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Razer, Verizon, and Qualcomm have teamed up to create a handheld 5G gaming console called the Razer Edge 5G.
Despite its 5G focus, announced at Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas, the new handheld will only be used to stream games from the cloud, as Verizon also announced that games can be downloaded to the device.
There’s not much more to say about the device as it’s not scheduled for a full reveal until RazerCon on October 15th, but the companies have confirmed that it will be built on the Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 gaming platform and We make sure it’s designed for high-performance gaming.
Qualcomm and Razer teamed up in December to prototype a handheld gaming device that is believed to be the predecessor to this new console announced by Verizon. It was also created using Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 technology and is available to developers but not consumers.
The recent explosion of handheld games may have been sparked by the Nintendo Switch release in 2017, but more recently by Valve’s Steam Deck.
Logitech and Chinese publishing giant Tencent also announced their own devices in August, so the market for essentially portable gaming PCs seems to be growing strongly. However, the console will be used exclusively for cloud gaming, connecting users to multiple services such as Xbox’s Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA’s GeForce Now.
Nintendo stepped into handheld streaming after launching services in Japan with games like Resident Evil 7 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but later brought it to the West with some games like Control and the Kingdom Hearts series.