With hybrid and portable games machines still as popular as ever, a reader explains why he’s never liked them and much prefers home consoles.
I’ve been into video games pretty much my whole life. My first console was a SNES, back when I was a kid, and I’ve had at least one per generation ever since, mostly PlayStation and/or Nintendo. I think my tastes in game are pretty broad, and I like a good game of Arc Raiders as much as I enjoy Donkey Kong Bananza. The one thing I’ve never liked, though, is handhelds.
Maybe I’m getting old-fashioned, because the idea of watching a movie on my phone disgusts me and I’d never do it. I want the big cinema experience, ideally at the actual cinema or at least back at home with a big screen and a decent sound system. I’m the same with games and consider it very important to play in the ideal conditions, in the dark and with nothing else going on in the room (I’ll admit, the ideal situation does not always happen!).
I don’t think that position is too unusual when it comes to movies, or at least most people would understand it, but with games I’m not so sure. I hated the idea of the Game Boy and Game Gear when I was a kid and mocked them both, while sticking to my home console. I considered their worse graphics to not be worth the price of portability and dismissed their games as badly made.
Nowadays I can admit that last bit is not necessarily true at all, but those big clunky handhelds, that ate batteries and played worse versions of games I already had at home had no appeal to me. I never really changed my mind as things evolved and still found the graphics on the DS to be extremely ugly. The PSP interested me a little more, and the PS Vita more again, but since their best games often got ported to PlayStation anyway, I wasn’t tempted.
Bringing things up to date, the Switch and Switch 2 have been big hits and while I have both I never use them in handheld mode. I appreciate that they are portable, but whenever I got somewhere, like my parent’s at Christmas, I take my dock with me too. That’s my idea of a handheld console!
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The other modern form of the handheld is the PC device, which started with the Steam Deck, which was very influenced by the Switch, and has spawned endless copies. These I really don’t get, because not only do you have to put up with a tiny screen, you also have iffy controls, spotty performance and compatibility, and the horror of having to use Windows on a gaming handheld – or at least you did on the one my friend has, I forget the name of it.
That they’re outrageously expensive only makes things even worse and leaves me essentially anti-tempted. Even the PlayStation Portal is really expensive, and it doesn’t even do anything except stream games from your home PlayStation. Yes, that means you can play it in bed, but you can also play it in bed if you just set up a TV in your bedroom!
These things are popular, so I guess it’s just me. But that’s fine. Unlike some people on the internet, I don’t feel the need to try and force other people to stop playing something just because I don’t like it. But whenever I see someone scrunched up on the train or wherever, playing a home game on a tiny portable screen, with bad controls, I just get the heebie-jeebies.
Don’t even talk to me about mobile phones but there at least I think a lot of people would agree with me. But when it comes to my dislike of handheld consoles… sometimes I feel like I’m the only one.
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