One huge thing to note is that the Switch has ports specifically for it, meaning game devs make significant changes to support the Switch if they’re porting an existing title (e.g. look at Hogwarts Legacy on PC and Switch, it’s very different). Handheld PCs just play the original release without any tuning.
So it’s not just “optimization” (as in, tailoring the code to the hardware), but actual, meaningful changes to the gameplay to work. So even if handhelds standardize around a single APU, it’s unlikely game devs will craft a custom experience for that hardware like they would with the Switch because it’s not going to generate nearly the same amount of new sales.
For sure, but since PC handhelds will always have quite powerful APUs it’s not necessary like it is for the Switch. I mean the Z1 Extreme pushes tflops like an Xbox Series S, not by any means a perfect metric but still indicative of the level of raw performance the chip actually sports, which is why it can play most titles in 1080p with 30 fps (just like the series S).
One huge thing to note is that the Switch has ports specifically for it, meaning game devs make significant changes to support the Switch if they’re porting an existing title (e.g. look at Hogwarts Legacy on PC and Switch, it’s very different). Handheld PCs just play the original release without any tuning.
So it’s not just “optimization” (as in, tailoring the code to the hardware), but actual, meaningful changes to the gameplay to work. So even if handhelds standardize around a single APU, it’s unlikely game devs will craft a custom experience for that hardware like they would with the Switch because it’s not going to generate nearly the same amount of new sales.
For sure, but since PC handhelds will always have quite powerful APUs it’s not necessary like it is for the Switch. I mean the Z1 Extreme pushes tflops like an Xbox Series S, not by any means a perfect metric but still indicative of the level of raw performance the chip actually sports, which is why it can play most titles in 1080p with 30 fps (just like the series S).