A few months back we wrote about the growing interest among hardware makers for an emerging category of devices known as handheld consoles. At the time, we cautioned that the key factor in determining the popularity of these devices would be the software ecosystem around them and availability of game titles:
Of the many past attempts to pry open this market, the availability of software has proved the critical hurdle to adoption.
Last week while the semi world was focused on Nvidia’s GTC conference, the gaming world was focused on the GDC conference. (Someone please hire a naming consultant.) Adjacent to that we had the chance to meet Playtron, a company that could prove to be the keystone in bringing high quality games to handhelds.
Playtron has built what is essentially an operating system (OS) for portable computing devices.We say essentially because most people believe that building OS’s is nearly impossible, and Playtron’s software functions in a very different way than what most of us think of as an OS. Instead of being an all-purporse platform for running every kind of software, Playtron OS focuses on gaming. In some ways this is much simpler, it can handle routine tasks and other types of basic applications, but it does not try to be a general purpose compute solution. This makes it much easier to build, they call it a “light weight” OS. This allows them to instead dedicate resources to make game play better in some critical ways. We infer this means solid interfacing with device silicon, especially the GPU. This is a highly specialized discipline, and from what we can tell so far, the company has done a solid job. Playtron-powered devices should be able to support all PC titles with graphics performance comparable to that of a good gaming PC.
We have described the market for handhelds as an interesting niche, but the company makes a good case that this is a larger opportunity. Today there is a giant gap between mobile gaming and PC gaming. Depending on who you ask there are about 1 billion PC gmers in the world, and only a fraction of those are “serious” gamers willing to spend $50 to $100 each on multiple game titles each year. By contrast, there are about 3 billion mobile gamers, and while they spend a lot more time gaming they are largely only monetizable through advertising, and the market for mobile advertising, especially in games, is in bad shape right now. This gap exists, in part, because the gaming experience on mobile is not as good as what is on offer on PCs and consoles. Handhelds bridge that gap, they largely have the same compute power of a PC, with PC-grade GPUs, but are highly portable.
So there is an opportunity in providing a PC-level gaming experience in a form factor that appeals to that far larger audience of free-to-play gamers. Of course there is more to it then just putting an affordable GPU in everyone’s hands, but there is definitely potential in here for a device of this nature to expand the ranks of “serious gamers”.
Of course, building something like Playtron into a viable business is not going to be easy. There is a reason why everyone thinks building an OS is close to impossible. Beyond the technical challenges, which are significant, this corner of the software market heavily favors consolidation. The need for compatibility creates a self-reinforcing cycle which ultimately winnows down the competition. That being said, the team behind Playtron is not new to these dynamics. A decade ago, the company’s founders created Cyanogen, an alternative Android build. By most accounts, Cyanogen was far superior to stock Android, addressing many of that OS’s still-extant critical weaknesses. Ultimately, they could not overcome the mass and inertia of Google, but they learned some critical lessons through that experience. Moreover, Playtron solves an important problem for the industry, all those handhelds out there really need a good software layer, and there is no obvious provider – Windows is too heavy and too expensive, Android is too lightweight. On top of that, Playtron is also looking to solve a much more restricted problem, just gaming. Nintendo’s OS is proprietary, and Valve’s Steam OS is effectively as well.
We are still very early in development of this category. The layer that Playtron provides could evolve in ways that retain the core compatibility function and shed much of the burden of a traditional OS. So as challenging as this field will be, we think it is encouraging to see someone challenge that traditional model with something that looks compelling.
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