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Winners and Losers: Razer’s Steam Deck rival appears while Stadia disappears
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OPINION: It has been an incredibly busy week in the world of tech with loads of new product launches and of course the hallowedTrusted Reviews Awards 2022taking place.
But as ever, in the sea of announcements for the team at Trusted Reviews there was one very clear winner and one very clear loser in the world of shiny things.
Here’s who they are.
Winner: Razer Edge 5G
This week gamers were given a rare treat withVerizon revealing the existence of a new portable games consolefrom Razer.
The news broke after Verizon executives took the stage at Mobile World Congress in Las Vega to reveal the Razer Edge 5G handheld console.
The console is the latest in a long line of Switch-like games consoles, like the recently unveiledLogitech G Cloud.
However, what sets the Razer apart is that it already looks set to have much better specs than most of the rivals we’ve seen. The full specs haven’t been revealed but the key points are that, as well as5G connectivity, the console will be “built on top of the Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 Gaming Platform and designed for high-performance gaming on the move”.
This means it should offer much better performance than the G Cloud, which runs on a mid-range 7-series Snapdragon CPU.
The addition of 5G connectivity means it’ll be much better for gaming on the go using cloud services likeGeForce NoworGame Pass, which require a very fast data connection to work and are the only real way to get full fatAAA gamesto run on Android devices.
Loser: Anyone who uses Stadia
You may have noticed we didn’t mention one other “big” cloud gaming service in that list. Specifically, we intentionally didn’t giveGoogle Stadiaa plug.
The reason why is pretty simple:Google’s shutting it down. The tech giant confirmed the news on Thursday ina blog post, where it cited a lack of traction as reason for retiring it.
This means all content on the platform will be unplayable from January 18 2023. The only silver lining is that all hardware, game and add-on content purchases made through the Google Store will be refunded before then.
The news isn’t surprising given how fast Google stopped investing in Stadia, with itclosing its newly formed exclusive game studioin February. Since then, it’s made next to no effort to market the service, or get exclusive games and features onto it.
But even so, considering the fact Stadia had such an impressive start, with its launch seeing big name games like Baldur’s Gate make their debut, it’s still a little sad to see it keel over so quickly.
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Alastair is in charge of Trusted Reviews Limited’s editorial strategy and output across all its sites. He has over a decade’s experience as a journalist working in both B2C and B2B press. During this …
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
