Prices are so wild with every new release, especially given the gains are not great. They really need to figure out some game changing ways to cool the devices in order to get more performance out of the chips without just defaulting to just sticking even more thermally intense releases. We just get chips that are more and more expensive that don’t reflect prices. And just means it sucks so much worse if they get dropped (being handhelds) or stolen. Like it sucked if my GBA or even PSP where to get stolen, but at least the price for a new one wasn’t anywhere near as bad of a hit to take.
The current state of how games are made doesn’t help either. They don’t put in anywhere near the levels that games from decades ago did to optimize to get everything possible from the hardware. It is cool to see/hear about how devs would pull off wild stuff on consoles in the 80’s/90’s given the specs. Same can be said of PC games in the 90’s being much more playable on potato pre-builds that were “the family computers.”
But now we are lucky to even get high-end builds to run correctly on launch (let alone the average hardware). Seeing the GHz number means nothing functionally anymore (not a great metric even before). A 3GHz Pentium or Athalon feels like it might as well say 800MHz with how bad even just booting and opening Windows Settings runs. Getting a $500 card seems to mean needing to just turn off so many things (even though the card companies love to put “gaming” on them and talk about ray tracing (but at bad performance and needing to default to DLSS/FSR to be anywhere close to 60fps). The handhelds and their ability to be used as a regular PC connected to a TV/monitor really have the chance to bring more people to PC gaming while also being really useful. But much like laptops, they don’t “feel” like the hardware is actually being fully used. Obviously there are bumps here and there, but they aren’t noticeable in the ways upgrading PCs or even consoles felt in the 90’s and 00’s.
All the nice charts and graphs get brought out, but in use they seem like placebos at best. Though the hardware manufacturers don’t get all the blame for it. The software devs for even non-gaming programs just love to waste resources as if they are THE only programs you will use. Can see this daily at my job seeing how basically all the major programs now default to running on start-up. And even if they offer a option in the program to actually turn that off, they now love to only give that option if you sign in. You accidentally open Spotify? Now it launches on startup and can’t be officially disabled or removed from the list of startup programs in Task Manager until you sign-in (and even then it is not obvious right away how to do so). Creative Cloud both not signed in or fully signed in goes nuts too. So many times I am able to make customers’ PCs seem brand new by just being OCD about disabling all the game launchers, chat apps, and whatever else (especially on laptops).
I don’t own a Switch (new or old), but I know those consoles are still not working with the same raw power as Sony and Microsoft. Given how much effort and money they put into hunting down copyright stuff. Really seems that they could redirect even a portion of those resources into making full use of the hardware and provide help to devs/studios for optimizing games. Though I know it is easier to optimize their legal attacks compared to game optimization.
Noticed only after I finished typing that I went into the below rant like my original comment. Feel free to ignore since the above relates to your reply. lol
I was/am hoping that given the popularity of the Steam Deck, that it will benefit more PC games to be at least a little better (both for Linux and lower spec hardware). But would still need a lot more people to buy Decks over the other more pricey options, and for the definition of “verified for deck” to be 60fps (really hate that 30 is still pushed by studios and outlets as the standard at this point). And would of course need for the studios to fear dramatic drops in sales of their IPs on all platforms (though I imagine they would rather close studios before caring about better code).
Stuff like DLSS/FSR also don’t help in making studios/devs care to bother, or make the GPUs actually better for 1400p/4k (not looking forward to fake 8k) unless you turn the option on. Just so many excuses while charging more and more. The dramatic jumps in prices for the consoles and components further makes things worse for even wanting to play games. I can’t imagine being a parent and having my kids that want to game these days (consoles being like $300~$400 for a “it just works and can play basically all games” are now costing more than launch prices. Even though that is in-part due to tariffs, it still makes it really hard for lower income households. So it means now more than even a few years ago that these games actually run super well to justify all the money. All that will remain are mobile crapware that are ads with game elements.