It's a great year to be a gamer, period. Whether you're busy optimizing your Lenovo Legion Go, debating whether to buy the new Steam Deck OLED, or hyped about playing Assassin's Creed Mirage on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, there are so many options and things to explore. But amid all the talk about new handhelds and next-generation gaming on iPhones, there have been whispers of PC gaming becoming obsolete.

While it's true that 2022 was a bad year for desktop gaming, PC gaming isn't about to suddenly concede defeat to portable gaming, especially since PC handhelds still can't replace the Nintendo Switch in terms of popularity and price. Desktop or laptop PC gaming just has a lot of hard-to-emulate benefits over both handhelds and mobile devices, and that's unlikely to change for a long time.

Desktop PC gaming is superior, and it's not even close

Handhelds are cheaper, but so is the experience

Devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Legion Go, and Ayaneo Kun provide great reasons to buy a PC gaming handheld, but that doesn't mean they can fully replace the desktop experience. Handhelds have completely changed the way people play on the go, allowing users to play PC games on the go rather than just mobile or Switch games. Playing games while commuting or when taking a break from work can feel great, but it comes with its own compromises.

PC gaming handhelds, especially ones based on Windows, aren't made for portable gaming from the ground up. Windows 11 specifically isn't a touchscreen-friendly OS, and even the ports of popular games don't always work as intended (Steam Deck's verified program not withstanding). Even local multiplayer is a pain to set up on, say, a Steam Deck. Many of the things we take for granted on a desktop PC just don't work as well on handhelds or just don't work at all.

Not only will games just work, for the most part, on a computer, but you'll experience them in larger more exciting ways thanks to bigger more vivid screens and the ability to enjoy the framerates you want. Most, if not all, PC gaming innovations of the future will most certainly debut on desktop before trickling down to PC handhelds. Having a handheld to supplement your gaming experience is great, but you'll probably always return to your PC for some serious action, especially when it comes to competitive games where noticing every detail is crucial.

Next-gen mobile gaming will just be a gateway to the PC

iPhones will compete with handhelds for gamer mindshare

There has been a lot of fanfare around Apple's foray into dedicated iPhone gaming with the iPhone 15 series. The company showcased hardware-accelerated ray tracing and a stable 30FPS gaming experience thanks to the A17 Pro silicon, and it even teased actual AAA games like Death Stranding and Assassin's Creed Mirage coming soon. However, I reckon that all this would really do is entice iPhone users to experience what true PC gaming is like, especially if they don't have a high-end PC already.

The thing is, mobile gaming is still a casual hobby. Most Google Play Store revenue is attributed to free apps and their in-app purchases. People rarely think of their phones when they want to enjoy an hour or two of dedicated gaming time. They'd rather switch on their consoles or pick up their handheld. Some might use an extreme gaming phone like the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, but that's still a very niche product. This is why I think the real competition for next-generation mobile gaming will be with handhelds.

Both mobiles and handhelds are portable devices that'll continue to struggle with battery life, especially when playing demanding AAA games. Neither would really replicate the desktop PC experience, nor are they planning to. If iPhones and other flagships manage to carve out a serious piece of the gaming pie in the future, PC handhelds would have to considerably up their game in order to justify their existence. Improving portability while retaining an immersive edge will likely be the key. Right now, products like the Steam Deck are big and bulky, especially compared to mobile devices, so if you can get that power into a smaller chassis, it could be a huge win.

PC gaming can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be

Even budget gaming PCs can outshine handhelds due to customization

We've written a lot about how PC build costs are getting unsustainable, but this trend, although unfortunate, mostly applies to high-end gaming. If you're someone who can enjoy games only at 1440p or 4K at 100+ FPS, then yes, desktop PC gaming has become too expensive. But not everyone cares about framerates or cranking up in-game settings all the way. If you want to build a budget gaming PC in 2023, you can still do it for around $700.

Such a PC will allow you to leave every handheld and mobile in the dust, enabling you to play at a consistent 60+ FPS at 1080p resolution in nearly every game. Sure, you shouldn't be playing Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing on this PC, but for a small premium over the price of a PS5 or Xbox Series X, you can experience a whole different level of gaming compared to any portable device.

And, for those of you wondering what the point of compromising on visuals and performance is, the point is that desktop PC gaming gives you the freedom to spend as much or as little as you want. Enthusiasts will not think twice before spending $2,000 on an all-white gaming PC with an RTX 4070 Ti and a scintillating white design that's nothing short of a masterpiece. But you can also build a $500-600 budget PC if you desire. The choice is yours.

Unlike handhelds or mobile devices where you're limited by the hardware that ships with the device, you can always customize your gaming PC to your heart's content. Even if you aren't too keen on building a PC, you can always choose to buy a prebuilt gaming PC, where the value for money can often exceed that of a custom-built PC.

Different strokes for different gamers

PC gaming has survived in its current form due to a variety of reasons, ranging from freedom and flexibility to performance and the community. It's not going to become less desirable if people start adopting powerful handhelds and mobile devices for gaming, even if we're talking about a decade in the future. Different gamers prioritize different aspects of the medium, so they might pick up a handheld or even a gaming laptop for its portability. However, there's a chance almost every PC handheld owner already owns a mainstream gaming PC one or will at some point.

Handhelds still have a long way to go in terms of convenience and user experience if they need to capture a greater share of the overall gaming market. As for the new iPhones and other next-gen phones, the competition would be against handhelds rather than PCs. But due to the fundamentally different ways in which we use our phones and handhelds, all three can co-exist for a long time to come.