I’d prefer Linux over Android in this context 100% of the time
darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Good job on the headline, made me click. I found the full quote interesting:
Do you think GameNative might in some way redefine the way people think about PC gaming on portable devices?
Utkarsh: Yes, I do, and that’s the reason I’m choosing to work on it! I genuinely feel that in the next year or two, GameNative is going to become a complete replacement for handheld PCs like the Steam Deck, and in the medium-long term make expensive, bulky gaming PCs an anachronism.
This seems overly optimistic and there’s no mention about Valve actively working on fex as a possible precursor to the Deck2 or Deck3 being an arm powered device. Then there’s the problem of heat dissipation in devices that haven’t been designed with that type of sustained usage in mind. Will people buy bulkier phones without water and dust resistance in large enough quantities to be sustainable?
I’ve been excited about PC emulation on my phone and it has been a surprisingly good experience for most non-AAA games (except for the hit on battery life), but it’ll never be able to duplicate the immersion that only becomes possible on a large display with the necessary horsepower to bring the game to life. PC gaming isn’t going anywhere and neither are dedicated handhelds.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
This claim is a ridiculous overreach. There’s only so much computing power you can fit in a small space due to heat dissipation. You can’t beat thermodynamics. You can get a lot of games to run on lower end systems, but only if you’re willing to make a ton of compromises.
In no way are you going to be running something like Cyberpunk at 4k 60fps on a phone within the next 10 years. Thats what the “expensive, bulky gaming PCs” are for.
And I don’t get why they’re painting a target on the back of high end gaming hardware or even the Steam Deck. There’s another target that would be more beneficial to society to take out: consoles, particularly their locked-in ecosystems. Democratize gaming.
ericwdhs@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
I don’t think the greater power of larger devices is being questioned. There just happens to be a threshold where a technically inferior but more accessible solution becomes “good enough” for most people that they never consider moving up.
Just look at mobile devices. Of everyone who accesses the internet, 75% do so via mobile devices only. As someone who doesn’t even like desktops losing ground to laptops, that statistic scares me.
darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
We know there’s a growing number of people who use their phone as their primary and only computing device. And the success of the steam deck is proof that a “good enough” experience can attract an audience. It is also likely that Valve is planning for a future where the Steam android app will be capable of installing and playing games locally without the 30% Google tax.
None of that will change the fact that gaming will always push technology forward with the need for faster CPUs and GPUs and that will never be the domain of phones where efficiency is king. There is no reason to worry.
ericwdhs@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
I’m not worried about the tech going away so much as the market percentage dropping to make enthusiast hardware more niche. Among other things, it makes enshittification in the space harder to fight.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
There’s also some people moving in the other direction, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that grows. My parents only had their smartphones for years, but recently had me pick out a laptop for them because trying to use their phones for everything was a headache.
I think one thing to consider is that cost of living has been going up in the US with wages not keeping up. So budgets are getting tighter, and if you can only afford a single device to buy, you’re going to buy the phone, even if a PC makes a lot of things significantly easier.
Tbh, I think we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns on video game graphics. Do we really need games to be any more photorealistic and power hungry than they are now?
That being said, I don’t think android phones are going to usurp this domain any time soon. Power requirements for 4k 60fps are way too high, and mobile devices simply can’t distribute enough heat to handle it unless there’s enormous bumps in efficiency. And advancements in chip design have seriously slowed down the past few years
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Fair, but I don’t think that threshold will be passed by smartphones for at minimum a decade. If you want 4k resolution for games you need 10-12GB of VRAM minimum. By claiming that high-end PC’s will become pointless in 5 years suggests that the interviewee thinks that mobile chips will surpass those requirements.
ericwdhs@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
Except even among most current PC gamers, the threshold isn’t that high. 4K is still less than 5% of the market.
Also, I’d argue “anachronism” isn’t the same as “pointless.” It’s just claiming that something that was once more common will become less common.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Cyberpunk came out in 2020. Are there games from 2010 that you would be surprised to see running af full speed on a high-end smartphone?
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Trying to push the narrative to focus on 2010 games feels a bit like moving the goalposts, but I’ll bite
Trying to run anything in 4k 60fps native still is challenging for a lot of systems today, even older titles. Anything with high fidelity like the Last of Us would be a problem.
Plus anything with a lot of characters on screen at the same time would likely be a struggle. I’ve done 4-person couch co-op of CoD: Black Ops Zombies on XBox 360 (the system it was designed for) and it got choppy due to the number of zombies and perspectives the CPU had to handle. Open world games could potentially end up in a similar situation.
Then you get games that usually end up modded a lot like Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas that would likely be trouble from the start, and modern graphics mods still require fairly powerful systems to handle well
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why? Isn’t the comparable expectation for consideration of what high-end phones ten years from now could do with a six-year old game to ask what today’s high-end phones can do with sixteen year old games?
Moore’s Law was always a marketing gimmick, but progression of information technology has been a rather steady cycle of “next year’s model will be even better” that it strikes me as a good starting point.
darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Metro2033