I think Switch is just following the other consoles eventually.
This lead me think, is there any 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit native handheld (not Pi emulation) market? I guess the primary difficulty is to make games for them, so most likely just a small hobbyist market. I still think kids don't really care about graphics though, at least when they are young.
There's this, https://play.date/. Haven't heard much news about it lately though. Feel like any handheld built around a relatively cheap microcontroller should be shooting for a much lower price point.
Economy of scale only saves you so much at small batch sizes, plus I assume the unique input setup drives up the BOM price a fair bit.
I think they did a few blogposts about having initial teething troubles getting consistent manufacturing, so they might have a significant upfront expense cost to subsidize (which probably explains why they're raising the price again...)
There are a few handhelds that can play pico-8 games. I think it’s done by running pico-8 itself on the handheld which can also run other emulators so I’m not sure it meets your criteria but there’s that at least :)
This lead me think, is there any 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit native handheld (not Pi emulation) market? I guess the primary difficulty is to make games for them, so most likely just a small hobbyist market. I still think kids don't really care about graphics though, at least when they are young.