Represent.
Represent(ative) of bad opinions
If it's not a separate platform then that's even worse. Games would be held back big
Xbox's handheld 'Pembrooke' has been sidelined (for now), as Microsoft doubles down on Windows 11 PC gaming handheld optimization
ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
There's literally no situation where it won't hamstring the PS6. None. And thicc, you know better than to suggest otherwise.
That shit with the Series S? The extended cross gen period? Pass it along and triple it. Thats the degree of negative impact we're talking about here. And it's not going to be a net gain for the ecosystem: Again, we heard that with the Series S, but we also heard it about PSVR2, PC ports and the PS Portal. Well, the PS5 is behind the PS4 in sales and I think it's going to finish behind the PS4 even with GTA6 and despite an Xbox that will be cut by almost half compared to last gen. That's a userbase contraction.
It doesn't even make logical sense. All 10 PeeSea pirates who bought a Steam Deck or ROG Ally are not going to abandon their libraries for a PS handheld. PlayStation does not (or at least shouldn't) make the kinds of games that anyone wants to play on a handheld that compromises the experience. Most people who use the Switch in handheld mode do it within the confines of their own house. Same goes with Steam Deck. If Sony is so desperate for a handheld option, they can stick to making Portals.
You're clearly lost it's the same games they will just play at a different setting on the handheld.
PC games are not held back big by Steamdeck
It depends on how Sony handles PS6 target and compatibility. If Sony demands that devs target 4K120/8K60 for the home console, then scaling that down to a 1080p60 handheld is easy. They can also make handheld support optional, so devs would only target it during cross-gen period, while late-gen games that really push PS6 could skip the handheld.
hououinkyouma00
Member
I was looking forward to this way more before the leaked pictures came out and Microsoft raised the prices of all of their hardware. Microsoft was the only company that I thought could match Valve on pricing and give us a Windows based gaming handheld that isn't $700 or above but now I don't see that happening.
We now have a Microsoft that now sells a Series S at a higher price then a PS5 DE bundled in with COD, and a 2TB Series X that costs more then a PS5 Pro so I bet a Xbox handheld is just as expensive as something like the ROG Ally or possibly more.
Oh well.
We now have a Microsoft that now sells a Series S at a higher price then a PS5 DE bundled in with COD, and a 2TB Series X that costs more then a PS5 Pro so I bet a Xbox handheld is just as expensive as something like the ROG Ally or possibly more.
Oh well.
I agree. You can't just slap the Xbox branding on another Windows handheld. Microsoft needs to at least create a wrapper for windows that is gaming oriented similar to BPM.
Crayon
Member
The only console they should make is the TDX (Thousand Dollar Xbox. I've been talkming about it for at least a year now.) A portable is a horrific idea.
Trying to make their os good for portable and console-like pc's is the right idea. Too bad for them they won't be able to do it. If they could, it would have been done by now.
Trying to make their os good for portable and console-like pc's is the right idea. Too bad for them they won't be able to do it. If they could, it would have been done by now.
ReBurn
Gold Member
Nono of Function is my favorite game
ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
It's not about resolution and texture fidelity to "just scale it bro", it's all about the CPU, I/O speed, architecture, etc that have impacts on the very techniques you can even use for graphics rendering and the workable game design conceits.
Even if it was about "just scale it bro", we've been playing uprezzed 8th gen games for 5 years now, and the XBS is actually causing problems enough to delay releases at least for that console.
It doesn't matter if the 2+ SKUs are on the same general power level. It creates a bottleneck for creating the game, one that the PS 1st party library needed to avoid to get to where it is.
The idea that PS first parties are going to have to develop for the PS5 (buckle up for an even longer cross gen period), PS6, PS johnny come lately portable AND a range of PC specs going into 2030 is unacceptable.
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Radical_3d
Member
Bridges
Member
I expected something to be announced instead of these vague rumors and the occasional aside about them "looking into it" during interviews
Jinzo Prime
Gold Member
I believe MS will have to make serious changes to Windows to make it run better on lower power devices. Although we know that the NT kernel can run just fine on handheld devices thanks to Windows Phone 8, so the challenge is to get the rest of Windows to work on said devices, which might be impossible.
Bernardougf
Member
Well they weren't wrong... they just fucked up the chance they had this gen. Sony is cruising with almost fcking nothing
reinking
Gold Member
You're right. I guess I got stuck on the first quote. I still think Steam OS is the bigger threat and why they are shifting focus to Windows 11 handheld optimization. They can't let Steam OS get the big jump on them and that is where things are headed right now.
