I have been reviewing retro handheld devices for a long time now, my first video on one was uploaded way back in 2017, it was a fake PSP like device with pre-built games, since then the market has evolved drastically and fast. Handhelds have been a part of my fondest memories and I love collecting them, but over the last year or so, I have become exhausted trying to keep up with the retro handheld market and recently I’ve hit a breaking point.
The RG40XX line of devices by ANBERNIC is what has recently tipped me over the edge. It’s not ANBERNIC specifically that’s caused this, but they’re certainly playing a large part in this over-saturated and quite frankly boring market that we’re all in.
I get handhelds landing on my desk almost weekly, and I previously loved reviewing every single one, but as the months and years go by with very little iterations I tend to make the same videos, saying the same things over and over, and it’s sapping the joy out of creating.
A handheld will get delivered, and it typically takes me a week to take it through the review process between running the website and life, and then another two days to create the video, from scripting, to filming, to editing and uploading.
It’s a long process to create a video on something that I am starting to lose interest in, and a long process to end up saying something similar to what I’ve said about a previous handheld that launched just two weeks ago.
For example, the RG40XX H landed on my desk, so I began the review process, then the RG40XX V was announced before I had even finished writing the review, and it put pressure on me to get this review out before the next best thing comes along, at the same time I was also reviewing the AYANEO Pocket Micro, a handheld i genuinely wanted to review because it was actually unique.
So I skipped making a video on it the RG40XX H to focus on something I liked, but by then the RG40XX V arrived and again, during the review process ANBERNIC reveals the RG406V, a handheld that looks identical to a previous handheld of theres, but in ANBERNIC fashion has some small upgrades that attempts at forcing their customer base to buy it because of FOMO.
I literally can’t keep up. I want to focus on handhelds that I actually enjoy, instead of throwing video content out into the wilderness because it simply drives affiliate sales. Video creation takes me a very long time, and I miss the days of creating videos that genuinely excites me. You may have seen that I launched a new show on the channel, dedicated to exploring awesome retro game shops, called The Retroad Show. That’s the kinda stuff I want to do more of, but I can’t because I’m trying to keep you all updated with the onslaught of mediocre handhelds.
So from here on out, you will only see video reviews on handhelds that I love, handhelds that I genuinely want to support and handhelds that I think deserve more attention. I will produce written reviews on most of them here on our website, so you can all read my opinions good or bad. It’s just very time consuming and soul draining to spend a week producing a video that is negative, its not the brand voice I want to build and I value all of your time dearly, plus more importantly I want to reignite the joy of creating videos about the stuff I actually have interest in.
So although you’ll see slightly less handheld reviews, it means you’ll be able to watch different videos, such as more of The Retroad Show, opinion pieces, unboxings of unique retro gear and it also gives me more time to create higher quality reviews too as I won’t have to rush the upload out of the door.
This brings me onto the retro handheld industry as a whole. It’s so oversaturated right now and most of them, in all honesty, are very mediocre. Half of them launch with terrible user experience with the manufacturers expecting the community to fix this issue for them, and for some reason influencers and media have normalised this instead of calling these companies out, which if they did, it would eventually force their hand to make genuinely good frontends for their devices that would please new customers to this industry. We seem to be in this where consumers are happy with half-baked handhelds coming out of China, and that isn’t good.
And from my experience I have very little contact with the actual people behind these brands, when we ask further questions about their products we get ignored, when we ask to discover who’s behind these brands we get ignored, when we speak badly about these products we tend to get blacklisted from review samples, the only time I can actually get a response from them, is when they want to send me early units for content purposes, which deep down is simply them wanting to selfishly squeeze money out of our community. It’s certainly a one way street. Heck there’s one company which I won’t name, that owes me around $1000 in commissions, and again, no response from any customer service, or any real person behind the brand that cares.
I have no idea what ethics are behind these companies, how they source their materials, how they treat their staff, what they are doing to do support the gaming industry as a whole, or how they treat customers that have a poor experience, it’s a very shady, one-sided mask with these brands and i just don’t how long i can go supporting their release of mediocre products here on the channel.
I want genuine, customer-friendly handheld manufacturers to flourish that build great products for a great price without being biassed to shady marketing tactics, or purposely making terrible products and then releasing a slightly better one a couple months later out of pure greed.
Many of these brands send myself, influencers and publications early samples to review, and as much as this helps us give value to our community by giving early opinions, detailed reviews and unboxings before normal customers, I am actually starting to feel like I’m being taken advantage of. In the sense that these companies can use myself and influencers to generate attention before customers get the real thing, and we do have an incentive because we get, or i can transparently say I get roughly 5% commission on each sale, and i can assure you if you’re one of the first to get a review up, or be on these companies white list to receive it before anyone else, you’re going to make a pretty penny if you speak good of it and these companies know that and are happy to butter us up if it drives sales.
I want to also give space to other independent manufacturers on our platform to feel like they have a chance to showcase their products and build something unique and to not feel like they’re being forced out of the space by these big companies throwing out as much as they can, because let’s face it, once there’s an inkling of innovation in the retro handheld space, there’s a handful of companies that come out and copy those devices before the real creators can even get their products to market, which damages this industry as a whole.
For example the ZPG Unicorn, a handheld that was in development for a good while because the team behind it were small, but a certain handheld manufacturer saw what they were doing and decided to launch their own, with more financial backing, faster manufacturing and they could obviously price it competitively too. I was forced to pick between the two in terms of coverage because they landed on my desk at the same time during a busy period of ours, and now looking back, i selfishly covered the product that I thought would get most attention, and that didn’t sit well with me and it’s why I want to change that.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I only want to shine light on the products that I believe are truly remarkable here on the channel, to put my time producing videos into products I enjoy and more importantly products that I think you as a viewer would appreciate owning regardless of trying to create content early or trying to please the ever consuming algorithm.
Financially this doesn’t make sense, but as someone who wants to create a trusted source for handheld reviews it’s a mandatory change that will also help me with my content creation flow long-term.
I know a lot of you value my opinions on devices and that’s why I will still write reviews on our website that speak truthfully about my opinions on these devices good or bad, I just can’t keep to the path of taking weeks to produce high quality videos about basic, boring handhelds, i’ll go mad. I hope you understand.
