00:00SPEAKERWelcome to episode 420 of the Dual Boot Diaries.
00:04SPEAKER- No, that's the wrong one.
00:05SPEAKERIt's A, it's only for episode 41,
00:07SPEAKERbut B, this isn't the Dual Boot Diaries.
00:09SPEAKER- Oh, okay, hold on, hold on, here we go, reset.
00:13SPEAKERIn this episode of The Full Nerd,
00:15SPEAKERwe talk about-- - No, no, no, nope, nope.
00:17SPEAKERNo, I don't do that one anymore.
00:18SPEAKER- Oh, you're right, you're right.
00:19SPEAKERWe're doing, we're talking about handhelds, hold on.
00:21SPEAKER- Yeah. - This is entry 420
00:24SPEAKERof Expedition Handheld, I'm Adam.
00:26SPEAKER- Nope, that's not it either.
00:28SPEAKERAlso, you've only done like 10 episodes of those.
00:29SPEAKERThat's too many episodes.
00:31SPEAKER- Wait, what podcast is this?
00:33SPEAKER- This is, Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
00:35SPEAKERYou're Brad, hi. - Oh, hi, I'm Brad.
00:38SPEAKER- No, you're not Brad, actually,
00:39SPEAKERbut Brad's out on family stuff this week,
00:42SPEAKERso our friend of the show, Adam Patrick Murray,
00:45SPEAKERhas decided, I'm just doing the intro
00:46SPEAKERbefore we get to the intro.
00:47SPEAKERThis was barely a cold open.
00:50SPEAKERIt's a lightly warm, it's a stale, warm open, Brad.
00:53SPEAKER- You know, maybe I just-- - New Brad.
00:55SPEAKER- Maybe I just have too many podcasts in my life.
00:57SPEAKER- It's possible, oh, it's possible.
01:00SPEAKERI gotta tell you, we have two dogs here again this week,
01:03SPEAKERand I am a sleepy boy, 'cause my wife and I
01:07SPEAKERwent to the Valkyries game and were there
01:08SPEAKERuntil like 11 o'clock last night,
01:10SPEAKERand then we came home to dogs that would not go to sleep,
01:12SPEAKER'cause they'd been crated for four or five hours,
01:15SPEAKERand they came back and were wild.
01:17SPEAKER- Oh, they had energy, they were ready.
01:19SPEAKER- They had the zoomies.
01:20SPEAKERSo now, guess who has two thumbs
01:24SPEAKERand slept about four hours last night?
01:26SPEAKERThis guy right here.
01:27SPEAKER- That guy, you can't see, this isn't a video podcast.
01:30SPEAKER- No, I just assumed, I didn't even do it.
01:32SPEAKERI just, it's a podcast of lies.
01:34SPEAKER- They're just gonna have to assume you have two thumbs.
01:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I do have two thumbs, see?
01:38SPEAKER- Nobody can see that.
01:39SPEAKER- You can, you can, look, man.
01:42SPEAKER- I'm only a single source.
01:45SPEAKERPeople need to get another source
01:46SPEAKERto truly trust the number of thumbs that you have.
01:49SPEAKER- I don't even know if you count
01:50SPEAKERas a single source, Adam, I'm being honest.
01:52SPEAKER(upbeat music)
01:56SPEAKER(upbeat music)
02:16SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad Will Made a Tech Pod.
02:18SPEAKERI'm Will, and today, as said in the cold open
02:22SPEAKERwhere I got ahead of myself,
02:23SPEAKERI'm joined by one Adam Patrick-Murray
02:25SPEAKERof PC World and The Full Nerd,
02:28SPEAKERand newly formed of Expedition Handheld,
02:31SPEAKERa podcast about handheld games things
02:34SPEAKERthat aren't Game Boys or, what are the kids,
02:38SPEAKERlike, do they play, is the Vita still a thing?
02:40SPEAKERDo kids still play the,
02:41SPEAKERdo it a David Letterman bit now, I think.
02:43SPEAKERBut welcome to the show, Adam.
02:44SPEAKER- Hello, don't worry, I have a Vita right behind me,
02:47SPEAKERif you need me to go grab it.
02:49SPEAKER- Mine's right over there, I dug it out, actually,
02:51SPEAKER'cause I thought it was a PSP
02:52SPEAKERand it turns out it was the Vita instead, but.
02:53SPEAKER- I mean, some would argue it's better,
02:56SPEAKERbut, you know, everyone has different tastes in handhelds,
02:59SPEAKERand that's what Russ Crandall from Retro Game Corps
03:03SPEAKERand I talk about on Expedition Handheld,
03:05SPEAKERis just all kinds of handhelds, new, old, weird.
03:08SPEAKERWe actually had a friend of the show, Steve Lynn,
03:10SPEAKERon recently to, he brought by a bunch of weird,
03:14SPEAKERmysterious, horrible handhelds from the past.
03:18SPEAKERThat was a good time, so.
03:19SPEAKER- Did he bring a Lynx?
03:21SPEAKER- No, no, it was even more obscure than that,
03:23SPEAKERso he had a Gizmondo, he had the N-Gage,
03:27SPEAKERhe had the game.com, I know it's not dot com, but it's.
03:31SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I remember that one.
03:33SPEAKER- Yeah, so, you know, just little footnotes
03:36SPEAKERin handheld past, it was a good time.
03:39SPEAKER- Yeah, but today we're gonna talk about,
03:42SPEAKERlike, basically, the kind of current state
03:44SPEAKERof handheld game stuff, 'cause there was new stuff
03:47SPEAKERthat came out at Computex a couple weeks ago,
03:49SPEAKERwhich you were at and you had some hands-on time with.
03:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:53SPEAKER- There's some new, I guess they're not APUs,
03:55SPEAKER'cause they're Intels, and APUs are all AMD, right?
03:58SPEAKERBut there's new chips for handhelds from Intel,
04:02SPEAKERwhich is the first time they've done that,
04:04SPEAKERlike, a dedicated piece of hardware.
04:08SPEAKERAnd yeah, and like, also, this may surprise everybody,
04:11SPEAKERbut shit's going wild in the prices
04:17SPEAKERof existing x86-based handhelds.
04:20SPEAKER- Yeah, by the way, we can cuss here?
04:23SPEAKER- Yeah, you can say whatever you want.
04:23SPEAKER- Oh, shit. - We got all the words.
04:25SPEAKERWe're not on YouTube.
04:26SPEAKERWow, is that Adam Patrick Murray's first podcast swear?
04:29SPEAKER- No, I've definitely sweared before,
04:30SPEAKERbut I usually try to keep it buttoned up,
04:32SPEAKERbut I forgot here, there's no rules.
04:34SPEAKER- Yeah, we don't, like, this isn't on YouTube,
04:35SPEAKERso if we get, if we say all the bad words
04:37SPEAKERin the first five minutes, who cares?
04:38SPEAKERIt works itself out.
04:40SPEAKERLike, Apple's not gonna delist us.
04:43SPEAKER- Nice, well, hold on, real quick, before we dive into it,
04:46SPEAKERI have to give a little bit of an update,
04:48SPEAKERbecause I know you guys are very excited
04:50SPEAKERabout Intel's Wildcat Lake.
04:53SPEAKER- We do. - Platform.
04:54SPEAKER- Some would say we're wild about Wildcat Lake.
04:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I have an interview over on PCWorld.com
04:59SPEAKERwhere I interviewed Tom Peterson, Intel's tap,
05:03SPEAKERabout handhelds and their initiative,
05:06SPEAKERand I did ask the question, what about Wildcat Lake?
05:09SPEAKERAnd he was like, wait, why are you asking this question?
05:13SPEAKERLike, he had to ask his handler off to the side.
05:15SPEAKERHe's like, wait, Wildcat Lake?
05:16SPEAKERWhy, why is he asking this question?
05:19SPEAKERAnd they were like, yeah, no, there's only,
05:21SPEAKERthere's only two, no, no, it's four,
05:24SPEAKERit's four XE3 cores for the GPU,
05:27SPEAKERand he's like, yeah, no, that's not gonna be enough.
05:31SPEAKERSo, I, yeah, I tried to ask,
05:34SPEAKERbut it doesn't seem like Wildcat Lake
05:36SPEAKERis gonna be in gaming handhelds,
05:38SPEAKERbut I did see a lot of Wildcat Lake at Computex.
05:42SPEAKER- Well, okay, so for folks who don't know,
05:43SPEAKERWildcat Lake is Intel's upcoming,
05:47SPEAKERis it a Celeron, or is it,
05:49SPEAKERit's in the same kind of class as that, right?
05:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe they retired the Celeron name,
05:55SPEAKERso I didn't see it, I didn't,
05:57SPEAKERor at least I didn't see the name Celeron anywhere.
05:59SPEAKERIt's still the core, it's not an Ultra,
06:02SPEAKERbut it's a Intel Core Series 300.
06:06SPEAKERSo it's just the low end of that, the low power stuff.
06:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's coming in a bunch of like 500,
06:13SPEAKERsub $1,000 laptops, like 500, $600 laptops it seems like.
06:18SPEAKER- Laptops, mini PCs, small boards.
06:21SPEAKER- The thing, the reason we are excited about it
06:24SPEAKERhere at the TechPod is it's a pretty capable,
06:27SPEAKERreal low power, great, inexpensive home server box,
06:32SPEAKERor home lab box.
06:34SPEAKERSo if you wanna have like a big Docker,
06:35SPEAKERbig bunch of Docker containers running on something,
06:38SPEAKERit seems like the next in a long line
06:40SPEAKERof really good Intel processors,
06:42SPEAKERyou know, starting with like the Alder Lake Celerons,
06:45SPEAKERwhich were like the N100, N105,
06:48SPEAKERwhich were typically like 200, $150, $250 boxes.
06:52SPEAKERSo yeah, we're excited about Wildcat Lake over here,
06:54SPEAKERbut nobody at Intel seems like they're excited
06:56SPEAKERabout Wildcat Lake.
06:57SPEAKERWhen I ask questions about Wildcat Lake over there,
07:00SPEAKERI get the same blank stares that you got from Tom,
07:02SPEAKERwhere they're like, which one is that again?
07:05SPEAKEROh yeah, nobody cares about that.
07:07SPEAKER- Yeah, why is everyone excited about that?
07:09SPEAKERWell, hey, listen, I'm trying to ask the series questions
07:12SPEAKERfor the tech pod audience, but it's not coming to handhelds.
07:16SPEAKERWhat they do have is a new processor series
07:20SPEAKERcalled the Intel Arc G series.
07:25SPEAKER- G for games?
07:26SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much G for gaming.
