The Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 is aimed at Android handheld consoles and brings a test console to demonstrate its full potential

The context. The 2021 Snapdragon Summit will take place in Hawaii. Qualcomm unveils its best weapons for the start of next season among which, of course, the processor which aims to dominate the Android market in the next 12 months. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, with a new architecture, a lot of power and new features of its Snapdragon Sight caliber for photography.

But in addition to that, Qualcomm wanted to look into the market for portable consoles and for this he created a new chip. It is Snapdragon G3x Gen 1, which goes by the name of “Gaming Platform” And it claims to be the first of many chips to compress games on portable platforms. And to top it off, it comes with a test console, the Snapdragon G3x Handheld Developer Kit, for developers.

A processor for portable Android consoles and an Android console to prove it

Qualcomm says of Hawaii’s sunny climate that the video game market generates around $ 175,000 million each year, and that more than half of this revenue comes from the mobile market. Given that, and that the park the players It is estimated at around 2,500 million users worldwide, it is understandable that the North American manufacturer wants a piece of the pie.

To do this, Qualcomm has created a new processor whose goal is to move portable consoles with the same ease and power as more “traditional” devices (to call them somehow) such as personal computers or consoles. offices deploy. This is the reason for the New Snapdragon G3x Gen 1, a chip for Android handheld consoles who for a long time have done almost everything.

Qualcomm account that PC games can now be played from an Android gaming platform Thanks to streaming (speaking of Stadia or xCloud for example), we can also play games directly in the cloud and, of course, there are games present whose graphics power is very close to that of consoles. This requires having a really powerful and, as far as possible, dedicated chip. The Americans’ G3x Gen 1 is therefore trying to fill this gap. Why mount a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 on a portable console if you already have the specialized G3x Gen 1. That’s pretty much the idea.

So Qualcomm goes to work and builds a chip that not only deploys top-level power, but also focuses on connectivity and energy savings and emphasizes its compatibility with all types of controllers and input methods. An ideal chip to be the heart and brain of a “Nintendo Switch with Android” which can be built by one of the major players in the mobile market today. Or by players in the game console market. Remember that Sony loves mobile again, and this G3x Gen 1 would be the ideal excuse to do more than just gaming ports.

And to present its new processor, instead of waiting for a manufacturer to decide to use the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 in one of its products, Qualcomm itself created one as part of its development kit. That’s it Snapdragon G3x portable development kit. A portable console made by Qualcomm to be able to work on creating new games for it, or to try to adapt existing games. So we have a whole gaming chip with the potential of Qualcomm developments and offering support for Qualcomm XR accessories (their virtual reality platform), support for 4K output to TV, as well as 5G. and WiFi 6E. A portable console at full power and with all the laws.

We don’t know yet if this console can be bought by the general public since Qualcomm only says that “we have to serve the developer community first”. Maybe this Snapdragon G3x portable development kit ends up losing its last name “Developer Kit” to become a product for sale, we’ll see what happens to it. But what seems clear is that Qualcomm wants its share of the video game market, and it’s going to build specialized brains to do it. And maybe consoles too.