Thread 718208637

Portable handhelds, if they aren't already, will soon become a relic of the past that people will look back on and consider as a sort of "lost technology," and no, the Switch or whatever plastic chink emulator toy (including the steam deck) does not count.

Been using my PSvita every time I go to the toilet to entertain myself while I do my business on the throne. It has gotten to the point where I sit to pee just so I can play my psvita. God I love playing with my little psvita. It feels so good to game on a little handheld with awesome games, I could almost shoot with excitement!

>>718208637 (OP)
I remember jerking off to this image using my ps vita's browser before I had a smartphone. I was like maybe 15 or 16 at the time. over a decade ago, now. Aaaahhhh good times.

>>718208637 (OP)
Handheld is the future though
Just look how many people prefer playing games on mobile over pc and console

handhelds are gonna come back before too long imo, the market has been retarded about them since like 2010. Nobody wants cameras or gimmicks like 3d in them. Nobody cares about internet browsers or watching netflix on their dumb 3ds. Bring back GBA and DS and PSP style handhelds already... 100 bucks they'd still be making money on a cheap system like that

>>718208637 (OP)
The Odin 2 Mini works wonders.
Expensive but it being able to play everything up to the Switch is nice, especially for it looking 99% like the Vita.

>>718208637 (OP)
>the switch doesn't count
Why? Its literally a handheld

I love dedicated handhelds. The issue is a lot of people don't and see them as inferior to consoles or PC simply because they're not as technically capable. And if you want a handheld PS5 Pro at the size of a Vita, such a thing would be far more expensive than the PS5 Pro itself. There are size limitations that will be overcome with time (imagine 2036-2037), but by then people will claim that the PS5 Pro is unplayable and dated and games from that time just weren't good.

You have to accept that a dedicated handheld must be
>Affordable
>A generation or two behind in terms of power

>>718208946
In my entire life span, I have had so many encounters and seen people use handhelds from brick GameBoy and even GameGear up till the 3DS. The general attitude about handheld games is to pick up, play, and drop at any moment. The games are made and designed for this general attitude. Not only that, there is less of a stigma to be seen with a DS or PSP because those things were seen and cool and really fun to play, compare that to a /v/ anon with a cum crusted Nintendie shirt with a Doge hat walking around with an overpowered android tablet.

>why does the switch not count
None of the games are designed to be a handheld, none of the games are predetermined to be picked up, and played around at any time or location like a GameBoy. The games are too long, too complex, and really require the players attention. The ONLY POINT you can argue is that you can pick it up and take it any where and suspend it without losing progress, but no one want to constantly keep track of the battery power at risk of losing progress.

>>718208734
>Handheld is the future though
>Just look how many people prefer playing games on mobile
You have no idea how grim and bleak this sounds.

>>718209495
the real thing is that handhelds are as popular as ever though, the switch, switch 2, and steam deck are ludicrously popular and there are entire companies in china making dedicated emulation handhelds that people buy in droves. Anbernic makes like 4 or 5 each year, how could a company like nintendo or sony not see this as a market that demands more systems and games?

>>718209495
And this is exactly why handheld games are a relic of the past. The overall gaming climate is different. People are more serious about their bibeo bames, and not only that, have become way too greedy demanding more stimulus, graphics, noise, live service shit that gives people the illusion of an evolving game and the predatory fomo strategy to hook players like if it were crack in Detroit.

>>718209942
>And this is exactly why handheld games are a relic of the past.
even though handheld gaming is more popular than ever

>>718209756
For Nintendo, it's a matter on not wanting to split their development output across two platforms. They can afford to right now by giving the Switch 2 the clearly definitive versions of Switch games as they gradually move over, but the 3DS cannibalized the Wii U. It's not like Game Freak was ever going to make a mainline Pokémon for it, but nobody wanted to develop for it when there was a much more viable platform available. It also didn't help that Nintendo tried to make sure the 3DS was getting a lot of what was on the Wii U. The Switch was the perfect marriage, but choosing to focus on it was choosing to go hybrid over dedicated handheld/dedicated home console. Leaked materials show that the original 3DS successor would have been far weaker than the Switch we got, but they abandoned it and consolidated.

For Sony, they've simply bowed out of the race, there's no point, especially with PlayStation moving away from its Japanese roots. But both platform creators recognize that with the ballooning costs of games, it's financially unviable to allocate resources that could be used for the more powerful device to the smaller one. I wouldn't mind a new dedicated handheld that's on the lower end of power, but I would never expect it to accumulate a library and ecosystem.