07:29SPEAKERBut the interesting thing here, kind of to start off,
07:34SPEAKERis that this is the first time they've put together
07:36SPEAKERan APU style chip, but they put it under the Arc flag.
07:42SPEAKER- Oh.
07:43SPEAKER- 'Cause most of the time, it's considered a CPU,
07:45SPEAKERso it's an Intel Core or a Core Ultra.
07:49SPEAKERThis, I mean, it's Panther Lake based, so 18A,
07:53SPEAKERall the goodness we've been seeing with Panther Lake devices
07:57SPEAKERbut they said, you know what, this isn't just a CPU
08:00SPEAKERwith a GPU attached to it, this is a GPU
08:04SPEAKERwith a CPU attached to it.
08:05SPEAKERI mean, whatever, it's all about framing,
08:07SPEAKERlike how different--
08:08SPEAKER- Yeah, you got chocolate in my peanut butter,
08:10SPEAKERyou got peanut butter in my chocolate.
08:11SPEAKERI've heard this story before.
08:13SPEAKER- Yeah, which is, I mean, sure, it's kind of similar
08:17SPEAKERto what AMD has done on their side.
08:20SPEAKERThey have their normal laptop processors
08:23SPEAKERand then for handhelds, they have the Z series,
08:26SPEAKERwhich is, once again, just kind of shades of gray
08:30SPEAKERof the same thing.
08:31SPEAKERBut here, I think it makes a little bit more of a difference
08:35SPEAKERthan what AMD has done on their side
08:37SPEAKERbecause they've actually prioritized the GPU,
08:42SPEAKERwhich is what really matters for handheld gaming devices.
08:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so what's the structure of the chip?
08:50SPEAKER- So it's the normal Panther Lake, I believe, X7.
08:55SPEAKERSo like it has the full fact 12--
08:59SPEAKER- Back when I--
09:00SPEAKER- That's the most important part.
09:01SPEAKERIt's like that GPU can crank out some amazing goodness
09:07SPEAKERbut where they cut back was, it only has two PCORs
09:12SPEAKERinstead of four in the normal configuration.
09:16SPEAKERIt still has--
09:17SPEAKER- And those are on their own tile, right?
09:18SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.
09:19SPEAKERAnd it still has the same amount of E-Cores, so that's four.
09:24SPEAKERAnd then it has two low-power E-Cores on the IO platform,
09:29SPEAKERwhatever the extra chip is.
09:31SPEAKER- The IO die, yeah.
09:32SPEAKER- Yeah, and then they also cut down the display outs
09:37SPEAKERfrom four to two, which on a laptop or a mini PC,
09:41SPEAKERyou need multiple display outs,
09:43SPEAKERbut on a handheld, no, at most you just need two.
09:47SPEAKERAnd then also cut down the Thunderbolt lanes
09:49SPEAKERfrom four to two, which once again,
09:51SPEAKERmakes sense for a handheld device.
09:53SPEAKERI did ask Tom about whether these are
09:56SPEAKERspecifically engineered for this line
09:59SPEAKERor if these are ones that didn't hit qualification
10:03SPEAKERfor a normal Panther Lake device,
10:06SPEAKERand he said it's a mixture of both.
10:09SPEAKERThey do have the capability to spin up chips if they need it
10:14SPEAKERbut there is a fair amount of actual chips
10:17SPEAKERthat just aren't qualifying to be full Panther Lake-based.
10:20SPEAKER- Okay, I mean, that's fine, right?
10:22SPEAKER- That's fine, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:23SPEAKER- That's just how this business works, yeah.
10:24SPEAKER- Yeah, and so they're like, okay, cool.
10:26SPEAKERMaybe one of the PCORs didn't qualify
10:29SPEAKERso we'll just fuse off the other one
10:30SPEAKERand we'll call this an ArcG series kind of deal.
10:37SPEAKER- Is there hardware announced for this yet?
10:40SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so Computex, they actually came out swinging
10:43SPEAKERwith the MSI Claw 8EX AI Plus.
10:47SPEAKERI actually have one right here.
10:49SPEAKER- This is the third generation Claw?
10:51SPEAKER- Yeah, this is the third generation Claw.
10:53SPEAKERWe kind of knew that MSI was gonna have something new
10:56SPEAKERbecause, yeah, they've been very closely partnered
10:59SPEAKERbut what we didn't expect, at least us
11:02SPEAKERin the handheld community, is to have two other partners
11:05SPEAKERat launch so one of them is another major manufacturer
11:13SPEAKERof sorts so Acer has a Predator Atlas 8.
11:19SPEAKERThis isn't their first handheld
11:20SPEAKERbut this is their first major handheld launch
11:23SPEAKERfor the US market.
11:25SPEAKER- The last thing they did was giant, right?
11:27SPEAKERWas a giant screen, huge deal, they announced CES maybe?
11:31SPEAKER- Yeah, they had a Predator, I'm sorry,
11:34SPEAKERan Acer Nitro Blaze 7, 8 and 11.
11:39SPEAKERYeah, so it was a huge 11 inch device
11:41SPEAKERwith detachable controllers and whatever.
11:45SPEAKERThose weren't actually designed and manufactured in-house.
11:49SPEAKERThey hired a third party company to do those
11:52SPEAKERand those actually never got released in the US
11:55SPEAKERso this is really Acer kind of getting their feet
12:00SPEAKERinto the handheld gaming market at kind of a weird time
12:03SPEAKERso we'll see how it is but really the real surprising one
12:08SPEAKERwas that the third player is a Shenzhen based company
12:11SPEAKERcalled One X Player, they had the One X Player 3
12:15SPEAKERwhich is a Lenovo Legion Go kind of competitor
12:19SPEAKERwhere it literally has the same 8.8 inch OLED screen
12:24SPEAKERwhich is amazing and then detachable controllers,
12:27SPEAKERthat kind of stuff and I was surprised
12:31SPEAKERthat one of those, this isn't derogatory
12:36SPEAKERbut Shenzhen based companies, there's a lot of them
12:39SPEAKERand I put them on kind of a different tier
12:41SPEAKERin terms of manufacturing and global scale
12:46SPEAKERthan somebody like an Asus or an MSI kind of thing
12:49SPEAKERso to have them there at launch was like,
12:53SPEAKERoh wow, okay, cool, this is interesting.
12:57SPEAKER- That's pretty rad, okay, so I'm gonna ask
12:59SPEAKERthe bad question now, what does this thing cost, we know?
13:06SPEAKER- Yeah, we do, well we know the MSI Claw 8EX
13:13SPEAKERis going to come in at $1800.
13:16SPEAKER- Woo!
13:17SPEAKER- There was like a little bit of a pre-release promotion
13:20SPEAKERfor $1700 but it sounds like all those got sold out.
13:24SPEAKEREither way, that is a large chunk of change.
13:27SPEAKER- Wow!
13:28SPEAKER- Yeah, I am under embargo for review stuff
13:31SPEAKERso I'm not gonna get too deep into final thoughts
13:36SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff but either way,
13:38SPEAKERbetween that and the Steam Deck price increase,
13:42SPEAKERlike, we're kind of in a weird spot for x86.
13:46SPEAKER- Oh, wait, so you had a hands-on with the new Claw.
13:49SPEAKER- I have it, yeah, I have it right here.
13:52SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not a video podcast so they don't,
13:54SPEAKERyou held it up a minute ago.
13:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I got to, I had extensive hands-on at Computex
14:00SPEAKERwhich I can talk about, you know, that is not embargoed
14:04SPEAKERbut I have it here with me right now
14:06SPEAKERfor the full review testing.
14:09SPEAKERTune in to PC World and Expedition Handheld next week
14:12SPEAKERfor the final thoughts over there.
14:14SPEAKER- Post embargo stuff.
14:16SPEAKERHow, can you give a sense of what performance is like
14:19SPEAKERcompared to the existing AMD stuff that you've used?
14:23SPEAKER- So, they, I mean, Intel's been coming out swinging
14:27SPEAKERsince Panther launched, like, they've been walking
14:29SPEAKERinto a room with Swagger and this is no different, so.
14:33SPEAKER- I mean, when we were at that,
14:34SPEAKERwe went to an Intel Panther-like press tech day,
14:39SPEAKERbasically, a few months, last fall,
14:42SPEAKERand TAP, when we were there, was like,
14:45SPEAKERyeah, you're gonna like this 12-core one.
14:48SPEAKERAnd like, so, for folks who don't know
14:51SPEAKERand don't follow this space, Tom Peterson is,
14:55SPEAKERlike, he's the G-Sync guy, he was in NVIDIA for a long time,
14:58SPEAKERhe was the one who, was it G-Sync or Reflex?
15:01SPEAKER- G-Sync, yeah. - G-Sync, yeah.
15:02SPEAKERHe was the G-Sync guy who drove that whole,
15:07SPEAKERhey, we need to get refresh rates
15:08SPEAKERand frame timing under control,
15:10SPEAKERthis is impactful and important.
15:12SPEAKERAnd then he went to Intel a few years ago,
15:14SPEAKERso when he's excited about something, it's usually,
15:16SPEAKERlike, he doesn't, I've seen him before
15:18SPEAKERwhen he wasn't excited about things,
15:19SPEAKERand you can tell he was excited about this GPU
15:22SPEAKERthat they built for these Panther-like chips.
15:25SPEAKER- So, yeah, they continue to have a big chip
15:30SPEAKERon their shoulder and the G3 announcement is no different.
15:35SPEAKERThey show off a bunch of slides where they're like,
15:38SPEAKERhey, we are far performing ahead of the Z2 Extreme,
15:43SPEAKERwhich is the highest end of AMD's line of handhelds.
15:47SPEAKERNot only that, we are roughly matching performance,
15:51SPEAKERor their full-bore performance with us at,
15:55SPEAKERI think it was, they showed it off at 18 watts.
15:57SPEAKERSo they're saying, hey, their best performance,
16:01SPEAKERwe can match at, like, at half power.
16:03SPEAKER- At Steam Deck power base.
16:05SPEAKERSteam Deck TDP is, like, 15 watts max, right?
16:08SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and so, like, you know, it's--
16:10SPEAKER- That's wild.
16:11SPEAKER- You know, I can't validate their claims,
16:13SPEAKERbut, you know, we know, like, they pass these things
16:17SPEAKERthrough lawyers, all that kind of stuff,
16:18SPEAKERso, you know, they definitely feel like they have a win
16:22SPEAKERon their hands, and if true, like,
16:24SPEAKERthis is definitely gonna be the most performant
16:28SPEAKERhandheld out there.
16:29SPEAKERBut, I mean, does that matter?
