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I've always found it strange that phones never really went this way. There are attachments, I've seen attempts. But it just seems like such a large and availa

I've always found it strange that phones never really went this way. There are attachments, I've seen attempts. But it just seems like such a large and available market to overlook.

ekianjo 6y ago
You mean Gaming Android Phones? I guess the main reason is that it would detract from their primary use as phones? However you do have a lot of Android-based gaming devices with proper physical controls.
qbasic_forever 6y ago
Intel fumbled hard trying to go into mobile. It went so poorly it cost them billions of dollars, tens of thousands of jobs in layoffs, and quite a few executives (including the CEO): https://siliconangle.com/2016/05/01/intel-shuts-down-development-of-low-powered-chips-for-mobile-devices/ https://siliconangle.com/2016/05/01/intel-shuts-down-develop...
bobthepanda 6y ago
Phone gaming never quite took off outside of the freemium stuff. And gaming is a hard business for new entrants. The most likely path would’ve been if an existing gaming company made a handheld that was also a phone, but Microsoft doesn’t have a handheld entry, Sony’s Vita go down well, and Nintendo is just not really interested. This thing also costs $699, which is quite a bit more money than say a Switch. In fact a Switch is pretty much the cousin of a phone, hardware wise.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Nokia did. It flopped. Horribly.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    And it did also because the execution was horrible. Not sure thought if it would have been successful were it done better...
    - TylerE 6y ago
      The problem is the target market (teens/young twenty-somethings) don't have an inflation-adjusted $1k to drop on a phone.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        They can, but you need iPhone-level cachet to get that kind of money from them, and Nokia is not that.
- Koiwai 6y ago
  Saying Switch is a phone is like saying phone is a PC. They use similar components, but designed very differently: Switch has dedicated controller, phones don't, at least the vast majority of them. Switch has lower resolution, targeting framerate instead. Switch has active cooling for sustained performance, phones usually only work on short bursts. Switch is cheap, comparing to premium phones. Phones are ok for a lot of things, but good for nothing, while Switch is good at gaming, undeniably the 1st in the mobile gaming market.
- jsnell 6y ago
  Sony's Xperia Play. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    I feel like if you were to debut a gaming-oriented phone, you need to go all the way. Like, an Xbox phone that had all your Gamepass titles would be a compelling buy on day 1. This was a bit half-baked. It didn't even get the update to Ice Cream Sandwich.
TylerE 6y ago
Counterpoint: n-gage.
sien 6y ago
It's interesting that the Sony Experia Play phones never got anywhere. They were pretty impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
- nemasu 6y ago
  Yes! I still have one, and it is amazing.
- Causality1 6y ago
  I so want an "always in my pocket" smartphone gaming solution. Ideally a modern Xperia Play style slider phone with buttons and a slide pad but I'd also take a keychain-sized Bluetooth gamepad that attaches to the phone. Something visually like an iMpulse controller that plugged into the USB port and gave you an upright Gameboy-style experience. Every pocketable gamepad on the market expects you to have a table to rest your phone on.
nkozyra 6y ago
I think the problem is people want to play mobile games until they don't. What works about the switch is the option. I can play handheld or pop it in its dock and play on the TV with other people. Phones never quite got this. They had the mobile part built-in, but attempts at multiplayer on a screen were either ignored or botched horrifically. There's another big challenge with phone games, in my opinion ... Phones are also very personal, and I've observed that people are less likely to commit to longer-term games on their phones for some reason. Some of it is no doubt inertia - the early games on mobile were meant to be played in full in under an hour. But part of it is - I think - that having your phone occupied by something persistent like a game robs people of their ability to use the phone in the open gaps we normally use phones. Things like Switch or Stadia or whatever are dedicated gaming devices, even if they slingshot from your phone's computing power. I can use them and still have my phone in front of me. They do one thing and get out of the way. That's all depressing to write out, but it's the world we live in.
- chaosharmonic 6y ago
  Yeah, one of the most limiting factors imo about phones-as-consoles is actually getting the game onto a larger display. They're more than powerful enough to run lower-spec console games - as evidenced by the fact that, say, remastered Square Enix titles have also been hitting mobile platforms. But the Switch, being a dedicated system for this, doesn't have to put nearly as much work into the implementation. You can easily just throw it into a dock and leave it there indefinitely, because you don't need it for anything else. While you can cast a phone wirelessly, the setup will depend largely on your ecosystem and/or accessory vendors. And even then, the entire thing is typically mirrored - which not only leaves the rest of your device otherwise unusable, but also raises further cases to handle around notifications (or worse, calls) while you're actually gaming on it. These issues would make single-player gaming annoying enough, and local multiplayer effectively becomes a nonstarter. (Never mind that one you introduce that as a requirement you also introduce the need to set up additional controllers a nontrivial amount of the time, and fast pair support within the Bluetooth spec is just as messy.) For phones to really be able to cover these things without introducing tradeoffs that just don't exist with a dedicated device, we'd need OS- and hardware- level support for running a secondary display, wirelessly, without also introducing lag in the process. Effectively, we're comparing them to the wrong platform. Because while the internals most directly line up with those of the Switch, the interface design they'd need in order to really make the experience work is arguably a lot closer to that of the Wii U. [0] Note that, for the sake of this discussion, on Android's side I'm referring strictly to what's available in AOSP. I'm aware of, say, DeX, but the app ecosystem as a whole doesn't tend to have great support for vendor-specific implementations, and the stock desktop mode is still a. experimental, b. wired.

