The Handheld war is coming: Can the Switch remain King?

Original Article written by: Juisaiki

Edited by: Yousef

Revision written by: Yousef

Editor/Revisor’s notes:

Hey everyone it’s me, Yousef. Sorry to temporarily steal attention away from my great friend Jusaiki here. I’m the editor and writer of this revision. This was both approved and requested by Jusaiki himself, so with his permission, I had full creative control over the editing and revision process while respecting the original text here. The original text was too poor quality, riddled with errors and typos and not up to this site’s standards and given how much traction this article was getting, I felt compelled to step in and do something to pay respects to the community during my time off, as I may step away as a writer completely and spend my time mostly as Jusaiki’s editor. This article was the perfect opportunity to get our feet wet as a team, so this was largely experimental. Due to my poor mental health, I might step away from RGT all-together and work in the shadows as Jusaiki’s editor. You’ll still see my snarky remarks in these editor notes though. We may also start a podcast! But without further ado, please enjoy this revision I wrote for Jusaiki’s wonderful article!


With Nintendo’s new console reveal last night, fans were left wondering what Nintendo has in store and what they have up their sleeve this time around. That question alone opens the floodgates of handheld competition. Since a lot of companies like Valve, MSI, Asus, Lenovo and many more already put their foot at the Handheld door, flexing the ability of their consoles, and how unique each and every one of their systems are. Nothing could've been better for these than Nintendo fumbling their own treasure of a device.

The Nintendo Switch suffered performance issues, as well as stick drift. But worst of all, a lack of games. Whether that's the virtual console side of games or new ones, Nintendo should really fix all these problems with the Switch 2 and rule the Handheld lands like they always did. If they're really trying, we might see one of the biggest gaming wars, but this time between handhelds
rgt article thumbnail.png

Let's talk Sony​

sddefault.jpg

The PS4 and PS5 hold up pretty well when it comes to most sold consoles the past few years. They did pretty well and the market was stable until the Steam Deck was released. Sony felt the pressure of the handheld market, and how did they respond? By releasing the PS Portal.

The device couldn't play games natively, and relied on the PS5 as a host, basically acting as a remote play device for your PS5 games. I'll admit it's cool, I bought my PS5 Pro recently and there was a bundle with the Portal for just 80 bucks more. I felt like it was a steal, and bought it and I've been playing my PS5 through my Portal, and I love it.

But the Portal is not quite what everyone wants from a handheld device, it doesn't run its own OS repair, and the thing costs a fortune and half the time the parts aren’t available. Hopefully Sony is aware of the Handheld void they left behind and actually start working on the new installment to the PSP.

Screenshot 2025-01-18 225942.png

Hope that comes sooner rather than later preferably with backwards compatibility. This would be troublesome for Nintendo if they don’t play their cards right this generation. But remember, Sony aren’t the only ones with a horse in the race.

The Steam Deck.....HIM​

1737231172446.png

Alright, so I’d rather not bore you with as to why The Steam Deck is one of the best handheld options. With the vision of Lord Gabe Newell and an OS based on Arch Linux, the Steam Deck will be here for at least 5 more years. The gold standard for handheld gaming. But if you wanna know more about it, I advise you check this review written by my buddy @Yousef about the Steam Deck where they did a damn good job reviewing it. Here’s a quote from them written for this article:

“The Steam Deck is a fantastic little machine. When I first got it, I couldn’t begin to imagine the world of emulation that was just waiting for me. It does a fantastic job running some newer abandonware games, so it’s not exclusively a 6th gen machine as it had no problem running games like Deadpool or GTA IV for me. I strongly recommend it for anyone enthusiastic about affordable PC gaming options, especially people interested in an Arch Linux based system.”

This Part of the article is an Xbox btw

For the longest time, the Xbox struggled with their identity. While they did a lot of good stuff in recent years, such as Game Pass, backwards compatibility and more. But during their Blizzard drama with Sony last year, someone allegedly leaked a document that included potentially important info on Xbox’s possible future plans, that potential leak made me happy cuz it showed the possibility that Xbox might still care. Somewhere in the document was this alleged PDF of 55 pages talking about a potential handheld, as well as Microsoft’s Intent to buy Nintendo which sounds bizarre. If they commit to their handheld Idea, we might see competition from Xbox.