16:31SPEAKERLike, there's definitely a subset of people
16:32SPEAKERwho are willing to buy the best of the best.
16:35SPEAKERI mean, I guess, really, if you think about it,
16:38SPEAKERit's not gonna be the best performing handheld,
16:41SPEAKERbecause, like, the Ryzen AI Max Plus devices,
16:45SPEAKERthe Strix Halo stuff, like, it's out there,
16:48SPEAKERbut, like, I mean, those things are, like,
16:50SPEAKERover $2,000, generally, and it's,
16:53SPEAKERit's, have weird configurations, yeah.
16:56SPEAKERLike, some of the handhelds that have that,
16:59SPEAKERlike, don't have an internal battery,
17:01SPEAKERso they have to have an external battery attached,
17:03SPEAKERlike, all that kind of stuff. - Oh, that's wild.
17:05SPEAKER- So, yeah, anyway, for the normal kind of devices,
17:09SPEAKERI think that's, like, Intel's gonna rule the roost here,
17:13SPEAKERand I really think, like, could dethrone AMD in this space,
17:17SPEAKER'cause AMD is just, has just owned this space forever.
17:20SPEAKER- Okay, so two questions.
17:21SPEAKERWhat's the monitor on the claw like?
17:24SPEAKERWhat's the screen?
17:25SPEAKER- So, it's the same screen as the original MSI Claw 8
17:28SPEAKERfrom last year, a really good eight-inch panel,
17:31SPEAKER1200, I don't know, 1920 by 1200.
17:35SPEAKERIt is IPS, but it is a really good IPS.
17:39SPEAKER120 hertz VRR sync range from, I think it's 48 to 120.
17:45SPEAKER- Okay, so you can get that smooth 40 on,
17:47SPEAKERbut I mean, it sounds like you don't need to worry
17:48SPEAKERabout smooth 40 on this thing.
17:50SPEAKER- I mean, like, the thing is, I like,
17:53SPEAKERme personally, I like options.
17:55SPEAKERLike, I'm somebody who pretty much plays on the couch
17:59SPEAKERplugged into the wall, so I'm usually like,
18:02SPEAKERoh yeah, just let the juice fly, baby, I don't care,
18:05SPEAKERkind of thing, and so I like having a really nice
18:09SPEAKERhigh-end range, but there are a lot of people who are like,
18:11SPEAKERoh no, I usually play it kind of like a, you know,
18:14SPEAKERsome sort of balanced preset,
18:16SPEAKERwhich is usually somewhere around 18, 20 watts kind of thing
18:20SPEAKERbecause they wanna extend battery life
18:22SPEAKERor they don't wanna have to worry about the fans,
18:23SPEAKERsomething like that, so I'm glad there's that,
18:26SPEAKERand hopefully, if the power's there on this,
18:30SPEAKERlike, you're gonna have your cake and you're gonna eat it too.
18:33SPEAKER- Are you able to turn on like ray tracing
18:35SPEAKERand stuff like that with this chip,
18:36SPEAKERsince it's a little more capable than the RDNA 2
18:38SPEAKERthat's in the Steam Deck and a lot of the other?
18:42SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting because they're,
18:45SPEAKERso many of the developers usually go back
18:49SPEAKERand make Steam Deck verified versions of their game
18:53SPEAKERthat either has a fallback solution
18:55SPEAKERor maybe like a light ray tracing solution,
18:58SPEAKERwhich like Doom of the Dark Ages went back and did that
19:01SPEAKERfor the Steam Deck specifically,
19:03SPEAKERso like these devices are able to benefit from that work,
19:08SPEAKERbut just like full native ray tracing stuff,
19:11SPEAKERI mean, I can't remember the exact list of games
19:14SPEAKERthey showed off right now, but I mean,
19:16SPEAKERif it's anything like other Panther Lake-based devices
19:19SPEAKERthat I've used, the ray tracing is surprisingly capable.
19:22SPEAKERLike, are you able to do path tracing
19:24SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff?
19:25SPEAKERNo, but I mean, I guess I haven't tested ray tracing
19:30SPEAKERcapability of Panther Lake versus like the launch
19:34SPEAKERof the RTX 2080 or something like that,
19:37SPEAKERbut I would be curious, now I'm actually kind of curious,
19:40SPEAKERlike where in that timeline of RTX GPUs
19:44SPEAKERare we falling right now?
19:46SPEAKERI mean, it's probably more like a 2070 if I had to guess,
19:50SPEAKERbut so it's able to run it, but very, very likely.
19:54SPEAKER- You can't play control with ray tracing on,
19:56SPEAKERbut probably not like full cyberpunk overdrive.
20:00SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:01SPEAKER- Okay, okay, that's super interesting.
20:05SPEAKERIt's a bummer that those things have come in
20:08SPEAKERat like two grand basically,
20:10SPEAKER'cause it feels like in a different world
20:12SPEAKERthat they would be, that would be like $1,000.
20:15SPEAKERIs that, do you think that's fair?
20:16SPEAKER- You know, I actually tried to theorycraft this out
20:19SPEAKERwith Russ on the most recent episode that we did,
20:22SPEAKERbecause like MSI and Intel,
20:25SPEAKERthey didn't want the prices to go this way.
20:27SPEAKER- No.
20:28SPEAKER- Like MSI had an interview, and I'm sorry,
20:31SPEAKERI don't remember the source off the top of my head,
20:33SPEAKERbut there was an interview that got passed around
20:36SPEAKERwhere MSI was like, hey, listen,
20:38SPEAKERlike we're getting hurt by the SSD and the RAM stuff,
20:42SPEAKERand it's just driving the price up,
20:45SPEAKERand it just is what it is, unfortunately.
20:48SPEAKERSo I don't know where they would have aimed it.
20:51SPEAKERIf I had to guess, I bet they were probably aiming
20:55SPEAKERfor 1,000 to kind of like be at the top end of that,
20:59SPEAKERand I think that wouldn't have been
21:01SPEAKERout of the realm of possibility, but you never know.
21:04SPEAKERI mean, it's hard to say.
21:06SPEAKEREither way, the Steam Deck was always the go-to.
21:10SPEAKERThe Steam Deck was, hey, what you can get for $400 or 550
21:15SPEAKERif you sprung for the OLED model
21:17SPEAKERis good enough for everybody.
21:19SPEAKERIt's awesome hardware, Valve makes it.
21:22SPEAKERSo many developers are targeting that platform,
21:24SPEAKERand every conversation we would have
21:28SPEAKERaround another handheld would be, hey, buy a Steam Deck,
21:32SPEAKERbut if you're looking for XYZ, maybe more power,
21:36SPEAKERdetachable controllers, or a bigger screen, yada yada,
21:40SPEAKERthen maybe this is more up your alley.
21:42SPEAKERNow that the Steam Deck has jumped up in price,
21:47SPEAKERit's so weird because now all the YouTubers are like,
21:49SPEAKERhey, don't buy a Steam Deck.
21:51SPEAKERIt's just, overnight, the whole conversation changed,
21:55SPEAKERand the hardcore of us are trying to figure out,
22:00SPEAKERokay, well, what are some good alternatives,
22:03SPEAKERbut these high-end devices, how do we pitch these to people?
22:08SPEAKER'Cause no matter what, it's for the enthusiast.
22:12SPEAKERThe Steam Deck was the closest I think we could ever get
22:15SPEAKERto a mainstream device, and even then,
22:18SPEAKERI mean, we're only talking about, what,
22:20SPEAKERI think four million units sold
22:23SPEAKERis what the estimation is. - Well, that's what
22:24SPEAKERthey've talked about.
22:25SPEAKERThey haven't given a number in two years,
22:26SPEAKERa year and a half at this point.
22:29SPEAKERThe thing to me that's interesting,
22:31SPEAKERthat makes this math weird,
22:33SPEAKERis that when you're talking about a $500 device,
22:37SPEAKERand the cost of RAM and storage is a third
22:41SPEAKERto a half of that probably, right,
22:43SPEAKERfor their bill of materials before they make money,
22:46SPEAKERthen it makes sense to buy the inexpensive one, right?
22:52SPEAKERBut if you're buying, if you have the same amount of RAM
22:54SPEAKERand same amount of storage in all of these devices,
22:56SPEAKERbasically, 'cause they're all basically
22:58SPEAKERlike 16 or 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte SSD,
23:02SPEAKERbut those cost $1,000 of your device,
23:06SPEAKERyou might as well buy the one with the good CPU.
23:08SPEAKERThe unfortunate thing is it's killed the,
23:11SPEAKERhey, my kid wants a gaming PC, what's a cheap way,
23:14SPEAKERthis is now a cheap, easy way to get them into it, right?
23:18SPEAKERAnd I think that, I assume this is Windows, the claw.
23:21SPEAKER- Chips with Windows.
23:23SPEAKERI did ask at our press briefing days at Computex,
23:27SPEAKERhave you, is it gonna have official Linux support?
23:30SPEAKERYou know, have you tested it?
23:32SPEAKERAnd they were like, well, we don't wanna really claim
23:34SPEAKERofficial Linux support, 'cause that's just too hard.
23:37SPEAKERAs we know as Linux experts, me and you,
23:40SPEAKERthere's a lot of different versions of Linux,
23:41SPEAKERso if they came out and was like,
23:43SPEAKERoh yeah, it has Linux support, but you know--
23:45SPEAKER- No, you don't have-- - It doesn't run Ubuntu.
23:49SPEAKER- You don't have, you don't have Kubuntu, yeah, no, whatever.
23:54SPEAKER- So, but then we're like, okay, well, what flavors
23:57SPEAKERor what distros have you actually tested on?
24:00SPEAKERAnd they said yes.
24:02SPEAKEREssentially meaning like all the major ones.
24:06SPEAKER- The ones you'd expect from the market.
24:07SPEAKER- Yeah, and especially gaming ones, Bizite, SteamOS,
24:11SPEAKEReven though it doesn't have official SteamOS,
24:13SPEAKERthere is a beta version of SteamOS
24:16SPEAKERthat officially supports the old generation MSI Claw 8.
24:21SPEAKER- Okay. - And so, you know,
24:22SPEAKERlike they're, now more than ever,
24:26SPEAKERthey are thinking more about it, but hey, guess what?
24:29SPEAKERMicrosoft is a valued partner, and you know,
24:32SPEAKERso these are gonna ship with Windows.
24:34SPEAKER- You know, the question I would love to know the answer to
24:36SPEAKERis if they cede early hardware to like Bizite developers
24:41SPEAKERand stuff like that so that those folks
24:42SPEAKERcan have that stuff ready to go out of the gate.
