I sort of noticed there has been a boom for handheld PC after Steamdeck launched. Within this year, we go “big” three such as Rog Ally, LegionGo and SteamDeck.

My wandering mind is like, why not, why didn’t this happen say, 5 years ago. Is it because handheld CPU are now fast and power efficient to run full desktop operating system?

We had laptops for the longest time, say Era of “Intel Core 2 Duo”, were there handheld PC at that time? If we had laptop, could there be smaller form gaming device running linux/windoes?

  • invid_prime@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    They existed. They were just made by small companies at very high prices. GPD has been around for a few years now for example, having launched the GPD Win in 2016. If you’d been shopping them you’d know that these devices have existed for at least a few years now.

    It’s just that the Steam Deck came out and massively dropped the floor on the price of these devices so that they’ve now become much more popular with the masses. The reason I was willing to get the first gen Steam Deck was precisely because I’d been shopping these computers and knew exactly how good a deal the Steam Deck was. It was half the price of anything even close to it in performance or specs, and that was for the top end model.

    No offence to the people that think a Steam Deck is overpriced but they have no idea what the market for these things was before the Steam Deck existed.