← Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast
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- [00:00]
Tim Gettys
Hablas espanol spries to Joyce. Come do nosq. If you've heard that sound from Babbel.
- [00:05]
Greg Miller
Before, I bet you do.
- [00:06]
Tim Gettys
Babbel is the science backed language learning app that actually works with quick 10 minute lessons. Handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babbel.
- [00:13]
Paris Lily
Gets you on your way to speaking.
- [00:14]
Tim Gettys
A new language in just a few weeks with over 16 million subscriptions sold and a 20 day money back guarantee. Just start speaking another language with Babbel right now. Up to 55% off your Babbel subscription. @babbel.com Spotify podcast spelled B a B-B-E-L.com.
- [00:28]
Paris Lily
Spotify podcast rules and restrictions may apply.
- [00:30]
Mike
What is dedication?
- [00:32]
Tim Gettys
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him Dae Date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person.
- [00:48]
Mike
I want him to be able to.
- [00:49]
Tim Gettys
Sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job. That's daddication. Find out more@fatherhood.gov brought to you by.
- [00:56]
Mike
The U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council Foreign.
- [01:07]
Tim Gettys
What'S up and welcome back to the kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, June 16, 2025. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by the master of hype, Snowbike.
- [01:16]
Mike
What up, Tim?
- [01:17]
Tim Gettys
The big daddy himself, Greg Miller.
- [01:18]
Paris Lily
Hello, Tim.
- [01:19]
Tim Gettys
And joining us remotely from sunny San Diego, it's the best voice of video games, Paris Lily.
- [01:25]
Greg Miller
Hello, Tim.
- [01:26]
Tim Gettys
How you doing, Paris?
- [01:28]
Greg Miller
I'm doing fantastic, sir.
- [01:30]
Tim Gettys
You've been out there. You've been doing so much in the last couple weeks. Like we, I, Greg got to go down to sgf, but we all had to stay here. You were running around. We saw you everywhere, man. That was so cool to see.
- [01:40]
Greg Miller
Oh yeah, man, I, I've literally been around the world and back. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy, but finally I feel like I can take a mini break. But excited to be here. I, I always miss you guys.
- [01:51]
Tim Gettys
Me too. So this is going to be a very good one, everybody. Of course we are talking about a lot of what you're seeing on the desk. But what is that? You'll have to wait and see in just a second because this is the kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership. You can get it pretty much anywhere you are. Whether it's YouTube, Patreon, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can get the membership to get our shows ad free and a daily exclusive. Greg Way for a chance to be part of this show. Submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. So if you have any questions about handheld gaming in 2025 or suggestions please super chat them in. We are an 11 person business all about live talk shows. Games Daily covered the Imminence, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Nintendo Direct that I'm incredibly excited for.
- [02:45]
Paris Lily
Can you believe Paris is a 5 out of 10 excitement on this?
- [02:47]
Tim Gettys
I mean well that's fair.
- [02:49]
Paris Lily
Get out of here. What do you gotta get? What do you got against monkeys?
- [02:52]
Tim Gettys
All right, so anyways the 5 out.
- [02:53]
Greg Miller
Of 10 because grab me man.
- [02:55]
Tim Gettys
Because you don't care about Donkey Kong or. Or because you can.
- [02:59]
Greg Miller
I love Donkey Kong. So you know I went to the LA preview like you went to the New York one and I played it there and it just. Just didn't do it for me, man.
- [03:06]
Tim Gettys
I.
- [03:07]
Paris Lily
It's hard to say.
- [03:08]
Tim Gettys
I think so more so far me and you are the only people I've heard that aren't like, oh man, it was the best thing I ever played. I was pretty like I. We'll see.
- [03:17]
Paris Lily
I'm for it.
- [03:19]
Tim Gettys
If we don't. We don't even know what the team is. Assuming we know that it's Nintendo ead. Um, I. I'm hopeful but I'm waiting for this director to show me some more after this. Greg and Nick are torturing Joey on the kind of funny podcast. Is it just the three of you?
- [03:34]
Paris Lily
That's right.
- [03:35]
Tim Gettys
That's amazing. Oh my God.
- [03:37]
Paris Lily
I decided what I'm going to do. It's time for annual employee review.
- [03:40]
Tim Gettys
Oh, okay. Are you. Oh yeah, I'm reading this all wrong. Whatever. The stream is the start of Naughty Dog week. Come watch some Crash. It's going to be me and Barrett playing Crash Bandicoot. Can't wait for that. Been too many years since I played Crash Bad on stream. If you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg way is 14 minutes about if Doomsday will show up in James Gun's dcu. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays. We'll tell you all about that later. For now, let's start with the topic of the show. It's handheld gaming in 2025. Couple questions I posed to myself. I like that to try to like give context to the conversation and what we're even talking about. Because what is handheld gaming in 2025? I feel like back in the day it made a lot more sense. It was just, oh, it's a Game Boy, that's it, you know. But that was a long time ago. Since then, portable gaming. Handheld gaming has taken many different forms. So why would you want a handheld gaming device? The categories I came up with were modern PC gaming, modern console gaming, retro emulator gaming, modern retro emulator gaming, that I'm counting like PlayStation 3, Wii U, you know, where it's like it's retro but it's not old school Super Nintendo and all that stuff.
- [05:02]
Greg Miller
Right.
- [05:02]
Tim Gettys
Like it's stuff that hurts us to call retro, but it is. And then game streaming. So whether it's cloud streaming or remote play or things like that. Am I missing anything there? Those seem to be the big reasons you'd want a handheld gaming device.
- [05:17]
Paris Lily
I know this is going to get an eye roll, but I think it's worth the conversation. We are missing mobile gaming. We are missing an iPhone and iPad. I do think that there are still a lot of people who are playing a lot of games there. Whether they be I'm doing Resident Evil on my iPhone or I'm playing whatever.
- [05:32]
Tim Gettys
The new cookie clicker is, like app based gaming.
- [05:34]
Greg Miller
Then.
- [05:34]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, okay, yeah, fair. So key factors to consider within that are compatible game collection, slash storefronts. So for example, Nintendo Switch, you're locked to Nintendo Switch games and that's it. Whereas most of the devices, whether it's more portable emulation devices or things like the Ally or the Steam deck, you have choices of different stores, different operating systems to allow you to get into them, different workarounds. But that's the whole conversation there. Then it's is this for travel or is it for a second screen experience? Meaning is this something that you want to, to be portable? Because just because it's handheld doesn't mean portable necessarily. Or is this something that you want a second screen on your couch while watching TV or while someone else watches TV or whatever. Then the quality of the screen, you know, there's a lot of different screen tech these days, whether it is OLED displays or aiming for higher refresh rates. And there's different reasons to want one or the other of those things. Then portability overall in terms of if it's going to be a portable device, how portable is it? Because yes, the Steam Deck's portable, but it's a lot less portable than this guy, the Stream ui Brick. And then price of course is another major factor to keep in mind with all these things. I think the last one is versatility. Like are these devices able to be good enough at other categories even if they're not the best? And there is a better device for X, Y or Z, but this one's good enough at all of them that it's an easy recommendation to if you just want one thing, go with this, you know.
- [07:11]
Paris Lily
Sure.
- [07:12]
Tim Gettys
So with all that, any opening statements about the state of handheld gaming in 2025?
- [07:18]
Greg Miller
Paris Lilly I think Microsoft with Windows has an opportunity to really dominate that market for everything that you were just talking about. Windows is the dominant operating system. Windows allows you to have anti cheat so you can play games like Fortnite and Call of Duty. Windows allows you to have multiple storefronts, whether it be Xbox, Steam, gog, Epic, Ubisoft on, on down the line. Obviously what we got to see last week is them trying to iterate and have a true Windows handheld experience that's easy to use. Press the power button, you're into your games, you're able to play them, have the multiple stores. We talked about the emulation piece of this. Obviously Windows is very friendly with that as well. They're not there yet. Now I'm gonna be crystal clear on that. There's still work that they need to do to get there. I think right now clearly Nintendo with the Switch 2 kind of dominates the handheld market. We're seeing the sales numbers out there, I would say behind them what VAL has done with Steam os. But Linux, you know, has its limitations which is why I think Windows does have an opportunity if they can kind of shore up some of those so points that they have right now. But I'm excited for the future of handheld gaming because I do think there is a market there. I think every, everything that you listed out about it. The fact that I can play my AAA PC games on the go when I'm traveling, I can cloud stream them at high quality as I'm sitting on my couch, you know, through, through my, my internal network. Things like that excite me for the future of where handheld gaming is going to. We're almost there I think, but there's still work to be done.
- [09:05]
Tim Gettys
Mike, I actually don't know about you and handheld gaming at all. Like what are your thoughts on it in general? And let alone 2025.
- [09:11]
Mike
Yeah, I'm more the person on the fence about handheld gaming here, probably on this panel. I feel like I am surviving an onslaught of everybody having a handheld gaming device. Now we're announcing a new one that I should go purchase. I am just overwhelmed on the TikTok shop of all these different emulators that are trying to get sold for 70 to 100 plus dollars. And so for me, handheld gaming has kind of come really fast on these past couple of years where before it was clear, this is the Game Boy, I like the Game Boy. This is my Nintendo 3DS. I get that, right? I think the Nintendo Switch really nailed the handheld for me. After of course the PSP and Vita, which I loved and enjoyed. But the Switch nailed what a handheld to me is in this new generation should be.
- [09:58]
Tim Gettys
Right?
- [09:58]
Mike
It is a at home console and then it can be picked up and on the go for that versatility and that portability. And so for me now I look at my Switch, it's like, okay, well they nailed that. Like that is where I go to. But I am someone who plays in a lot of different ecosystems and I kind of want my games to come with me. And I've always had a dream of X, Y and Z. Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Steam, all coming with me somewhere. Right. And so now I'm a little overwhelmed by how much options there are and the worry that if I invest X amount of dollars into something, I'm going to be left behind or I'm going to miss out on something or it's going to become E waste. My favorite word, Tim Gettys. In three to five years where no, that's not viable anymore, we've moved past that. Right. As an Xbox fan, we've come hard off of the Xbox series S. And I know for me in Paris will tell you not many games were really held back by that, but there was way too many news stories of the Xbox series S is holding it all back. They can't make games for this. Oh, this game's not releasing there. And so I worry about handhelds being the same way of like, if I invest this now, this game won't run on it or this game runs so poorly on it it's not worth it. And so I'm a little more on the fence about that. I think portability as well is a fun conversation we'll have here throughout. But yeah, I'm more of the apprehensive of like I'm ready to commit but I don't know which one to do because there's too many.