24:44SPEAKER- I mean, I hope. - I would hope so.
24:46SPEAKER- Yeah, but probably not.
24:49SPEAKER- They should. - Yeah, they should.
24:51SPEAKERThat would be really smart,
24:52SPEAKERbut like knowing how a lot of these launches come in,
24:55SPEAKERnot just handhelds, like flying by the seat of the pants,
24:58SPEAKERnobody wants stuff to leak and all that kind of stuff, so.
25:03SPEAKER- Yeah, okay. - I can say,
25:05SPEAKERand I actually didn't say this on Expedition handheld
25:07SPEAKER'cause I forgot, is that this has a manufacturing date
25:11SPEAKERon the back of it, and this was manufactured
25:14SPEAKERin March of 2026.
25:17SPEAKER- Oh, wow. - This handheld, so.
25:18SPEAKER- So you've been making 'em for a minute, huh?
25:20SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, this definitely is,
25:22SPEAKERthis is not a final retail unit.
25:24SPEAKERThis is a, what I have in for testing
25:27SPEAKERis a pre-production model, but I mean,
25:30SPEAKERthey tell me it's close to retail, so.
25:33SPEAKER- Interesting, okay, so well, we've hit,
25:36SPEAKERwe touched, we kinda danced around this,
25:38SPEAKERbut the Steam Deck prices have gone up.
25:41SPEAKERI think we talked about it a couple weeks ago as well.
25:44SPEAKERBut Valve basically doubled the price
25:45SPEAKERof all their Steam Deck models a couple weeks ago?
25:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it hurts, like I think the hard part for me
25:54SPEAKERis that usually people have to make a decision, right?
25:58SPEAKER- Yeah. - Like when the Steam Deck
26:00SPEAKERwas down at $400 to get in the door,
26:03SPEAKERyou're looking at, oh, okay, well, could I get a Steam Deck
26:06SPEAKERor could I get a Switch 2, which is generally around that.
26:09SPEAKERIf you're looking at the OLED model,
26:11SPEAKERwhich started at 550, you're like, oh, okay, well,
26:14SPEAKERit's more than a, you know, a Nintendo Switch 2.
26:20SPEAKERYou know, you're starting to push
26:21SPEAKERinto the bigger consoles kinda thing,
26:23SPEAKERlike, eh, okay, but I want it portable, yada yada.
26:27SPEAKERAnd then usually when people are looking at stuff
26:29SPEAKERthat's more expensive, then you get the people
26:32SPEAKERwho are like, oh, well, why would I get this
26:34SPEAKERversus a gaming laptop or whatever?
26:36SPEAKERAnd so, like, consoles kind of,
26:40SPEAKERI usually try to use console pricing as like an anchor,
26:42SPEAKEReven though it's not a one-to-one,
26:44SPEAKERbecause, hey, you're not gonna take your PlayStation 5
26:47SPEAKERand put it on, you know, your lap, you know, and play it.
26:52SPEAKERIt's not a handheld device.
26:53SPEAKERSo, I mean, but either way, the PlayStation 5 Pro,
26:57SPEAKERI think, is at $950 right now.
27:01SPEAKERAnd, like, the, I mean, that's the top end
27:05SPEAKERSteam Deck OLED variant as well.
27:08SPEAKERAnd so, like, they both have gone up, and it sucks.
27:11SPEAKERI'm not gonna say it's, like, great,
27:14SPEAKERbut, like, they're, everything's going up.
27:16SPEAKERAnd so, like, they're just kind of matching it.
27:18SPEAKERAnd so, I think that really the bigger thing is,
27:21SPEAKERdoes somebody have the disposable income
27:23SPEAKERto buy any of this stuff?
27:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:25SPEAKER- Let alone the $1800 MSI Claw 8EX.
27:30SPEAKER- $1800 is, like, it's funny.
27:33SPEAKERThere was a thread going around, like,
27:36SPEAKERgame developer Twitter yesterday, or Blue Sky yesterday,
27:39SPEAKERwhere people were pricing out their machines
27:42SPEAKERthat they built, like, at the start of this generation.
27:44SPEAKERLike, people who have, like, a Ryzen 9 series,
27:49SPEAKERor a Core 3, Core 2 from Intel, right?
27:52SPEAKERLike, the newer CPUs, and they were pricing out
27:54SPEAKERwhat their workstations cost that they're using
27:56SPEAKERfor, like, Unreal Engine 5 development.
27:59SPEAKERAnd they were, like, oh, I paid $2200 for this machine
28:01SPEAKERtwo years ago, and now it would be $5600,
28:04SPEAKERbecause they have, like, three, four terabyte SSDs
28:07SPEAKERin there, right?
28:09SPEAKERSo, yeah, it hurts, it hurts.
28:11SPEAKER- Well, I mean, and, like, the big thing I worry about is,
28:14SPEAKERokay, does this mean it's the death,
28:16SPEAKERor are we past the heyday of PC gaming handhelds?
28:22SPEAKERLike, I really hope not.
28:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:25SPEAKER- But, I mean, with the pricing the way it is,
28:27SPEAKERI mean, maybe another way to look at it is that
28:30SPEAKERit could be, sure, but it also would mean
28:34SPEAKERthose same questions should be asked of the consoles,
28:37SPEAKERlike, is this the death of home consoles,
28:40SPEAKERbecause those prices have gone up as well.
28:42SPEAKER- I mean, I think Microsoft--
28:43SPEAKER- Personal computing.
28:45SPEAKER- I think Microsoft's asking those questions right now,
28:47SPEAKERif nobody else is.
28:48SPEAKER- True.
28:50SPEAKERBut luckily, like, I feel like there are
28:52SPEAKERinteresting alternatives.
28:53SPEAKER- Okay.
28:54SPEAKER- Because there are still some x86-based devices
28:59SPEAKERthat are hitting that $500, $600-ish price point
29:03SPEAKERfor reasons we can get into, but, like,
29:07SPEAKERRuss and I did a video a couple weeks ago
29:09SPEAKERon the PCWorld channel, like, debating,
29:11SPEAKERhey, do you wait for a Steam Deck OLED?
29:14SPEAKERAnd this was--
29:15SPEAKER- 'Cause they're out of stock.
29:16SPEAKER- Yeah, it was out of stock at that time,
29:18SPEAKERthe pricing hadn't gone up yet.
29:19SPEAKERDo you wait for a Steam Deck OLED,
29:20SPEAKERor do you buy a, I think it was a Memorial Day sale,
29:26SPEAKERwhere the Asus ROG Xbox Ally non-X was on sale for $500.
29:34SPEAKER- So that's the Xbox-branded one,
29:36SPEAKERthat's not the souped-up Z2 Extreme one, right?
29:38SPEAKER- Exactly, yeah, so it's the more entry-level one,
29:40SPEAKERit's white, you know, it still is the same awesome hardware
29:44SPEAKERon the outside, but on the inside,
29:46SPEAKERit has a couple cutbacks.
29:49SPEAKERI feel like I tested that one out for a couple weeks,
29:51SPEAKERand it was a perfectly cromulent handheld.
29:55SPEAKER- I mean, power-wise, so that one has a Z2 Go chip in it,
29:59SPEAKERI think, or maybe it's Z2A, oh, too many Z2A processors.
30:04SPEAKER- Their naming scheme is terrible.
30:05SPEAKER- Either way, it literally is almost the exact same processor
30:09SPEAKERthat's in the Steam Deck.
30:10SPEAKERSo, like, roughly, you can think,
30:13SPEAKERoh, okay, how is it gonna perform?
30:15SPEAKERWell, just look at how the Steam Deck performs,
30:17SPEAKERand it's, you know, almost one-to-one kind of thing,
30:21SPEAKERso it's like, oh, it's not, you know,
30:24SPEAKERit's still an option that's out there,
30:26SPEAKERit is still actually being sold, not at that price,
30:29SPEAKERI think it went back up to the $600 price,
30:31SPEAKERbut, you know, that is normal, like,
30:33SPEAKERthat is more of a quote-unquote normal
30:35SPEAKERSteam Deck-ish pricing, if not a little elevated.
30:40SPEAKERBut unfortunately, like, I think the only reason
30:43SPEAKERwhy they're able to continue to have those pricing
30:45SPEAKERis that they have inventory right now,
30:49SPEAKERand when they have, at the moment,
30:50SPEAKERthey have to build new ones, they're either gonna say,
30:53SPEAKERyeah, we're just not gonna build anymore,
30:54SPEAKERor they're gonna say, okay, we'll build more,
30:57SPEAKERbut we have to do it at the current costs
30:59SPEAKERthat we paid for it, so, like, I mean,
31:02SPEAKERI hate saying this, 'cause I don't want people
31:04SPEAKERto feel left out, but, like, if you're looking
31:08SPEAKERto get a handheld around the 500, $600-ish price point,
31:13SPEAKERthen you should probably jump on that
31:15SPEAKERsooner rather than later.
31:16SPEAKER- Well, yeah, 'cause a lot of this stuff is priced low
31:18SPEAKERbecause people paid for their memory two years ago.
31:22SPEAKER- Yep. - Like, they're dealing,
31:23SPEAKERyou're, if you have a company like Acer or Asus or Lenovo
31:28SPEAKERor somebody that's big and buys memory in huge lots,
31:30SPEAKERthey're paying 2024 prices, not 2026 prices right now still,
31:35SPEAKERso, what else is it, like, the other thing that's happened
31:38SPEAKERis, well, I mean, the other thing that's happened is ARM,
31:41SPEAKERright, ARM stuff is getting kind of good,
31:44SPEAKERI can't believe I'm saying it, but it's getting good, right?
31:47SPEAKER- I mean, so, this is definitely something
31:49SPEAKERthat has kind of caught me by surprise
31:51SPEAKERover the past couple weeks, if not months.
31:54SPEAKERRuss, usually, I'm sorry, Russ over at Retro Game Corps,
31:58SPEAKERhe usually does testing on Android devices, you know,
32:03SPEAKERlike, ARM-based devices.
32:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like the Retroid Pocket and stuff like that, right?
32:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, AYN, Ioneo, all that kind of stuff,
32:11SPEAKERand he was like, he did a video
32:14SPEAKERabout an app called Game Native,
32:17SPEAKERwhich uses the translation layer for ARM to x86 PC gaming,
32:24SPEAKERand he's like, wow, this is actually surprisingly good,
32:27SPEAKERlike, it falls on its face here and there,
32:29SPEAKERbut, like, it's surprisingly good,
32:31SPEAKERand then all of a sudden I started seeing
32:34SPEAKERa bunch of other people making the same kind of videos,
32:36SPEAKERand I was just, I was laughing it off at first,
32:39SPEAKER'cause I was like, ah, come on, I have three different ways
32:45SPEAKERfrom Sunday to play my PC games on bigger devices,
32:49SPEAKERwhy would I ever try it out on Android or ARM?
