Of all the things I would upgrade on the deck, resolution isn't one of them. I have never seen a game look blury on that tiny screen. That said, a lot of them are using higher res panels probably because it is what they can find in bulk.
Text intensive games are hard to read at times on the deck. Magnifier helps, but not ideal. Games like Against the Storm or some digital board games would benefit from higher resolution.
A digital board game is almost always going to feel claustrophobic and difficult to read/take in on a small screen tbh. They have to be designed with that audience in mind, like Civ Revolution 1/2. The information has to be more separated out (meaning way more clicking/tapping/swiping/etc.) or extremely pared down (simplifying the game).
Any word on what the hardware specs are? Someone there used their brain and loaded up SteamOS, but the hardware needs to be worth the jump or it’s just a steam deck clone.
They specifically said "it's not a powerhouse". It's supposed to be a lower power device with a big battery, capable of playing less demanding games for a long time. SteamOS also makes a lot of sense for this goal, since windows handhelds get pretty terrible battery life in low power games. The price is supposed to be low as well, although it's not clear yet if that's just low by Ayaneo's standards or if it will actually be cheaper than the deck.
That fits the kind of use case I would want from something in addition to the Deck. That said, I don't know this is the form factor I'd want; what I'd love is something that could actually fit in my pocket like a Gameboy. This seems like it'd be a bit big for that.
I love my steamdeck, but I would hardly call it a powerhouse. You have to make pretty serious compromises on your visuals for AAA games with a few notable exceptions. Anything not well optimized can also struggle.
So yeah I’m down for a device that isn’t as powerful but if the gap is too wide it really is only going to strictly be a little indie game machine. Which is cool and but important to note.
Battery tech and x86 chip tech doesn't really make a "powerhouse" handheld possible, unless you completely abandon the idea of it having any acceptable battery life.
There's talk about the next few years being when arm and risc-v will start to replace x86 for windows/Linux, and that could possibly make a big difference. But I also imagine game compatibility and performance will be pretty poor starting out, so it'll be quite a while I imagine.