2024 will be the year of the handheld

In the first edition of the overkill digest newsletter, I argue why 2024 will be the year of the handheld.

Hello, and welcome to a new edition of the overkill digest newsletter, and welcome to a new year.

If you are new here, or don't remember what this is: I am your host, Kevin Wammer, and overkill digest is a weekly newsletter featuring original content, links to the best gaming reads of the week, commentary by yours truly, and more.

I hope you had a great holiday season and could recharge your batteries. I did, though I have to start work-work again tomorrow, and I am not ready!

But regardless, without further ado, let's get to the first digest of the year!

2024 might just be huge

We're only one week in, and we've already seen three new handhelds.

For one, AYANEO has pre-launched the fantastic-looking Flip KB and Flip DS, two clamshell handhelds.

Both are probably launching very soon on Indiegogo, and I am looking forward to them. Especially as the Flip DS is a concept I can get behind: Dual screens on a modern clamshell handheld might make this the best device for Nintendo DS and 3DS emulation.

But even for general gaming, this is a great idea. I guess most of us here who play games on a PC rock two screens, with the game running on the main one and something like Discord on the secondary monitor.

It remains to be seen if this is more than just a gimmick. I will be reviewing this on overkill, so stay tuned. Also, one little parenthesis: AYANEO announced a version with a new chip, possibly the AMD 8840U.

Talking of chips: MSI is about to enter the handheld space. They planned to announce a new device at CES next week, but leaks happened:

If the leaks are correct – and I believe they are – for the claw, MSI is about to partner with... Intel? So far, most handhelds we've seen rock an AMD chip. This is especially true for the big players like Valve, ASUS and Lenovo. An Intel chip in a handheld would be a very intriguing change, so I'm curious to see what this will look like. Performance and battery life, especially, might be very interesting.

Seeing that all Z1 Extreme devices perform similarly – and technically, so do the AMD 7840 U devices – an Intel-based device will bring fresh air to the space. And that, despite the MSI Claw looking like a black ROG Ally.

But 2024 won't only be significant for the handheld space. We hope it'll be a big year for overkill, too. Chris and I plan big things this year, and I'm leaking a few here.

For one, this will be the year we focus much more on YouTube. We're also planning to grow this newsletter and overkill spotlight. I believe a lot in newsletters as a medium, as it is one of the best ways to create a direct relationship with the readers, with you.

As usual, we're also planning to publish great content. Unlike some of our colleagues who may be much more into news, our goal with overkill is to create a space where you come for our expertise and commentary on things.

We'll be more opinionated than other websites to help you make sense of an ever-growing handheld space and entertain you with our writing. We might not be first, but we hope to be among the best.

And for a last leak: one of our most significant projects for the first half of 2024 will be a big redesign for the website (and this newsletter). We're still in the very early steps of planning, but you can look forward to this project.

Finally, I wanted to thank all of you for reading and starting the new year with us. Overkill is still a hobby for Chris and me, but we hope to grow into a healthy business. If we can get to a point where we can both make a decent living off this project while supplying you with the best writing we can do, I will call this whole endeavour a huge success.

Without any of you, none of this would have been possible. So, thank you from my heart, and let's make 2024 a fantastic year! <3

In other news

It's a new month, so here is a list of the best games coming to Steam in January.
Chris also wrote about all the Steam sales announced so far for 2024. Hide your wallets!
A new plugin for Decky Loader launched, and we can now (finally?) use cheats easily on Steam Deck. I wrote a guide!
A fan-made prequel for Portal 2 launched, and Chris interviewed Stefan Heinz, the lead developer.
The Steam Awards awarded Starfield the "most innovative gameplay award", and no one understands why. Not even Starfield fans. And here's another take by Kotaku. My current theory is that the results have been skewed by people who do not own these games but clicked on anything they heard of.
I don't know how I missed this, but we're getting a Minecraft movie, and Jack Black will star as Steve, the game's silent protagonist. The movie is slated for 2025.
A fan-made remake of Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall has been released.
As mentioned above, 2024 will be the year of the handheld, especially because we'll finally get a successor to the Nintendo Switch. And analysts predict, it'll be more expensive!
If you are a fellow Mac user, Inverse's Raymond Wong talked to multiple Apple representatives about Apple's push into the gaming scene. It's a great read!
And finally, during the holidays, we had some great writers publish fantastic reads on overkill:
- Mahin discusses why 2023 was the year of Mario.
- Chelsea shares why the PlayStation Portal is, after all, a great handheld.
- Laura reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go, and named it the Game Pass device of her dreams.
- ....and Laura argues how Nintendo need to step up their game in terms of accessibility features.