32:52SPEAKERAnd I was like, ah, okay, I shouldn't dismiss it outright,
32:56SPEAKERI should try it out, and man, I've been surprised, dude.
33:00SPEAKERIt is like, it has shook me in ways that I'm like,
33:03SPEAKERoh, I see a different feature laying out before us.
33:07SPEAKER- So, okay, I've heard this before,
33:11SPEAKERis it good in the, oh, yeah, you can play
33:14SPEAKERall your Xbox 360 games on this thing and it's great,
33:16SPEAKERor is it good in the, hey, I'm gonna play 007 First Light
33:23SPEAKERor Forza Horizon's setup at seven, six,
33:26SPEAKERwhatever the new one is on it?
33:29SPEAKER- I mean, well, there's multiple things at play here,
33:32SPEAKERlike Qualcomm's hardware is very capable,
33:36SPEAKERand not that there's not other ARM-based devices,
33:39SPEAKERbut Qualcomm is kind of the Snapdragon series
33:42SPEAKERis the one most people are developing against,
33:45SPEAKERand I mean, they've done a lot of work
33:48SPEAKERto beef up ray tracing, I mean, these are capable things,
33:52SPEAKERbut people usually kinda dismiss it
33:54SPEAKERbecause it's mostly going in phones, right?
33:57SPEAKER- Well, or like corporate laptops, yeah.
33:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, well. (laughs)
34:02SPEAKERAnd so there's that, this hardware is actually pretty capable.
34:07SPEAKERNumber two, there is a lot of development work
34:10SPEAKERbeing done on this translation stuff,
34:13SPEAKERand I mean, obviously Valve is contributing to it
34:18SPEAKERwith their effects program,
34:20SPEAKERthat's specifically for the headset,
34:23SPEAKERbut oh, hey, guess what, I mean, it's open source,
34:26SPEAKERso everyone else is able to take those learnings
34:29SPEAKERand put it onto other x86 gaming,
34:33SPEAKERand this feels like, I mean, I guess I wasn't around
34:38SPEAKERpre-Steam Deck days to mess around with this,
34:41SPEAKERbut this feels like the early days of Proton,
34:44SPEAKERwhere hey, you know what, we're doing a lot of work here,
34:49SPEAKERand when it works, it works awesome,
34:50SPEAKERand when it doesn't work, it falls on its face.
34:53SPEAKERSo that has definitely been my testing,
34:55SPEAKERis that I just, I download a bunch of games
34:59SPEAKERand try them out, just to see if it works kind of thing,
35:02SPEAKERand sometimes it's like, oh, Hades just works, cool, great.
35:08SPEAKEROr I loaded up something old like,
35:13SPEAKERoh, why can't I think of the name?
35:14SPEAKERThe game that had the twangy guitars, the Xbox 360.
35:21SPEAKER- Call of Juarez?
35:22SPEAKER- No, no, it's like a isometric view.
35:26SPEAKERI can't think of the name of it.
35:28SPEAKERAnyway, it's an older Xbox 360 arcade game,
35:31SPEAKERwhich I was like, oh, this should play it.
35:34SPEAKERPower-wise, it's not taking up a ton of resources,
35:37SPEAKERbut there was graphical glitches,
35:39SPEAKERthere was a line down the middle of the screen kind of thing
35:41SPEAKERso it played, but it had a graphical glitch kind of thing.
35:45SPEAKERAnd then--
35:46SPEAKER- Wait, was that an actual Xbox 360 game,
35:48SPEAKERor was that an Xbox 360 x86 port?
35:52SPEAKER- I mean, this was from my Steam library,
35:54SPEAKERso yeah, it was a port to the PC.
35:58SPEAKERI'm just saying it launched around Xbox 360 timeframe.
36:02SPEAKERThat's how usually I kind of chunk it up,
36:03SPEAKERis like, oh, the power that they needed back in the day
36:07SPEAKERis usually lower than what's needed now.
36:11SPEAKERAnyway, and so, yeah, I'm not gonna say,
36:16SPEAKERoh, we have a silver bullet here,
36:18SPEAKERbut the fact that Valve is doing all this work
36:21SPEAKERfor their headset, and they have--
36:24SPEAKER- Flex.
36:25SPEAKER- The FEX is the translation layer for their Steam frame,
36:30SPEAKERand if they're doing all that work
36:32SPEAKERto get normal Steam games running on the frame,
36:36SPEAKERwhich is a ARM-based processor,
36:39SPEAKEReverybody else is gonna be able to benefit from that.
36:42SPEAKERAnd the community, there are,
36:44SPEAKERjust like on Linux and open source,
36:46SPEAKERthere are many different drivers,
36:48SPEAKERso kind of like in Steam OS right now,
36:51SPEAKERif you go on your Steam Deck,
36:53SPEAKERyou can pick different versions of Proton,
36:55SPEAKERthere's experimental, there's 10,
36:57SPEAKERlike now 11 is in beta, whatever.
37:00SPEAKERInside of this game native app,
37:02SPEAKERyou can pick different Mesa drivers, community drivers,
37:05SPEAKERlike turnip drivers, things like that.
37:07SPEAKERSo really, everyone's kind of,
37:10SPEAKERI don't know if there's a really good database
37:12SPEAKERthe way that Steam DB is,
37:14SPEAKERbut I know a lot of people are doing work
37:16SPEAKERto chronicle and be like, "Hey, you know what?
37:18SPEAKER"If you're gonna play this game,
37:20SPEAKER"you should make sure you load up this driver
37:21SPEAKER"with these settings, and then it'll play really good."
37:24SPEAKERWhich is not great for mainstream users,
37:27SPEAKERbut either way, like the power that I'm seeing
37:30SPEAKERout of these ARM-based handhelds,
37:32SPEAKERwhich are much cheaper than x86 devices,
37:35SPEAKERlike I start looking towards,
37:37SPEAKER"Oh, I think this is the future
37:39SPEAKER"of low-end handheld gaming."
37:42SPEAKERLike I can easily, I think rather than a $400 to $500
37:47SPEAKERSteam Deck being x86-based,
37:50SPEAKEReither Valve is going to switch to ARM in the future,
37:54SPEAKERor the x86 prices are always gonna be at the top end
37:59SPEAKERbecause Qualcomm peaks at a certain point,
38:04SPEAKERand x86 devices can go pretty high-end.
38:07SPEAKERSo I think maybe we'll see a future
38:09SPEAKERwhere all the low-end devices, maybe sub-$500,
38:13SPEAKERare all ARM-based, and if you want more power,
38:17SPEAKERyou get x86.
38:18SPEAKER- I mean, I think that, A, I think that kinda makes sense.
38:22SPEAKERI also think more, well, okay, three things.
38:26SPEAKEROne, I think the kind of people who are running x86 games
38:29SPEAKERon ARM are probably, at this point,
38:31SPEAKERare probably okay with doing fiddly stuff,
38:33SPEAKERlike going to a forum someplace
38:34SPEAKERand looking for the right settings, right?
38:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:37SPEAKERI do, I think that, honestly, I think,
38:40SPEAKERand this would be, if I was pitching something to Valve,
38:43SPEAKERI would be like, hey, one of the things you all should do
38:45SPEAKERis make a tool that collects all this user information
38:49SPEAKERand makes it so that you just hit the,
38:52SPEAKERlike the GeForce experience of running emulated games
38:56SPEAKERon Steam platforms, whether it's Windows on Linux
38:59SPEAKERor x86 on Windows on Linux on ARM.
39:05SPEAKERBut we shouldn't have to do that work.
39:07SPEAKERAnd honestly, a lot of it is, hey,
39:12SPEAKERI go to ProtonDB and I look for the settings
39:14SPEAKERand then I put all the stuff in
39:16SPEAKERand it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
39:18SPEAKERIt would be nice if that was kind of automated for me
39:20SPEAKERin some way.
39:21SPEAKER- Like a feedback loop.
39:23SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:24SPEAKER- That would be nice, and I mean--
39:27SPEAKER- They already do it with the controller mappings, right?
39:28SPEAKERLike, if you look at how the controller mappings work
39:31SPEAKERon the Steam input stuff, they have a system
39:33SPEAKERfor users to submit things and then them to get voted on
39:37SPEAKERand approved and all that.
39:38SPEAKERSo all you have to do is build that,
39:40SPEAKERbut for the settings and command line, basically,
39:43SPEAKERis the thing.
39:44SPEAKER- Actually, man, that's really smart.
39:47SPEAKER- I'm gonna go send my resume to Valve
39:48SPEAKERand see if they need somebody to get this team going.
39:50SPEAKER(laughing)
39:52SPEAKER- But yeah, right now it's definitely tinker territory.
39:54SPEAKERI mean, the people who are buying these ARM emulation devices
39:59SPEAKERlike the AYNs, the Retroids, the Ioneos,
40:02SPEAKERall that kind of stuff, it's mostly tinkerers.
40:05SPEAKERI mean, like, I feel like when,
40:12SPEAKERwhat's his name over at Giant Bomb?
40:14SPEAKER- Jeff Grubb.
40:15SPEAKER- No, well, yeah, when Jeff Grubb and Dan and stuff
40:18SPEAKERare buying handhelds and like configuring them
40:22SPEAKERfor their friends and like reselling them and stuff,
40:24SPEAKERlike it is starting to get somewhat of a mainstream
40:28SPEAKERkind of thing because, I mean, we're talking about
40:31SPEAKER$100, $200 devices that can emulate not just PC stuff,
40:35SPEAKERbut also like every other classic console.
40:39SPEAKER- It's interesting because, well, A,
40:41SPEAKERthat reminds me a lot of like the old days
40:43SPEAKERwhen somebody was like, "Hey, man, I know a guy
40:45SPEAKER"who can mod your Xbox for you."
40:47SPEAKERAnd you'd drag it out there and then he'd be like,
40:50SPEAKER"Yeah, come back in two hours, I got you."
40:52SPEAKERAnd it's like doing a drug deal, right?
40:54SPEAKERLike they're in the same situation.
40:55SPEAKER"Hey, man, I can hook you up with a Thor
40:57SPEAKER"that can run all the business you need."
41:02SPEAKER- I think that this makes the decision matrix,
41:06SPEAKERhaving ARM machines that are capable
41:09SPEAKERand also in increasingly interesting and weird form factors,
41:12SPEAKERlike the Thor is really interesting
41:14SPEAKER'cause it's basically like a 3DS kind of form factor
41:17SPEAKERwith like a really nice capable ARM CPU.
