*This article is compiled from IGN US and is not reproduced without authorization.
2021 is a pivotal year for the mobile gaming industry. There are Switch OLED Tigers in the front, and steam Deck chasers in the back (which has been postponed to 2022). Not to mention cloud technology, which allows players to play anytime, anywhere on tablets and even mobile phones. Today, qualcomm, the manufacturer of the Snapdragon series of high-end smart machine processors, has also shown wild hopes for the game industry. They officially ventured into this area with the G3X, a mobile processor designed for games. But Qualcomm knew that chips alone weren't enough, so it partnered with Razer to launch a handheld device that could demonstrate G3X performance.
Pictured here is the first generation of Snapdragon G3X development machine, Qualcomm hopes that this handheld mobile gaming device can become the pioneering work of a new gaming platform. Hardware-wise, it's equipped with a 6.65-inch OLED FHD+ 120hz display, touchscreen operation, automatic cooling, and of course, the handheld also comes with a regular thumb rocker, buttons, and trigger. And its power is the previously mentioned Snapdragon G3X, 8-core CPU with 6G memory, which is a chip based on the Android operating system design. One thing to be clear is that the product won't be available this Christmas season. At present, the official announcement is only a development machine, and Qualcomm hopes to use it to incentivize game developers and hardware manufacturers to expand the game library.
I've had the pleasure of getting started with the G3X handheld and playing a few games. After experiencing it, although the degree of "impressive" is not up to it, it is enough to arouse my interest. In terms of size, the G3X is slightly larger than the NS, but slightly smaller than the Steam Deck. The buttons, triggers and joystick feel very close to the Razer Kishi mobile phone handle attachment, but Razer officially said that the two do not use the same parts. The buttons on the panel would feel much better if they were played some more, but the triggers were too loose and lacked realism. But overall, the G3X is much more reliable than NS's Joy-Cons or even smaller Kishi handles, at least in the hands of an adult like me, the G3X's operating comfort is absolutely superior.
During the experience, I played three games: first the sci-fi racing game Redout with Steam Home Streaming, minecraft: Dungeons with Xbox Cloud Streaming, and finally an air combat game demo stored locally on the device. The gameplay experiences for Redout and Minecraft: Dungeons are relatively smooth, with only occasional minor glitches and graphics issues caused by streaming technology. The air combat demo also ran quite smoothly, but the visual effects were not ideal. The texture of the background and model in the game is not detailed enough, and when flying past the exploding fireballs, it only feels like they look like huge blocks rather than flames. That said, the demo is meant to highlight the device's tactile and control experience, with little to be seen in terms of graphical expression.
These three games were chosen to showcase the various use cases of G3X, that is, to demonstrate its ability to integrate multiple game platforms as a single device. But more importantly, it's an official demonstration of power to game makers, proving that it's a device worth developing games for.
Of course, there are countless games on Android devices today, but most of them are portrait or developed for touchscreen controls. The G3X, on the other hand, focuses more on the traditional landscape, physical controller-based gaming experience. However, at present, the horizontal screen and controller control games on the Android system are also emerging. G3X actually has a built-in touch mapping system, and most games that don't support gamepads can run smoothly on G3X.
G3X development machines can also be seen as "invitations" to hardware manufacturers. As mentioned above, this product is not for sale, at least for the time being, this "development machine" form will not be listed. Razer may release similar products in the future, and other manufacturers such as Asus and Acer will also share a piece of the pie.
Still, I'm skeptical about whether such devices can adapt to the current market, especially since price is a big issue. Admittedly, playing cloud games with a powerful gamepad is certainly much better than the experience of mobile phone chips and peripherals, but I still don't believe that most people will spend a lot of money to buy a machine that is simply used as a streaming game receiver, not to mention that the stability of cloud games is completely unreliable in terms of cloud.
Another option is to run Android games natively. At present, there are already high-quality works such as "Original God", "Pokémon Collection" and "Diablo: Immortal" on Android, while transplant works also have "Fortnite", "Stardew Cereal Language" and "Dead Cells" and other masterpieces. But overall, the Android library pales in comparison to NS or PC. So if the E3X is priced higher than the NS or Steam Deck, I would never have started.
The burden of adding a game library falls to game developers, which is what E3X is all about as a development machine. Qualcomm said that the G3X chip is more powerful than any high-end smart machine chip on the market, which is of course remarkable. The Tegra X1 used by NS is simply old compared to it, although Qualcomm has not released specific data at present, but it is likely to have the strength to compete with the AMD APU customized by the Steam platform. Regardless of the end, Qualcomm hopes that this powerful mobile hardware can inspire developers to build games on this platform, or at least port existing games to it.
Of course, there are already quite a few Android mobile game devices on the market now. In addition to gamepad peripherals like Razer Kishi and Backbone One, there are gaming phones like the Asus ROG and their related accessories. Of course, equipped with Snapdragon 888 chips, using an NS-like layout design, the $200 Ayn Odin all-in-one machine is also worth mentioning. Still, none of these devices have a foothold in the market, at least as hot as the NS. But if the major hardware manufacturers do respond to the G3X's "call" and start to enter this market, the situation will become very interesting.