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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

It's curious to me that nobody is daring to encroach on Nintendo's territory - how hard would it be to add really good native controllers to this and have an indie game dream machine? I'm sure the Switch owes much of its success to Nintendo's IP and history, but I believe that any major manufacturer (Apple, Amazon, Google, etc) who dared to just include pretty good controllers on a pretty good tablet would have had a hit.

It will be interesting to see if the tablet makers will just defer to Nintendo indefinitely, especially since the market (excluding Nintendo) has cooled dramatically.

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Why include one? Including an Xbox One controller will increase the price $60 for... what? You won't be able to run Xbox games on this device. While lots of PC games do include controller support, this isn't universal, and most of them are third party and aren't great for pack-in. And it dilutes the messaging of this as a portable device.

I'm not dissuading you from your tablet gaming dream, but hook up an Xbox One controller to this and you'll get the experience you're proposing.

I think the person you're responding too was implying a tablet with attached controllers like the Nintendo Switch.

Indie games like Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight are incredibly popular on the Switch, so a device from Microsoft that could play the already existing PC versions of those games on-the-go while also providing a real tablet experience could probably take some business away from Nintendo.

Such a device exists though, albeit not from Microsoft.

It's called a GPD Win 2.

A small laptop with an Xbox controller is a notably less portable setup than a Switch, especially when you want to use it on something like public transit.

I think the mobile platforms are doing pretty well for themselves. Nintendo has there own little niche with specialized controls. Not sure there has ever been a successful gaming platform built on a mobile device outside of the touch screen approach already being taken.

I am pretty sure people play Nintendo games in spite of their hardware choices. The Wii was several generations behind the state of the art, but still sold fine because it was the only way to play Wii games. The Switch is the world's worst mobile device... but the exclusive games are so good that people tolerate it.

Their games would be a lot more enjoyable if they could be played with mouse and keyboard on a 240Hz display.

If you want to replicate Nintendo's success, you need to make really good games. The hardware doesn't matter.

This has been true of many generations (I would quibble with the Wii because many people bought it expressly for motion controlled games) but I'd argue not this one. There's a buzz about third party releases on the Switch like no other Nintendo system, and I'd argue it's because the Switch is a fantastic form factor and experience. You will find a lot of people that own good games re-buying them on the Switch because it's a really enjoyable way to play. You can play in bed or on your porch! You can play Hollow Knight or Rocket League while sitting next to your significant other as they watch their favorite shows!

Not quite what you're looking for but there's the GPD Win and the recently released GPD Win 2, which are mini-clamshell style x86 devices that have an integrated controller.

The Switch has a Tegra, this has a low power Pentium. This doesn't have nearly enough power to run the kind of games you can play on the Switch.

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