41:19SPEAKER- It's really nice.
41:20SPEAKER- And it makes the decision matrix for people
41:23SPEAKERwho are buying stuff both simultaneously more difficult
41:26SPEAKERand also kind of easier, right?
41:28SPEAKER'Cause like your chance of getting something good
41:31SPEAKERthat's gonna actually do all the things you want
41:33SPEAKERis pretty high.
41:35SPEAKERHow does stuff like anti-cheat work
41:37SPEAKERon these ARM-based machines?
41:40SPEAKERIs that a no-go?
41:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it pretty much lines up
41:44SPEAKERwith what we have on the Linux side.
41:46SPEAKERSo if it's kernel-based, it's just not a thing.
41:51SPEAKERBut hopefully, I mean, I think the other part of this
41:54SPEAKERis that because of the pricing,
41:57SPEAKERbecause of the world right now,
41:59SPEAKERat least I've heard and I don't know if you have,
42:03SPEAKERmaybe you can back this up,
42:04SPEAKERbut there's a lot of push to say,
42:07SPEAKERhey, let's try to get more out of what we have now
42:10SPEAKERrather than buying the newest hardware, right?
42:13SPEAKERLike we're all in on this
42:15SPEAKERand I think developers are on this as well to say,
42:18SPEAKERhey, you know what, we need to optimize more
42:21SPEAKERfor lower end things and make sure everyone
42:25SPEAKERwho has hardware can get access to our games.
42:28SPEAKERAnd that like, I love pushing forward,
42:30SPEAKERI love having new features and all that kind of stuff,
42:33SPEAKERbut also maybe it is good, hey, you know what,
42:35SPEAKERlet's take a step back for a couple years
42:37SPEAKERand not push the bleeding edge
42:38SPEAKERand just make sure everyone with low end hardware
42:40SPEAKERcan kind of catch up, right?
42:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
42:43SPEAKER- So like, and I think low end based devices
42:46SPEAKERare gonna do that.
42:47SPEAKERLike, I mean, something that's 100 to $200,
42:52SPEAKERyou know, ARM-based device, like a Retroid Pocket,
42:56SPEAKERyeah, you're thinking first to pick it up
42:58SPEAKERto play retro games on it, but man, I tell you what,
43:03SPEAKERemulating is like such an almost solved equation.
43:06SPEAKERLike sure, there's the PS3, which is weird
43:09SPEAKERand there's a lot of work being done there
43:11SPEAKERand you know, real random, weird consoles
43:14SPEAKERlike the 3DO that haven't fully been figured out,
43:16SPEAKERbut for the most part, like there's people
43:18SPEAKERwho are playing Switch games on emulation
43:21SPEAKERand just running fine.
43:23SPEAKERLike emulation is in such a good spot.
43:26SPEAKERLike I feel like the other Wild West is the PC stuff.
43:29SPEAKERSo I just feel like people are like,
43:30SPEAKERoh, okay, now how do we get all this PC gaming emulation
43:35SPEAKERstuff up to snuff as well?
43:37SPEAKER'Cause that's a deep well.
43:38SPEAKER- And like the choice between, hey, I want an AMD APU
43:45SPEAKERwith like a couple of generations back GPU
43:47SPEAKERand a couple of generations back CPU
43:49SPEAKERor an ARM handheld that probably costs about the same
43:53SPEAKERthat has like the bleeding edge new GPU
43:56SPEAKERis like, it's an unusual choice to make, right?
44:02SPEAKER- Well, and yeah, I mean, here's the other part of it too
44:05SPEAKERis that at Computex, Nvidia released
44:11SPEAKERor announced their more consumerish ARM platform.
44:16SPEAKERMicrosoft was on stage, all the major OEMs were on stage.
44:20SPEAKERI mean, we're talking about laptops and desktops
44:22SPEAKERthat are thousands and thousands of dollars.
44:24SPEAKERSo they're not fully consumer,
44:27SPEAKERbut you have Qualcomm with their Snapdragon platform
44:30SPEAKERpushing from the low end up into computing
44:33SPEAKERand now Nvidia coming from the top end
44:37SPEAKERand like strong arming down.
44:39SPEAKERLike X86 is getting squeezed in the middle here.
44:41SPEAKERAnd so like for Nvidia to come up and say,
44:44SPEAKERhey, we've been working with developers
44:49SPEAKERto make sure that these games run on ARM is a big deal.
44:52SPEAKERLike I literally played three games at my briefing
44:56SPEAKERand one of them was Fortnite.
44:58SPEAKER- That's wild.
44:59SPEAKER- Will Smith's Fortnite was there.
45:02SPEAKER- I haven't played Fortnite in six months, but yeah.
45:03SPEAKER- But like, they were like, hey, listen,
45:05SPEAKERwe worked with them to figure out an anti-cheat
45:07SPEAKERthat worked on ARM and there was a couple other games
45:12SPEAKERlike Pragmata, Alan Wake 2, just being like,
45:16SPEAKERhey, yeah, is this running up to snuff as X86?
45:20SPEAKERNo, but we got it running and like,
45:23SPEAKERwe're dedicating valuable time and resources to it
45:27SPEAKERin a way that is just like, oh, ARM,
45:30SPEAKERARM is getting attention now.
45:32SPEAKER- Well, and then the other thing about like Nvidia
45:34SPEAKERcoming into the market is they're putting the high end,
45:38SPEAKERperfectly qual chips into the laptops like the Surface
45:42SPEAKERand stuff like that.
45:44SPEAKERPresumably that means at some point in the future,
45:46SPEAKERthere'll be some downstream chips that don't quite hit
45:48SPEAKERthe snuff required for a full workstation style laptop,
45:53SPEAKERAI workstation style laptop and there's an entire possibility
45:59SPEAKERthat stuff will scale down and we'll start seeing
46:01SPEAKERlike handheld versions of the SKUs in six months
46:03SPEAKERwhen they know how the manufacturers didn't go on those.
46:06SPEAKER- I mean, the Nvidia does have Tegra, right?
46:10SPEAKERI mean, Nvidia's in the Nintendo Switch 2
46:13SPEAKERand we have not seen an update to the Nvidia Shield,
46:18SPEAKERlike imagine a video shield with essentially
46:21SPEAKERthe A Switch 2 power performance profile,
46:24SPEAKERlike what could be done with that?
46:26SPEAKER- Yeah, arguably they invented this category, right?
46:29SPEAKER- Right, yeah, so like Nvidia is definitely primed.
46:33SPEAKERI mean, can they keep their eye on the ball?
46:35SPEAKERWho knows, they're so deep in the AI money
46:37SPEAKERthat gaming is such a small little side note, but.
46:41SPEAKER- Yeah, do they care about the niche of the niche
46:44SPEAKERof the niche?
46:45SPEAKER- I mean, there are people there who care for sure,
46:48SPEAKERbut do they have enough resources and time
46:51SPEAKERto really do interesting things with the gaming devices?
46:54SPEAKERI mean, I hope so, but yeah.
46:57SPEAKER- We'll see.
46:59SPEAKERWhat about stuff like the analog pocket?
47:01SPEAKERWe haven't talked about that at all,
47:02SPEAKERbut that's the analog makes, I don't wanna say closed,
47:07SPEAKER'cause they're like semi-open, right?
47:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:10SPEAKER- FPGA-based emulation devices?
47:13SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's not just analog.
47:14SPEAKERI mean, FPGA is definitely there and it continues
47:18SPEAKERand I mean, analog had, what was it?
47:21SPEAKERThe analog 3D, the N64-based.
47:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the N64 one, yeah.
47:25SPEAKER- Like, there's other devices out there that use FPGA.
47:30SPEAKERPlugged in my CRT right now.
47:32SPEAKER- I think the, like, I don't have a ton of experience
47:35SPEAKERwith them, I do have an analog pocket, of course,
47:38SPEAKERbut like, from what I understand of the FPGA stuff
47:42SPEAKERis that the problem they're having there is scaling up,
47:45SPEAKERbut they can't really scale up to higher-end hardware
47:48SPEAKERfast enough, like, I mean, they got N64 working, right?
47:54SPEAKERPS1 seems to be something that people are working on,
47:57SPEAKERbut, you know, jumping to then PS2-level FPGA, like,
48:02SPEAKERdevices, like, might take a little bit more time as well.
48:05SPEAKERLike I said, I'm not as tuned in on that,
48:08SPEAKERbut from what I've heard, it's just slow.
48:11SPEAKERLike I said, like, ARM is already able to, like,
48:15SPEAKERplay PC games, current PC games and Nintendo Switch 2
48:18SPEAKERand all the newest consoles, all that kind of stuff,
48:21SPEAKERpower-wise at least, where FPGA is still, you know,
48:25SPEAKERlike, really focusing on retro stuff.
48:27SPEAKER- I think, I mean, we've covered FPGA stuff a fair amount
48:31SPEAKERbefore, I don't have any experience with the analog stuff
48:33SPEAKERjust 'cause I'm firmly in the buy the cheap open thing
48:36SPEAKERrather than the expensive closed thing category
48:38SPEAKERin that space.
48:39SPEAKER- It is really nice hardware, though.
48:40SPEAKER- It is nice hardware, yeah.
48:41SPEAKERLike, I look at those analog pockets, I'm like,
48:42SPEAKERoh man, that thing looks pretty good.
48:46SPEAKERBut it seems like, I also think that there's a reward,
48:51SPEAKERlike a return on investment that makes more sense
48:54SPEAKERwith actually the older hardware design
48:56SPEAKERfor the low latency of the CRT and stuff like that
48:58SPEAKERversus the frame laggy or, you know,
49:03SPEAKERonce you got to the era where you were doing 3D rendering
49:07SPEAKERand the actual 3D performance was limiting
49:10SPEAKERwhat you could do and you would see, like, frame sags
49:12SPEAKERlike crazy on PS2 games and GameCube games,
49:16SPEAKERI actually think that running emulation on software
49:19SPEAKERrather than on hardware maybe makes more sense
49:22SPEAKERbecause it turns out the hardware experience
49:24SPEAKERis kind of shit on a lot of that stuff,
49:26SPEAKERespecially in the early 3D days,
49:28SPEAKERand giving it more performance in a way
49:31SPEAKERthat doesn't break the game is maybe not a bad thing.
49:34SPEAKERLike, getting an actual stable 30 or 60
49:37SPEAKERout of a PS2 era GameCube era,
49:39SPEAKERI'm not just picking on the PS2,
49:40SPEAKERbut all of those early 3D things
49:43SPEAKERhad some real performance problems.
