ZAK STOREY, CONTRIBUTOR

Whether it’s processor generation, PCIe 5.0 drives, or fishbowl cases, there are a lot of product announcements, but few launches.

Variety is the spice of life

Market saturation is killing progress

I’VE WAXED LYRICAL about Geometric Future over the last few issues, but its take on chassis design has got me thinking about the PC marketplace as a whole.

Let’s consider handhelds for a moment. In 2021, out of nowhere, Valve announced its first-edition Steam Deck. This new, potent, powerful, and reasonably priced handheld finally gave PC enthusiasts the opportunity to play their gargantuan Steam libraries anywhere in the world—albeit for a short time, before the battery dies. It sold like hot cakes, and boy, did people notice.

Jump forward to today, and everyone is launching handheld gaming PCs left, right, and center; some good, some bad, some average, In fact, my colleague, Aleksha McLoughlin, published a fantastic article in PCGamerabout it. It’s well worth a read.

That got me thinking about the wider market in general, in particular how it’s too predictable: one manufacturer builds something phenomenal, then six months later, eight to nine established brands launch something pretty much identical, but with a slight ‘brand’ tweak. It’s tedious and boring, designed to keep revenue upticks predictable. It’s almost like those dystopian sci-fi novels where some far-off alien race delves into cloning, slowly tweaking and altering the clones, time after time, until they devolve into an ugly blob on the floor. There’s no innovation, no life here.