this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Smartphones were supposed to kill off portable consoles and for a brief moment they did. It took 2-3 years until people realized dedicated hardware was so much better and Switch happened to launch at perfect time.
Well, we've now got Steam Deck turning your portable console into a full PC, just connect a keyboard. Also no need to buy a Steam Deck version of that game you bought on Steam ten years ago, it's already there and probably runs great.
It might be that proprietary, single purpose gaming portables are going to lose to more flexible portables even if smartphones are too limited to do the job.
Android could have had this same advantage too, but Google's now pushing this whole framework version check thing.
There's also the fact the mobile gaming industry worked hard to make it an ad riddled, predatory monetisation & whalebait laden skinner box hellscape.
I don't deny there's a few gems mixed into the dogshit, which is a shame because I'm not going digging for it.
long response sorry
I think smartphones could have done a massive amount of damage to consoles and ultimately will occupy a large section of gaming as they should.
This has been forgotten and it shouldn’t, but mobile gaming really wasn’t a business movement to transfer existing video game development practices to a mobile environment, it was a business movement to apply corporate business practices to gaming. Mobile gaming wasn’t ever given a fair chance because there has always been a huge headwind of money shaping the mobile gaming industry into the toxic shithole it is.
Not to mention the Apple and (more so) Google app stores have never valued creating reliable game suggestions and review databases that people actually trusted. Neither has either company given a shit about encouraging a cottage industry of mobile game critics, instead they have pretended like people are seriously going to keep looking for new games through the recommendations of an algorithm that is so obviously tuned to spit out crap and point you at the same old couple of popular slot machine microtransaction games over and over again.
If you forget all that nonsense though and take a look at games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Farlight 84 and Pubg Newstate, touchscreen interfaces are getting extremely good for shooters and many mobile players have gotten extremely good at creating custom arrangements of buttons so they can use three or four fingers to play almost competitively as the average mouse and keyboard player (farrrr better than a controller player without gyro).
Games like Call Of Duty Mobile and the now maddeningly defunct Apex Legends Mobile also allow the use of a controller hooked up via Bluetooth to your phone. Using an xbox x/s controller and the PowerA Moga gaming clip 2 you can mount your phone on your controller in a very sturdy fashion. You can then turn gyro input on your phone on too (which is normally for touchscreen users directly holding their phone). In this way I was able to aim in Apex Legends Mobile without auto-aim far more competitively than someone playing normal Apex Legends on console could do with a controller and no gyro even if they had auto-aim turned on.
This clip only costs about $17, so that with a used Xbox x/s controller for let’s say $35 gets you the ability to comfortably play Wreckfest on your phone anywhere in your house with your phones beautiful AMOLED screen at a close enough distance to give you a high fidelity viewing experience. The clip also easily pops off and can be stored in a pocket.
You can’t argue the potential of mobile gaming especially if people continue to buy phones with fairly powerful processors and high quality screens. Sure I love gaming on a computer or a console, but those cost money and most people only need to drop <$50 on some peripherals to game with their phone. I game on a steamdeck and I am satisfied with that right now but in many ways the balance of my phone in a moga clip was better and anyways everybody already has a phone so it was dead easy to wrangle friends in on actually good mobile games.
The problem is all the business/corporate bros in mobile gaming are keeping the industry from innovating or really even just replicating the experience of normal gaming because they have been hellbent on enshittifying mobile gaming from the start.
We would ALL own Diablo Mobile if it was actually a phenomenal Diablo game that we could play with any friends we wanted and was satisfying to control on mobile. Blizzard just catastrophically shit the bed and made people feel icky for participating in this corporatization of gaming.
Made a comment in another thread the other day, but as a gamesir x2 pro owner the telescopic controllers are really good now too.
I got the USBC one so no input delay or battery to recharge, cost me $100AUD, built solid and there are mod guides out there now (I'm gonna add a 30mm fan or two to keep my phone cool it can get a bit hot under heavy load.
Isn’t it amazing this capability was basically right there from the beginning of mobile gaming?
It really shows badly corporate business practices utterly destroyed the ability of mobile gaming to innovate and improve as a medium for years and years. We might as well be almost 10 years behind where we should be in the evolution of the mobile gaming scene and it is honestly appalling.
I am so glad we have options like your gamesir x2! I use an Xbox controller just because I already had one, actually for awhile I was using a wired Xbox 360 controller which would sometimes work for games that weren’t even designed with controller input because compatibility is so good with 360 controllers lol.
