The fact that developers have to cater to multiple platforms that have hardware limitations and different operating systems has led to worse quality of games of time. Console exclusives are anti-competitive, monopolistic, and they lead to a terrible consumer experience.
Yeah, I know people are on board with the Steam Deck, but it’s an interesting process to see more and more laptops and small PCs targeting that same hardware and the handhelds making it a target that developers want to keep in mind.
I think there’s a future where whatever the baseline integrated GPU for each CPU generation is becomes the new “console target” because that’s where people will be gaming on handhelds and laptops, with dedicated GPUs becoming the old PC market spec for enthusiasts wanting to crank it all up.
I’m not against it, but it’s a lower target than the equivalent same-gen console spec, which is also some APU but without the limitation of having to be working on a battery. In that sense I hope we keep getting console generations to have a decent gradient of handheld battery-powerd APU>console wall plugged APU>dedicated GPU. That seems like a reasonable spectrum.