous lead despite PC handhelds having been around for ages and the Deck having taken a very good stab at competitive pricing and performance a whole three years ago (what is even time, holy crap).
As for mini PCs… Man, I don’t get mini PCs. I’m very much an early adopter of weird tech, I have more SBCs and handheld devices than I know what to do with, but… who wants a screenless laptop? Or an underpowered, overpriced desktop? I can see some use cases for it, I’ve had some NUCs and thin clients here and there, I just don’t think the value proposition is there to use them even as a media device. But hey, it’s a small but clearly competitive space, and if this gen APUs do indeed match a 4060 desktop level of performance when fed enough power maybe that starts to make sense next to a Xbox Series S or something as a gaming device. We’ll see.
For the record, I do have a PC plugged into a TV for gaming, mostly made out of spares and hand-me-downs built into a smaller, less garish case. I haven’t seen a mini PC that made me question that choice yet. I’m open to having my mind changed, it just hasn’t happened yet.
PC gaming has mainstream appeal, measurably. There are lots of reasons to play games on PC, and this is an additional one, particularly compared to PlayStation and Xbox, moreso than Switch.
I haven’t seen any reporting on that in a long time, since before this PC form factor existed, but I’d happy to peruse a link. I see some people playing Switch on the subway from time to time, but also anecdotally, most of my friends, all adults, play them docked just about exclusively. I’ve definitely seen children playing Switch Lites at the laundromat as a tool that parents use to keep them busy.
My use case is I have a very easily packed and unpacked local multiplayer machine, for emulators and fighting games especially. The Steam Deck is a bit of a pain to set up for this use case, and it can’t run Street Fighter 6 very well or at the resolutions I’d want it to, but the mini PC does all of that very well. That use case, and some interested fighting game tournament organizers I’ve been talking to, are admittedly very niche, but I think the alternative for a laptop has real legs. My friend just got one for her dad (in his late 60s) for a little north of $150. It runs Windows. It allows him to browse the web and run his office applications, plus whatever else he needs to run on x64. Most older folks I see using laptops only ever use them in a single place like a desk anyway, and they’d rather output them to a larger monitor. This is where I think this form factor will sing in the coming years, plus the real possibility of whatever living room PC game machine that Valve can put together for decent value. The other advantage is that not only can they be cheap up front and take up less space, they also use less electricity and produce less waste heat.
PC gaming absolutely has mainstream appeal, and it’s growing. Just not specifically because of the handheld market. By the numbers, anyway. I find people tend to hedge on this. Either the Steam Deck is a consolized solution to PC gaming that makes the Switch obsolete or a bit of an experiment that doesn’t need to stack up to mainstream devices.
Yes, PCs (desktop PCs, laptops and handhelds together) are comparable to 4K home consoles these days and lead in some segments. But of those categories the handhelds are the smallest contributor while they are the largest portion of the console market. I love PC handhelds and I’d like to see those proportions shift, but it’s interesting that Valve has put a lot of resources behind having a competitive device at a very low price point and we haven’t seen more of a change.
On the docked vs handheld thing, Nintendo disclosed that info a few times. This is the first result I found just searching for it. It’s recent enough that there were already a hundred million of the things in the wild, so I don’t expect it’ll have changed much.
As for the mini PC thing… yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not sayng they don’t do the thing, I’m saying whenever I sit to look at the optimal solution for a problem the mini PCs never seem to come out on top. A PC for an older person taht doesn’t need a ton of computing power? I went with an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard last time, they are delighted at having a laptop-style thing and a tablet to watch media that works like their phone. A low power device to run some specific application? I can probably find some cheap SBC somewhere I can get running passively with a heatsink and will do the job. A portable gaming solution? I have laptops with dedicated GPUs around that are older but much faster than most mini PCs. Also, they have a screen, so there’s that. A set-top box? I can put something together for cheaper in the same performance range.
There are valid use cases. Sure, if you need a dozen of these things to embed in desktops, or something you can mount behind a screen, or… something to run a FGC tourney for cheap, apparently, there are reasons to use them. I just haven’t found they provided a better alternative than other devices for most of the uses I personally have.
I’d wager that the reason the PC market has grown is due to a million different reasons that, on their own, are quite small. Probably not many people would ditch their PlayStation just for mods. Or just for more freedom on controller choices. Or just for better performance. Or just for free online play. Etc.
If I might nitpick your link on the handheld usage, which by the way is dated approximately right when this handheld PC market was born, the thing that Nintendo was seemingly seeking to justify with that data is, “Do people switch with the Switch?”, but it would not answer the question, “How many people would buy the handheld-capable version if they already had a more powerful stationary machine that plays the same games?”
I’m confused on what your hypothesis is here. You think PC handhelds are massively shifting the modes of usage of the Switch towards being primarily docked? I’m not gonna dig for it, but my understanding was that the Switch usage was slowly drifting towards more handheld over time. Even if that wasn’t the case, the numbers just don’t match. Even if 10 million people had shifted from using the Switch as a handheld to a PC handheld, why would that impact the remaining 130 million users? PC handhelds are a rounding error in the space the Switch operates in.
If I had to guess the drift towards PC probably has a lot to do with software. PC ports weren’t a given until recently and they arguably still aren’t reliably great. With console exclusives becoming fewer and further between and both first parties now willing to ship PC ports there just is less of an incentive to be stuck to a specific piece of hardware. PCs have always been backwards and forwards compatible, but with all sorts of devices able to run the same software across many device types and hardware generations that is becoming a big selling point.
Which on the Switch is a lot weaker, mostly because Nintendo is better at making a ton of first party games than Sony and Microsoft and because they have a younger userbase that is less likely to have three other gaming-worthy devices at their fingertips at all times.
Answering this post is difficult without writing an entire book, but I think the existence of this form factor, the iteration on it, and the cycles of hardware going out of date and being replaced will, in the long term, have more and more of a tangible effect on all consoles, and Nintendo will feel that last out of the three. Rumor has it Xbox has given up on being a console and will actually just be a PC going forward.
This is basically the gist of my point, and long-term, I think it will apply to handhelds as well. As an example, on the current Switch, you can get compromised versions of the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal, or you could just get the better version of the game on PC; it will run perfectly at home, and you can run it at acceptable settings when handheld. Feel free to extrapolate that a few years into the future when there’s a new handheld PC out and the consumer is comparing the latest new game on PC against a Switch 2.
This has been true of Nintendo hardware for a long time, though. I wouldn’t discount their ability to sustain it through a steady feed of exclusives.
Whether they can do better at managing rising costs and complexity than others is anybody’s guess. And we’ll see what happens on PC with compatibility. With a handful of games that don’t run on SteamOS dominating the PC market there is a quiet conflict there and it’s not clear how it will resolve itself.