This Part of the article is an Xbox btw​

with-switch-2-revealed-xbox-announcing-theyre-working-on-a-v0-jxs4hgob5gde1.jpg


God their new marketing suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk-.... anyway Xbox for the longest time struggled pretty bad with their identity, while they actually did a lot of good stuff in recent years like X cloud, Game pass, Backward compatibility and more, they take too much time to execute their plans, and sometimes you see the struggle exploding after every big release like what happened after buying blizzard and the release of HIFI Rush, somehow Xbox always far behind and finish last, but during their Blizzard drama with Sony Last year someone leaked their document that included very important info on future plans, that leak made me happy cuz it showed that Xbox still cares but like any dead beat dad don't know how to show their love, somewhere in the document was this whole PDF of 55 pages talking about a handheld and their Intent to buy Nintendo which is Bizarre, since Nintendo revealed the switch 2 you know that deal never happened but still they helped Nintendo making the S2, and they want their own Handheld too, if they still on bar with the Handheld Idea we might see a good comptetion from Xbox for the first time in who knows when
1737231951063.png

You got:
-GamePass
-blizzard games
-xcloud
-backward compatibility
-decent prices
and of course pairing that with your PC and you got a really good ecosystem.

What else is coming ?​

From MSI and Asus and all the other gaming companies the power of their system is a key factor, but other companies, Chinese ones to be exact are trying to achieve what The steam deck have and more weather that's power or a new OS to compete, china did really well last year with Games and they quickly went into making Systems to enter the war, meet Codename: Sunday Dragon from Tencent
sunday-dragon-3d-one.png

a huge handheld that's surprisingly light and powerful, they didn't say much about the specs, but some people had Hands-on experiences with the console and the thing that might actually make a boom in the Handheld department is their use of Android OS and Linux as dual booting in one device, since it's made in China it will be more affordable and available than the Steam Deck which may become the standard after SD and this device is just the start you will see more Chinese consoles hit the market soon

Final thoughts​

BEST-HANDHELD-GAMING-CONSOLES-2048px-09702-2x1-1.jpg

Handhelds for me were always the magic of the future, a compact device that you can take anywhere with you and play with it. One of the reasons I play my vita and 3ds to this day is that I hate how modern gaming looked down upon those systems as a relic of the past. For the longest time , I've always said to myself "if modern consoles are this good, why can't the handhelds be too?" but a lot of companies have not invested in the idea.

The Switch was different. Instead of releasing a new 3DS, they made the Switch, their current flagship console into a handheld and that was big. If it wasn't for Nintendo, we wouldn't see this interest in handhelds in general. Nintendo needs to play their cards right. They have IPs no other system has, they have a lot of studios under their umbrella, and they have loyal fans despite being a god awful company policy-wise.

The Switch is a household name, they don't have to hold back and be afraid of "taking risks", if they went all out and delivered a unique experience like it’s the last console they will release, they will be successful regardless, even with their games getting emulated and cracked. I truly believe they can be the number 1, April 2nd can’t come any sooner.

What’s your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!
 

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Holy shit, the title is NUCLEAR! I have never read something so accurate about the current state of gaming as of right now.

You are absolutly correct about everything said here, Gabe Newell saw a golden oportunity and took the chance, and it payed off IMMENSELY! The SD is an absolute beast of gaming, it's essentially a portable computer with the exclusive usage for gaming, but the fact that you can acess the OS part of the computer really sets it apart and I'm sure that if you couldn't do it, the SD wouldn't have been as succesfull as it is.

