Re:Hacking the PS Vita
by joshuapants on Sunday June 21, 2015 @03:39PM
(#9754670)
> Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones.
With the notable addition of good physical controls
Having good physical controls is not so hard to get on smartphones [1]. If smartphone manufactures wanted to make their device better for gaming, they'd just need clips for common controllers and make the wired and wireless connection work.
Re:Hacking the PS Vita
by joshuapants on Sunday June 21, 2015 @05:19PM
(#9755024)
That does kill the portability aspect though.
Yes, you are right, that specific linked gadget kills portability to a large degree. However, there speaks nothing against making a gamepad more specific to this use-case so you have better portability. Of course this approach will not be as good as dedicated controllers on the device itself, but I think it would be enough.
One might argue that good physical controls just don't matter that much for the audience that casually plays a game on the train.
Re:Hacking the PS Vita
by joshuapants on Sunday June 21, 2015 @05:18PM
(#9755021)
But one might also argue that those weren't the people who were interested in home-brew on a portable game console
The Nintendo DS homebrew community was very active, with a well-supported toolchain. The NDS was a neat piece of hardware - the graphics system was inherited from the GBA, which bears many similarities back to the original Gameboy and the NES. It's probably the last console produced with the concept of tilemaps and sprites. You also got a fast CPU, two screens, and a touchscreen, three years before the iPhone.
Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones. Perhaps the 3DS is a bit unique due to its screen, but better consumer hardware exists even for that. It's even worse for desktop consoles, which are an AMD APU with no particular merits whatsoever.