>>718208694
Same but with PSP. So many fond memories

>>718210112
You are fucking retarded. The Switch is only a handheld by convention, what next? Are you are going to say that phones and apple tablets are handhelds too? They might as well be given they are "ludicrously popular" and have a "dedicated emulation system." Retard.

>>718210112
Dedicated handheld, anon.
Not hybrid
Not mobile
Not clone devices

Game Boy, Game Gear, WonderSwan, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, etc. are dedicated handhelds with their own unique libraries and ecosystems.

>>718210472
>>718210529
>Noooooo all these popular handhelds (switch/switch 2/steam deck/rog ally/chinkhelds/playing on phones with controllers/even the playdate LMAO) don't count because.... because.... because they just don't!!!! Noooo the 3 major gaming console developers haven't created a new dedicated handheld device since 2012 so we can't see it if it would do well in the modern climate and that means that it won't even though people are readily grabbing onto anything close to that noooooo stop suggesting a handheld would be successful even though the market clearly can and would support it reeeeeee!!!!

>>718209556
>and really require the players attention.
why the fuck is this even supposed to be a bad thing? are you one of those zoomies that play while having jewtube goyslop in the background?

>>718210329
that seems more like an issue with game development costs and difficulties increasing out of proportion with the profits of the games being made rather than it being an issue with splitting development fundamentally. The effective counterargument would then be:
>if the companies could support a handheld and a home console at the same time then, and we still have games that don't have those ludicrously overexpanded budgets being successful, why can't they support both a handheld console and a home console with easier- and cheaper-to-develop games on it right now?
The answer is that they CAN support it, but they don't want to risk changing what they're doing right now. With the failure of the wii u, they consolidated to a handheld/hybrid specifically to force people from both sides to it to maximize their chances of success; it wasn't because it's IMPOSSIBLE for them to have returned to a split console space, but purely that they didn't want to risk it. It would undoubtedly be more profitable for them to split between handheld and home again in the future IF they don't have cold feet about it.

>>718209556
I bet a lot of the vita games you play are on the switch

>>718210925
he works at gamefreak, ignore him

>>718208637 (OP)
then would you consider switch lite a dedicated handheld? its only a tad bigger than a vita from what i could tell and you literally CANNOT connect it with a tv because nintendo clearly doesnt want their regular models deprecated.

speaking of which, whats your favorite games on vita? i usually just boot up txk or geometry wars when im taking a shit but i also play long story games like trails or tales of hearts. thinking to finally dip in and play disgaea 1 with adrenaline.

>>718210790
They don't count because they have completely different design philosophies to what dedicated handhelds are.
A home console is a generally stationary device attached to a TV that plays games that are meant to be longer, meatier experiences.
A dedicated handheld like the Game Boy is about having home console-esque experiences on the go with weaker portable hardware. You can bring Mario with you, you can bring Metroid with you, the games you're playing are typically a generation or two behind technologically, and they're designed more for quick pick up play rather than long extended periods.
A mobile device like a phone is an all-purpose utility device. Games are more often than not freemium and somewhat compromised by being on a device that wasn't designed with games first in mind. A lack of buttons, poor battery management, no dedicated hardware.
A hybrid console is a cross between handheld and home console. Games are more often than not just as meaty as a home console but with some portable design decisions like that of a dedicated handheld. It's "take your TV games with you with little compromise". It's far more rooted in its identity as a hybrid, unlike something like the Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player, or PlayStation TV, devices which were more or less secondary to their respective platforms.

>>718211308
>They don't count because they have completely different design philosophies to what dedicated handhelds are.
i have yet to see any examples from you about this, and vaguely mentioning "tropes" are not examples, drop game names and specific stages or missions
you're also forgetting the switch (and switch 2) just like the vita can just have the power button pressed and you can just resume at the same time later, making "muh longer design" a complete non-issue

>>718211308
you're completely ignoring the chinkhelds, playdate, switch lite, and arguably the steam deck. Go look up some anbernic reviews or something.

>>718208637 (OP)
Nah, they'll come back in some form in the future, even if they're just attached to some larger multimedia device. On a related note, apparently they're trying to bring ye olde flip phones back, missed those niggers.

>>718208637 (OP)
Now hear me out
Game Gear 2
inb4 first one was bigger than a Switch

>>718211971
modern flip phones have existed contiguously from when smart phones were brought on the scene, but they're most often running something like kaios which is just completely awful, absolutely unusable; I had tried to swap to a flip phone and it just bricked after 2 months of use.

