[johnnyanmac]

calling the PSP nub an analog stick is almost an insult to the Vita. It was this flat protrusion that you can switch out caps on, and you move it around like some thinkpad nub for analog movement. It made sense for the time, but I still ponder why they never added two of them. Held back so many potential games.

And yes, I still consider the Vita the last true "portable". potability in my mind implies pocketability, and the Switch and every other non-phone went beyond that. Devices like the Ayaneo Air do give me hope that that "pocketable" market may make a comback sooner than we think, though.

[flessner]

A "pocketable" gaming console in the modern world is essentially a smartphone with analog sticks.

There are "controller grips" or "controller mounts" for phones readily available and you can even pair it with Steam in-house streaming or Moonlight to play games at a quality that is impossible at this form factor for cheap.

Even at larger sizes it's difficult - The Nintendo Switch only worked because of great franchises and IP. The Steam Deck also required great technological investment into Linux and platform familiarity.

It's not hard to see why barely anyone's trying...

[caseyy]

> A "pocketable" gaming console in the modern world is essentially a smartphone with analog sticks.

Yes in a technical sense. But no in a business and ecosystem sense.

PSP and Vita had very impressive game offerings that we don’t get on mobile to this day. The games felt like proper PlayStation games, only about 0.5 console generations behind. Back then it meant PS2.5 games. Today it would mean PS4.5 games on your handheld.

Switch is probably the closest today due to its first party games and very fluent support for many popular titles, unlike Steam Deck which is still a bit hacky and not everything it offers runs well. But Switch technically is several generations behind. PSP and Vita really felt like 2/3rds of your PlayStation 3.

No smartphone with a controller add on offers an experience of PlayStation 4.5 with first party titles and support. The business side was executed very well on PSP/Vita. The developers cared for that console.

[johnnyanmac]

Yeah, from a logistics point of view I understand it. No one is going to design a smartphone game to be gamepad first , and with the huge cloud push there's less pressure to make console games work on mobile anyway. So the last bastion (unless you have an amazing networking solution in your household) is basically "wait for Windows PCs to become almost smartphone sized".

I do in fact have a smartphone with a controller mount. Mostly for emulators at this point. But most of the time it can feel like no one is really taking advantadge of the hardware capabilities of modern phone hardware.

[s1gsegv]

I have a Retroid Pocket Flip that I’ve loved for this exact reason. It’s just about powerful enough for Gamecube. More recent iterations are definitely powerful enough, and Gamecube is the library I love to play most.

[JansjoFromIkea]

the nub was a last minute addition iirc, it probably would've been extremely complicated to squeeze two onto it

The nub was announced at the same time as an announcement where the memory was quadrupled so I think it was probably intended to be only PS1 level games on it originally.