- [11:22]
Tim Gettys
Greg Miller. Hi, Tim, how are you?
- [11:24]
Paris Lily
I'm great. How are you?
- [11:25]
Tim Gettys
What are your thoughts on handheld gaming in 2025?
- [11:27]
Paris Lily
What a time to be alive. You know, I think we're very lucky, and me in particular, since I'm a little bit older than most people. Not older than Paris. Come on, no one's that old. But the idea that, you know, I've talked at length about the fact that all the nerds like me grew up and kind of took over the world in some very bad ways, but in some great ways, right? In the way of like all these superhero movies we get and all this cool shit and how popular video games are and da da da. But the fact that handheld gaming is where it is in 2025 is so special to me as someone who's always loved handheld gaming, right? Game Boy was my first Nintendo anything. I was a Sega kid. And then I had to beg mom for that. She said, there's no way I'll ever spend $100 on a video game console. And then Aunt Del bought it for me and from there it was into game gear. And it's been on every other stretch as you go to PSP, DS, 3DS, etc. You don't have to go through all this, right? But especially when I came to IGN in 2007 and you'd sit there and review all these different versions of games and really find usually, and I'm talking about like, you know, cross platform tie, when they're trying to do like a tie in or a thing or a wrestling game or a sports game, find the handheld version to be so less than. You know what I mean? Not be able to. I'm not talking about exclusives or something like Elite Beat Agents or Luminesce or whatever, right? But like, you're getting into these games that were designed for the handheld of their choice and what they were, and that's good. But as we've seen this industry coalesce, right? And become, oh, man, games cost so much money, we can't afford to take chances. Handheld gaming as we knew it in 2007 could never exist like it does now. And rather than it go away, it really opened up to, hey, gamers want to be able to play their games everywhere. You know, I joke around obviously all the time about the vita and the PSP and, you know, they. I just blue. I BS'd blue sky, Tim, that, you know, Vita crawled so that all of these handhelds could run. But for real, like hats off to Nintendo. Thank you so much, Nintendo. With the Switch one going like, we are going to make this thing. It's the one Nintendo system. There isn't a handheld and a console anymore.
- [13:31]
Mike
You.
- [13:32]
Paris Lily
It's just one. And the fact that people ran to that for as underpowered as it was and were, like, I want this and that. PC manufacturers took notice, PlayStation took notice, Xbox took notice. So now we are, hey, let's solve these problems so you can get a good enough experience in a handheld form factor that you can somehow compliment your other devices. Like, I am so thrilled right now, where we're at, let alone where we're gonna be in six months, a year, two years, five years, ten years, when suddenly, like, this isn't even a conversation anymore. It's just all ubiquitous and it's, you know, streaming 4K, whatever the hell it is.
- [14:06]
Tim Gettys
I don't know, Tim, I'm right there with you. I mean, we are living in such a great time in terms of portable gaming devices. Handheld gaming devices on the PC and console side, like, I feel like because of how handheld devices are, they're. They're kind of an area in tech that cares about the tech of it, I think, more than most, because it has to have the hardware to be able to run the games, but also a screen to be able to display them, but also a controller to be able to have the inputs right. So the combination and ingenuity required for these devices, I think requires them to really, like, push things forward and come up with like, new standards that everyone can then learn from each other. And it reminds me a lot of thinking about just controllers and like, all right, there wasn't a D pad until there was. There wasn't an analog stick until there was. And then there becomes these kind of like, standards that are set of we need shoulder buttons, we need this many face buttons. And, you know, if a controller came out for a new system and it had 20 face buttons, guess what? They're not going to be used. Because games need to be made for every single device, so they have to be homogenized to a certain level. So because of that, I think we're at a great spot now with looking at even the devices at the desk, where there's more similarities than differences. And I think that overall we're in a great place that no matter what your needs are, you'll at least get a good enough version if you're willing to spend the money. And I think all of that is only going to get better and better over the next couple of years. But I think that we are firmly in a present where it's here, this is happening and it's not a. Oh man, this is gonna be so great in a couple years. It's gonna be. Oh, it's just gonna be better. And I really do think that we're at the point with handheld gaming that we were with the, I'll say, iPhone 10 when it finally went full screen, right? And it's just like ever since then it's like cool. The phone tech's being upgraded, but at the end of the day, the iPhone X is all you need, you know, and sure, an iPhone X in 2025 is maybe unacceptable, but like in terms of what it needs to do, it has all those functions. And I only use iPhone because I've only had iPhones. But Android as well, whatever the equivalent when it went full screen, must have been like the Samsung S freaking 12 or some shit.
- [16:18]
Paris Lily
But like the cookie cutter, cookie dough.
- [16:20]
Tim Gettys
Shut up. Whatever the hell it is. My point being, I feel like we're already at that point. The, we're at the convergence points. The smartphones hit a decade ago now because we're freaking crazy old. But I think handle devices on the small side are perfection and on the higher end side, I think with the help of cloud streaming are essentially at perfection. But without that, we're just a couple of years away from being in a perfection place. Having said that, the moment we get there, the hardware for consoles and PC is going to be higher anyway. So we're always going to be chasing that high to some extent.
- [16:54]
Paris Lily
100%.
- [16:55]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. I want to get into a bunch of specifics of what we use and our experience with things and if there's products that we don't like. Paris, what are your kind of. If not daily drivers like, what are the handheld devices you stand by?
- [17:10]
Greg Miller
Steam Deck is probably my number one handheld that I use. I just prefer through the hardware and obviously the user interface that SteamOS has. And I have enough of the games I like to play on my Steam library that it makes it pretty accessible for me after that would be the Switch. I mean clearly for the Nintendo games that would be able to play on that I do have and I never get these names right, but I have the. The rogue ally, the original one. Yeah, I actually dual boot that with. With SteamOS and Windows right now just to go back and forth. It is my least use because of the user interface of Windows. I'm just not a fan of it currently. Obviously they're working on that to Fix it as I already talked about. But Steam Deck would be my pr.
- [17:56]
Tim Gettys
Mike, what about you?
- [17:57]
Mike
Do you have any Steam Deck in the Switch? Of course. I go to where my collection of game catalog is, where I've spent the most money, where I want to be able to play those games anywhere. And so right now it is Steam with the Steam Deck and it is the Nintendo Switch. I am looking forward to this Xbox partnership with the Rog Ally to see if this is going to be for me. Because yeah, that's where my big base of game library is. And so I'm hoping for the best. But yeah, right now I enjoy the Steam Deck whenever I play it and then the Nintendo Switch.
- [18:26]
Tim Gettys
To Greg.
- [18:27]
Paris Lily
Hey, how are you, Tim? I'm good, yeah. I mean it's a toss up depending on what I'm reviewing or playing. If I'm playing something for funsies, it's usually going to be the Rog Ally X. It has, you know, I got it all set up in January and it has dominated my year in terms of what I play. It's made me an Xbox gamer thanks to Xbox game anywhere. Right. We're at that point right now that comes around, I'd say every year and a half. You know, it's kind of like the blood moon or whatever where I go, I should really be into no man's sky and I start a new thing and I do the new thing happens every year, every year and a half I really like.
- [19:05]
Tim Gettys
I.
- [19:05]
Paris Lily
And then eventually I'll, I'll play for, you know, 10 or 20 hours and then it's really gonna want me to do like a bunch of hey, go craft all this stuff. I'm like, I don't want to make factories or whatever and I'll stop. But this is the first time where I was like, wait a second, you know, I went to redownload on place and I was like, wait, open up the Xbox app on the Rog. There it is. On Game Pass. There it is. Xbox Game anywhere. Download it here, download on the exit home, be all set, right? And then If I'm doing PlayStation stuff, also review stuff, it's going to be on the portal. So right now, right, it's interesting because you figure it was all Rog in the run up to Switch, Switch drops, we play a bunch of that. And then of course, as Paris already said, we are Reviewing Death Stranding 2 on the beach right now. You can look for our review one week from today on the kind of funny gamescast.
- [19:48]
Mike
Wow.
- [19:48]
Paris Lily
Where Jerrica Hannah is flying herself out here to be on the panel and review it alongside us from JK Games. But you know, now that I'm doing the death stranding grind, I'm out playing my portals on every night at home, of which I have two. I have one for the office and one for home.
- [20:01]
Tim Gettys
Because I love the portals God damn much. Yeah, yeah.
- [20:05]
Paris Lily
So it really comes down to what I'm playing at that moment. Obviously with Switch 2 being so hot right now, I'm excited to get back to that after this. But again, now I got to do this no man's sky thing. You gotta go do it. They gotta do. And I play 300 hours.
- [20:22]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. I am very lucky that I'm in a position that I get to try out so many of these things. And also like anyone that's listened to us for a while knows, like I am obsessed with this type of tech and I care deeply about every factor that we mentioned. I care about. So while I am on a forever quest to find the one device to rule them all, I definitely learned that just doesn't exist. And when I care as much as I do about each of the verticals, I want the best for each vertical.
- [20:48]
Paris Lily
Right.