I didn't know that Nintendo got help making the S2 by Microsoft, that's fucking crazy! They pulled a reverse Playstation and used the Xbox tech to make their own console. Another scary thing, Microsoft is buying EVERYTHING! Bill Gates went full fucking psycho and decided to buy every studio going under, I have no ideia what the fuck he's planning (probably a gaming monopoly) but he's looking left and right for any possible acquisition, bordelining on hostile take over (for those that don't know, it's a term where if a company buys more than 60% shares of another company, they by default own it), I legit didn't know he tried to buy Nintendo, and this might be a hot take, I'm glad he couldn't!

Yeah, we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, altought many are catching up late with the wave, seeing these many products trying to one up each other is really interesting to see. Back in the day, gaming used to be this wild west of sorts, like how The Atari used to be the main gaming console of the era but that didn't stop competitors to have their own ideias and sell them to the market, this was all before the video game crash and a few years later Nintendo swooped in to feast on the remains of the dead market and revive it, restarting the video game craze. Sure we aren't living a one to one replication of these times, but we have seen the industry semi-crash, watching all these studios shut down and even Xbox quiting from the race to become more of a dedicated studio for developer, much in the vein of Sega, and now? We see Nintendo in the lead (again) but this time others want a piece of the pie too, and like I said before we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, it's anyone's game, will Nintendo and Valve reign supreme over their competitor? Or will someone usurp the throne from both? We best pay close attention, because we are living in gaming history gentlemen.

...Wow this was a looooong response to a simple article, I'm sorry for unloading a massive text wall on your comment section @Jusaiki lol. Your article and @Yousef 's article have inspired me to cover my own handheld related article, so expect to see an article coming soon...ish.
 
Holy shit, the title is NUCLEAR! I have never read something so accurate about the current state of gaming as of right now.

You are absolutly correct about everything said here, Gabe Newell saw a golden oportunity and took the chance, and it payed off IMMENSELY! The SD is an absolute beast of gaming, it's essentially a portable computer with the exclusive usage for gaming, but the fact that you can acess the OS part of the computer really sets it apart and I'm sure that if you couldn't do it, the SD wouldn't have been as succesfull as it is.

I didn't know that Nintendo got help making the S2 by Microsoft, that's fucking crazy! They pulled a reverse Playstation and used the Xbox tech to make their own console. Another scary thing, Microsoft is buying EVERYTHING! Bill Gates went full fucking psycho and decided to buy every studio going under, I have no ideia what the fuck he's planning (probably a gaming monopoly) but he's looking left and right for any possible acquisition, bordelining on hostile take over (for those that don't know, it's a term where if a company buys more than 60% shares of another company, they by default own it), I legit didn't know he tried to buy Nintendo, and this might be a hot take, I'm glad he couldn't!

Yeah, we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, altought many are catching up late with the wave, seeing these many products trying to one up each other is really interesting to see. Back in the day, gaming used to be this wild west of sorts, like how The Atari used to be the main gaming console of the era but that didn't stop competitors to have their own ideias and sell them to the market, this was all before the video game crash and a few years later Nintendo swooped in to feast on the remains of the dead market and revive it, restarting the video game craze. Sure we aren't living a one to one replication of these times, but we have seen the industry semi-crash, watching all these studios shut down and even Xbox quiting from the race to become more of a dedicated studio for developer, much in the vein of Sega, and now? We see Nintendo in the lead (again) but this time others want a piece of the pie too, and like I said before we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, it's anyone's game, will Nintendo and Valve reign supreme over their competitor? Or will someone usurp the throne from both? We best pay close attention, because we are living in gaming history gentlemen.

...Wow this was a looooong response to a simple article, I'm sorry for unloading a massive text wall on your comment section @Jusaiki lol. Your article and @Yousef 's article have inspired me to cover my own handheld related article, so expect to see an article coming soon...ish.
Haha nice to hear. Thanks for the kind words :) . Good luck and cheers.
 
Looks like Nintendo shaking on their knees knowing that their handheld dominance is being challenged. Practically Nintendo never faced this kind of threat since the DS-PSP war.
Any completion is a good competition, this will make their arrogance stop and actually do something good for once
 
Holy shit, the title is NUCLEAR! I have never read something so accurate about the current state of gaming as of right now.

