I ended shopping for most video games for my Nintendo Swap the day I purchased a Steam Deck. My Swap has been a Mario and Zelda machine ever since. It’s easy: the Steam Deck took the Swap’s finest trick — pick-up-and-play portability — whereas providing extra video games that run higher. I can simply resume those I began on my desktop PC, or proceed to play moveable titles on my desktop and marvel at improved graphics.
However the Nintendo Swap 2, coming later this yr, could change that worth proposition. Not solely will it proceed to be the console that pulls households and youngsters with creative, stunning, must-try unique Nintendo video games that use its removable Pleasure-Cons’ many methods, but it surely additionally has an actual likelihood at convincing the lovers who may in any other case purchase a handheld gaming PC — or who have been ready for handheld PCs to turn into much less of a wild west.
The Swap 2 could meet or beat the Steam Deck in efficiency. If historical past’s any indication, it ought to simply promote higher than each handheld gaming PC mixed. When the unique Nintendo Swap launched practically eight years in the past, there was nearly nothing to play however Zelda, and Nintendo held its recreation catalog in an iron grip — however now, the backwards-compatible Swap 2 will launch with one of many largest and most welcoming libraries of all time, rivaled solely by smartphones and computer systems. The Swap might theoretically turn into the brand new baseline for recreation builders to focus on, and probably the most dependable place to seek out new handheld-friendly titles.
So: How can the budding handheld PC revolution escape the shadow of the Swap 2? I received’t say I do know for positive, however I did simply examine the {industry}’s temperature at CES 2025, the world’s largest tech present — and I’m afraid PC handhelds could keep in that shadow until the {industry} does extra.
Handheld ergonomics was one shiny spot going into 2025. Whereas I nonetheless want the Deck’s total really feel, virtually each PC handheld I touched had properly sculpted grips that made them extra snug to carry than their predecessors. From the 8-inch MSI Claw 8 AI Plus and Lenovo Legion Go S, to the 8.8-inch Legion Go 2, and the enormous 11-inch Tencent Sunday Dragon, even the biggest Home windows handhelds didn’t really feel as awkward as a few of their first-gen predecessors.
There are 4 locations I feel the {industry} has to vary — and possibly, band collectively — if these handhelds need a significant piece of the Swap.
Working system
Patrons have to know that their recreation will probably be able to play after they press the ability button on a handheld. That’s the Nintendo Swap expertise, and it’s just like how the Steam Deck works as soon as video games are downloaded — but it surely’s removed from what Home windows handhelds at the moment provide.
That’s why the three largest items of handheld gaming information on the present had little to do with the {hardware} itself. They have been about ditching at this time’s model of handheld Home windows.
First, Lenovo revealed it might produce the primary licensed third-party handheld to ship with Valve’s easy-to-use SteamOS as a substitute of Home windows — one thing solely the Steam Deck has completed to this point. Second, Valve advised us it might convey a SteamOS beta to further third-party handhelds as quickly as this April. Third, a Microsoft government advised The Verge that the corporate would lastly do one thing significant about its bloated Home windows expertise on handhelds later this yr, combining “the most effective of Xbox and Home windows collectively.”
These strikes are heartening, because it’s a Wild West in handheld PC land. Most corporations go for a duplicate of Home windows that doesn’t reliably launch video games or sleep and wake correctly, defeating a number of the goal of a pick-up-and-play handheld expertise. They’re full of difficult-to-navigate UI and pointless bloatware, too — to the purpose that at this time, a community-created fork of Valve’s SteamOS UI is already a much better expertise than Home windows.
It’s additionally good for SteamOS followers: whereas the Steam Deck is a good platform for SteamOS, we’ve already seen the Deck can’t compete with the Swap by itself. Sport publishers don’t see the uncooked gross sales numbers to convey huge multiplayer video games like Fortnite or Valorant to SteamOS. (They are saying cheaters are too huge a danger.)
However, whereas the CES strikes are vital, Valve, Microsoft, and Lenovo are non-committal about how a lot issues may enhance. Microsoft would solely give me the barest hints about making Home windows really feel extra like an Xbox recreation console in some unspecified time in the future later this yr. Lenovo is hedging its SteamOS guess laborious — not solely will the Legion Go S ship in each Home windows and SteamOS varieties, the Home windows model will go on sale months earlier, and Lenovo received’t decide to SteamOS for its bigger, later-in-2025 handheld.
No different firm introduced a SteamOS handheld at CES, both, save for PC maker GPD, with a declare that was apparently false or misplaced in translation. Valve advised me it has no different companion gadgets at the moment within the works for SteamOS, although it’d be glad to work with extra corporations. I consider each handheld maker ought to give SteamOS a shot.
Display screen
This one’s straightforward: to maximise efficiency, battery life, economies of scale, and provide a closer-to-game-console expertise, handheld PC makers ought to universally undertake a 1080p-or-lower-resolution HDR OLED display screen with variable refresh fee.
Many PC producers are losing what little efficiency they’ll muster from a handheld chip and battery on a display screen with far too many pixels for the duty, artificially constraining efficiency and battery life in trade for 1600p or 1200p sharpness that the majority players received’t miss on a 7-inch to 8-inch panel. Moreover, each handheld with out a variable refresh fee display screen is probably going losing chunk of the frames that their handheld can serve as a result of their display screen is artificially limiting their framerate — VRR was the Asus ROG Ally’s secret weapon, letting it play video games extra easily than competing handhelds even when rivals’ chips supplied the identical FPS.
