I miss the days of dedicated game consoles for this exact reason. Smartphones becoming a universal do-it-all device broke the economics of portable gaming.
Nobody wants to pay more than $2-$3 for a game, which disincentivizes people from making complex games. So we get formulaic puzzle games for 'free', which are loaded with gambling-style mechanics that constantly nickel and dime you to upgrade to paid mods to beat harder levels.
I agree with this on the whole. I’d add the form factor of a phone works against anything complex also.
No D-Pad/Joystick or hardware buttons really makes it difficult to design anything that will hit that fun + complex loop well.
I can see play.date/steamdeck rolling in sales, as the portable market has a huge back-catalogue and is underserved.
Ultimately, our utilitarian glass slabs are only really good for lists. Lists within lists.
Nobody wants to pay more than $2-$3 for a game, which disincentivizes people from making complex games. So we get formulaic puzzle games for 'free', which are loaded with gambling-style mechanics that constantly nickel and dime you to upgrade to paid mods to beat harder levels.