| Doctor_MG said: I think both of you are looking for something that simply cannot exist in an effort to dissuade others from accepting the hybrid monicker. Unless there is a huge revolutionary breakthrough in technology, there will not ever be a gaming console that has either separate hardware when docked or a separate cooling system. It simply isn't feasible. Doing so would effectively mean the dock is its own system (and may as well be played separately) as putting hardware in the dock just to connect to the portable unit would cause severe latency issues (due to it being away from the motherboard). Don't even get me started on the functionality of hooking up a new cooling system just for docked play... Does the technology derive from mobile hardware? Absolutely, but that's a means to an end, not the whole story. Again, you would not be able to include stationary hardware in a portable unit with both a massive product and a massive battery (or short battery life). |
You start to get it.
portables and stationary systems are almostmutually exclusive to each other.
stationary = not portable
portable = not stationary
You can construct a hybrid system but you would have to do it on purpose.
You can use a main unit, which functions as the portable unit and can be used on its own.
And then you have a dock with additional hardware (cpu, gpu, ram, etc.) which the portable unit connects to.
To make that setup a hybrid system, you would have to let the main unit handle the OS stuff, game data and such but the hardware inside the dock does
the calculating. Best case would be if the hardware from the main unit could do stuff aswell like decompressing assets etc.
That would however require a very fast connection between dock and portable unit.
| Doctor_MG said: This doesn't even include other hybrid features such as the joycons disconnecting and reattaching as part of the design, games being made for solely portable or docked play, and it's relatively large design (in comparison to almost every other portable made in the last 30 years). |
The joycons are just a design decision, they dont have any impact on the definition.
If having detachable controllers means something becomes stationary, then not detachable controllers would mean something
does not become stationairy. Does that mean that arcade machines are handheld hybrids?
| Doctor_MG said: Also, I would absolutely suggest that a laptop has a more hybrid like design, and if tablets/smartphones had been created before laptops we would likely be suggesting they are hybrid units. The reason we dont is because it didn't happen chronologically, not because it wouldn't fit the definition. |
The key point is, that portable devices were never meant to prevent the stationary use.
The point was to be independent from that context.
Every portable device is allowed to have features which make it possible to be used like a stationary, but they dont have to offer them.
Last edited by GamingRabbit - on 19 March 2021Nintendo Switch:
... announced as a Home Console
... advertised as a Hybrid
... delivered as a Portable