- [20:49]
Tim Gettys
So because of that, like I actually run a ton of different devices for different reasons and even sometimes for a specific reason. PlayStation comes to mind when I'm streaming a PlayStation game. It is a question for me of am I going to use the Portal or am I going to use my Steam Deck oled? And it comes down to do I for the game I'm playing, do I care more about the haptics and ergonomics of the Portal, which is perfect in my hands, or do I care more about the OLED screen that is just that much better than the Portal in addition to running cloud streaming, significantly better than the PlayStation Portal does when you get everything all tinkered in. But the other ones I want to give a shout out to for sure. Because of course the Nintendo Switch to that's the best single device. If you just want to keep things easy and you're a Nintendo fan, it's a no brainer. Yeah, you know, things are going to work and the things that are going to work are your Nintendo Nintendo games, both modern and go back to nso great ways to play at this point, a very sizable library of the vast majority of Nintendo's history you'd ever want to actually play. But that is not at this point something I could be like if it's your only gaming device, the Switch too, because we just don't know if the third party support is going to be what I expect it to be, but it's still a little too early for that. But on the handheld side, like the old school emulator side that I care a lot about, to me, the creme de la creme, it's the Retroid Pocket 5. This thing shaped like a Vita but bigger buttons, beautiful OLED screen, like one of the nicest screens I've ever seen. And this thing can go all the way up to like PS2 and all that easy PS3 and that sometimes hit or miss or whatever. But if you dial things in, you can get it going. But in addition to all that, it streams great. Like this could be a PlayStation portal replacement. Oh, interesting. Most devices can be as well. So I absolutely love this thing.
- [22:36]
Paris Lily
What is that using to play remote play? Is it doing the Chaiki like on.
- [22:41]
Tim Gettys
Steam or Jockey for deck, similar things. There's a thing called moonlight that you can use. Like there's a lot of just streaming platforms that are real dialed in because the people making these apps and programs are doing it for this specific reason. So it's like they're really tuning it in.
- [22:54]
Paris Lily
It's an interesting one where just the other day our friend Timor from Gamespot had put up a B.S. that's a blue sky Tim. He was out there BSing about how the remote play or the portals never worked for him. For remote play it's always this, it's always that, blah blah blah. And I have the complete inverse where for me on my deck when I was using my deck before the Rog and now with the Rog when I use Chaiki, which I can jockey, jockey I can. I never get a great connection out of it. I get a lot of artifacting. I just. And I don't think the visuals look as sharp as on my Portal, which is a weird one. And so it's just a flip where I feel like I've been burned enough that I'm always going to stick to hang out with the PlayStation device.
- [23:29]
Tim Gettys
It very much is an iPhone versus Android thing. The place is Portal. It does just work once you set it up. I mean in its very specific in your house it just works. You can take it farther if you want to, but on the other side, the more time you spend tinkering and dialing in on all the specific like Internet data stuff, it's a much better experience. But you have to do that stuff and it does require a lot more bullshit. Like honestly. But my favorite thing, my use case for this one is Being in the bed, like, it's just so small. Being able to remote play my systems.
- [24:00]
Paris Lily
It'S just small things in the bed.
- [24:02]
Tim Gettys
I am. That's true.
- [24:03]
Mike
I got him.
- [24:05]
Tim Gettys
Paris, I saw you ready to jump in there for. For something.
- [24:09]
Greg Miller
Oh, no, I was just gonna. I forgot to mention the portal, what you guys were talking about. I use a portal, obviously, as well for PlayStation games when I'm just sitting out on the couch and playing whatever. It's. It's a great device. Ironically enough. I had a lot of issues when it originally came out with the WI Fi. It was very spotty in my house. But ever since they did that update last year, it's been great. Been pretty flawless.
- [24:31]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. So I want to kind of go through different categories and I kind of came up with my list of what I think based on extensive experience with these things, are some things I would recommend. But I definitely want you guys to jump in and if you don't agree with what I'm saying or just add to it.
- [24:47]
Paris Lily
Can I jump in already?
- [24:48]
Tim Gettys
Yeah.
- [24:48]
Paris Lily
So you have so many retro. Retro. Retro devices like Retroids. How often are you using those?
- [24:55]
Tim Gettys
Well, for different reasons, all the time. So like I'm saying, like the. The Retro Pocket 5 I use all the time as a streaming device so that this goes back to the different use cases. And like, is it the best for streaming? It's not, but it works great. And. And I'm only saying it's not. It's still like, I'd say eight out of ten. Great. It's just. It's not as amazing as when the portal is fully working or when the steam deck OLEDs, like, dialed the hell in.
- [25:20]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [25:20]
Tim Gettys
But it's for the portability, like having this thing, like being able to lay down and it never. There's no fatigue at all.
- [25:25]
Paris Lily
Yeah. So light.
- [25:26]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. I use this and it's so light.
- [25:28]
Mike
I mean, like, so what is this? Is this like, tick tock shop where I'm getting hit with, like, things that are clearly like the Soldier Boy console, where it's like, clearly fake? We've just stolen all these games. Where does this kind of fall in my handheld, like, legitimacy?
- [25:45]
Tim Gettys
So, yes, I had the handheld emulator devices at the end of this. We can start there because I do think really nice. I think that there's like the. The least necessary to say here because in my opinion, I'm right there with you. There's way too much noise out there. And there will always be. Yeah. These are companies that are going to iterate every single Year, maybe multiple times. They're having devices for so many use cases. If you want to screen like DS type emulation, if you want clamshell, if you want horizontal, if you want vertical. There's just so many factors at play. There are a couple different hardware manufacturers that I would say have like kind of risen to the top. Yeah, there's. There's Odin, there's a Neo, there's like just a couple different ones. But I personally really, really, really love Retroid when it comes to the higher end devices. So.
- [26:31]
Mike
So how I get in the games on this?
- [26:34]
Tim Gettys
Allegedly.
- [26:35]
Mike
Okay.
- [26:37]
Tim Gettys
No, but that's what this is like. Yeah. What I'm talking about here. It's a very alleged situation. Okay. But what's interesting about that is you just get the SD card, you can get your games, you put them on and it's very, very simple to set up. You watch a YouTube video, 10 minutes, next thing you know, you're playing games. And it's great. Does require tinkering. It is Android.
- [26:57]
Paris Lily
I went in there like a child and frozen. I'm sorry. Just trying to start a. Any game.
- [27:01]
Tim Gettys
But again, I use this one mainly for the. The streaming and stuff.
- [27:04]
Paris Lily
But.
- [27:05]
Tim Gettys
But The Retroid Pocket 5, it's 220. 220. Oh, wow. This. Well, I would say it's on the higher end.
- [27:11]
Mike
I would say that's.
- [27:12]
Tim Gettys
This is on the higher end. But you do get the quality.
- [27:14]
Paris Lily
But I was going to say the feeling. Oh, it's amazing.
- [27:16]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. The thing is, Andy's not here. I wish he was, because in addition to the Retro Pocket 5, which I would highly recommend at this level, if you're this interested in it, is the retro pocket flip 2.
- [27:27]
Paris Lily
He's 1. Playing Vagrant Story on it. Exactly.
- [27:30]
Tim Gettys
Kevin, if you could bring that one up, I'd say that that's like the equivalent system to this. It's $10 more, but it has a clamshell design that's very appealing to a lot of handheld games.
- [27:39]
Paris Lily
He's got the purple gamecube one right now this.
- [27:41]
Mike
Is this what I'm talking about, the portability I like. Right. Because like right now, I bet you didn't know that. In my pocket.
- [27:47]
Paris Lily
Oh, my God.
- [27:47]
Mike
This guy's got something I've been holding on to. Just Game Boys.
- [27:50]
Tim Gettys
I love it.
- [27:51]
Mike
So of course I have your Vita.
- [27:54]
Paris Lily
Yeah. You know, right.
- [27:55]
Mike
Look at how. Look at how portable this is. Right. We've lost the world where I can just slide this in my pocket, go to somebody's house, play it on the low Key, you know what I mean? Now all of a sudden Greg's got bags on bags for this.
- [28:09]
Tim Gettys
So many bags.
- [28:10]
Mike
But yeah, I like the portability, Tim. But I also am someone who fumbles the bag when it comes to going on to online websites and starting to download things. Allegedly.
- [28:19]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. Okay, well, I mean, allegedly, I know some guys that can help you. But the thing about this though is people saying that yeah, this goes up to about the PS2. It can like flawlessly if not actually definitely better run at like 4 times resolution. PS2 games.
- [28:33]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [28:34]
Tim Gettys
Which is super nice. And the same goes for the Flip 2. But again, I'd say these are by far on the more premium side. Very unnecessary. But for personal experience, I would recommend it. If you want something that's very entry level and you're. You're inundated with the Tick Tock shop, like this looks like soldier boy, what's going on? The thing is, it is, but it's the right thing. Like they're, they have hit a point that like there are so many companies that you're seeing that like, yeah, for.
- [29:00]
Mike
74 they got a game catalog on this thing that'll be sent to my.
- [29:04]
Tim Gettys
Door tomorrow if you are interested in this. But you're like, I don't know that I really want to commit. The best advice I can give you is the Miyoo mini V4.
- [29:12]
Mike
Okay.
- [29:12]
Tim Gettys
This is one you're going to see on Tick Tock every goddamn day for $54. You get this guy. It's the cutest little thing. Are you kidding me? It's so, so this is like. It's literally uncomfortable for me because my hands are a little bigger. But it is as portable as you could possibly get. Solves all the problems that you just had. Like this is the type of thing you just throw into your bag and just have it with you at all times. To be able to just play some games when you're waiting in line or whatever it is this a little small.
- [29:40]
Mike
It hurts my hand very.
- [29:41]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, exactly. But I'm saying this is like the, the budget. I'm not sure I want to this to be my entire personality but like I'm interested in dabbling. What's cool about this is you buy this from AliExpress. It comes with an SD card filled with games.
- [29:52]
Paris Lily
Okay.
- [29:53]
Tim Gettys
I don't, it's. I don't want to say I don't understand the legality. I do. It's not.
- [29:56]
Mike
But someone going to be knocking on my door, Tim.
- [29:59]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, yeah, it's. And so it's a weird experience because you'll get this SD card with thousands of games and most of them are just copies of each other or whatever. And if you're down to just sift through the. You'll be able to play Mario 1, 2 and 3. You know what I mean? Like they're all there on these things.
- [30:12]
Paris Lily
I can do that on my graphing calculator.
- [30:15]
Tim Gettys
But. But anyway, I love Guy just for it's like sheer entry level. But if you're more interested, if you're like, I don't need to go super high end. I don't need it to be like the most modern thing, game streaming and all that. I just want to play legit retro games. I could not recommend this Guy anymore. The Trim UI brick this is $85, so a little more expensive than the Miu, but it's so much bigger to be like the perfect level of it. Still incredibly small and portable. Nicest screen I've ever seen for this type of system. And the buttons feel great. Like it's. And also the colors and stuff. This is a very premium product for its price. 85 bucks. And yeah, it's, it's more of a traditional Game Boy style. Very clean and I love it.
