There's so much discourse focused on playing the biggest games on max settings that it can be easy to forget the sheer number of older or non-AAA games that work just fine on modest specs. Or games that work fine if you bump down to medium/low.
Oddly enough that is partially to the credit and fault of Sony/Microsoft. games have been stuck targeting 2013 hardware for a very long time, longer than any other generation prior. But it was also needed in a way; the cost/speed ratio of storage was woefully behind the power advancements, and we see that with the crazy load times in the mid-late generation games of gen 8.
On the same end, mobile has been advancing in huge strides and there were more x86 hardware that could run on lower wattage. Valve simply saw a hole that only certain Chinese manufacturers were trying to fulfill, and they used their market advantadge to slash prices. Honestly surprised Microsoft didn't try this first, given their dabbling with Surface (I know Sony has long since been burned out on handheld gaming)
Oddly enough that is partially to the credit and fault of Sony/Microsoft. games have been stuck targeting 2013 hardware for a very long time, longer than any other generation prior. But it was also needed in a way; the cost/speed ratio of storage was woefully behind the power advancements, and we see that with the crazy load times in the mid-late generation games of gen 8.
On the same end, mobile has been advancing in huge strides and there were more x86 hardware that could run on lower wattage. Valve simply saw a hole that only certain Chinese manufacturers were trying to fulfill, and they used their market advantadge to slash prices. Honestly surprised Microsoft didn't try this first, given their dabbling with Surface (I know Sony has long since been burned out on handheld gaming)