You are absolutly correct about everything said here, Gabe Newell saw a golden oportunity and took the chance, and it payed off IMMENSELY! The SD is an absolute beast of gaming, it's essentially a portable computer with the exclusive usage for gaming, but the fact that you can acess the OS part of the computer really sets it apart and I'm sure that if you couldn't do it, the SD wouldn't have been as succesfull as it is.

I didn't know that Nintendo got help making the S2 by Microsoft, that's fucking crazy! They pulled a reverse Playstation and used the Xbox tech to make their own console. Another scary thing, Microsoft is buying EVERYTHING! Bill Gates went full fucking psycho and decided to buy every studio going under, I have no ideia what the fuck he's planning (probably a gaming monopoly) but he's looking left and right for any possible acquisition, bordelining on hostile take over (for those that don't know, it's a term where if a company buys more than 60% shares of another company, they by default own it), I legit didn't know he tried to buy Nintendo, and this might be a hot take, I'm glad he couldn't!

Yeah, we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, altought many are catching up late with the wave, seeing these many products trying to one up each other is really interesting to see. Back in the day, gaming used to be this wild west of sorts, like how The Atari used to be the main gaming console of the era but that didn't stop competitors to have their own ideias and sell them to the market, this was all before the video game crash and a few years later Nintendo swooped in to feast on the remains of the dead market and revive it, restarting the video game craze. Sure we aren't living a one to one replication of these times, but we have seen the industry semi-crash, watching all these studios shut down and even Xbox quiting from the race to become more of a dedicated studio for developer, much in the vein of Sega, and now? We see Nintendo in the lead (again) but this time others want a piece of the pie too, and like I said before we are walking into a wild west era for gaming, it's anyone's game, will Nintendo and Valve reign supreme over their competitor? Or will someone usurp the throne from both? We best pay close attention, because we are living in gaming history gentlemen.

...Wow this was a looooong response to a simple article, I'm sorry for unloading a massive text wall on your comment section @Jusaiki lol. Your article and @Yousef 's article have inspired me to cover my own handheld related article, so expect to see an article coming soon...ish.
Love to see it can't wait for your article, and yeah I love this situation where Nintendo is kinda fucked cuz people are fed up with their bullshit, also It's nice to get a new competition path away from higher graphics and frames when all of that turned into AI even the new GPUs ain't worth buying, Microsoft is dying out in the weirdest hill imaginable I wish these events are a wake-up call for them, Gabe is a genius who pulled the right strings at the right time I can't express how much I love my SD not only i enjoy gaming on it but also daily drive my linux like that feels unreal, Handheld and Linux are the future of gaming and tech in general
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Wow how spooky we upload our articles at the same time haha.
Thanks for the shout, brother! You are amazing!
haha, I've been working on this one all day, happy to be back and writing again
 
Love to see it can't wait for your article, and yeah I love this situation where Nintendo is kinda fucked cuz people are fed up with their bullshit, also It's nice to get a new competition path away from higher graphics and frames when all of that turned into AI even the new GPUs ain't worth buying, Microsoft is dying out in the weirdest hill imaginable I wish these events are a wake-up call for them, Gabe is a genius who pulled the right strings at the right time I can't express how much I love my SD not only i enjoy gaming on it but also daily drive my linux like that feels unreal, Handheld and Linux are the future of gaming and tech in general
Post automatically merged:


haha, I've been working on this one all day, happy to be back and writing again
Nice!! Excited to have you back man! Look forward to more of your stuff. This was a great piece!
 
