Logitech has had a growing presence in the PC gaming market over the years, but it looks like the company is preparing to expand in a big way. According to a blog post, Logitech is teaming up with Chinese mega-publisher Tencent to create a dedicated gaming handheld in the style of Nintendo’s Switch or Valve’s Steam Deck. Here’s the twist: Instead of focusing primarily on local games, as has been the model since the original Game Boy, it will focus on streaming cloud games.
“The new device will support multiple cloud gaming services, and the two companies are working with the Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now teams,” Logitech said in its press release. Telling the names of two major game streaming platforms. While the Switch is based on Nvidia’s Tegra platform, which is originally intended for high-end, ARM-based mobile gaming, and the Steam Deck uses an ultra-efficient version of AMD’s x64-based Ryzen platform that can also be used in laptops. Seen, the as-yet-unnamed and unseen Logitech G handheld can almost completely underpin local hardware, offloading most of the heavy lifting of graphics and gameplay to remote streaming servers.
The announcement claims that the Logitech handheld is planned for release by the end of this calendar year. No technical details were posted, but a streaming-focused device certainly implies an ARM-based gaming machine, probably similar in size and form factor to mobile game machines like the Ain Loki, GPD XD Plus, and many more. The expensive hardware required for high-end local playback can allow the device to come in at an incredibly competitive price point.
Logitech and Tencent are the latest in a long line of companies that have tried to muscle on Nintendo’s dominance of dedicated portable gaming machines. After gaming competitors Sega and Sony dropped the Game Gear and PSP, Nvidia gave it a shot with its original Shield handheld, before focusing on tablets and then set-top boxes. “Gaming phones” such as the Asus ROG and Black Shark series are a growing niche, but they are moving very slowly outside the Asian market, where buyers have to use the phone as their primary or even the sole gaming platform. more likely to be seen as
Razer and Qualcomm teamed up earlier this year for a Snapdragon-powered portable game concept device (pictured above), but little seems to have come so far. While mobile gaming on Android and iOS remains an incredibly lucrative part of the game industry — the most profitable sector, in fact — stand-alone game machines built around mobile games have yet to enter the mainstream. In-between accessories like the Razer Kishi are as close as we’ve come.
Willis Lai / Foundry
Indeed, the biggest mobile gaming competitor to have hit the market since the Switch’s launch in 2017 is Valve’s Steam Deck, a device that’s bigger, more expensive, and that’s most of PC gaming as an already existing platform. Takes advantage of the major market. Valve’s PC-centric approach hits portable gaming from a whole new angle, and so will the Logitech G device. Both the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch are capable of streaming games (the latter does so for some titles that its ARM-based hardware can’t handle, such as the port). controlkingdom hearts 3, And Dying Light 2), but are still focusing heavily on games loaded and running on handheld hardware.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this Logitech G streaming device later this year.
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