Qualcomm is also present at Gamescom to unveil new technologies. More precisely three chips that will be able to animate portable consoles similar to the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. They will run on Android, but not only.
The game console market has seen a significant change with the arrival of the Steam Deck. Valve has demonstrated that there are gamers interested in an alternative to the Nintendo Switch.
This is also what Qualcomm thinks. The smartphone chip specialist is unveiling at Gamescom a new range entirely designed for these portable consoles: the Snapdragon G Series.
Cloud, gaming, Android and more
We start with the Qualcomm Snapdragon G1 Gen 1 chip, which is paradoxically designed not to be really capable of running video games. Indeed, this chip is intended for machines oriented towards cloud gaming or local video game streaming such as the PlayStation Portal or the Logitech G Cloud. It is therefore designed to consume as little as possible and offers Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5 connectivity for connection to game services.
For machines that are really capable of playing video games natively, we find the Snapdragon G2 Gen 1 and Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chips.
The first targets intermediate machines, with native gaming, Wi-Fi 6 and 5G connectivity for cloud gaming. The G3x Gen 2 chip promises a high level of performance, still for mobile gaming. Qualcomm promises to have doubled the performance of its GPU compared to the previous generation equipping the Razer Edge.
Most interesting is when Qualcomm indicates that the G3X chip is aimed at the market ” Android+ “. The brand admitted half-heartedly during the presentation that other operating systems could be exploited with this chip. Can we imagine a future Qualcomm portable console with Windows?
The first machines equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon G Series chips should land in 2024.
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