I got a Switch from my Family, i was really desperate at the Beginning, as most Games i had on the Wii U.
The third Party Titles saved it for me, my most played Titles are Neverwinter Nights, Witcher 3 (yes, really), Final Fantasy XII, Doom (every one) and similar ones.
I wished it had at least Steam Link, so i could stream from my PC.
Somehow, Nintendo Titles aren't surprising me as much any longer.
I loved Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U, but Mario Odyssey was quite boring, i played more Mario 64 on the Switch in the End via 3D Allstars.
Nintendo will sell enough of the Switch 2, if they take again a Advertisement with young and hip People.
But they really must push more Titles out.
Bring backwards compatible kills the income with Ports, at least from the last Generation.
Also, Titles on the Estore a generally 100-200% more expansive as on Steam or Gog (i followed the Prices of some Multiplatform Titles for a long Time).
The Prices are more or less on par since this Year.
But let us take Dragon Dogma, when it was for sale at 8€ on got, it was for 16 on Switch.
Also considering that Nintendo is not reliable with their online Store, i personally skip that Device.
 
With Nintendo's new console reveal last night, the competition and the fans were left wondering what's in Nintendo's pocket this time ? What's the catch, the wining card up their sleeves that question alone opens the gates of war upon us soon since a lot of companies like Valve, MSI, Asus, Lenovo and many more already put their foot at the Handheld door flexing the ability of their consoles and how unique each and every one of them are, nothing could've been more encouraging to these companies to make their systems more than Nintendo fumbling the last few years of their own treasure of a device, the Nintendo Switch, from performance issues to stick drift and the worst of them all lack of games added to the system whether that's the virtual console side of games or new ones, can Nintendo really fix all these problems with the Switch 2 and actually rule the Handheld lands like they always did ? If they're really trying.... we might see one of the biggest Gaming wars, but this time is between Handhelds
View attachment 14184

Let's talk Sony​

View attachment 14201
The PS4&PS5 held up pretty well when it comes to most sold consoles the past few years, and it was for a reason aside from some misses here and there they did pretty well and the market was stable for the majority of the time until the steam deck released and got better Sony felt the pressure of the handheld market, and what did they do ? Released the PS Portal.... yeah that's a PSP alright, the device couldn't play games natively and relied on the PS5 as a host and basically mirroring your ps5 games, ill admit it's cool, I bought my PS5 pro recently and there was a bundle with the portal for just 80 bucks more I felt like it was a steal and bought it and I've been playing my PS5 thru my portal and I love it, but It's not quite what everyone wants from a handheld device, it doesn't run its own OS repair on that thing cost a fortune and half the time the parts ain't available, and not matter how far they are pushing the cloud service it ain't there yet, they need at least 5 more years to perfect it
at least Sony are kinda aware of the Handheld black hole they left behind and actually in the works of making the new installment to the PSP
View attachment 14315
Hope that comes sooner than later and actually bring back the big PSP library we once had....WITH!!! Backward compatibly??? This will for sure make Nintendo worry if they are not planning their switch 2 properly, but Sony ain't the only people getting into it, remember ?

The Steam Deck.....HIM​

View attachment 14325
ok, I don't need to bore you with why The steam deck was and still is the best handheld option, with the blessing Vision of Lord Gabe Newell he planned the device right, good dedicated OS based Arch Linux good performance and prices the Steam deck will be for at least 5 more years the gold standard for Handheld gaming, if you wanna know more please check my buddy @Yousef Review on the Steam Deck he did a damn good job reviewing it :)

This Part of the article is an Xbox btw​

View attachment 14187
God their new marketing suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk-.... anyway Xbox for the longest time struggled pretty bad with their identity, while they actually did a lot of good stuff in recent years like X cloud, Game pass, Backward compatibility and more, they take too much time to execute their plans, and sometimes you see the struggle exploding after every big release like what happened after buying blizzard and the release of HIFI Rush, somehow Xbox always far behind and finish last, but during their Blizzard drama with Sony Last year someone leaked their document that included very important info on future plans, that leak made me happy cuz it showed that Xbox still cares but like any dead beat dad don't know how to show their love, somewhere in the document was this whole PDF of 55 pages talking about a handheld and their Intent to buy Nintendo which is Bizarre, since Nintendo revealed the switch 2 you know that deal never happened but still they helped Nintendo making the S2, and they want their own Handheld too, if they still on bar with the Handheld Idea we might see a good comptetion from Xbox for the first time in who knows when
View attachment 14344
You got:
-GamePass
-blizzard games
-xcloud
-backward compatibility
-decent prices
and of course pairing that with your PC and you got a really good ecosystem.

