HIT THE DECK

Despite their overwhelming popularity, handheld PCs raise some tricky questions

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Handheld PCs aren't a new phenomenon. Atari's Portfolio released in 1989, for example, with a full keyboard and a modified version of DOS called DIP-DOS that allowed it to more or less run as an IBM-compatible PC. Hewlett-Packard released the HP-95LX two years later, which ran on DOS itself. But it doesn't feel like devices like those have been at the heart of PC culture, or even in particularly high usage, throughout the platform's long history.

Not until 2022, when Valve released the Steam Deck. As soon as the company behind Half-Life gave us a glimpse of what looked like a futuristic Game Gear and flexed its gigantic brand power biceps, we seemed to decide that handheld gaming PCs were a) a thing, and b) a fun way to play PC games. Well, I'm not having it.

I know the world's against me on this one. Since the Steam Deck's release, Razer, Asus ROG, MSI, Lenovo, and Logitech G have all made a play for a slice of the handheld gaming PC pie with models of their own. People bought those models, and had a nice time with them. I'm not here to debate that. But I am here to say: it isn't PC gaming.

What hardware like the Steam Deck and its army of third-party reinforcements do, other than foster in us a pathological impulse to observe the nearest plug socket on every train and in every coffee shop, is that they ask us to define what a PC is, and what gaming is.

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