this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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They won't even compile games for Linux as it is, and a lot of the ports we do get are awful ones that run significantly worse than the Windows versions do through Proton, so expecting publishers to start putting all their PC games on a different architecture entirely, just for the sake of handhelds like this, is completely unrealistic
Stuff like Proton (which isn't emulation in the sense that this would be) has already struggled so much with compatibility over the years to get to where it is now, adding an entire x86 emulation layer on top of that would set things back so far and it would even more of an uphill battle to recover from
If the goal is to run enough current games well enough, then AMD chips are still doing fine at that, and upcoming generations will likely go a long way to improving that
I've been pretty happy with the Steam Deck, and pretty much all the games I wanted to play worked just fine. Steam Deck is also selling quite well, so clearly I'm not an outlier.
And I've already explained in detail why RISC SoC architecture is far better than anything possible with x86.
Yeah but that's only from technical standpoint. Adoption is king and right now we're pretty far away from ARM or risc being commonplace. Hence, a handheld with a non x86 chip does not make sense now or in the near future. Not to mention that people tend to want to run emulators and old games with these devices and those will never be "compiled natively" for either arm or risc.
The major advantage of RISC is drastically lower power consumption compared to x86. One of the biggest complaints people have with mobile is that the battery runs dry quickly when playing games. Significantly increasing battery life would be a huge win.
Agreed. However, why would I be happy about having more battery in a device that doesn't let me run the games/programs that I want to use?
I find there are more games than I have time to play already out there, so the actual question is whether the device would have enough games to make it worth it. I mean this is exactly the same problem people have when choosing a game console. Despite consoles having strictly less games than PCs, plenty of people still buy consoles and are perfectly happy with them.
I have a Steam Deck and I'm happy with it too, but my point is that the game compatibility would just get even worse if you add on having to emulate x86, because it's not like x86 emulation would be perfect right away, and the amount of native ports will become even smaller than they already are
Even if the architecture is an improvement, in practice it wouldn't make any sense right now, and I can't see an ARM-based Steam Deck or whatever selling nearly as well as the existing x86 ones given the downsides it would present
Using this logic no custom console hardware would've ever been possible.