Topher
Identifies as young
Bazzite on Ally (or anywhere else really) makes Microsoft looking incredibly silly
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Unknown Soldier
Member
Just wait until Steam OS becomes available for desktops and laptops
Then we're gonna see some shit
ChorizoPicozo
Member
this is going to be very interesting because we are going to see how big really is "PC Gaming"
Fake
Member
We don't need a rumor to state Windows 11 gaming optimization is shit. Is a well know fact.
Puscifer
Member
Economies of scale and direct line from Microsoft basically.
Fess
Member
It's a matter of principle for me. I don't want to lose access to anything I've purchased. And Series X is doing backward-compatibility particularly well through the fps boost tech. I want to see if they can match that on PC before I sell anything. I don't want any downgrades.
A "no more hardware" strategy would fall flat on it's face if they can't do the emulation right. They could attempt to use cloud streaming instead but I doubt that anyone would fall in line over such a solution. Would be worse than the XB1 DRM. Streaming is literally not usable at all for some people.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
As predicted. No surprises there. Third-party publishers don't manufacture consoles.
ByWatterson
Member
I mean that's why right there. Those companies are nimble, more specialized.
Like a rabbit evading a dog.
Fess
Member
In what way? Unless SteamOS start dealing with other stores in a more convenient way it will be a niche thing. It'll be great for those completely locked into Steam who literally only use their PCs for gaming and nothing else. The rest will keep using Windows.
I could possibly see myself using it for a separate living room PC though. But I already boot into Steam big picture mode in Windows and it works so well that I only see walls coming up if I would swap to SteamOS.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
That's what I'm saying. I'm not necessarily talking about replacing Windows with SteamOS, but using SteamOS when playing video games instead of Windows, for example.
That jump will tell us how many people see their PC as a gaming system.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
OK, hear me out....
Bringing up the Series S, yes that has clearly been a bottleneck for Xbox this generation, and it's held the Series X back. But we're also talking about 2020 tech with no form of actual hardware-dedicated ML/AI upscaling, and a bloated SDK with so many API choices it actually led to less optimized games vs. more. Those aren't going to be problems for a PS portable. Sony & SIE aren't going to hamstrung their 10th gen systems by just ditching PSSR or cheaping out memory configurations just to save a few bucks at the expense of long-term performance through the gen. They won't make the PS6 and the rumored handheld on different technologies, and that handheld isn't going to have its own dedicated software library so it won't risk siphoning resources from PS6.
A PS portable is a way different thing vs PSVR2, because the market for large, socially isolating headsets in general isn't very large, let alone for gaming. VR won't have truly mainstream appeal until they get that thin, fashionable iPhone-like moment paired with real software ecosystem support, so that's a ways off. PS Portal hasn't really been a detriment to PS5 I feel, because it's just a streaming handheld. Devs don't have to do anything on their end to get games running on that thing.
The PC ports, I agree those are likely causing some gradual build-up of long-term damage, particularly because of all the non-GAAS which have been ported already plus the fact their GAAS strategy was partly in favor of having more games on PC, and we've seen now a lot of that has come at the expense of non-GAAS 1P one way or another. But we won't really know the impact of the PC strategy until PS6 launches, and that also depends on if SIE haven't already internally shifted to a more sensible (scaled back) strategy on that platform going forward.
Talking about userbase contraction though, the truth is unless there is a PS handheld next gen, there's going to be a contraction regardless even if SIE does everything right and avoids the mistakes they made this gen. That'll happen due to pricing trends likely being reflected again 10th gen (i.e no real price cuts, potential price increases throughout the gen), continued growth of certain PC gaming platforms like Steam, and less exclusives (1P due to higher costs & longer dev times for AAA, potentially fewer AA than should be, so less releases; 3P due to less reason from 3P and platforms like Steam & Switch 2 getting more preferred Day 1 treatment). Also it's clear in places like Japan non-portable consoles are shrinking in appeal, and Japan is still a larger market for core console gaming than many singular European, LATAM, MENA, African and even many other Asian markets like South Korea and arguably (at least for now) China. It's not the write-off some people want to pretend it is.
