this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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I mean, the supply side of things is very different now though. Neither Nintendo nor Sony can really afford to make "handheld games" separate from "console games". It splits their resources too much. The #1 most played game on Steam Deck is Balatro, and #4 is Stardew Valley; both are immensely popular and available on the Switch, but they're disproportionately popular on Steam Deck compared to Steam at large, and that's what I mean by some games just naturally floating to the top. I don't think it's enough of a hindrance to the customer to figure that out themselves such that it makes sense to spend time, money, and effort on making games specifically for handheld.
Once again: mobile space vs console space. There are plenty of revenue streams and opportunities for profitable ventures here.
The article itself points out one of the reasons that Microsoft might be interested is to maximize the utilization of King, a studio they got as part of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, makers of Candy Crush and Bejeweled. That's just one example- off the top of my head I remember Ratchet and Clank had "Going Mobile", Knack had a tie-in mobile game where you could earn extra currency and transfer it to the PS4 games. Nintendo has done tons of stuff like Pokemon Go, Sleep, TCG, Cafe, Mario Runner, Fire Emblem, and more. And Microsoft owns more than just King.- Bethesda has done a handful of Slder Scrolls mobile games, and Fallout Shelter was an incredible award-winning game that was so good it goy ported to PC. It wasn't long ago people were speculating that AAA single-player experiences might be getting killed off in favor of these smaller, cheaper, much more profitable mobile games.
The article also mentions cloud gaming- the Portal and Logitech G-cloud are already exploring this space a little bit and I expect that to continue (personally I love using my Deck to stream from my PC or PS4 to save battery, reduce heat and noise, and have better graphics settings, albeit only when I'm on my home network). These companies absolutely love subscription services, so I could see that even subsidizing the hardware. Xbox is trying to push gamepass onto every device it can- what if they could subsidize a low-powered handheld with excellent battery life that could be another avenue for that? I know things like NVIDIA GeForce Now and Stadia have failed, but I think it's only a matter of time before global Internet bandwidth and latency gets good enough for that to make sense. I hate the idea of cloud gaming personally, but it seems like what the market is trending towards.
I'm not disputing that subscriptions for Game Pass is how Microsoft wants to make money off of a handheld, but that doesn't seem to support your argument. Gears of War isn't really built for the mobile use case. I don't really see cloud gaming taking off the way these companies pitch it to their investors. I think Microsoft's on the right track with making it a value add rather than mandatory, but Stadia didn't take with the market for a reason. I don't see the author's vision for cross-pollination between "traditional mobile games" like King's output and what we think of as Xbox games; I feel like those markets have thoroughly evolved into pushing out the customers that don't like what they offer. I don't want touch buttons on my screen, nor do I want to be nagged by microtransaction prompts, and I don't think mobile gamers want to pay $70 for a challenging prestige story experience up front.