- [30:56]
Mike
Okay. Yeah, I like the look of that.
- [30:58]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, yeah. So those are the little old school emulator devices. I will also say to end this bit, if you have a Steam deck or have interest in the modern gaming side of this conversation, you could just have a Steam deck or a Rog ally and accomplish all of this. So if you're trying to minimize purchases or minimize anything, you do not need all of the things, of course. But if you do value that sheer portability, form factor, all of that, like, there are definitely great reasons to be interested in these things. And while there are a bazillion of them out there, there are only a handful of them that are really, really worth looking into. And I think that these are some great starting points there. I want to get more into less me talking and more this is great. The other devices, good. But let's do that after a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Shady Rays. Get ready for the season ahead with quality shades built to last. Our friends at Shady Rays have you covered with premium polarized shades that won't break the bank. Shady Rays is an independent sunglasses company offering a world class product rated five stars by over 300,000 people. They have hundreds of options to choose from, so you're bound to find the perfect pair to match your style. If you don't love your shades, exchange them for a new pair or simply return worry free within 30 days. There's no risk. When you shop, their team are always there to have your back with personal and fast support. Y' all know I've been outside a lot playing Pokemon Go and it's such a great experience wearing Shady Rays when I'm out and about looking dope. Exclusively for you. Shady Rays is giving out their best deal. Head to shadyrays.com and use code funny for 35 off polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades rated 5 stars by over 300000 people. Again go to shadyrays.com use code funny to get 35 off polarized sunglasses. So now we're back. Let's talk about handheld gaming PCs. Yeah Greg, yeah you the the top level I would say is there are many players in this game whether it's the the Legion Go and its iterations, the the, the Roger Allies, the Steam Deck. Like there are definitely many players in the game but I would say after the experience that I've had with all of them it really kind of comes down to two leading ones currently and that is the high end which is the Rog Ally X coming in at $900. There it is. Or the Steam Deck OLED that comes in at 550 or $650. But the note there is I would recommend the cheaper one. Oh the difference there is a. The amount of storage space you have. You can buy a cheaper SD card to solve that immediately. But the other difference is the more expensive one has an anti glare screen and this does come down to preference. But me and the majority of people that I know prefer the cheaper one because the anti glare lessens the brightness of the OLED screen. So I think it's a better screen experience with the cheaper one. Interesting. So that's, that's good to know. But then the one to keep your eye on is the Xbox Ally X. We don't have pricing information on that. We are going to expect that the, the higher quality one which is the one I would go for is going to be about 900800 if we're lucky. But I do want to hear your thoughts really on your experience with the the Ally X.
- [34:23]
Paris Lily
Sure. Yeah. I couldn't be more into it which is definitely the opposite of what I thought. As everybody knows I am allergic to PC gaming usually because of the minor complications that come along of a driver or DirectX or etc etc etc. So when Steam Deck originally got announced you know, and finally went live for everybody to buy. I went and pre ordered right away and it took forever to get one. But it seemed like the perfect device for me because it was, hey, it's just this Steam OS interface. You're not getting into Windows unless you want to go do that. You can just use this as a Vita game machine, whatever. And I did and I had my Steam Deck and I enjoyed it quite a bit. But the problem I found with it was that it just was Steam and Steam is not a platform I have history with, nor is it one that I use outside of the machine. So then I started talking on shows and bumping my gums about the fact that what I really would like is the ability to throw it up there and I don't want to hook up a PC because then I'd be back into my PC problems. And as I would complain about this, so many people are like Greg, what you're describing is the Rog Ally X or Rog Ally. Right. And so I looked into that and I had hit them up years ago actually about getting me and Bless review units for just the original Ally when it launched. But as lo and behold as all this started, they hit me back up and were like, hey, sorry we missed this, we would be down, we'll send you in Bless Ally X's. And so when I jumped into Ally X I had heard so many people have the problem of ah, it's it can do more and it can run Xbox and it can run all the different launchers but it's Windows which I don't like. And I was like, well again I hate PC gaming and stuff to that effect. Yeah. As Paris said earlier, I'm just raising my hand.
- [36:01]
Greg Miller
Yeah.
- [36:02]
Paris Lily
And so I was very much prepared to turn on the rag Ally have it be comparable enough to Steam Deck that I was like okay, cool, I'll stick with Steam. And it's been the exact opposite where for me with the Ally X like the touch controls on it I feel are better in terms of a mouse movement and double click. I guess it's more natural than I feel my Steam Deck touchscreen ever was. It seemed like for me with trying to get into Windowsy parts of it, even when I booted into Windowsy mode and then have to move around, I connect the mouse and I connect the keyboard so I can go in and do whatever allegedly thing I need.
- [36:33]
Tim Gettys
I think the big thing for you there and correct me if I'm wrong, but it is the fact that it's Linux and it's not Windows. So it's, I think less the touchscreen and it's just more.
- [36:41]
Paris Lily
I don't mean to touch. Exactly.
- [36:43]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, it is. It is Linux just different enough that it feels uncanny. Valley Windows.
- [36:47]
Paris Lily
Yes, exactly. And so like it just wasn't giving me the experience I wanted where as soon as I got this and swiped up and put in my codes and went in like, I was like, holy shit, this works so well again to, you know, boot into my rag and go in there and have it just be. All my desktop is just game icons from Steam. Sure. From the Xbox app on PC, from my Battle Net things. It's like all my games are there. Granted, it's a Windows, you know, interface, which I'm looking forward to. What I got to play, what Paris got to play down at SGF when we used the Xbox Ally X. Right. And having that streamlined Xbox interface to it. But the performance is better than my Steam deck. The ability for Xbox game anywhere to send these codes back and forth. So it is that my Expedition 33 saves there blueprints is there. I'm playing a vowed. It's there Oblivion drops and I'm playing it on both places. And again, yeah, there's performance sacrifices, of course, but it's good enough on the little screen to then when I get to the big screen, keep it going. Right. That's. That's what I want. Let alone again how good it is at remote playing the Xbox when I do want to jump in there and when I was tinkering with outer worlds or when I was doing something with Starfield and to come off of, you know, the Xbox presentation we just had. Even if I wasn't all in to find out what the Ally X will be. These games are games. Everything we saw is game anywhere. So it'll be the exact same situation here of having this. Like, I'm so happy with this device that yeah, like I said, it's eclipsed. It's my most played platform this year for sure.
- [38:16]
Tim Gettys
Yeah.
- [38:17]
Greg Miller
Paris, I am the opposite of Greg. Whereas I don't like the Windows interface. Like, I even saw someone in the chat bring up Armory crate. Yes, it is there. And you can access multiple stores and do all of that. I don't know if you remember years ago we even did a review on xcast of the original Rogue Ally. And while I love the fact that that gets me access to Xbox, the Xbox Store, game pass, things like that, the UI just wasn't what I wanted in comparison to what essentially is big picture mode that you get on on Steam os. That has just been my preference. I'm. I'm with you Tim. That I actually prefer Steam Deck oled. That that is my preferred handheld device. I just like it. I like the interface. I get my access to those games. But the limitation to it is I can only play my Steam games on it. Whereas what Greg is talking about, I now have access to multiple digital stores on the Rogue Ally and Ally X and all the different iterations of it. Whereas I can play Steam if I so choose. I can play my Xbox games Battle Net on down the line which is what I talked about at the top. That's why I think what I got hands on with last week shows the potential of what the Windows OS can be on these handhelds whereas the UI is more intuitive. I don't have to tinker around. I'm just in that experience. I can have access to all my digital stores in one place. I want that. That's what I want. I was encouraged by what we saw last week by that. But to the point that, that I was making before, they still got some work to do. They know that obviously and you know they're still iterating on it. But as we sit here today, like you said, you're, you're Linux averse in, in a way I, maybe I'm just used to or whatever. I prefer it. I just prefer it right now. I just think it's the more user friendly interface to be able to play my games. I feel like I, I turn it on, I'm instantly into playing my games. Whereas on the Rog Ally. Yes there are instances where you just turn it on and I can jump in and play games but I also feel like there's some additional hoops that you have to jump through. Updates come in. It's forced me to the desktop. It's not as intuitive. I can you just use the joysticks and the buttons to completely navigate through everything. Whereas obviously that's what Microsoft is working on now to fix that. So, so we don't have to worry about that anymore. But we'll obviously have to wait to see one once the, the, the rogue Xbox Ally X. By the way, why are they not calling the white one the Ally S? It was right there.
- [40:52]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, that's. Honestly that is like such a good point that like. Yes, I don't.
- [40:56]
Paris Lily
Do you think the S has a good. I think it's got goodwill behind it. I think it's easier to be like it's the Ally X and we already have the allies so you a degree and also only people are going to talk. It's more bewildering I think of like having so many people I saw were like, oh man, the white one looks dope. I'm like, it's the weaker one. Like you're not going to actually probably want to get that one.
- [41:14]
Tim Gettys
You're definitely.
- [41:15]
Paris Lily
Exactly. So it's that idea of it.
- [41:17]
Tim Gettys
Oh man.
- [41:17]
Greg Miller
But to the point, I do feel like Asus makes great hardware. I, I, I like the, the I have the original Ally and obviously you have the Ally X, which I know improved on it even more and what we got to hold. Putting those grips on that new one makes a world of difference as far as comfort goes. So I am very excited to see what they'll eventually get to this holiday with the OS paired with this hardware. So I'm definitely excited to check it out and review it potentially or whatever. But like I said before, I think Windows has a grand opportunity staring them in the face right now if they can get this right from a UI standpoint, obviously we know this thing is not going to be cheap from a, from a price standpoint, but the fact that I can get all my PC digital stores on one device would give it an advantage over the Steam Deck, in my personal opinion.