How do you like the joysticks and buttons on the gamesir?
The pro is the one to get I'll tell you, unless you have a Z-Fold, in which case get the X2C (I think) that just released, that one's got the port on the left, meaning when unfolded it sits with the screen unfolded upwards.
The standard X2 has buttons for the triggers, pro has travel. The joysticks aren't hall effect on mine iirc, but they're very accurate and it's surprisingly comfortable. You can also swap the ABXY around as they're magnetic button caps, and they're held in so well I need pliers to pull em. Only issue I've got is left on the D-pad is a little finicky and it makes combos a bit difficult at times on some games.
You can mod the X2 pro so it stretches out and fits a 10/11" tablet but it'll stretch the springs out, or add fans if your phone gets a bit hot like mine under heavy load (I'll likely be adding a 30mm fan or two).
I give it a 9/10, -1 for D-pad jank.
Phones are by far the most popular gaming device.
It's just not the same market, might as well say that smartphones are killing tabletop gaming. DS lifetime sales were 155m, Switch is at something like 140m and still going. There's not that much room for growth probably but smartphone gaming is saturated as well.
The comment about killing a market came from you; phones are, as I said, the most popular device for gaming. Likening video gaming to tabletop gaming is silly and irrelevant; phones can and do play the same games which consoles do, board games are not the same market or sphere.
Billions use their phones for games, the Switch accounts for over a hundred million consoles, which are essentially large phones/tablets with controllers. It depends what you mean about dedicated hardware, as there are phones which are more powerful. If it's based on the controllers, sure, although there are also pads which can connect to mobile devices to make them into little consoles in themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean by smartphone gaming saturation; in terms of how many phones have been sold and who has them? I guess. But the market for mobile games is absolutely huge because of how many exist, so you have a potential market of billions rather than millions.
What I'm saying this is not "this or this" dilemma so the whole premise that one unrelated market is going to snuff out another is a fallacy.
Mobile space is a completly different to any kind of PC or console gaming. It's not about buttons, it's the whole thing. You can't get into hardware because profit margins are laughable. You can't compete with Google or Apple on market commission because they have a monopoly. You can't do AAA games because positioning and advertising is a tossup. You're left with trying to get another gacha game which is akin to trying to do another live service game on traditional platforms and we all know how predictable this business is.
I've used portable consoles as an example because years ago argument that they'd be replaced by smartphones had some merit. We now know that was kinda dumb. To replace Xboxes and Playstation you'd have to have tech that's just not there yet and won't be there for the foreseeable future (vast majority of people play FIFA, CoD, Fortnite etc so lag just kills it). People who could put up with deficiencies of streaming are likely not the same ones that game on existing hardware. There will be people who will jump on it if it grows but for different types of experiences, creating new market segment.
I agree that it's not a drop-in replacement, but there are definitely games that come out on both mobile and PC/console. There's definitely some level of overlap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloons_TD_6
I don't know what the percentage in terms of game revenue is there. But there is definitely some overlap there.
Yeah, casual games definitely benefit from being on mobile. That group of players barely needed PCs in the first place and was likely first to switch to smartphones and tablets where touch control scheme makes much more sense. Publishers benefit from more streamlined in-app purchases there too so even if the sales volume was similar, overall revenue will definitely favor mobile platforms.
Is LoL casual? Is Death Stranding? Are other high performance games?
Wild Rift has 10% of active players LoL does. Death Stranding on iOS is just one more token deal Apple made to signal that they're interested in gaming, but if past is anything to go by it'll never get anywhere.
You were talking about performance and wanted a title which is modern, like Resident Evil 4. DS is one. Moving the goalposts doesn't stop the game existing.
Well no, as there are plenty of MOBA and similar games on mobile that work just fine; lag is really not an issue.
I have showed you Death Stranding and showed the capability of phones. Your waffling on (and continued downvotes), and saying that Apple and Google have a monopoly (uhh what?) when they are direct competitors is hilarious. They are walled gardens in a way, but less so than consoles. Android allows any store or software to be installed.
Portable consoles have been replaced by smartphones, the DS and PS handhelds are dead. Stick to a point or concede.
lol
Yes, DS sales were, and now it's dead. The Switch is Nintendo's only console yet has not picked up the slack. It should be doing Wii + DS numbers, not under the latter.
If anything we should be comparing DS+PSP numbers but then again it'll never be apples to apples comparison. Nintendo DS was a phenomenon just as Switch is, which is why I used it for the example.