49:44SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah.
49:46SPEAKER- And some of it is some charm, but like,
49:51SPEAKERput it this way, playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
49:54SPEAKERon a mister with a CRT is way different
49:56SPEAKERthan playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
49:58SPEAKERon a Retroid Pocket on an LCD, right?
50:01SPEAKER- Right.
50:02SPEAKER- Like, look, yeah.
50:04SPEAKER- Well, and I think that that's the other thing
50:07SPEAKERthat I've noticed a lot recently with myself, too,
50:11SPEAKERis that there are some people who just don't have,
50:14SPEAKERlike, nostalgia for classic stuff.
50:17SPEAKERLike, Russ, he is perfectly fine to play older games
50:22SPEAKERon these emulation devices.
50:23SPEAKERHe's like, oh, you know, I don't really have a reverence
50:25SPEAKERfor the hardware, in some cases, in some cases.
50:29SPEAKERAnd then, you know, maybe the game,
50:31SPEAKERI never played it back in the day,
50:32SPEAKERso I'm just playing it fresh kind of thing.
50:35SPEAKERBut the more and more that I mess around
50:37SPEAKERwith, like, the AIY and Thor, I was like,
50:39SPEAKERdang, this is great.
50:40SPEAKERThis can play all of my DS and 3DS games.
50:44SPEAKERAnd then I whipped out, or I mean,
50:46SPEAKERI have my 3DS, my original one still,
50:49SPEAKERand then I bought from Steve Lynn a DSi,
50:54SPEAKERand I started playing on this, being like,
50:56SPEAKERoh, this might be kind of fun
50:57SPEAKERjust to see what the experience was like.
50:59SPEAKERAnd then I was like, dang,
51:01SPEAKERI actually just kind of miss the original hardware.
51:04SPEAKERLike, I've been enjoying, yes, I have all the devices
51:08SPEAKERthat I can just play everything under the sun,
51:11SPEAKERbut when it comes to it, I've just been really
51:13SPEAKERhaving a good time going back to the original hardware
51:16SPEAKERand sometimes plugging into a CRT or,
51:19SPEAKERin the case of home consoles, or with the handhelds.
51:22SPEAKERI mean, I just got a PSP, and it's just like,
51:24SPEAKERI right now have an MSI Claw 8EX in my possession,
51:29SPEAKERand I'm sitting down to play it and test it out
51:32SPEAKERand stuff like that, and in the back of my mind,
51:34SPEAKERI'm like, I kind of just want to be playing the PSP,
51:38SPEAKERwhich is probably bad to say, but.
51:41SPEAKER- No, it's funny you say that,
51:42SPEAKER'cause one of the things I realized,
51:45SPEAKERI had the mystery set up for years,
51:47SPEAKERand I did the thing that everybody does
51:48SPEAKERwhere you just get the whole NES ROM set
51:50SPEAKERand take out all the Mahjong games, and then put it on a--
51:54SPEAKER- Hey, don't select Mahjong, come on.
51:55SPEAKER- Look, I like Mahjong, but I don't need
51:57SPEAKER45 weird Mahjong games.
52:01SPEAKERBut it, I realized
52:05SPEAKERthat having all those games was kind of too much.
52:10SPEAKERIt gave me the worst case of menu paralysis I've ever had.
52:14SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
52:14SPEAKER- And so I went through, and I just pulled out,
52:17SPEAKERfor each core, I pulled out the 10 games
52:19SPEAKERI was interested in spending some time with,
52:22SPEAKERand I made a folder, and it was like, it's like Will's 10,
52:26SPEAKERand I open that up, and I'm like, I pick out of there,
52:28SPEAKERand it's a much easier choice, and it's like,
52:32SPEAKERit's a mix of stuff that I love playing,
52:33SPEAKERbut also, I was like, I want to,
52:36SPEAKERI hadn't played Zelda II in 40 years, right?
52:40SPEAKERI played a lot of-- - I played for the best.
52:42SPEAKER- You know, everybody says that.
52:43SPEAKERZelda II is a much better game than I remembered it being.
52:46SPEAKER- Really?
52:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't, I think I didn't,
52:50SPEAKERokay, just to be clear, at the time I got Zelda II,
52:52SPEAKERyou didn't not play a game 'cause you didn't like it,
52:54SPEAKERyou just played it and hated it
52:56SPEAKER'cause it was the only thing you had that was new.
52:57SPEAKER- Yeah, and you're like, oh, well,
52:59SPEAKERI just got this for Christmas,
53:00SPEAKERand I guess I won't get anything 'til my birthday,
53:02SPEAKERso I'm just gonna play this.
53:04SPEAKER- This is the one for the next 10 months.
53:07SPEAKERAnd so I got real good at Zelda II,
53:09SPEAKERI beat Zelda II multiple times,
53:12SPEAKERbut it was the first time I'd ever seen RPG mechanics
53:14SPEAKERand stuff like that, and so friend of the show,
53:17SPEAKERJeff Gerstmann, has been doing, for the last three years,
53:21SPEAKERhis ranking of all the NES games ever,
53:23SPEAKERI don't know if you've seen this,
53:25SPEAKERbut he finished it the other day, and--
53:27SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know he finished it.
53:28SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, like, finally, 750-some games later.
53:34SPEAKERAnd it's-- - Where does Zelda II fall?
53:36SPEAKER- Higher than you would expect.
53:38SPEAKER- Okay.
53:39SPEAKERThere's more on 8bitnintendo.science, I think is the URL.
53:45SPEAKERBut it's interesting going back
53:46SPEAKERand looking at some of these games,
53:47SPEAKER'cause there's some games
53:48SPEAKERthat have really complicated mechanics
53:50SPEAKERin those early generations
53:52SPEAKERthat they didn't explain well at all,
53:54SPEAKERand I completely did not pick up
53:56SPEAKERas a 10-year-old or 12-year-old or whatever,
53:59SPEAKERbut that now, when I sit down and play 'em,
54:01SPEAKERI'm like, oh, wow, these people were way ahead of their time,
54:03SPEAKERlike, way ahead of their time.
54:06SPEAKERSo it's been fun giving myself constraints on that.
54:10SPEAKERAnd I think you've kind of gone down the same hole
54:12SPEAKERwith the GBA and the PSP, right?
54:14SPEAKEROr the DSI and the PSP?
54:16SPEAKER- I mean, all of 'em, like-- - Yeah.
54:19SPEAKER- I'm definitely, I'm sure people in the audience
54:21SPEAKERare like me, where I had all this stuff.
54:24SPEAKERI mean, my first personal console that I ever had
54:27SPEAKERwas an original Game Boy DMG,
54:30SPEAKERand I loved that thing, but I remember I sold it.
54:35SPEAKERI sold it to some neighbor kid on the street
54:38SPEAKERfor pennies on the dollar just to get something else new,
54:41SPEAKERand I'm just kicking myself,
54:43SPEAKERbecause all of my old hardware, I just don't have anymore.
54:46SPEAKERAnd so now I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to,
54:49SPEAKERgonna have to rebuild that library again,
54:51SPEAKERand I'm looking at current prices, and I'm just like, ooh!
54:54SPEAKER- Look, you can't go back in time, Adam,
54:56SPEAKERbut you can rebuy your youth,
54:58SPEAKERso that is the thing to remember.
54:59SPEAKER- Just, it's more expensive to rebuy my youth
55:02SPEAKERthan I anticipated.
55:05SPEAKER- I think, somebody told me the other day
55:06SPEAKERabout a copy of Super Mario Brothers.
55:08SPEAKERI think about my unopened box of Super Mario Brothers,
55:10SPEAKER'cause I had two copies.
55:12SPEAKERI had the one that came with the console
55:15SPEAKERthat had Duck Hunt and the Super Mario Brothers,
55:18SPEAKERand then I had the other one that my grandparents bought me,
55:21SPEAKER'cause they're like, oh, this is the game
55:22SPEAKERthat the kids love!
55:23SPEAKERIt's the Mario Brothers!
55:26SPEAKERAnd one just sold unopened for $2.3 million the other day,
55:30SPEAKERand I'm like, Jesus Christ, where is that?
55:32SPEAKERI gotta casually ask my sister if she still has it.
55:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean--
55:36SPEAKER- It's not gonna be graded clean, but you know, whatever.
55:39SPEAKER- But that's the interesting part,
55:40SPEAKERis that we're talking about emulation,
55:43SPEAKERwe're talking about playing games
55:44SPEAKERon this high-end new hardware,
55:47SPEAKERbut I also feel like there is a growing groundswell
55:51SPEAKERof even the younger generation rediscovering the past.
55:56SPEAKERMaybe it's just my YouTube algorithm
55:57SPEAKERis just completely effed with handheld stuff,
56:01SPEAKERbut I'm getting all these kids in their 20s being like,
56:05SPEAKERooh, I picked up a PSP for the first time,
56:08SPEAKERand wow, this thing is surprisingly good.
56:10SPEAKER- It turns out Lumines still rules, who knew?
56:13SPEAKERThat's still the good version of Lumines.
56:15SPEAKER- Yeah, and then it's still really easy.
56:18SPEAKERI mean, it's easier more than ever now
56:19SPEAKERto mod old hardware as well.
56:22SPEAKERLike, I replaced my GBA screens with IPS panels.
56:26SPEAKER- Backlit?
56:27SPEAKER- Yeah, backlit panels, like this PSP 1000
56:31SPEAKERhas a new kit that came out in the past year or so,
56:35SPEAKERwhere it's just drop-in new IPS panel.
56:39SPEAKERYou don't have to do soldering, anything like that.
56:41SPEAKERThe technology's gotten crazy,
56:43SPEAKERand then in order to soft mod it,
56:46SPEAKERI got a micro SD card, put it in,
56:48SPEAKERand there's this thing called an ARC, A-R-K,
56:52SPEAKERand you literally just hit play on that.
56:55SPEAKERIt runs a little script, and then you can play all the ROMs
56:58SPEAKERthat you want. - That's wild.
56:59SPEAKER- It's not breaking systems, anything like that,
57:01SPEAKERso it is nice to see the younger generation
57:07SPEAKERappreciate the hardware from the past,
57:09SPEAKERbut then still use it to emulate new experiences as well.
57:14SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, it turns out,
57:15SPEAKERone of the things that was fun about having a kid
57:17SPEAKERand introducing her to games was
57:24SPEAKERshe doesn't differentiate between old games
57:26SPEAKERand new games in a weird way, right?
