I use Microsoft's app to stream my Xbox Series S to an iPad Air 5. I use the OEM Series S controller paired to the iPad. Connected to my headless Xbox Series

I use Microsoft's app to stream my Xbox Series S to an iPad Air 5. I use the OEM Series S controller paired to the iPad. Connected to my headless Xbox Series S are only the CAT6 and AC cables. I think my mesh network is only Wifi 5, too. But it's also playable over 5G when I'm out, and that says a lot because my home connection is run-of-the-mill rural DOCSIS cable internet. Sorry that you had a bad experience. Also I am a huge fan of dedicated appliances for particular classes of applications if you could not tell. Sure, the same iPad Air 5 I'm using has the fancy M1 that can supposedly play games but...where are the games? Like you said, they're not porting the games to iOS because touchscreen. Otoh, they could (and do!) require you need a controller, but then Apple would have to admit you need a third party peripheral -- which might actually zombify Steve Jobs from his slumber. But they'll happily push a GTA port with the interface grossly adapted to the touch screen. So it's a marketing thing: Apple is not going to be 'seen with' Microsoft, but they'll let Microsoft publish an official streaming client in their store without much fanfare. That app requires a (presumably Xbox-Microsoft-propriety-licensed) controller paired. Then I get to play top-tier games on my iPad, while Apple pretends I wouldn't ever want to do this anyway unless it was via the touch screen. Everybody wins! One more thought: consider the battery fuel trade-off between A) running locally B) streaming ... Consider that ChromeOS can do that Xbox stream thing too, and the battery life is about 10 hours on the cheapest book (terrible 720p screen) I could buy...all despite running as an 'android emulated app' (whatever that actually means in the streaming clients particular context, they could have shipped intel native binaries anyway.) I get maybe 5-8 hours on the iPad (which has a nice screen remember), but it's not 10 hours. ... Anyway, my point in sharing all of this, was to illustrate why I believe advanced mobile consoles like the 3DS are going away, despite the (still accelerating) growth of mobile processing power: the future is cloud gaming, so your hand held device just needs to be an acceptable thin-client which optimizes on the appropriate things (battery life, screen quality, can I drop it on asphalt, does it easily pair controllers....)