can get a pretty similar experience attaching a Razer Junglecat, Razer
Kishi, or PowerA Moga XP5-X Plus controller to your phone. You can
play many of the best mobile games on either machine. Plenty of casual
Apple Arcade games come to Switch, albeit not in a subscription. If you
want to play mobile games on a TV, connect a DualShock or Xbox
controller to an Apple TV, plug an HDMI cable into your phone, or use
Chromecast for screen mirroring. You have choices for reaching the
same basic gaming idea.
It’s okay to have a preferred way to play. The Nintendo Switch remains
my go-to device because of its amazing library of exclusive Nintendo
games. The power of those exclusives is also why I don’t exactly think
we’re heading toward a so-called “one-console future,” even if buying
Microsoft’s Halo and Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn from the same PC
gaming marketplace is pretty wild.
But once you get over your rigid gamer preconceptions of what
constitutes a “real” game system, you’ll see how all of these perfectly
valid options end up blurring together. An iPhone is as much an
inheritor of the Game Boy’s popular legacy as Nintendo’s own
KDQGKHOGV:HPD\WDNHGL̆HUHQWURDGVWRJHWWKHUHEXWZHDOOHQGXSDW
the same games, and that’s a good thing.
ALWAYS IMPROVING, NEVER ENDING
You can see the singularity forming in how these products keep looking
more and more like one another as they borrow the same ideas. In the
SDVW\RXFRXOGHDVLO\WHOOWKHGL̆HUHQFHEHWZHHQDFXVWRPL]DEOHJDPLQJ
PC, a bespoke gaming console, and a phone that barely played games at
all. Now, they really are all just computers of varying shapes and sizes,
UXQQLQJZKDWHYHUJDPHVWKHVSHFVFDQSXOOR̆
They all upgrade themselves like computers, too. More than ever, boxes
like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X feel like marginal
improvements over what has come before rather than total reinventions.
From their features to their games to their system architecture, they look
like the latest high-end gaming PCs, complete with gaudy cases.
J
o
r
d
a
n
M
i
n
o
r