So knowing all this, how is SIE hurt by having a dedicated PS handheld for 10th gen? They can develop tech that can mostly automate resolution downscaling (basically take what they're doing with PSSR but apply algorithms that do the inverse of upscaling) and auto-simplify LODs to some degree. Maybe do partial framebuffer updates combined with blit operations on selective pixel data (I think that'd require having hardware layers for the framebuffer, think like how systems like the Saturn had multiple layer planes....but that might require devs to re-learn approaches they probably haven't used in decades if ever). The important part would be, making sure the PS6 and handheld have the same features on the CPU & GPU, and having tech & APIs in place that can automate as much of the process as possible, so hopefully devs don't need to do more than just add some metadata scripts to their code to exploit the hardware features.
In short I wouldn't use the Series S as a cautionary tale or foreboding against the concept of a lower-power companion system in a device ecosystem, because the Series S wasn't a well thought-out system at the engineering level in the first place. And, I mean that in terms of it complementing the Series X without acting as a bottleneck, or having a market use-case that didn't directly conflict with or become redundant with Series X's. Series S failed on both notes, but that doesn't mean PlayStation would.
EDIT: Could also put it the following way. Just because "mid-gen" upgrades like the 32X failed, doesn't mean the concept of a mid-gen upgrade itself was bad. It just meant SEGA's implementation of that idea was not well-realized.
It's the same thing here with Series S & X, and a multi-SKU concept with systems of differing performance abilities coexisting within a generation.
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Fess
Member
You mean like having a dual boot? Play games on SteamOS, use Windows for the rest?
That'll be extremely niche, like 1% niche. And that won't tell us anything at all about how many that see their PC as a gaming system. Most stick to Windows because it's what they're used too and unless it's a prebuild with SteamOS installed they won't even know what that is. A slight bump in usage should come from SteamOS prebuilds and handhelds though.
Crayon
Member
I have a pc at a desk, but a separate pc on bazzite for gaming. I'm a console player at heart, and having that pc act as close to a console as possible is good. Who knows how many more people would do that. The deck is an example of people accepting the idea of having a second pc that is for another purpose.
Viruz
Member
It's been some time that xbox hardware and brand are dead but the thing is their management will never come clean about it. They need to keep their consumers engaged so they can continue polluting gaming with their perpetual noise.
And yes the comparison with Sega is on point, xbox management are just manipulative cowards.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Haha, they are clueless.
Saying that. They should have been making windows 11 perform as well as steam deck from day one.
Saying that. They should have been making windows 11 perform as well as steam deck from day one.
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Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Thing is that it points out a shift in thinking of the console itself… as device with customised system software, APIs that might not be in Windows yet, very low level access for developers, and semi custom HW (more than just small light customisations)…
If Xbox Series X had been designed with this philosophy in mind it might have not shipped with Direct Storage API at launch, it might have not had the HW Decompression block, etc…
I can definitely empathise with the MS engineers designing the "true Xbox" handheld and facing lots of people internally saying "yeah, but what is the point of being a True Xbox anyways? A simple optimised shell on top of regular Windows is good enough".
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Fess
Member
So far the "gradual build-up of long-term damage" is just more money in the bank.
But you're right, at least in theory, the consequences might come later. That's how it was for Xbox, they too started with late ports and then Steam releases. But Xbox wasn't sitting at an 80 million userbase 5 years into the generation with no competitor in sight when they started spreading out…
That said, if Valve does something incredibly awesome for the living room things could change. Then a new challenger has arrived with Sony's own games on it. A wise move would probably be to have their own launcher, if things truly go south they could move the games there, wouldn't be popular but stranger things has happened.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Yeah, seeing benchmarks of Legion Go S with SteamOS vs. with Windows has to be an(other) eye opener. About 13 FPS faster in Cyberpunk, 9 FPS faster in DOOM Eternal, 10 FPS faster in Witcher 3, 5 FPS faster in Helldivers 2.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I have little trust in Sony doing their own launcher well and customers migrating to it as well as developers. Sony should not bank on it unless they have decided to give up on HW and third party royalties as well as network subscriptions.
CuteFaceJay
Member
Crimson Desert coming to Switch 2? WHERE?!
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
It also depends on other factors for me. Do they give it more time to bake or do they go out with it on day 1 alongside PS6?
How long have they been baking this return to handheld and is the PS6 designed from the ground up to be a low resolution and heavily PSSR 2.x reliant baseline. Would the home PS6 be hamstrung if developers started from the portable form factor and then "just" had denser geometry, higher resolution render buffers and textures (and higher framerate) but everything else had to stay the same? Would people find it a big enough jump from PS5 and PS5 Pro?