57:29SPEAKERShe knows that if she wants to play Super Mario Brothers
57:31SPEAKERon her Switch, she has to go into the,
57:33SPEAKERI gotta go play the NES games here,
57:35SPEAKERbut when she comes in here into my office
57:37SPEAKERand we fire up the CRT, and she's like,
57:39SPEAKERI can't play Mario Brothers, that game still owns,
57:42SPEAKERand it's good for hours of entertainment
57:45SPEAKERin the same way that it was in 1986 still.
57:48SPEAKERA good game from 1986 is still gonna be good in 2026.
57:52SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, you're right.
57:54SPEAKERSo whether you're looking to buy one piece of hardware
57:59SPEAKERthat hopefully plays everything,
58:02SPEAKERor you're looking to dabble here and there
58:05SPEAKERand either recapture your youth
58:07SPEAKERor buy something that fills a specific niche,
58:10SPEAKERlike there still is more options than ever,
58:13SPEAKERit's just the pricing is kind of messing there
58:15SPEAKERwith a lot of stuff.
58:16SPEAKER- So there's, the last frontier for me
58:19SPEAKERis I wanna be able to play games in my office
58:22SPEAKERon the CRT on the MiSTer, and then also have the save,
58:26SPEAKERthe ROMs and the save states and the save files
58:29SPEAKERwork on RetroArch on my Steam Deck,
58:32SPEAKERand there's somebody that's working on it.
58:33SPEAKERThere's a project that's going right now
58:34SPEAKERto do exactly that, to have a RetroArch folder
58:40SPEAKERand a MiSTer save folder and have them kind of
58:42SPEAKERtransmogrify between each other automatically
58:44SPEAKERwhen one gets saved.
58:45SPEAKER- Oh, that would be nice.
58:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
58:47SPEAKER- Because, I mean, there's like that retro achievements,
58:51SPEAKERlike where you sign in on any device
58:53SPEAKERand it can gauge your progress
58:55SPEAKERand you get achievements, whatever.
58:57SPEAKER- I think I'm anti that though, just conceptually.
58:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't really care about that,
59:01SPEAKERbut if I could sign up for some cloud service
59:04SPEAKERthat syncs cloud games from any emulation device
59:08SPEAKERthat you have, like, dude, I'm up for that.
59:11SPEAKER- Or you just run a Docker container
59:13SPEAKERand let it do, you know, do it automatically
59:14SPEAKERand you don't have to pay for a cloud service.
59:16SPEAKER- There you go.
59:17SPEAKER- There we go, yeah.
59:20SPEAKER- So yeah, I guess that's a pretty, do we miss anything?
59:22SPEAKERThat's a pretty overarching state
59:24SPEAKERof what's going on with handhelds right now.
59:27SPEAKER- I mean, no, I think it's pretty exhaustive
59:31SPEAKERand when Russ and I first started
59:33SPEAKERthe Expedition Handheld podcast,
59:35SPEAKERlike we were a little worried to do it weekly
59:38SPEAKER'cause we're like, is there really gonna be enough
59:40SPEAKERto talk about in handhelds, like to talk about every week?
59:44SPEAKERBut no, there's, even during this time,
59:47SPEAKERthis period of, you know, rising costs
59:49SPEAKERand less devices getting launched,
59:52SPEAKERman, there's still always something to talk about.
59:54SPEAKER- That's awesome.
59:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, 'cause like I said,
59:58SPEAKERI'm on this journey of rediscovering handhelds
1:00:01SPEAKERfrom the past, Russ is very much, you know,
1:00:04SPEAKERin like the emulation game.
1:00:07SPEAKERI'm also on the side of x86 handhelds,
1:00:10SPEAKERso like it kind of works the way we tech team stuff
1:00:14SPEAKERand then we sprinkle other stuff in there like eGPUs,
1:00:18SPEAKERwhich are, you know, attached to these handhelds,
1:00:21SPEAKERwhich has finally gotten good, all that kind of stuff, so.
1:00:24SPEAKER- It's weird, weird business there.
1:00:26SPEAKERIt's like trackball stuff.
1:00:28SPEAKERWhat, where can people find Expedition Handheld, Adam?
1:00:33SPEAKER- Yeah, well, anywhere that podcasts are sold,
1:00:36SPEAKERthen you can find Expedition Handheld.
1:00:38SPEAKERIf we're not there, please let me know.
1:00:41SPEAKERYeah, if you wanna watch the video version,
1:00:43SPEAKERwe have a video version that's up on Spotify,
1:00:46SPEAKERbut the YouTube channel, what, the Fullnerd Network
1:00:51SPEAKERis the YouTube channel that you can watch over there,
1:00:54SPEAKERand I do collaborate with Russ
1:00:56SPEAKERor use the collaboration feature in YouTube,
1:00:58SPEAKERso it does show up in his YouTube feeds as well.
1:01:02SPEAKERSo yeah, yeah, and then we have a Discord,
1:01:05SPEAKERthe Fullnerd Network Discord that you can go hang out.
1:01:08SPEAKERWe have a handhelds channel.
1:01:10SPEAKER- Good handhelds, good Linux channel over there too.
1:01:12SPEAKER- Yeah, good Linux, yeah, good, who knew?
1:01:15SPEAKERThere's nerds that are into all this kind of stuff.
1:01:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out nerds are okay.
1:01:20SPEAKER- Yeah, real quick, I will say,
1:01:22SPEAKERlooking at the definitive ranking of NES games,
1:01:26SPEAKERZelda II, The Adventure of Link lands at number six.
1:01:31SPEAKER- It was five.
1:01:33SPEAKER- Well, look at that.
1:01:34SPEAKER- Before yesterday.
1:01:35SPEAKER- Yeah, dethroned by somebody, but that's crazy.
1:01:38SPEAKERThat's crazy talk.
1:01:39SPEAKER- You think so?
1:01:40SPEAKERI'm gonna tell you, you should go back
1:01:41SPEAKERand replay Zelda II, The Adventure of Link.
1:01:43SPEAKERIt is, he's making faces.
1:01:46SPEAKEROh, he just flipped around to grab a Game & Watch.
1:01:50SPEAKER- Yeah, recently picked up the Legend of Zelda Game & Watch,
1:01:54SPEAKERwhich does have Zelda II on it.
1:01:55SPEAKER- I was gonna say, that's the reissue one?
1:01:58SPEAKER- Yeah, this is the reissue one.
1:02:01SPEAKERYeah, it has Zelda I, Zelda II,
1:02:03SPEAKERand then Adventures of Link for the Game Boy.
1:02:06SPEAKER- That's pretty good.
1:02:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I expected to never fire up Zelda II,
1:02:10SPEAKERbut maybe I will.
1:02:11SPEAKER- I wouldn't play it on that thing,
1:02:12SPEAKERbut I would definitely try, like, I was surprised.
1:02:17SPEAKERI had a lot of fun with it.
1:02:18SPEAKERIt was not what I remembered it being.
1:02:24SPEAKERIt starts a little slow, but it's worth a look.
1:02:29SPEAKER- Will, I had a lot of fun with this.
1:02:31SPEAKER- Hey, it was a pleasure having you here.
1:02:32SPEAKERThanks for coming by, Adam.
1:02:33SPEAKERAnd yeah, everybody go check out Adam over at The Full Nerd.
1:02:36SPEAKERBetween that and, well, Doolittle Diaries,
1:02:40SPEAKERthree episodes left.
1:02:41SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, we're wrapping it up.
1:02:44SPEAKERWho's gonna delete which partition?
1:02:46SPEAKERNo one knows.
1:02:47SPEAKER- It's impossible to guess, really.
1:02:49SPEAKERNo one's ever gonna figure that out.
1:02:53SPEAKERAnd yeah, I've enjoyed the exhibition handheld a lot.
1:02:55SPEAKERI learn something every week.
1:02:57SPEAKERSo, you know, good job over there for you and Russ.
1:02:59SPEAKER- Hey, thanks.
1:03:00SPEAKER- Thanks, Adam.
1:03:01SPEAKERAnd that will do it for us this week.
1:03:03SPEAKERI hope everybody enjoyed the show.
1:03:06SPEAKERPlease go over and follow him at The Full Nerd on YouTube
1:03:08SPEAKERand check out Expedition Handheld
1:03:10SPEAKERif that is of interest to you all.
1:03:13SPEAKERNow, we have reached the part of the show
1:03:15SPEAKERwhere we thank everybody for supporting us.
1:03:19SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here without you all
1:03:20SPEAKER'cause this is a listener-supported show.
1:03:22SPEAKERSo thank you to everybody who chucks in a couple bucks
1:03:24SPEAKERevery month to support the podcast.
1:03:26SPEAKERIf you would like to find out how to do that,
1:03:28SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techbaud.
1:03:31SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techbaud.
1:03:34SPEAKERWhere for five bucks a month you get access to the Discord,
1:03:37SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds who talk about stuff
1:03:39SPEAKERlike handhelds and how to set up their misters
1:03:40SPEAKERand all that stuff all the time.
1:03:42SPEAKERAnd then we also, you can also get access
1:03:45SPEAKERto the monthly Patreon exclusive episode
1:03:47SPEAKERwhere Brad and I talk about different topics every week,
1:03:51SPEAKERthings of interest, things that we are maybe thinking
1:03:55SPEAKERabout doing an episode about.
1:03:56SPEAKERMaybe we thought that we could do an episode
1:03:58SPEAKERabout there wasn't enough there.
1:04:00SPEAKERIt's part dumping ground, part research,
1:04:04SPEAKERpart just a place for us to chat and hang out.
1:04:10SPEAKERI don't wanna say it's a ramble cast
1:04:11SPEAKER'cause that's a registered trademark of somebody else,
1:04:13SPEAKERbut we do occasionally ramble over there as well.
1:04:15SPEAKERSo thanks everybody for supporting the show.
1:04:18SPEAKERAn extra special thank you goes out
1:04:19SPEAKERto our executive producer tier patrons,
1:04:22SPEAKERincluding In Felicitous Rips, Jordan Lippett,
1:04:25SPEAKEROctothorpe Bunny Still for Work,
1:04:28SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon,
1:04:31SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:04:33SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:04:35SPEAKERHave a lovely week.
1:04:37SPEAKERWe're hoping Brad will be back next week,
1:04:39SPEAKERbut we're not sure, and if not,
1:04:39SPEAKERwe'll find another awesome guest
1:04:42SPEAKERto come on and talk about stuff.
1:04:43SPEAKERBut I hope everybody has a lovely week,
1:04:45SPEAKERand we will see you next time on Bradwell Made in Tech Pod.
1:04:49SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment
1:04:53SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.
1:04:55SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:05:25SPEAKER(upbeat music)