- [42:06]
Paris Lily
And get them in easily. Right. Because obviously you can jump the hoops and make it happen. I know I won't save you comments that'll come out on that one. Yeah, that's all interesting. I think the other wrinkle that you and me heard about Paris and Saw, but it's such a controlled test of beta stuff basically for the Xbox Ally X. We keep talking about the interface and okay, it's this version of Windows, but it is this idea that they keep saying right of booting straight into this is keeping a bunch of Windows bullshit offline so they're not using up the memory, not using up the CPU doing it. I'm very excited to see what that brings in terms of battery consumption, power, what the games look like, you know, being able to use those resources in a way that isn't me just having a portable PC in my hands.
- [42:47]
Tim Gettys
And that to me is the most important thing that I'm looking forward to. Like I do not currently own Ally, but I have had pretty good experience with it, a good time experience with it, at least to be able to say this, but I have a lot of experience with the Steam Deck OLED and just starting and ending here. OLED to me is such a differentiating factor that I will 9 out of 10 times, choose the OLED device over an even more powerful device or an even better device or whatever. Just because I care that much about how I perceive the quality of that screen. Having said that, it's undeniable that the Rog Ally X is more powerful and can run games better than the Steam Deck. The problem is at this point the Steam Deck is more optimized and it the Steam system it uses is more optimized to play games. So at the end of the day, the experience overall needs to be improved for that multi hundred dollar difference to I think be something that I would recommend over the Steam Deck. Especially when we're talking about the OLED screen as well. But then there's the thing about resolution. The resolution of that screen is better. And that is another thing of like do you want that though when we're talking about a system that needs a battery and needs to be able to power all that. So I feel like right now when it comes to where we're at with the Ally and where we're at with the Steam Deck, OLED specifically is what I'm talking about. I feel like I love my Steam Deck oled. I really like the Ally, but I'm not in love with either. I really feel like there is like a perfect storm that we're getting closer to. Unfortunately it will not be the Xbox Ally X because that's also not oled and I understand why. But I do think that at the very least we are seeing a step where Windows getting its big picture mode that they're they're doing already. I'm happy that's happening because I feel like we are steps away from that experience actually being what it needs to be. But not having all the Windows things run in the background. That is the type of steps that we need to start taking. Like Paris was saying the anti cheat and having everything in one place like Xbox and Windows, if they take it as seriously as I hope that they are, really is positioned to take over a much, much bigger slice of the market share than they they previously have. But it's going to require commitment to it and it seems like they're doing that. But the big difference to me is like we look at this and handheld gaming console. It's like That's Nintendo Switch 2, it's a gaming console that's handheld. We need to stop thinking about the Xbox and the Rog Ally as a portable Xbox. It's a portable Xbox PC. And I feel like that until, until they and this is a problem of just the marketing, there's so many brands with Xbox and Rog as well. So it's like extra branding on branding until there can just be one system where Xbox console games are just playable on PC via emulation or something. We need to just start thinking about this as Xbox PC handheld. And I think that's going to be a tough sell for them. But once they get over that hurdle, it's theirs to win.
- [45:46]
Paris Lily
So stick with me for annoying conversation. Do you think that's what they're building to now rather than us sit here and obviously go through the hundreds of thousands of games that aren't play anywhere? And aren't this that conference at SGF where they showed both the Ally X and we're like, hey, every one of these games is starting. It says Xbox Game anywhere to me. Really strikes the chord that in a very markety, whatever way. But like to them it seems like what they're about to launch with the Ally X is a, for lack of a better term, new console. It is a new sku. But it's going to be supported in like this has a launch lineup in quotes of games we just announced, let alone how many games you might not think about backwards are Xbox Gaming. We're like no Man's sky, like I'm talking about or Avowed or Elder Scrolls. Right. You know, I'm talking about like there's. There are so many. There are glaring omissions as I found out the hard way. But like, I do wonder if we're especially for the. The amount of people are going to come in here and already know what this is and know what they're buying. We're talking then about like mainstream gamers to a degree. And are they even Xbox gamers? And then would they be coming in and playing whatever really specific old RPG and not even old, but you know what I mean?
- [46:58]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, I mean I think the answer is yes. Like they will. And I. Because like that's the thing when you. When this is an Xbox is their entire thing. But the reality is this is an Xbox PC. Like I'm with you. That this is just their new standard and it's good and it's awesome and I want this all to work and I, I believe in it. But the problem is there is a difference between Xbox console and every. Everything else that's an Xbox and you can't kind of market that this is an Xbox if there's an asterisk to that that. Well, technically it's not the actual main thing that people think of, of hey, You're. My Xbox is backwards compatible. It has my entire library. It has all the stuff. This is an Xbox. Well, it doesn't have all those things. And it's like, that's the problem when I'm talking to my friend Curran trying, who loves Xbox, Halo's one of his favorite franchises. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, Xbox is the easiest thing to jump into now. Pretty much you. Any device, you don't even need to buy something, buy a controller and you're going to be fine. And then he starts asking me questions and I'm like, well, not this and not that. And it's like the moment you have to do that, he's like, all right, well, it's like not an Xbox then. And again, getting there.
- [47:59]
Paris Lily
Yeah, but what about when he's buying that handheld for the new Halo and that's future proof. And then when you. When he goes into this OS and he goes to the old Halo and the button goes from play to stream, is he going to pay? I mean, granted the stream quality sucks. Maybe then it's a different conversation. There's the wrinkles to it, right? A remote play to your Xbox and all this. Like, it's. It strikes me as this is a conversation somebody was having on games daily. Someone in this room. Maybe it was Blessing, maybe it was Raj, maybe it was Andy. But there was this conversation of how oftentimes we all think up these hypothetical situations of, but it'll be a mom in the Walmart line. She won't know the difference between switch one and two. And we really make a mountain out of a molehill for something that might not happen. Like, I don't know if this is it, but I think we're looking at a $900 handheld Xbox. I think you would do enough research before you pull the trigger.
- [48:49]
Tim Gettys
And while that's true, yeah, go for a pair.
- [48:52]
Greg Miller
I just. I dying to jump in on this, please. I don't think we're making a mountain out of a molehill, because the problem is third party in this sense, like I said it on our previous show, but they need to do a better job of messaging this thing throughout the summer leading up to the launch because there is some confusion about is this an Xbox Cons, is this an Xbox that can play all my console games, or is this an Xbox that can just play the PC games? Games. And we know this is. This is playing your PC games or anything that's quote unquote, play anywhere enabled, but there is the layer to this of your legacy console. Games that are third party more so than first party because I think for the most part they've done a pretty good job of getting their first party games to be playable, you know, on the PC side of things. And obviously we know moving forward everything will be first party, but what about third party? So, you know, it seems to me their next gen strategy is going to be that we're gonna bring all of that stuff via some kind of emulation or whatever to whatever their next gen console is. I don't think they're gonna leave the old games behind, but to the ma, you know, the mom that goes out and buys this thing this November, let's say, I think they do need to make sure that the messaging is clear that not all of your Xbox digital library is going to be playable on this. So yeah, I, I do think that's an issue for them because if you just watch that trailer during the showcase, it implies that you can play everything on it and it's just simply not the truth. So I do think they need to talk about this more. I do think they need to have a clear distinction of these are PC games, these are Xbox Play Anywhere games. If it is not play anywhere enabled, you can not natively play it on this device. You potentially could cloud stream it. Obviously if you got game pass or whatever they're, you know, requirement that, that you would need for that. But it's not 100% console games and especially third party games where I think is the biggest gap that they're going to have moving forward with this.
- [50:59]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, I would say it's less the mountain out of a molehill of the, the moms, the general consumers. I'm thinking about it more from the perspective of wanting to believe in Xbox's business strategy. And I feel like currently where I'm looking at it, there's so many wins and successes, but there's just so many things that they're just tied down to because of choices they made that I feel like what they're building with this Xbox interface, os, whatever you want to call it, let's just call it Xbox OS for this conversation.
- [51:26]
Paris Lily
Sure.
- [51:26]
Tim Gettys
Xbox OS coming to the Ally X and eventually hopefully coming to PCs like Windows Gaming Devices and having that be a much better experience than the current Xbox app is, but then having an identical OS on the Xbox console, that needs to be the goal. That has to be where we're at. And I think that the easiest thing is, oh, that's what next gen will be, where the console more than ever literally is just a PC that's in your living room with that boot up big picture mode, whatever it is. But the question is, is there a way for them to do that on Series X? Is there a way for them to get that going sooner? Because if they solve that problem and can figure out a way with Back Compat and all that stuff to have this be a non issue. Because it is now all the PC side of things, even if it is the console box itself. That has to be the goal. It's just, I think we're a little too far in now to reverse decisions made and to reverse the fact that the hardware is the hardware. It's out there now. And I just don't know if that's going to be possible. Am I on anything there, Paris?
- [52:29]
Greg Miller
No, I think you're, you're, you're nailing it as far as that goes. Because, I mean, I don't know what conversations you had, Greg, during there, but the few engineers that I got a chance to talk to after we went hands on, you know, they aren't explicitly saying backwards compatibility and all this, but it is heavily implied. This is, they clearly need to figure that out with this new strategy. Obviously, Phil Spencer himself, even when he had the interview last week as well on the Xbox podcast, talked about how this is the most integrated the Xbox team and the Windows team has ever been in the history of Microsoft. So clearly, and I mean, obviously Sarah Bond is leading this forward compatibility team and all that. So you're, if you start putting all the puzzle pieces together, they understand that they got to bring these games forward with this new strategy. You can't say this is an Xbox, but only 30% of your games are playable on the device. It needs to be 90 percentile. You know, if anything moving forward, if your new strategy is we don't care what device you use to play our games, then I need to be able to play my entire digital library or the vast majority of my digital library on whatever device I is. And cloud streaming is a band aid for that. It has to be native moving forward if this is what you're trying to accomplish. So. Excuse me. Yeah, I think you, you are on to something. And maybe they're being a little more aggressive right now with the marketing because obvious they got a new device coming out. But this is also why I say be crystal clear in your messaging on what it is today versus where you're trying to get it tomorrow.