I've always found it strange that phones never really went this way. There are attachments, I've seen attempts. But it just seems like such a large and available market to overlook.

ekianjo 6y ago

You mean Gaming Android Phones? I guess the main reason is that it would detract from their primary use as phones? However you do have a lot of Android-based gaming devices with proper physical controls.

qbasic_forever 6y ago

Intel fumbled hard trying to go into mobile. It went so poorly it cost them billions of dollars, tens of thousands of jobs in layoffs, and quite a few executives (including the CEO): https://siliconangle.com/2016/05/01/intel-shuts-down-development-of-low-powered-chips-for-mobile-devices/ https://siliconangle.com/2016/05/01/intel-shuts-down-develop...

bobthepanda 6y ago

Phone gaming never quite took off outside of the freemium stuff. And gaming is a hard business for new entrants. The most likely path would’ve been if an existing gaming company made a handheld that was also a phone, but Microsoft doesn’t have a handheld entry, Sony’s Vita go down well, and Nintendo is just not really interested. This thing also costs $699, which is quite a bit more money than say a Switch. In fact a Switch is pretty much the cousin of a phone, hardware wise.

TylerE 6y ago
Nokia did. It flopped. Horribly.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  And it did also because the execution was horrible. Not sure thought if it would have been successful were it done better...
  - TylerE 6y ago
    The problem is the target market (teens/young twenty-somethings) don't have an inflation-adjusted $1k to drop on a phone.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      They can, but you need iPhone-level cachet to get that kind of money from them, and Nokia is not that.
Koiwai 6y ago
Saying Switch is a phone is like saying phone is a PC. They use similar components, but designed very differently: Switch has dedicated controller, phones don't, at least the vast majority of them. Switch has lower resolution, targeting framerate instead. Switch has active cooling for sustained performance, phones usually only work on short bursts. Switch is cheap, comparing to premium phones. Phones are ok for a lot of things, but good for nothing, while Switch is good at gaming, undeniably the 1st in the mobile gaming market.
jsnell 6y ago
Sony's Xperia Play. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  I feel like if you were to debut a gaming-oriented phone, you need to go all the way. Like, an Xbox phone that had all your Gamepass titles would be a compelling buy on day 1. This was a bit half-baked. It didn't even get the update to Ice Cream Sandwich.

TylerE 6y ago

Counterpoint: n-gage.

sien 6y ago

It's interesting that the Sony Experia Play phones never got anywhere. They were pretty impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play

nemasu 6y ago
Yes! I still have one, and it is amazing.
Causality1 6y ago
I so want an "always in my pocket" smartphone gaming solution. Ideally a modern Xperia Play style slider phone with buttons and a slide pad but I'd also take a keychain-sized Bluetooth gamepad that attaches to the phone. Something visually like an iMpulse controller that plugged into the USB port and gave you an upright Gameboy-style experience. Every pocketable gamepad on the market expects you to have a table to rest your phone on.

nkozyra 6y ago

I think the problem is people want to play mobile games until they don't. What works about the switch is the option. I can play handheld or pop it in its dock and play on the TV with other people. Phones never quite got this. They had the mobile part built-in, but attempts at multiplayer on a screen were either ignored or botched horrifically. There's another big challenge with phone games, in my opinion ... Phones are also very personal, and I've observed that people are less likely to commit to longer-term games on their phones for some reason. Some of it is no doubt inertia - the early games on mobile were meant to be played in full in under an hour. But part of it is - I think - that having your phone occupied by something persistent like a game robs people of their ability to use the phone in the open gaps we normally use phones. Things like Switch or Stadia or whatever are dedicated gaming devices, even if they slingshot from your phone's computing power. I can use them and still have my phone in front of me. They do one thing and get out of the way. That's all depressing to write out, but it's the world we live in.

chaosharmonic 6y ago
Yeah, one of the most limiting factors imo about phones-as-consoles is actually getting the game onto a larger display. They're more than powerful enough to run lower-spec console games - as evidenced by the fact that, say, remastered Square Enix titles have also been hitting mobile platforms. But the Switch, being a dedicated system for this, doesn't have to put nearly as much work into the implementation. You can easily just throw it into a dock and leave it there indefinitely, because you don't need it for anything else. While you can cast a phone wirelessly, the setup will depend largely on your ecosystem and/or accessory vendors. And even then, the entire thing is typically mirrored - which not only leaves the rest of your device otherwise unusable, but also raises further cases to handle around notifications (or worse, calls) while you're actually gaming on it. These issues would make single-player gaming annoying enough, and local multiplayer effectively becomes a nonstarter. (Never mind that one you introduce that as a requirement you also introduce the need to set up additional controllers a nontrivial amount of the time, and fast pair support within the Bluetooth spec is just as messy.) For phones to really be able to cover these things without introducing tradeoffs that just don't exist with a dedicated device, we'd need OS- and hardware- level support for running a secondary display, wirelessly, without also introducing lag in the process. Effectively, we're comparing them to the wrong platform. Because while the internals most directly line up with those of the Switch, the interface design they'd need in order to really make the experience work is arguably a lot closer to that of the Wii U. [0] Note that, for the sake of this discussion, on Android's side I'm referring strictly to what's available in AOSP. I'm aware of, say, DeX, but the app ecosystem as a whole doesn't tend to have great support for vendor-specific implementations, and the stock desktop mode is still a. experimental, b. wired.