The Sui handheld: meant for no one, solving nothing

Web3’s device follies follow old hardware failures

And here I was thinking that we were done with random new gaming devices. Last week’s web3 gaming news that didn’t shake the world at all was the announcement of the poorly-rendered  SuiPlay0X1, a device that Mysten Labs (creators of Sui) said will support Sui games, Epic Games Store, and “other stores.” For those who understandably ask “Sui who?”: it’s a non-EVM blockchain with a stated focus on gaming and entertainment. 

But here’s the issue: in addition to a largely nonexistent Sui content ecosystem, gaming and gamers don’t need a new device. This is also not the first time we’ve seen this play from web3: a while back, the blockchain Solana launched a mobile device. It took a year to sell 20,000 units. We never heard from those device buyers again. 

Let’s take a look at the current landscape of gaming hardware. The relatively new category of “performance-focused” handhelds, as I’ll call them (meaning something meant to run higher-end games as opposed to something like a GameBoy), saw its newest entrant with the Steam Deck in 2022, a device from the PC store, Steam, that lets you play most any Steam game on the go, including thousands of indie titles. The Steam Deck—itself a relatively unnecessary device—still managed to sell a reported 1.6M units in 2022. That’s not horrible. 

But compared to 8.6M Xboxes, 19.1M PS5s, 19.6M Nintendo Switches, and 1,700M mobile phones in the same year, it’s a joke. Even Steam Deck’s meek figures make something like Solana’s 20,000 devices sound more like a quarterly report footnote about a lost shipping container rather than a hardware business. 

Gaming has been riddled with unsuccessful hardware plays, and the reason for these failures has always been the same: the device fulfills no market need. Let’s look at a personal favorite of mine, a device that was on the scene when I first came into gaming as a professional: the Ouya. You’re forgiven for never having heard of this. The Ouya was a little cube that was meant to play mobile applications but now on your TV! Said another way, $100 got you a controller and a Roku-like box that you had to connect to a TV. At its inception, the device was already significantly underpowered compared to the mobile phones people already owned. But the bigger issue was that it had no product-market fit. Who was this for? 

The Ouya played only mobile games, but mobile gamers already had much more powerful and portable devices in their pockets. The idea of playing in one’s living room on the TV was absurd: mobile gamers are known for playing as a second-screen activity, often while watching TV, for example. The Ouya killed that experience by taking over one screen and leaving the other by the side. It also failed to address the fact that gamers who did want to play games on their TV already owned much more powerful consoles with content exclusives. When I (kindly) asked Ouya’s CEO to tell me who the device was meant for given how these audiences were already satisfied and supported, she changed the subject. 

Steam, before the Steam Deck’s relative success, tried a similar play with things called Steam Machines. These were boxes—less powerful than a good gaming PC—that could play PC games but now on your TV! This was even more misaligned with users, since hardcore PC gamers—who had already spent thousands of dollars on high-end gaming rigs—were also often likely to already own consoles for other kinds of games and living room playing. Gamers are horrible at context switching: if you’re used to playing twitchy MOBAs on PC with a keyboard and mouse, you’ll never want to play the same game with a TV and controller, but the same gamer will happily switch to a controller for an open world RPG, or a mobile phone for a match three game. 

Fewer than 500,000 Steam Machines were sold, and the hardware makers involved shut down manufacturing pretty quickly.

Without the right motivation and a keen understanding of the audience and problem it’s meant to solve, gaming hardware fails. The problem is even more pronounced when hardware launches into a content desert. That’s been the journey for VR headsets, cool devices that certainly have understandable and unique use cases, but are missing the constellation of utility and killer apps required for success. 

Typically, gaming hardware success arises for a few key reasons that aim to benefit developers or players:

• Devices with multiple tier-1 IP exclusives (e.g. Nintendo consoles) and massive distribution 

• Devices that people already own (e.g. PCs, mobile phones)

• Devices that offer an ergonomic benefit (e.g. a Steam Deck for people who want to play exclusive PC titles but don’t have enough space for a PC) 

Looking at the Sui device, it fails all three of these rules:

1. The Sui ecosystem (and, let’s be honest at this point, web3 overall) has no tantalizing, must-have content. 

2. It’s a net-new purchase, on top of what the likely addressable audience of degens and core gamers already owns.

3. There are already way better devices with way more content that satisfy any desires for a handheld. 

Sui’s motivations could be couched in anticipation of their future ecosystem, solving a distribution challenge that web3 currently faces: traditional game stores like Playstation, Xbox, Apple, Google, and Steam are wishy-washy on their blockchain policies at best. Although there’s rapid clarity improvement and web3-enhanced games are already launching on Steam and mobile, it’s not easy for web3 titles to show up on gamers’ existing devices at scale. Unlike Nintendo, however, who want to own the hardware and IP business full-stack, it’s in Sui’s best interest to have their content in as many places as possible. This device is not a money-maker, as Nintendo’s are. Even if they wanted to go the verticalized hardware + content route, they don’t have enough content, and absolutely zero must-have exclusive content. And no game would ever go exclusive with an ecosystem that has zero distribution. Chicken and egg. 

In short, the Sui handheld isn’t a device that’s serving gamers nor developers. Even considering it as a stop-gap solution for the distribution of web3 games (that for some reason shouldn’t otherwise just be on Steam Deck, mobile, or PC) is overly generous. 

So what is this device at heart? A distraction. Like Solana, these hardware moves aren’t meant to solve needs or ecosystem requirements. They’re token pumpers aimed at capturing a moment of zeitgeist to distract developers and speculators from a lack of traction and launched content. Even worse for the prospects of this handheld, by the time it hits the market (if it ever does), the existing distribution and hardware platforms will look very, very different for web3. Meaning much more favorable. 

At that point, early buyers will be left with a device that’s weaker than everything else they own, has no edge in exclusives, and is redundant with the ways players already like to game. Ouya, anyone?