- [54:06]
Paris Lily
Yeah, I think that yes, this is clearly the goal for next gen, whatever the Xbox is, to be able to Play everything natively, whether emulation or ever. I think, yeah, to your point, I don't. I think the genie's out of the bottle on that. I just feel like be crystal clear on your messaging, of course. And I understand that we're gonna say, well, it says this is an Xbox. I feel like you can never get your entire messaging in one statement. I do feel like the direct. And when they ran through it was very clear like this is your Xbox because it's native, it's streaming and it's going to be cloud. Like we have all these things in there at options. Even when Mike had the interface up a second ago. Right. Which is the same interface we have on the handheld. Right where it is, here's your home, the games are your home, then the game pass, your library, cloud gaming like, like that's really this thing they're trying to get you into right now where again, throw the mom out of it. I think if current for some reason heard that it was an Xbox and pulled the trigger on 800 and got it. I still think there he's gonna maybe do a Google search or something. But I still think it would be easy enough to differentiate of like, oh, oh, okay, that sucks. But whatever.
- [55:12]
Tim Gettys
The differentiating is one thing, but I mean it sucks not so much the like, oh, we gotta power through. We do gotta power through. I. I'm there there. But it, yeah, I feel like it is more just like a. It all just comes back to the fact that there is Xbox and there's Xbox for PC and we know that, but that's the thing that they need to be clear about. And it's. I think at this point is impossible for them to be clear about when there's also Xbox game pass and it's multiple forms and Xbox play anywhere and like Xcloud and all these systems that if you know what they mean and how they function with each other, it all makes sense. When you hear this is an Xbox and Xbox play anywhere, you expect it's just going to work. And then when you're like, oh, well it's just gonna work. But unless it's this, this, this or this, it's like that's not. That sucks right? When on the Steam side it just works because it's Steam and it's dialed in there. So like again, I'm just saying this of like the dream is there and I do think that we are marching towards it. Like clearly Xbox wants that to be the case. But to Paris's point, he's made a couple Times like the Windows gaming side of things has never had to take itself that seriously. Especially combined with Xbox. They them collaborating closer than ever is the best news possible. Like they gotta figure this shit out or else it's always gonna feel like it's divided. There's Microsoft Windows Gaming and then there's Xbox and that can't be the case. Xbox has to be the definitive best way to play the games for most people.
- [56:35]
Mike
Yeah. Nothing more demoralizing than turning on my Steam Deck and being not Steam Deck compatible. Right. And so on the Xbox side where I want everything to just come with me and be playable. Yeah, I, I don't want to keep asking questions or seeing my favorite titles.
- [56:48]
Tim Gettys
Not on that list. Moving on from the actual dedicated handheld gaming PCs, we got game streaming devices. There are things like the Logitech G cloud, which Paris, I, I. You've used that, right?
- [57:03]
Greg Miller
Yeah, I've used it before.
- [57:04]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. It's a nice device. I wouldn't recommend it just because there are so many other devices similarly priced or higher price that I'm like, if you're into cloud streaming, I would just get that upgrade.
- [57:14]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [57:15]
Tim Gettys
Because I think it's at like $300, which I think is a little high for a system with a display of that quality and all of that. But the PlayStation Portal I think is actually a very easy recommendation for PS5 gamers that aren't looking for something that is portable, like in a travel perspective, but just wanting something for the couch. It's an excellent machine. You can get it refurbished for like, like $120 fairly often. And yeah, it has all of the the pros of a dualsense controller. It has a beautiful screen that's not OLED but similar to the Switch 2. It's a very nice screen that I won't complain about. I just won't give it the utmost props. It works great and the battery's awesome because you are just streaming. But yeah, I think that this is a, a very worthwhile device that even though I have quote unquote better devices to stream from with the Stream Deck oled, I oftentimes find myself reaching for the portal.
- [58:11]
Mike
This one has the most comfortable handles that I like. I like the form factor. This one, this one reminds me of playing a PlayStation with the screen in the middle.
- [58:20]
Tim Gettys
I love this.
- [58:20]
Mike
I am someone who loved that Switch fix where it was, hey, just grab a controller, we're gonna clip it on there and you're going to be playing. I'll always be, hey, give me the controller. First and then the screen on whatever I need to play with. And so this is like the closest out of all the handhelds that we've had in the office where I go, oh man, this is like the form factor I want here.
- [58:40]
Paris Lily
Yeah. I mean I love the Portal, obviously. Shocking no one for as much as I've talked about it and as much as I use it. But yeah, like I. The downsides to the portal, right, are this stupid ass decision to only allow the pulse headsets to work with it. In terms of wireless, why can't you just do Bluetooth?
- [58:55]
Tim Gettys
What do we.
- [58:56]
Paris Lily
Why PlayStation? Why would you go and get in the way of this? Answer being, of course they know that only enthusiasts will buy it and they'll probably buy the extra headset as well. Sure, I could plug in headphones, but who's got a headphone cable in 2025? Not me. I got AirPods in my pocket at any point in time. Let's just roll with it.
- [59:10]
Tim Gettys
AirPods should work with this a thousand percent.
- [59:12]
Paris Lily
Yeah, but other than that. Yeah, like again, I know this is always a back and forth. Mileage will vary. Like my Internet in my house is great, my Internet in the office is great. I've never had, I rarely have had a problem. Sometimes, you know, we got the. I got the Internet arrow in the bedroom, right. And sometimes Jen will hang something in front of me. I gotta move that out of the way to get a better connection, but that's about it, you know what I mean? Like I love the goddamn thing, it's great. And again, I think even if you take my raw consumption out, I think the majority of the time I'm usually playing something on a PlayStation 5 unless it's review and I'm really locked in trying to like make sure I'm seeing it all right. I'm playing on the portal just to get it done, have some fun, get up there on the couch, you know, catch it in bed, go to bed.
- [59:53]
Tim Gettys
Love the Portal. Highly recommend it. One downside is it is obviously exclusive to PLAYST ecosystem. Like you can only play PS5, of course, backwards compatible cloud games or whatever on it. So you are locked there. But I think an upside, it is just PlayStation. So it is dedicated, it is just going to work. You're not, you don't need to tinker with anything. It's just going to play your games. If your Internet works, it's going to work and it's awesome. Paris, your thoughts on the portal?
- [60:17]
Greg Miller
Yeah, I mean I love it for everything that we've already Talked about is just that you're locked to the PlayStation side. And again, yeah, it's crazy that it does not have Bluetooth, so you could do other headsets on it, but I think it's a great device, especially since they've updated it. Yeah, like I said, I've had virtually no issues with it at all. It's nice that you can now, you know, stream some of the PlayStation plus games as well on the device. I'm actually excited to see what the Portal 2 will be. Will that wind up being just their all in one device where they add native gameplay to it? Obviously, obviously you can still stream stuff at the same time, but I think this being the 1.0 of it, yeah, it's great.
- [61:00]
Paris Lily
The future of all this is so interesting. Right where it was that the rumor forever of like, oh, the Xbox is working with Ragh on a PC thing, but then they're also working on their own thing. And then of course, Jez came out right before SGF and said that's dead. That they're the. They're just going all in on this dead for now or whatever, you know, Is that true? Is that false? Who knows? Then the rumors that PlayStation's also working on a handheld. That would be a portable PlayStation as well. Very interesting because of course, that I'm right there of like, I love my Portal. That's what I'd really want, a PlayStation I could take on the plane. This is always about when I'm disconnected, taking my game, you know, I had a lovely Father's Day weekend. Of course we woke up Saturday morning. Jen's like, guess what, we're taking a surprise trip. There's all this stuff going on. Da, da, da. And I was like, yeah, I can't wait. And then I was though, like, I am trying to review Death Stranding, but it's like, I'm not gonna pack a PlayStation 5 and drag this to. Nor am I gonna go to whatever hotel WI fi we have and do that. He said, I packed the switch and I did what everybody does. I got too drunk and didn't even play it.
- [61:56]
Tim Gettys
That's the best part of handheld gaming. Yeah. Love the Portal, though. But sticking with the game streaming stuff, I do want to again shout out the Steam Deck oled, which I think is absolutely incredible. The OLED display pops so much. And the ability to tinker the Internet settings to your heart's extent of need is a beautiful thing because, my God, when you get it working, it looks so damn good. And it takes advantage of the higher wifi speeds and I, I love it. It does have more problems. There are more times where it won't work as compared to my portal. But when it does work, which is the majority of the time, it's an amazing experience on this thing. And also it's not limiting PlayStation you can. And I mean here's the biggest shout out actually for the Steam deck. It's PlayStation and obviously the Xbox streaming and all of that. PC streaming, Steam streaming. But the biggest thing is GeForce Now. If you are interested in GeForce Now. It is. I mean I cannot recommend that product enough, especially on the high end. It can be a little expensive. I think the highest end is $20 a month and you're just getting access to games you own in other places. But more and more we're getting different devices, whether it's in the home theater side or portable that can play GeForce Now. And you are playing a 4090 version of Expedition 33 and playing Expedition 33 on my Steam Deck natively and then playing in GeForce Now. It's like this is absolutely insane. And also it saves on battery life.
- [63:26]
Paris Lily
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
- [63:27]
Greg Miller
Yeah.
- [63:30]
Tim Gettys
And then the other thing with streaming that I do think is important on both the streaming side and the retro gaming emulation side, just your phone phones are like one of the best mobile gaming devices possible. And yeah, so I did. If you have an Android, you can fully do whatever you want. If you have iOS you now have Delta which allows you to emulate some old games. But on both the iOS and Android side you can get streaming apps for pretty much all the major systems except Nintendo. Being able to stream via remote play on PlayStation or on Xbox or Steam or GeForce now even like all of those things. But Kev, I put some phone accessories that I just wanted to bring up real quick because there's the. The backbone one which I would highly recommend. I think that this is a very nice entry level quality controller that just works as much as it needs to and is a fantastic experience. Remote playing games. Great.
- [64:25]
Paris Lily
Yeah, I've been I. Before the portal rolled around, I was in before we really got into these PC handhelds that could remote play. Like I was backboning for years. I think even as far as ign. Is that right or is that too early?
- [64:36]
Tim Gettys
I think that was the early days.
- [64:38]
Paris Lily
It's been a long, long time using many of these different iterations. The backbone's fantastic. Plug and play pop in and then yeah, it even has like Armory crate, its own little system that'll take you to games and apps that are compatible. So you can run through and do it. Adore the Backbone. They just put out that Backbone Pro that I don't have much experience with because it's come out in a time where we have other stuff.
