Switch 2, Steam Deck, and the next-gen console wars

The Vergecast

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Tech News, Technology

4.4 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Handheld gaming looks like the future — so why isn't it more popular? The Verge's Sean Hollister joins the show to talk about some new data about the handheld console market, what it says about the Steam Deck's dominance, whether the Switch 2 might change everything all over again, and why Sony and Microsoft don't appear to be in the game at all. After that, David reports on his trip to Florida to see TGL, the golf league aiming to bring the sport to new places and new fans, with the help of a truly enormous amount of technology. Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline about iPads — and more specifically, one particularly good reason to upgrade to the Air or the Pro. Further reading: Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming shipments Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster Lenovo Legion Go S review: feels good, plays bad Asus ROG Ally X review: the best Windows gaming handheld by a mile MSI Claw review: an embarrassment A night at TGL, the would-be future of golf From ESPN: Inside the making of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy's TGL From Wired: Robotic Putting Greens. Mixed Reality. Loud Spectators. This Is Golf?! Apple iPad Air 2025 review: what the M3 upgrade really gets you Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Handheld Gaming Wars.
0:07.4	I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here messing around with a new phone.
0:10.9	It's the nothing phone 3A pro.
0:14.2	I think this one's actually sort of interesting.
0:16.5	Nothing in general has, like, big, cool ideas about smartphones.
0:19.8	But I've talked a bunch already on
0:21.7	this show about how I suspect this is going to be a relatively uninteresting year in smartphones.
0:28.2	Flip phones and foldable phones aren't quite ready to go fully mainstream, and I think the
0:33.3	iPhones and galaxies and pixels of the world just aren't going to be that interesting.
0:38.1	So one of the challenges for myself this year has been to find new interesting ideas about
0:43.1	smartphones. And I think the thing in this phone, it's called the essential key. And it's basically
0:48.7	a button on the side that is designed to be an AI input. It's not like visual intelligence in the way that, you know, Apple is trying to do stuff
0:57.6	or all the complicated multimodal systems.
0:59.7	This is just right now, frankly, it's a glorified voice recorder.
1:03.0	But the idea is that it can also do things like take screenshots and just ingest
1:07.9	information from you as you use your phone and then store it, organize it, makes sense of it.
1:13.3	That's actually a thing AI is set up to do relatively well
1:16.1	and strikes me as a pretty good idea.
1:18.5	It's super, super limited on this phone.
1:20.5	It barely can do any of the things that I thought it might be able to do.
1:23.2	But cool idea and seems like the sort of thing
1:26.0	that if AI is going to come into smartphones,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.