You… you do realize we were handheld gaming long before the Switch, right? Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Nomad, GBA, NDS, PSP, 3DS, Vita, plus emulation handhelds have been around since the early 2010s, and I’ve personally been gaming with 7" and 8" tablets with telescopic controllers since 2013.
How exactly do all current handhelds owe their success to the Switch?
I’m old enough that I still have my original Game Boy that I got as a kid in elementary school, so I have been playing on handhelds for decades.
The Switch was the first “Flagship” handheld meant to compete with home consoles. It proved that there was a market for such a device, then the Steam Deck capitalized hard and the rest is history.
Sure, you can split hairs & say that the Nomad was technically a handheld Genesis, or get even more technical and say that the Game Gear was a handheld Master System, but neither one took over the market like the Switch. Hell, I’ve never seen a Nomad outside of a retro game store, it’s basically a rounding error in market share percentage just below the Atari Lynx.
You… you do realize we were handheld gaming long before the Switch, right? Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Nomad, GBA, NDS, PSP, 3DS, Vita, plus emulation handhelds have been around since the early 2010s, and I’ve personally been gaming with 7" and 8" tablets with telescopic controllers since 2013.
How exactly do all current handhelds owe their success to the Switch?
I’m old enough that I still have my original Game Boy that I got as a kid in elementary school, so I have been playing on handhelds for decades.
The Switch was the first “Flagship” handheld meant to compete with home consoles. It proved that there was a market for such a device, then the Steam Deck capitalized hard and the rest is history.
Sure, you can split hairs & say that the Nomad was technically a handheld Genesis, or get even more technical and say that the Game Gear was a handheld Master System, but neither one took over the market like the Switch. Hell, I’ve never seen a Nomad outside of a retro game store, it’s basically a rounding error in market share percentage just below the Atari Lynx.