[jsheard]

I think portables have settled around the Switch/Deck/Ally form factor because that's about as small as you can make a system while being able to run "full sized" games. You need enough processing power to run the games to a reasonable standard, and the battery/cooling to back that up, and enough physical space for all of the buttons and sticks on a conventional controller, and a big enough screen to see what's going on in games designed for TVs, which means you can't realistically go smaller than the Switch Lite.

Sure you could make "pocket sized" games designed specifically for much more limited hardware like they did during the Gameboy and DS eras, but I'm not sure how much appetite there is for that now that people have had a taste of full fat console games on the go.

[darkteflon]

The Switch and the Deck are completely different sizes, though. The Deck I would consider at the very upper end of actually portable, while the Switch really does feel like it strikes a magical balance of pocketability, screen size and weight - not to mention battery life.

Give me the Deck any day, though. Nintendo’s game pricing is absurd and the JoyCon controls are absolutely awful for adult hands. Like, “how did this happen”-level bad, imo. Valve has a tie-up with iFixit for the Deck, too, so I expect many happy years of use.

Perhaps we’ll get a PC-based device between the two in a couple of years time. Deck-quality controls. 8” 1080p OLED VRR display. ~500g. 3 hour battery life. 1080p60-capable on more recent titles. That would seem like the golden path.

[safeimp]

It's still too early to say what it'll be like but the Asus Rog Ally is interesting and sounds like it checks off some of your requirements:

https://rog.asus.com/gaming-handhelds/rog-ally/rog-ally-2023...

Again, it isn't even out yet and I imagine it'll take a few months to iron out bugs but I'm curious how this will be.

[darkteflon]

Yes, the Ally brings some nice features to the table - the Z1 APU being the centrepiece (although it didn’t seem to impress Digital Foundry as much as the on-paper specs suggested it might). 120hz VRR display and an excellent and near-silent cooling system are other standouts.

For the cons: very short battery life, poor back paddle placement, some questions around QC on the face buttons. And the big one: as Windows has no gamepad-native interface, you’re stuck with Asus’ Armory Crate front-end which seems to be half-baked at best. I don’t think it’s the work of a moment to fix that kind of thing.

Asus has done a pretty good job of tarnishing its reputation of late. I’d feel like I never knew how long they were going to support it and what would happen if it needed repairs. Subjective, but I reckon it looks terrible, too.

I think my next handheld will again be from Valve.

[fomine3]

Also now people get used to average smartphone size. I used PSP as a bigger multimedia device 15 years ago, but now it's small in retrospect.