- [64:57]
Tim Gettys
Yes. So a couple quick things. Neo ao she's saying RetroArch's also on iPhone now too. I would highly recommend. RetroArch is the way to go for emulators pretty much across every system. It's awesome that it's on iOS now. Parris, what's your experience with this Backbone?
- [65:11]
Greg Miller
Oh, yeah, I was actually just holding up right now. I have the Xbox version of the Backbone as well. Yeah, it works great. And they have, you know, they have their. Their Xbox button on it, so takes you right into the Xbox app. You got the Backbone button takes you into that experience as well. But yeah, it works. Works pretty well. I like it. I love Backbone. The controls are for this type of device. I just think it's industry best. They're the most comfortable and easiest to use.
- [65:38]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, it's great. I will say there's the Backbone Pro that came out recently that Greg was just talking about. I also have one that they sent and I've been playing with it. I love it. It is just the Backbone, but better. It's bigger, it's more comfortable, more features.
- [65:55]
Paris Lily
Right?
- [65:55]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, it's awesome. I really, really love it. It's $170 and I could not recommend that to anybody like this. It just gets to a point that it's like, ah, man. Like, that's.
- [66:05]
Greg Miller
Yeah.
- [66:05]
Tim Gettys
Very, very, very, very high price for what we're getting here. Because I would also say that as much as I love my phone and I love what it can do and how powerful it is, it is not having played with all my other systems, it is not my recommended streaming device. Like, it works for sure. But there's something about the way that, like text is displayed on a. A phone screen that just reads different. Different than like on a Steam deck. And maybe it's the size, but there's just something about it that I don't. I don't know that I would recommend going this high price for the gaming streaming side of things, but even I would recommend the original backbone for 100. I feel like that's a more fair. Like if you're going to dedicate to this is your thing. But if you just want to dabble. The 8bitdo ultimate mobile gaming controller, very similar idea. But it's $50.
- [66:53]
Paris Lily
Okay.
- [66:54]
Tim Gettys
And Kev, you can bring that one.
- [66:55]
Paris Lily
Up the Amazon link there next to Backbone Pro.
- [66:59]
Tim Gettys
Very similar concept. 8bitdo are incredible when it comes to just high quality, very cheap peripherals. And this is another example. There are limitations to make sure you're getting ones that are compatible with your phone and gaming devices. But you got your options here. And if you want to go even cheaper and you just want to play Pokemon Emerald for the thousandth time, there are these phone emulator button cases. I don't have any. One specific one I would recommend you can just go on Etsy and People3D, print them all. But Kev, if you can go to that, the next one there, the idea is it's just a case and then you can flip it around and then use the buttons. It's a Bluetooth controller for you to be able to play games on your phone like it's a Game Boy. It's awesome. Like it's such a, such a cool thing. I would say this is definitely the most entry level thing if you just want to. Again, the majority of people that emulate games and we, they did some polls and like ran stats on this. Yeah, like the vast majority are literally just playing the old Pokemon games. So if that's what you want to do and that's why you're trying to buy one of these devices, chances are you can just do it on your phone and buy a little case and you'll be fine. That's all that I have there. Does anyone else have anything they want to recommend or bring up?
- [68:18]
Paris Lily
I always end up getting asked again and again. Remember, I get my bags from SFBags.com that's Waterfield Ways or Waterfield Way. Sorry, Waterfield Designs. Not weird. Yes, they're a SF company here that does bags for laptops and tech and all this stuff. And they've been committed to gaming for a long, long, long time. If you go to sfbags.com Kev I found them a City Slicker for the Vida, I think was my first one from them. They've been around that and I still every time buy the City Slicker, which is what you see right there with the white top there as it was going up and down. But they have one backorder right now for Switch 2. I love these things. You know, usually when I do it, eventually somebody like, oh my God, $79, you know, $129 for Switch 2. They are premium and I've never ever had to replace them and they are cushy as hell and they take great care of the units. So I Have no problem throwing that out.
- [69:05]
Tim Gettys
These are definitely premium products, but I'm right there with you. They are. They're worth it if you care about that stuff. These are beautiful. They get compliments all the time from non gamers, even, like, it passes all the tests, takes really great care of the systems. And yeah, I. I haven't yet tried their magnetic cases, but I'm very excited.
- [69:23]
Paris Lily
I saw somebody wrote about another review that was getting kicked around about their rag ally case. That looks cool.
- [69:28]
Tim Gettys
Yeah. So excited for those. The one thing that I want to shout out in terms of handhelds portable gaming is the xreal AR glasses. They've been sponsoring us a lot. And again, it's one of those dream sponsorships because it's a thing that I legitimately love. Kevin Fre loves more and more people here. I'm trying to. Or I'm convincing. Like, y' all just need to see to believe. But it transforms your handheld gaming experience tenfold. You have a theater with you on the plane. Incredible quality. Plug it straight in the Steam deck, and goddamn, you're having a party. I could not recommend them higher. For people that are interested in wanting a. A giant screen anywhere you go.
- [70:09]
Paris Lily
Oh, he's eating his bones.
- [70:10]
Tim Gettys
We've got a bunch of super chats I want to get to here. CJ splits on says Dope Jersey Mike.
- [70:16]
Mike
Thank you.
- [70:18]
Tim Gettys
Danny Tortelli says the real handheld gaming question in 2025 is, where's our new Tamagotchi? I don't know about Tamagotchi, but they're releasing new Digimon things every goddamn week, man. Celebrating this anniversary, that anniversary handheld monster. People are there. Yeah.
- [70:34]
Mike
Remember when you used to not feed it or clean it and they would just keep beeping and your mom would be like, where the is that beeping coming from.
- [70:42]
Tim Gettys
Inside of this home?
- [70:43]
Mike
It's like once we had a Furby and the Furby was up in my parents attic and every now and then would make noise and they're like, where is that coming from? Like, yeah, that's the Furby.
- [70:51]
Tim Gettys
We forgot about that.
- [70:53]
Paris Lily
We forgot about.
- [70:54]
Tim Gettys
Ben Sanders says one of these tech manufacturers has to revolutionize battery tech in order for handhelds to really take off the batteries is a really interesting thing because like I said, I obviously would dream of batteries being so much better. Cloud streaming does help with that stuff. But I'm actually, as a kid that grew up with the PSP and all of that stuff, it's like, I can't believe batteries can last as long as they do for the high end gaming that they're doing for sure, the options you have to kind of like help with that stuff. But yeah, battery tech. Unfortunately, I feel like we're kind of stuck. I don't think it's going to get much better.
- [71:25]
Mike
What are we getting out of your two consoles of choice here on your Steam deck? How much are you really getting?
- [71:30]
Tim Gettys
I mean the Steam deck for me in terms of battery is a tough thing to answer because is what you're playing, it really depends on what you're playing. And also like it lasts for my flights. Like that that's kind of been my big thing. I haven't done like an international flight yet with it. But like anytime I'm flying I haven't had, I haven't had to worry about battery a single time. But that's in a very controlled situation where I'm planning my trip accordingly. And I do have a power bank with me that can solve that problem where necessary. Which I think these days that to me is I guess the battery tech. It's so easy to just have a.
- [72:02]
Paris Lily
Portable battery with me all the time. Yeah.
- [72:05]
Mike
Grog Ally, how far?
- [72:06]
Paris Lily
Same. I mean it's the same as tame. Where again, Rog's usually my lifeboat. Right where it is. All right. Playing on the couch and then I'm gonna go downstairs and play on the big TV or I'm gonna go to bed. So it's not like I'm putting in these marathon sessions. When I flew back this last time from Montreal, I must have used the battery because that's such a long flight. But I played Fallout New Vegas the entire way and it wasn't. And this was, this was the. My criticism of the Switch 2 where it was this horror story of like went to LA for SGF and then I started it in the lounge and by the time I was leaving I'm like 50%. And then on the plane it died. I was like, fucking hell, you know what I mean? Now granted, that was just not what I expected out of the Switch at that time. Also, maybe I didn't do the battery cycling bullshit they want me to do or whatever. Haven't had that with a Rog. But again, I'm usually expecting that.
- [72:48]
Tim Gettys
James McGill says the 10 year time capsule podcast reminded me of when we thought handheld gaming was dead and cell phone games were going to kill dedicated devices. Crazy stuff, man.
- [72:57]
Paris Lily
Industry's hard to keep up with. You never know where you're going to go and what's going to happen. What Nintendo is going to do to Revive it.
- [73:03]
Tim Gettys
Xbox says to Mike, feeling overwhelmed. Most handhelds use the same 3 to 4 chips of performance is similar. Sure, RAM may be. May differ, but what you're really choosing is preference, screen, battery, ergonomics, money, ux, etc.
- [73:15]
Mike
You nailed it.
- [73:16]
Tim Gettys
Yeah.
- [73:16]
Paris Lily
And this is the thing that Paris and I got when we went and saw this behind closed doors, right? Of them talking, you know, they were talking about the silicon chip, right? Of like this is being. We're trying to future proof with what we have so that we can use AI upscaling whatever the heck the tech is to go on that'll hopefully make this device, the Ally X able to hang in there longer than the others. But who knows?
- [73:37]
Mike
Yeah, this Xbox Rog Ally should be the one for me, right? My worry is just like, yeah, I'm putting away a little nest egg for that to hopefully splurge on that at the end of the year. But then Tim always brings up the screen and I'm like, fuck, like, when am I getting that oled? You know what I mean?
- [73:52]
Tim Gettys
It's gonna be a long time, man. I think it's gonna be a long time. This concession is made.
- [73:57]
Greg Miller
So Asus actually, because they had another stream too where they, they talked about obviously the partnership with Xbox and they specifically talked about why they didn't go with oled. And it came down to a couple things. VRR price. That's why they didn't do it. It would have astro, not astronomically, but it would have greatly raised the price of the device if they tried to do oled.
- [74:20]
Tim Gettys
So.
- [74:20]
Greg Miller
And they're clearly trying to get this thing as cheap as they possibly can. But even with that, we know it's. It's still going to be pretty expensive.
