Logitech’s new gaming boss, Robin Piispanen, tells me he likes the idea of gaming handhelds. “It’s such a charming value proposition,” he says, as we sip iced vanilla lattes at my local cafe. But he’s not building one right now. He’s not sure when or if Logitech should try again, after its underwhelming experiment with the Logitech G Cloud streaming handheld.
“Right now, in this moment in time, there’s bigger things for us to focus on than doing a second G Cloud,” he tells me.
Personally, I feel like the G Cloud would have a better chance today. At its 2022 debut, the $350 Logitech handheld was almost completely overshadowed by the far more capable $400 Steam Deck, whose PC chip could keep on playing games without needing reliable internet. But today, the price of a Steam Deck has risen to $789. The golden age of handhelds is over, and “the new normal” can be prohibitively pricey.
Sony recently suggested that cloud gaming handhelds like its own PlayStation Portal are one possible hedge against RAMageddon. “Cloud streaming also requires minimal memory, making it an increasingly attractive low-cost thin client device in the current market environment where memory prices are rising,” said a top PlayStation exec in a recent business meeting. Last year, I discovered Nvidia’s GeForce Now had advanced far enough to breathe new life into existing handhelds.
But it sounds like Logitech got burned by its first Tencent-backed attempt with the original G Cloud. Even people who bought it weren’t necessarily satisfied.
While there was a “realm of players that was super dedicated and loved it,” says Piispanen, it didn’t have staying power for the vast majority of buyers. “The bigger portion, call it the 80 percent, bought it, tried it, and then it ended up in a drawer.”
“We tried something that we really believed in, and it didn’t really materialize into the use case people wanted,” he says.
The other problem was that the big cloud gaming providers didn’t build out enough infrastructure quickly enough. “Cloud gaming in general really stagnated,” he says, adding later: “Microsoft clearly said cloud is expensive, cloud gaming is expensive to run.”
Would Logitech consider building a standalone handheld instead, then, using the lessons it learned from the G Cloud? Piispanen’s not sure about that. He says it’s theoretically possible, something to perhaps look into. But he says Logitech’s core competencies are design and input, and it’d probably partner with another company for the rest.
He says handhelds don’t look like a particularly good business to break into, anyhow: “The handheld only works when you get to a really big scale, and most of the handheld companies also own the content. So the question is then, should I get into content? Look at Nintendo, they own the content. Look at Steam.”
His question is just rhetorical, though. We quickly agree that buying studios hasn’t worked out great for Sony and Microsoft recently, and he doesn’t seem interested in competing with Asus and its Xbox Ally X. “They operate on slim margins and they don’t own anything. They have to work with everyone else to make it work. It’s not an easy business.”
If Logitech were to try handhelds again, he thinks that cloud gaming might still be the way forward — just not quite yet. “Cloud solves weight, it solves battery power, it solves graphics. It solves a lot of things… when you play locally, you don’t have those barriers.”
He says, cryptically, that Logitech is investing in the future of cloud despite how the G Cloud turned out, and is actively talking to big players. “We talk to Microsoft, Tencent, and all of them: what do they see? How would this become a bigger play? And then see how we can potentially be a part of that.”
Does he see an inflection point where cloud infrastructure costs drop dramatically? Is there a point in the next few years where a whole bunch of Nvidia AI data centers are going to age out and become useful for gaming instead? He says he agrees with my “future casting,” but can’t say when it might happen.
“If you figure it out, please let me know,” Piispanen says.
I spoke to Logitech’s new gaming boss about other topics too; stay tuned to The Verge later today for more tidbits from our chat!