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Exclusive: Google Pixel 9 processor won't be the ambitious chip we hoped for (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Your smart fridge is more powerful than the Switch but that doesn't prevent Nintendo from selling Switches.

Unless Apple ships a controller grip with their phone, Apple will never compete with gaming handhelds.

The shit pushed to Android is the same shit pushed to iOS. You can get excellent games like Rollercoaster Tycoon (the original one), GTA, Fortnite, PUBG, the list goes on, all from good old Google Play.

Performance isn't what's keeping phones from taking over the gaming market; control schemes and competitors are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think the biggest issue is titles; what people expect of mobile games, perpetuating itself into a weak catalog of original titles, with a few good ports. Mobile games are largely designed to be heavily-monitized, Games as a Service, and/or gacha titles.. profitable design choices, but not because they make games better.

Having a more standard control scheme would help get more ports of console games, but I'd love to see more mobile games that use the existing interface/formfactor well. Pokemon Go circa 2018 was a good game that only works on mobile, and I'd love to see more of those.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Plenty of enjoyable classics run in emulators on midrange phones. I was actually quite excited for the Android Switch emulator that used the fact the Switch is just a weird Android tablet to its advantage, which would let games run at near-native speed or even faster, but they got DMCA'd to death.

People make gacha games because hundreds of millions of people are paying serious money for them. They're not the only option, though. Better games are available and play just fine, people just don't want to play them on their phones. RPGs like Genshin, interactive multiplayer games like Roblox and Fortnite, In China and some other Asian areas, mobile gaming (as in, gaming, not the weird loading bar simulators with microtransactions) is actually very popular, to the point that there are specifically PUBG Mobile eSports matches.

As for games on phones, games like Mini Metro, Super Hexagon work very well on phones, even better than on desktops in my opinion. Card games (Heartstone, Marvel Snap) work very well on tablets. Various fitness-oriented apps also exist that can't work on any other platform (except maybe on smart watches?). I've also tried a bunch of puzzle games that can only work on handhelds because they required turning the phone or moving around the room.

You need to look beyond the most popular games on the Google Play frontpage, but if you scroll down a bit past the shitty cashgrabs, there are some real gems you can play on mobile phones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You bring up an interesting point, and now I'm wondering: how would a gaming-focused phone sell in a post-Switch world? We all remember the Xperia Play, but maybe it was just too early. What if Apple released an "Arcade edition" of the next iPhone for $1000, which featured a slide out controller or some other slick integration of physical controls? How well would that sell, and what impact (if any) would it have on Switch/Steam Deck sales?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, Asus and nubia have been making a gaming-specific phone for many generations now. Razer even gave it a try back in 2018, but I don’t think they released any follow up devices.

Lenovo also made a couple devices, but announced earlier this year that they’d be discontinuing their gaming phone business.

There seems to be a fan base and market for gaming-specific phones, but given Lenovo and Razer got out of the game and the fact that you haven’t seemed to have heard of any of these devices/product lines: my guess is that they are super niche.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I appreciate the links and examples, but none of those has physical gaming controls like I was suggesting. Obviously high end hardware is important in a device like this, but the physical controls were my key point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I hear you, and fair enough, but I think the fact that none of these gaming-specific phones has physical controls like you described built in speaks to how impractical that ask is.

And I think it’s important to note: there’s weren’t just powerful phones (in fact, many of them seemed to get bested by other phones in more benchmarks than they won), they were specifically marketed and sold as gaming phones; that was the specific niche that Asus, Lenovo, Razer, and others all sought to fill. Despite that, and despite basically all those companies having a ton of general experience building gaming hardware of one sort or another, none of them thought it was a good idea to include physical input methods on-device. They pretty much all have accessories that turn it into something looking akin to a Switch or DS, but none had them baked into the actual phone.

And I honestly think that makes a lot of sense. Thumb sticks aren’t super pocket-able, and I feel like even if they could be made to fit into a pocket, sliding them in and out of bags and pants over and over would make them fail faster. And while A/B/X/Y buttons might be more reasonable on that pocket-ability metric, do you want to smush them (or thumb sticks, for that matter) against your face while you take a call?

While current controller-esque buttons and thumb sticks remain the primary input method for games, I really don’t see gaming phones including those input methods within their physical form factor. It might be a limitation of my imagination, but I just can’t envision how one would make that work (and it seems I am not alone in that).