A popular refrain we’re been hearing in tech and games circles is that consoles are sunsetting and mobile devices will be taking over the gaming scene in a few years. While not directly taking issue with that assertion, Qualcomm’s Mike Yuen did say mobile devices will never have the full power of a current-gen dedicated console.
“At some point there is a limit [for mobile devices],” Yuen told GamesIndustry. “We’re never going to build a chip that’s faster than a console – in the truest sense.”
By “in the truest sense” he’s being literal. He also takes it one step further: “The experiences will be different. The underlying technology will be there in hundreds of millions of devices, and that will increase each year. It’s just that, as a developer, I don’t think the intention is, ‘I’m going to build a Blu-ray disc’s worth of game on a mobile phone.’ That just doesn’t make sense.”
Yuen, by the way, would know about these things. Aside from working at the company that makes SnapDragon processors, he also was the mastermind behind the Zeebo device that was intended to use smartphones to power console-style gaming. That endeavor failed, but it was a bit before its time in the sense that phones weren’t uniform enough in terms of connectors they used in 2009.
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