>>718212246
I really thought when they were drumming up about "NEW SEGA NEW ENERGY" they were going to unveil a new pc handheld like the steam deck or rog ally and call it the SEGA ENERGY, cus they still to this day do make hardware for arcades and released those mini game gears a couple years ago. It could have been an awesome way for sega to come back to making physical devices while not betraying their new multiplat history. Bonus, they could just port any new exclusives from other systems like the apple store or whatever to JUST their new sega energy, that way people would have a reason to own one if they were a sega fan - guaranteed access to all new sega games.
It just made sense, man. They literally just announced nothing...

>>718208637 (OP)
>Portable handhelds, if they aren't already, will soon become a relic of the past
They already are. 3DS and PS Vita were the last, true portable consoles.

And no, portable consoles with built-in retro games and "muh nostalgia but for normies" portable consoles don't count.

>>718213543
>big companies haven't made any
>so people trying to approximate it by getting the closest options they can (one of the most successful consoles of all time which is portable as a selling point, a true-blue handheld pc by valve, and various smaller and less expensive handhelds by chinese companies that somehow make money despite not selling any games)
>and these ALL sell extremely well
>and so that means dedicated handhelds are NEVER coming back guys, pack it up
if anything it means that there's been a void in the market since the 3ds was abandoned that should have been filled by now but the big 3 are retarded in their own special ways so they won't try it.

>>718208637 (OP)
>Portable handhelds, if they aren't already, will soon become a relic of the past
Yup, phones are going away very soon. Mark my words. Any day now

>>718214406
>that should have been filled by now
The switch exists.

>>718214524
no, it doesn't fill the "cheaper easily pocketable system" niche. I agree with the autists that it's not a true handheld. The GBA was like 100 dollars. And a chinese company makes money selling systems - and systems alone, no games - for around or lower than that price point. We can get a 100 dollar or less handheld with moderate graphics with easy to produce games again, and the only thing stopping it is corpos being run by incompetent idiots.

>>718214460
Phones aren't portable handhelds where in the context of the post, handheld means a gaming device rather than just its literal meaning. And phones will be a direct cause of this too, they're getting too good so they'll eventually be part "actual" gaming device.

Also god I love futa.

>>718214690
>muh pocketable
the switch lite exists

>>718215146
I'm not putting that in my pocket despite being 6' 1", it is not pocketable enough for me, much less someone like my wife or our kids. I could throw my gba in my pocket when I was in elementary school...

>>718215146
anything bigger than the PS Vita is not pocketable.

>>718215064
late-stage brainrot, sad to see

>>718208781
they are not going to comeback like that
most people want as little shit to have with them as possible
so carrying another device just for games will seem stupid for most people.
phones killed true on the go handhelds. Chilnklets are only ones left but even then they are a niche product for emulating instead of their own games
while switch and deck are destination handhelds basically competing in laptop sphere

>>718215967
>most people want as little shit to have with them as possible
except for all the people that carry around switches and steam decks despite the size, or have small chinkhelds, or the growing trend of having dedicated devices instead of just having your smartphone for everything
I stopped reading after this because you're completely out of touch with reality. The market and public opinion both agree with me, which means the only way they don't come back is if we somehow have some continued market stagnation for another several decades. If we do nothing but continue on this current trend, handhelds will be made because the market wants them right now. If we have a market crash, handhelds will be made to appeal to the lower price point seekers. If we have a market boom and it expands by 50% or whatever, then it can more readily support a wider range of devices, and handhelds will be made. It's silly to suggest that... what, all major game hardware developers will just leave money on the table for decades?

>>718210925
He obviously meant continued long attention.
You can pick up Cave Noir after a year and will be able to continue fine. You can't do the same with most modern games.
There are some games that cater to that pick up and play experience but they are minority even on modern handhelds.

Only way I see somewhat of a comeback is if somebody makes hardware company, installs SteamOS and has curated list of recommended games for the platform.

>>718219193
>He obviously meant continued long attention.
>You can pick up Cave Noir after a year and will be able to continue fine. You can't do the same with most modern games.
that's just moving the goalposts (and doesn't even apply only to handhelds) but ok
why not?

>>718208637 (OP)
>portable handhelds
That entire market got raped to death by smartphones. You're better off investing into one of those M-CON things and loading your phone up with emulators.

>>718208637 (OP)
>pic
Wait, was it always a Vita? I could have sworn it was a PSP.

>>718222241
I want to make as little use of my phone as possible desu

>>718215967
NTA but Sony is making a handheld for next gen