What else is coming ?​

From MSI and Asus and all the other gaming companies the power of their system is a key factor, but other companies, Chinese ones to be exact are trying to achieve what The steam deck have and more weather that's power or a new OS to compete, china did really well last year with Games and they quickly went into making Systems to enter the war, meet Codename: Sunday Dragon from TencentView attachment 14186
a huge handheld that's surprisingly light and powerful, they didn't say much about the specs, but some people had Hands-on experiences with the console and the thing that might actually make a boom in the Handheld department is their use of Android OS and Linux as dual booting in one device, since it's made in China it will be more affordable and available than the Steam Deck which may become the standard after SD and this device is just the start you will see more Chinese consoles hit the market soon

Final thoughts​

View attachment 14199
Handheld for me was always the Magic of the future, a compact device that you can take it anywhere and play with it, one of the reasons I play my vita and 3ds to this day I hate how modern gaming looked at it as the relic of the past for the longest time, I've always said to myself "if Modern consoles this good can't the handheld ones get better too ?" but a lot of companies gave up on the idea, the Switch didn't instead of releasing a new DS they made the Switch, their Flagship console into a handheld and that was big, if it wasn't for Nintendo we wouldn't see this interest in handheld in general, Nintendo need to play it right they have games no other console has, they got a wings of studios under their umbrella they have loyal fans despite being a god awful company policy wise, the switch is a household name they don't have to hold back and be afraid of "risks" if they went all out and delivered a unique experience like it's the last console they will release they will still be successful even with their games getting emulated and cracked, I truly believe they can be the number 1 effortlessly, can't wait for April 2nd to come any sooner :)
Ok, I will wait for Sudachi 2, haha! xd/<3.
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i think steam is the only one that could compete with nintendo. sony and microsoft have expressed disinteresting in gaming quite a while ago. it'll be interesting to see if this reinvigorates the other 2 companies.
Tencent nope? :'v?
 
I think when it comes to my thoughts on Nintendo in the competitive market, I never see them participating in it. Surely their hardware meets to no standards against what's current (Especially with he Steam Deck and it's other competitors) and the same will likely be for the Switch 2, but I think that their motives have always been to make great and notable experiences that everyone will remember, no matter the generation. While to an adult's eyes, the experiences that were done with the Switch for new gaems don't match up with what was done in the SNES-Wii generation, they might be perfect and memorable ones for the ones that are still growing in their teenage years. Talking about this really reminds me of my thoughts on Switch Online where whilw everyone hates the thought on going Online, I see the difference within my eyesd.
 
i was referring to the ten cent thing. sudachi sounds like a sushi recipe.

Creo que cuando se trata de mis pensamientos sobre Nintendo en el mercado competitivo, nunca los veo
i was referring to the ten cent thing. sudachi sounds like a sushi recipe.
Well, it depends on the kind of kanjis you write that word with, xd. It can mean "becoming independent" or "Citrus Sudachi", a species of japanese citrus, :).
Post automatically merged:

I think when it comes to my thoughts on Nintendo in the competitive market, I never see them participating in it. Surely their hardware meets to no standards against what's current (Especially with he Steam Deck and it's other competitors) and the same will likely be for the Switch 2, but I think that their motives have always been to make great and notable experiences that everyone will remember, no matter the generation. While to an adult's eyes, the experiences that were done with the Switch for new gaems don't match up with what was done in the SNES-Wii generation, they might be perfect and memorable ones for the ones that are still growing in their teenage years. Talking about this really reminds me of my thoughts on Switch Online where whilw everyone hates the thought on going Online, I see the difference within my eyesd.
I see the eyes from people who have beautiful memories after playing Wii and their flat screens crashed by a Wiimote, that's tender, :').
 
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I think the legion go deserves some credit for inspiring certain features in the switch 2.
 

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