And how many years since the Switch? Even the Steam Deck was an open secret for years.
To be fair, everyone was sure handhelds would die and mobile games would take over everything. Then the Switch happened.
MuskyMelon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Much as I hate Nintendo now, their contribution to gaming can’t be denied. First they revived it from the crash in 1983, then they showed that there’s a market for a hybrid console/handheld device, paving the way for PC handhelds.
Goretantath@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Heck a lot of “gimmicks” nintendo was mocked for ended up copied by sony and microsoft. The only reason nintendo is like it is now is cause of copying back the bad practices sony and microsoft pioneered like paying for server connectivity and games not fully being on the physical media that you buy.
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The loss of Reggie and Iwata are sorely felt. Nintendo is just run by generic corporate suits now, and it really shows.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t know how much of that was needing to prove that the market existed rather than the simultaneous development of performant and power efficient x64 APUs suitable for handheld gaming PCs. The 3DS was plenty successful even at the time, but handheld-only games had a reputation for being the B game to the home consoles’ A game. It was a pretty natural conclusion for Nintendo, when their handheld was successful and their home console was not, to combine the two, using the same tech found in cell phones, no less.
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Hard to say for sure without seeing a timeline where Nintendo didn’t make a hybrid console and seeing if the Steam Deck and other PC handhelds still happened the same way. I’d be surprised if the success of the Switch had absolutely nothing to do with the Steam Deck’s creation, however.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, the first GPD Win beat the Switch to market by two years, so I’d be willing to bet it was inevitable. The GPD Win 2 was wildly impressive at the time, coming in at almost Switch level performance, but it could play my Steam games, and I bought one immediately, even at twice the MSRP of the Switch. I’m an earlier adopter for this kind of thing, but I do believe it was just a matter of the tech catching up. Up until that point, the power level of handheld stuff was always woefully behind what home consoles and PCs could do, and now that may still be the case, but we’re still happily playing games that require no more power than what a PS4 can do, which is tech from 12 years ago.
dustyData@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s a massive catalog of 3ds exclusives and those drove the market, not the adaptations or ports. The latter were the minority and not even the most popular titles.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not an adaptation or port, but the Link Between Worlds compared to the console’s Breath of the Wild. Say what you will about the subjective quality of each of those games, but the market at large would prefer Breath of the Wild.
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Anyone that has ever played a game on a phone knew that would never happen.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So far as I can think, wasn’t the only handheld that failed the Playstation Vita? And that had very visible reasons for the failure - designing itself around an obtuse storage medium, and requiring first-party memory cards. Even with those drawbacks and with no first-party support, it had a tremendous following.
It honestly could still be a worthwhile device to chain off of, since none of the current offerings fit in a pants pocket.
Goretantath@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Was a really great emulation handheld till its oen hardware got emulated, then the new nintendo 3ds beat it since theres not good emulation of the 3D effects yet.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I love the Vita, and you’re right, you can hack it to accept SD Cards, use native PSP/PS1 emulation in any game and a lot of homebrew ports.
PS: If you’re willing to get third party PC Handhelds, the Ayaneo Air 1S is the closest thing the Vita form factor I know. 5.5" OLED screen, but the bezel is thicker.