Having spent the bulk of my handheld gaming time with the Steam Deck, it was a bit of a shock last year to discover that PC gaming isn’t just possible on Android phones and retro handhelds, it’s powering on in leaps and bounds.
I’ve seen so many different games running beautifully, from older AAA titles like Tomb Raider and Prey (2017), all the way to more demanding ones like RDR2 and even Cyberpunk 2077 (no surprise that the last one is still an imperfect experience, as things stand…but it is possible!).
GameNative lets you play all manner of PC games on Android from GOG, Epic, and Steam.
I reached out to my friend Utkarsh, who is the lead developer of GameNative to ask if he wanted to share his story and let me interview him.
His background in development and gaming through to how GameNative started and is built, all the way to what the future might bring for his program. This is an interview on what I think might be at least part of the future of handheld gaming, and I hope you find this interesting:
https://gardinerbryant.com/i-genuinely-feel-gamenative-could-replace-handheld-pcs/
Uhm look at the Ayn Thor and Odin 3. It’s pretty much on par in a way smaller form factor. ARM is a game changer.
ARM isn’t the reason why it won’t work for long.
It’s cooling, as soon as the phone thermal soaks it’s throttles down - phones can’t have a decent cooling system since they use power (fans EAT power), degrade water resistance and just add weight/bulk that most don’t want in a phone.
The handhelds you’ve listed aren’t phones. They’re handhelds that do in fact have heatsinks - they’ll work fine.
Again this isn’t anything against ARM, it’s the idea that a phone form factor with zero cooling considerations will somehow best a device with those considerations.
Here’s the thing: Game Native allows for this sort of emulation of PC games on those handhelds. Yes, it works for like 10 minutes on a normal phone with heavier titles, but these handhelds are easily half the size of a steam deck while giving comparable performance sometimes already on these devices. That’s what the conversation is really about I feel. I don’t think anyone would even want to to play cyberpunk on their phone.
To me this article definitely reads like the author and those involved actually think the opposite of what you’ve said; That phones will beat out any kind of handheld because why have 2 devices.
Granted i didn’t do more than a cursory look at it.
Do I? I certainly didn’t write that. I’m from a background where I spent around 2 years writing Steam Deck articles, guides and interviews, exclusively. I don’t like you framing me as someone dismissing the Steam Deck. Weird.
Ah, say no more. Now I see why you thought that.
At this point in time, with how expensive the Ayn Thor has gotten and the downgrade from UFS 4.0 to 3.1 (WITH a simultaneous price increase), that console is dead to me personally, unless prices return to normal (which won’t happen).
However, the future of portable gaming is absolutely in ARM based consoles. Given that the upcoming Steam Frame will come with ARM to x86 translation (FEX), I think that Valve is also aware of this, and that the Steam Frame is the tip of the iceberg and will act as a sort of testing ground for ARM.
I’m hoping that Valve creates a variant of the Steam Deck that runs on an ARM-based chip, in addition to a true Steam Deck successor console running on a normal AMD processor and GPU. I think that Android also adds unnecessary overhead when gaming (latency and CPU cycles), and SteamOS is a great answer to that problem.
While I think Ayn is currently out of reach price wise, more competitors will begin to pop up making similar things (e.g. Retroid Pocket Flip 2).
Yeah the price increase on the AYN sucks, but I brought them up as examples of great devices that run PC emulation quite well in a very small form factor (at least compared to PC handhelds).
Also I 100% agree that ARM is the future here, and that Valve is probably testing the waters with Steam Frame. It all fits in just way too perfectly. That being said, while I would hope to be wrong, I could imagine them completely moving to ARM and just not release a true Steam Deck successor at some point based on x86. Valve is kinda making history with not making direct successors with the Valve Index -> Steam Frame.