About time or a little premature?
There’s an art to the florid press release. If a games PR missive isn’t pitching up promising an ‘unforgettable journey,’ or calling their turn-based RPG ‘adrenaline-filled,’ I’m wondering if their hearts are really in it. That is to say, a little bit of confidence isn’t a bad thing. To that end, this press release teasing the Ayaneo 3 is a thing of beauty.
Ayaneo begin as they mean to go on, starting off strong by saying that their third-generation Windows handheld console is not only a “revolution,” but will also redefine “gamer’s imagination,” and “foreshadows the future possibilities of handheld devices.”
Unlike Valve, the majority of Ayaneo’s business is handheld machines, so iterative releases like this “annual flagship handheld” make more sense for them as a company. But will the Ayaneo 3 really be a ‘revolution,’ despite top brass at Valve saying a generational leap is still a ways off?
Well, the cherry on the cake of this overwritten press release is that actual details about the upcoming device are thin on the ground.
Though still unannounced, the real headline for the Ayaneo 3 will be its choice of chip. Historically, the company has gone with AMD for their handheld APUs, so a formerly codenamed Strix Point, Ryzen 9 AI 300 series CPU could be a shoe in, especially as the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 has already impressed us. That said, it’s not a massive leap forward compared to the Ayaneo Kun’s AMD Ryzen 7 7840U.
But AMD isn’t the only option. As far as Ayaneo goes, they appear to have a much less established relationship with Intel, offering Intel chips as an option for a limited number of their handhelds, such as the Air Plus. Perhaps the Ayaneo 3’s big swing will be the inclusion of a Lunar Lake CPU.
As we’ve previously covered, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V offers big wins in terms of power in a properly portable form factor that also doesn’t suck your battery dry. Besides, Intel has recently been looking for new allies and, though Ayaneo is a smaller company, it could be a mighty alliance.
Now, there’s always got to be a wildcard option — and here, that’s Qualcomm. The Snapdragon X Elite CPUs have kept us guessing, handling the demanding likes of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Metro Exodus with impressive portable panache, but also stuttering at titles optimised for x86. The chip manufacturer has also got their hands full besides, as Arm has pulled Qualcomm’s licence to produce chips based on their tech. Maybe not so much a wildcard as just plain messy, then.
That said, while Snapdragon X Elite is hardly the best choice for any machine geared towards gaming, stranger handheld hardware choices have been made. Now, an Ayaneo 3 running Windows 95? I suspect it’s only a matter of time.
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