- [74:27]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, hate that. Get it? Hate. Fix it. BJ Bernardo says in the future, will handheld be the low bar of entry like Xbox series S for the next gen or handhelds be the only next gen console? I think that we're already kind of at a point that it's kind of just options. I don't think necessarily, especially on the Xbox side, that it's going to matter much next gen. I think that it's just what is the version and entry point of the Xbox experience you're getting? The PlayStation side is very interesting where like I'm still not convinced they're ever going to have another dedicated handheld. Like, I do think that cloud streaming might be their. Their future there.
- [75:04]
Paris Lily
Do you believe the rumors that they're doing a portable handheld PlayStation or whatever?
- [75:08]
Tim Gettys
Not really. Like, that's the Thing is like I, I feel like I don't know What a Portal 2 is gonna look like. I don't even know that they need it necessarily. Like, like I think that they're serving the audience that they have and I think PlayStation function differently where I don't have faith in them being able to get their games running on a handheld device in the same way. But maybe I'm wrong there but I.
- [75:27]
Paris Lily
Think it's the same thing as that a lot of these and what Steam Deck probably thought it launched too just of like we've already sold all the PlayStation fives and PlayStation 5 Pros. We're going to sell to Greg and people who are like Greg. So if we make a portable PlayStation, that's the, you know, the power of the PlayStation 5, not even the pro and we want like idiots like him will buy it because they want this experience. And as slow as I imagine the PlayStation 6 generation will kick up, this generation's kicked up. I can still see me getting use out of that, let alone remote playing or something for it. You know, I feel like that's the idea of like it's another way to sell a 300, 400 device to someone who would give you the money for it. Let's set our expectations reasonably. Let's have it for PlayStation. I'm sure they say let's have it be another success. Like PlayStation VR was and like Portal was which were two devices that PlayStation was openly like holy shit. These sold a lot. This a lot better than we thought it was gonna sell and we didn't expect that. Let's make another VR. Oh fuck.
- [76:23]
Tim Gettys
Oh fuck. Z Drake says PSP2 is very real. I'm a UI UX designer and I saw the job spec.
- [76:34]
Paris Lily
It's one of those where I have no doubt they're working on it does never come to market it.
- [76:37]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, I'm there too and I, I just again I, I feel like we'll get something, we'll get a follow up to the Portal that'll have more features. Undeniably I just don't see a Future in which PlayStation. I mean I don't see a imminent future in which like next gen there's going to be a PS6. Like I guess that's my thing. The PS6 is not going to be a handheld device. Kyle says great assault here. Reported pricing for the Xbox allies are 500 and 800 and pre orders in August. That's exactly in line with what I'm expecting. Paris, right?
- [77:06]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [77:06]
Greg Miller
I mean if I saw that rumor too. That would be the ideal. I'm just. I'm just bracing for the worst 900 and 600 but yeah if it's 8 and 5 I think that would be ideal.
- [77:18]
Tim Gettys
AK says favorite setup has to be has been retro indie games native on the deck, big games remote playing off PS5 Series X so the SD doesn't get hot and battery lasts forever. Yeah I will say the best overall device in my opinion is the Steam Deck OLED just because it checks the most boxes. The one problem there is ease of use of getting to your Xbox games. But you still could do it. There's still ways around it.
- [77:42]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [77:44]
Tim Gettys
Calpy97 says Switch 2 will obliterate everything in its path. You're a Nintendo gamer? Yes. If not no. Mark Lopez says I currently have a Steam deck wish listed on my wedding registry.
- [77:56]
Paris Lily
Nice.
- [77:58]
Tim Gettys
Awesome dude. What are some drawbacks gamers should know of from the Steam deck? I mean like I was just saying it's like it's not inherently easily compatible with the Xbox ecosystem of things. There are workarounds to make that happen though.
- [78:13]
Paris Lily
Question for you Tim or the panel I guess. Does anybody have experience with these docks? I mentioned they mentioned in the presentation for the Ally X and then I talked about it as a talking point like the Rog XG mobile dock that boosts things I don't have a chance Mobile combines the power of the external GPU with expandability of a Thunderbolt dock and puts it into an extremely portable package boasting boot boasting up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU this portable blah blah blah. It's like I mean as all in as I am on the ROG and I expect to be on the Alyx. I'm like should I buy this and like that.
- [78:48]
Tim Gettys
I mean my thing is yes and no because I don't think it's going to get up to the quality of your Xbox Series X. You already have that on your tv. If you didn't have an Xbox Series X depending on price I look into that. But if you your your use case is playing Xbox games on this thing well I feel like your Xbox is going to be better than it.
- [79:07]
Paris Lily
Fair enough.
- [79:08]
Tim Gettys
And then yeah in terms of Steam other downsides of the Steam Deck I don't absolutely love the button placement on a lot of things a lot wider than I want it to be. It just has a whole units and it brand new games are not going to run perfectly on or not going to run on it in most cases But. But it's not. It's not just, oh, man. Every game that comes out, you can play on this. Unless you're down with Cloud, in which case. That is the case. You can play anything on it.
- [79:36]
Greg Miller
Well, Steam Deck 2 with Half Life 3, it's happening.
- [79:39]
Tim Gettys
God, that'd be awesome. We have Street Shadow saying, when have we've seen what everyone else is doing? But with strong rumors of Sony dipping into the space, what do you want them to do in the space? Competitive pricing and seamless console to handheld experience. I mean, yeah, that's the dream, but I don't think that's a reality at all. I Personally, as a PlayStation gamer, like, I'm happy with the Portal 100%. Give me OLED. Like, that's really OLED and Bluetooth support. And the Portal is essentially perfect.
- [80:08]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [80:10]
Tim Gettys
Bulk Dasher says, I love what's happening with the handheld space, but I still have a hard time playing anything but small games on them. I get major FOMO when playing, for example, a cyberpunk on anything but my tv. That's my life, too.
- [80:22]
Paris Lily
For me, it's always the big thing of. It's rare for me to start a big game on a Portal or on a portable. It's rare. It's rare for me to finish it or do a big story beat on it. It's usually the, all right, I'm in the minutiae and I'm grinding and I'm doing the thing that's not. It's not, you know, A to Z. I'm doing the mlnob. You know what I mean?
- [80:41]
Tim Gettys
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [80:42]
Paris Lily
I'm right there with you choked a second.
- [80:48]
Tim Gettys
I mean, that was me with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
- [80:50]
Paris Lily
Yeah.
- [80:50]
Tim Gettys
Where it's like, I. If I was in the story beat or anything for that, I was like, I'm playing on my tv, but like, when it was just more grinding or mindless. Kind of like get from point A to point B. That's portal time.
- [80:58]
Greg Miller
Yeah.
- [81:00]
Tim Gettys
Kyle says Valve's also positioning Steam OS as the big thing versus the deck itself. If they drop an ally with SteamOS, why buy the worst Windows one? I mean, because I'm hoping that. That what you just said about Steam is exactly how Windows handles it, that they focus on Xbox. OS is the thing instead of any one device itself. Like, that's when this is an Xbox becomes reality. Right. And we'll. We'll get there. C.J. splits on says. How does Mike feel about the new strategy as an Xbox console guy?
- [81:26]
Mike
Yeah, we brought that up of just Being able to play anywhere. I'm someone who is living through that, right? Of like seeing that happen in real time of a lot of my games now are play anywhere and I can play them on the PC and on my Xbox when I make that one purchase and I'm really happy with that.
- [81:41]
Tim Gettys
That.
- [81:41]
Mike
That is some of my hesitations of as Tim brought up, right. I am that one weirdo that has such a big catalog that I'm going to click on the one. It's gonna be like, hey, not playable on this handheld. I'm gonna go, oh, that sucks. And then I kind of lose the Steam on that, right? Similar to the Steam deck. When when I boot that up and it says ah, it's not Steam deck verified, I kind of go, yeah, that's too bad. And I move on. Right? So yeah, for me I'm enjoying the moment. I really love the messaging and the a vision of what they want to do. We are right there. I am someone who has gone from day one to hey, put all my games on cloud. Well, it's only game pass, right? I live through all these caveats that Tim brings up and it's like, yeah, those are all like moments where you kind of stop and question, well, what is the next move for me as a gamer here? And it seems like they're getting closer and closer. My dream is, yeah, my whole catalog is on game path or is on cloud gaming. It is on. On my ecosystem of PC, mobile and console. That is where we're heading to and I think we'll get there soon enough.
- [82:42]
Tim Gettys
Kyle says the game Sur G8 Galileo clears all these for $80. It's another similar thing to the Backbone or the 8Bitdo Ultimate Gaming Controller I was talking about. I don't have personal experience with it, but from what I hear it is another excellent option for you. Street Shadow says Tim, you should check. God damn it. Something's getting in the way. There we go. Tim, you should check out the news about PlayStation offering a low power mode for games hints at the ability to run a game on a handheld. Haven't heard about that. That'd be awesome. I think that is the one thing everyone's trying to figure out now is like scalability of just having modern games be able to run on their high end but also on a acceptable low end across all the other gaming handhelds that are still, we have to remind everybody a very, very, very small part of people playing games anywhere, period. But obviously everyone's hoping that that grows. But we're talking about a handful of millions of people at this point that can currently even care about this stuff. 100 Logan Jensen says My advice for anyone thinking about a Steam deck, it's actually very easy to customize y' all. I'm a living in Kansas. Thanks Greg. And if I can swap my M2, install emulators, external storefronts, Steam, Xbox, Stream Xbox and PlayStation than anyone can. There we go. Thank you so much for your super chats today, everybody, and for hanging out with us for this episode of the Kind of Funny Games Cast. Paris, thank you for joining us as well. Always a pleasure.
- [84:11]
Greg Miller
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I gotta come up to the studio, man. It's been a minute.
- [84:14]
Tim Gettys
You sure do miss you anytime. Let us know in the comments below what handheld gaming devices you currently have or are interested in having, and if not, what are your issues? What are you waiting for to get ironed out before you dive in and joins the millions and millions of people? But stay tuned. We're about to do a stream review. Great, Great. She's gonna love that. And then the stream is going to be me and Barrett playing some Crash Bandicoot. Until next time. Love you all. Goodbye.