Lastly, HDR is a revelation on the Steam Deck OLED’s display screen, letting each native titles and the HDR video games I stream from my PS5 really feel like they’re full of actual mild that explodes out of the display screen. It’s one thing Home windows desktops and laptops have by no means persistently supplied the best way at this time’s consoles do, however handhelds might be the gateway to altering that.
Is a display screen just like the one I’m describing costly or laborious to seek out? Band collectively, PC corporations, and certainly a show maker can change that for you.
Chips and battery
Until you depend the Nvidia Tegra on the coronary heart of the Nintendo Swap, AMD is the chief in handheld chips. However its semi-custom Aerith and Sephiroth elements for the Steam Deck really feel just like the solely ones proactively designed with power-sipping handhelds in thoughts, leaving everybody else at a portability drawback. And it seems like AMD’s new Z2 line won’t be all that totally different.
AMD’s Z1 batch of chips in handhelds just like the Asus ROG Ally wasn’t initially for handheld; they’re mildly tweaked laptop computer processors that want 17 or 18 watts to start to hit their stride, sufficient for an entire handheld to empty a typical 50Wh battery pack in effectively underneath three hours with mildly intensive video games.
The Z2 line is equally a set of tweaked laptop computer chips, and whereas AMD advised me some could provide extra efficiency on the identical energy and add improved effectivity tweaks, the overall consumed energy could not lower. Lenovo product supervisor Alex Zhu advised me it’s taking a look at operating its Legion Go S’s Z2 Go chip at round 20 watts, which could give it worse battery life than the 15-watt-and-below Steam Deck even when its GPU is extra succesful. AMD additionally confirmed the Z2 Go is much less highly effective than the prior-gen Z1 Excessive.
AMD senior fellow Mahesh Subramony advised me the corporate’s flagship Z2 Excessive chip, on TSMC’s shrunk-down N4P course of node with a mixture of newer Zen 5, Zen 5c and RDNA 3.5 cores, must be each extra environment friendly and rather more succesful than the Z2 Go, and fairly a bit higher than the Z1 Excessive as effectively, but it surely’s not a leap ahead. That will require AMD’s even newer RDNA 4 graphics, and it might require bespoke processors.
Don’t maintain your breath should you’re hoping Intel may present significant competitors within the handheld chip realm. Whereas early critiques of the Intel Lunar Lake chip within the revised MSI Claw 8 AI Plus are fairly promising, its expensive Lunar Lake chip could also be a little bit of a one-off, with future Intel elements steering away from the power-saving on-die reminiscence that Intel experimentally added. I’m curious if that’s why MSI hasn’t absolutely launched the Claw as anticipated.
In the meantime, Intel actually has greater fish to fry proper now than making {custom} handheld chips. “It’s not a market that we’re actively pursuing, but it surely’s a market we’re glad to allow,” Intel VP of technical advertising and marketing Robert Hallock tells me of handheld gaming. “It’s considerably extracurricular,” he added, explaining that it’s a enjoyable and thrilling however small market and that Intel has to choose its battles. “We’re coming off admittedly, about 5, six years of strife and we’ve to determine the place we need to make investments.”.
Some producers have been capable of enhance the battery life drawback of at this time’s off-the-shelf AMD chips by together with a a lot bigger battery pack — the Asus ROG Ally X doubled the scale of its predecessor’s pack to 80 watt-hours, and it’s now not the one 80Wh handheld you should buy. However that comes with measurement and weight tradeoffs that may solely be partially engineered away.
We want handheld makers to affix collectively and make a case for higher chips.
Worth
The PC {industry} additionally wants to chop costs if it desires an opportunity to eat Nintendo’s lunch.
The Nintendo Swap debuted at $299 in 2017 — round $380 in at this time’s cash — and the OLED model arrived at $349 in 2021. A yr later, Valve’s Steam Deck debuted at $399. However at this time, the one Home windows handheld gaming PC I can advocate prices $799, roughly twice the worth of an entry-level Deck, and most Home windows handhelds have began at $600 and up. Excessive-end choices are nice, however the house could stay area of interest with out low-end choices, too.
Solely the least costly mannequin of Lenovo’s SteamOS variant of the Legion Go S will decrease that bar to $499 this Might. And all of these costs are nonetheless greater than Sony or Microsoft expenses for a TV console with much more efficiency, and sure greater than Nintendo will cost for the Swap 2.
I’m unsure what precisely PC makers would wish to do to problem the Swap on value, but it surely’s doubtless not easy. Valve CEO Gabe Newell mentioned it was “painful” however “crucial” to launch the Steam Deck at $399, hinting that the corporate could have adopted the razor-and-blades enterprise mannequin the place console makers initially promote {hardware} at a loss, then make the cash again as folks purchase video games. If that’s the case, that’s a troublesome act to observe, as no different PC maker controls the world’s largest PC video games retailer and may afford to subsidize a handheld that manner.
However not each console has been a loss chief: Nintendo reportedly by no means bought the Swap at a loss, and Sony stopped promoting the PS5 at a loss lower than a yr after its debut. So it’s doable to chop costs with the proper invoice of supplies and economies of scale. Lenovo explicitly advised me it labored with AMD on the Z2 Go chip to assist decrease the Legion Go S’s value, for instance.
To compete with Nintendo, an organization like Microsoft or Valve and even Sony wants to guide the cost, securing the parts and providing the proper working system for dozens of true Swap rivals Think about dozens of moveable Xboxes or PlayStations or Steam Machines, as a substitute of every PC maker marching to the beat of their very own drum.
I feel it’s time for an industry-wide push on handheld gaming. It is perhaps the way forward for gaming, interval. There’s an excessive amount of at stake to deal with it one half-baked Home windows handheld at a time.
