Handheld consoles are the industry's next battleground | Opinion
Only a week or two after confirmation that Microsoft is working on a handheld Xbox device, we now have reports that Sony is also in the early stages of developing a new portable device – its first foray into this market since the discontinuation of the ill-fated PS Vita five years ago.
With a successor to the Nintendo Switch on the horizon and the burgeoning PC handheld space energised by the success of the Steam Deck, it's fair to ask if we're about to enter a new golden age for handheld gaming – a sector that many people wrote off entirely when smartphone games soared in popularity in the 2010s.
The caveat here is that both Sony and Microsoft are in the very early stages of planning their handheld devices, and to some degree both companies appear to be waiting for technology to catch up to their ambitions.
Sony wants its device to be able to play PS5 games, and it's reasonable to assume that Microsoft would similarly want any handheld Xbox to sit somewhere alongside the Xbox Series S in terms of game compatibility.
These are technologically challenging goals, not least because those consoles use PC-like x86 CPUs and AMD GPUs, while much of the advancement that has allowed mobile devices to get so much faster and more efficient in recent years has been focused on ARM architectures.
Nonetheless, we'll eventually reach a point where AMD puts PS5-class hardware in a mobile package. The path is relatively clear, given that the Steam Deck already runs on a scaled-down version of the RDNA architecture that powers both the PS5 and the Xbox Series consoles, but it'll take a while to get there.
Even once we do get there, battery life is likely to be a concern – the Steam Deck isn't exactly great in this department to begin with – and both companies will have to be very careful and clear in defining the use cases for these devices around the potential limitations that will introduce.
Technologically, then, these devices are certainly possible – albeit several years down the line,
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