Isn't Panic's Playdate gaming gimzo intended to sort of address the original spirit of handheld gaming.

>>14552
Never suggested going back to black and white, gameboy sized, no back-light displays. Minimalist gimmicks isn't what I think is missing from the current options.

>>14553
I don't think that's a gimmick so much as a deliberate choice on their part to focus on gameplay as opposed to visuals. Nonetheless, it's still a rip-off for the price.

Still bringing hardware to market (especially for niche items, and doubly so considering Panic was a software company – with a weird trajectory: first mac applications, then games, and now hardware) is always hard so I at least commend them for trying something new and not locking down their product.

Post edited on 1st Jul 2022, 6:05pm

Nintendo's Switch pretty much killed off handhelds as a concept since 3DS vs. Vita ended in decisive Vita failure. Now there are no handhelds at all. Switch and Deck are just portable console tablet things that play "the big games".

I think the issue here is handhelds are able to run prety high spec games now. The Switch is the full realization of this. I think the limitation left really is screen size.

>>14556
But the small screen-size is exactly the point, since otherwise it's not handheld. This makes the increased power mostly useless: no point doing complex raytracing or whatever when you barely have enough room to fit all your assets on screen. This means that handheld games cannot just be 1:1 clones of pc games, and thought must be put into ux.

>>14557
I didn't think of that. I see what you mean. I'm optimistic though, I don't think is has been ruined forever, it's in a weird transitional phase where developers are now enjoying the fact they can just port PC stuff to a handheld but what you mentioned didn't occur to most people and don't have an impact on the market yet. We'll see how it goes.

I'm mostly annoyed that you can't so much as play any older game you want on a switch. Something less than $300 that has a decent form factor and allows you to run whatever you want on it without needing to hack it or use a soldering iron doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask.

Yeah, the eshop has some titles, but pirates are far better at keeping track of old, forgotten and unofficially translated games than Nintendo is. You really don't need as much power as a pc/laptop has to do this either. The ds came out in 2006, so you'd think having something just tad more powerful than that would be affordable. Honestly, I wonder how viable a rasbperry pi in a nice case is as an option, but I have my doubts.

Post edited on 1st Jul 2022, 7:54pm

You are right especially on the emulators part but considering you can get a switch for the price of just a GTX1650 that is like the minimum recommended card for Yuzu, I'd say it's really not all doom and gloom.

I'm more worried about DRM honestly, and on that part Nintendo still publishing catridges is better in my eyes, at least you do own the games to a higher degree than renting access rights from Steam.

>>14560
>Nintendo still publishing catridges is better in my eyes
If I happened to have a lot of media I care about on CDs and cartridges among other physical formats, I'd go out of my way to transfer their data to mass and removable storage. Especially proprietary physical formats like nintendo's cartridges. DRM makes this more difficult, but is an artificial blockade, not a fault of that way of storing things.

>>14561
We are talking about slightly different things, long term storage is indeed a nice thing to have to prevent bitrot but it's not a limitation of your right to sell something you bought, personally I don't like hoarding things so it may boil down to preference I guess.

All platforms may be about encouraging you to consume as much as possible, in a way or another after all.

>>14562
I haven't considered the second hand reselling of games. Honestly, that's not important to me.

posting from steam deck

>>14564
I guess that excuses your lack of punctuation and capitalization.

>>14565
It certainly does not.
Corrective measures will be taken.

>Instead of embracing their limitations and producing 2d titles which wouldn't "cut it" on a console, handelds are pushed to play the same library as stationary systems', de-incentivizing the entire format of polished, but low-resource games.
This has been the biggest disappointment for me with the Switch. Handheld games were supposed to be a fundamentally different approach to gaming built around playing on the go. Not $60 ports of the same exact games you can play cheaper and better on literally any other platform.
It's depressing that a whole generation of gamers is turning to either low-quality ports or even more low-quality slot machine simulators on their cell phones for their on-the-go gaming fix, and they think this is how portable gaming is supposed to be.