Would we be able to have path tracing in games on PS6? How would this be handled on the portable console (would PSSR be good enough to achieve that?).
The key is not to expect developers to make totally custom versions for each platform… if PS6 has devs pushing path tracing, how would devs adapt to the mobile console? I guess it would be like a DOOM: The Dark Ages situation where you have path tracing built on top of ray tracing and no naked lighting fallback…
Would this handheld be able to connect to the TV? How would it perform there? Would that impact PS6 sales?
yeah no idea tbh.
you don't even get portability with recent hw.
steamdeck is as big as your arm.
Fess
Member
Strategically they could use it as a backup plan if the rumors are true that Valve is lurking just outside the living room now, through their own devices and third-party SteamOS devices plus some future Xbox with Steam access.
Day 1 on the launcher would soften the blow for annoyed PC gamers like myself when seeing games pulled from Steam. And a launcher would keep it all tied up into Sony's own business no matter what happens on the hardware front. Just stay out of ccu numbers and never officially state how successful it is. Nobody would know if it bombs but it would be the only way to play their games outside of PlayStation. Then just move the launcher to the cloud if that becomes popular in the future.
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KungFucius
King Snowflake
Which they would have a chance of doing if they could position the thing right. This article says they are not trying to make a mainstream portable high end gaming machine but instead are trying to improve their OS so the niche products out there already will perform better. It makes no sense. They are comparing Windows to Xbox.
More likely than not the original rumor was based on them trying to improve Windows and someone spun that into bullshit about a handheld Xbox, which was also rumored to be a Xbox branded portable windows machine.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I think that would kill PC sales for their games if they went with their own launcher which again they have not show the ability to run (quite the opposite over the years).
That strategy would be bad for both their PC ambitions and the console too.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
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Team Andromeda
Member
I don't understand why SONY or Xbox are even bothering to make handhelds
Fess
Member
How big are their PC sales though? I haven't seen any fresh numbers but going by Steam ccu they aren't exactly settings the world on fire now. The ccu numbers were better in the early port days, the hype over PS games on PC was real. But games like TLOUP2 and Spider-Man 2 barely reaching 30k is honestly disappointing.
I'm thinking a launcher and Day 1 access could get the snowball rolling again. It would gain some solid hype and take the PC port strategy out of the muted LTTP spot for increased sales. And they could have some save sync bonus and extra dlc too. It's still their platform then, kinda, would be like a 1st party store and launcher.
Fess
Member
My take is that they're just slow.
Everything they plan to do gets talked about, either by themselves or through leaks and rumours, years ahead of their planned release/launch. It just ends up as a never ending waiting game, then disappointment.
They hyped up their cloud initiative before even Stadia launched. There were fans claiming is was great early on, I actually tried all cloud services and I thought xcloud was crap. They excused it that it was still in beta. How is it now, years later. Has the service officially gone out of beta? I know from experience that it's still far behind where Stadia was a launch, on streaming stability as well as picture quality and how snappy it is to get going. Stadia failed. Xcloud is for some reason still limping around. And GeForce Now is so far ahead that the services can barely be compared.
To sum it up: Too slow!!
Then we heard about a possible Xbox handheld when Switch was mega popular, could be like a portable Series S.
And now Switch 2 is coming out in days and from previews it can reach ahead of Series S in some cases through DLSS and Nvidia magic.
So, yet again: Too slow!!
Then we have their rumored Xbox App UI update that could turn a Windows handheld and small form factor Windows PC into a console-like device.
Buuut then Valve is already ahead and is pushing out SteamOS to partners on handhelds and possibly prebuilds and Steam Machines.
So, yeah: Too slow!!
Finally we have their rumored Xbox Next. Was apparently planned to launch in time for GTA6. They got lucky and GTA6 was delayed but I think it's safe to say that it won't be released in time next year either. And how far away is PS6 which is likely a step above? I wouldn't bet on the Xbox coming out before PS6. If it does then it'll be a year ahead at most, and that'll be this scenario: "Xbox Next is more like a Xbox Series X 1.5. PS6 is when the real next generation starts."
So, again: Too slow!!
Hudo
Member
Their controllers are pretty good, tho.
what?! currently they are selling an "elite" controller with an "elite" price, which is breaking in your hands within a year.