Since the release of the Steam Deck in the middle of last year, competitors have been jostling each other with machines that are ever more powerful and ever more expensive.
Valve, the company that publishes the Steam platform and is behind the Steam Deck, recently confirmed that there is no question of offering a new version of the Steam Deck until performance is able to take a leap forward while maintaining a relatively low entry price. In this sense, Valve clearly stands out from all its competitors in the console/PC hybrid machine sector, whose design is apparently quite similar to the Nintendo Switch. Whether it's companies like AYANEO or GPD Win - well known to enthusiasts - these machines are not a novelty, they have been working on them and marketing them for several years. However, the prices are significantly higher than what Valve has proposed.
If Valve's core target is not the wealthiest gamers, by highlighting these small machines, the American company has made them known to a public with a larger budget, able to look at the products of the above-mentioned companies. On several occasions, the latter have already stated that far from taking market share, Valve has above all made a clear growth in a market that was previously confidential. The number of projects currently underway and the growing interest in AMD's APUs are proof of this. These chips combine the CPU power of Zen3 or Zen4 with the graphics performance of RDNA2 or even RDNA3, and should see a small revolution with the arrival of the first models combining Zen4 and RDNA3.
The Chinese AOKZOE intends to be among the first to market these APUs that we are all waiting for. So, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible and in the absence of being able to drastically lower prices - especially on such recent APUs - AOKZOE is planning not one, but two consoles based on Ryzen 7000 APUs. The A1 Pro should be the first to be available with its large 8-inch diagonal screen while the A2 should follow a few weeks later. It will be more compact and organized around a screen of "only" 7 inches diagonal. While the A1 Pro will only be available in blue, the A2 will adopt two distinct colors: green (Evergreen) and white (Skywing).
At the moment, it is clearly too early to have more information about these two machines. Note however that things could quickly get busy. AOKZOE is already inviting users to sign up for the internal beta test of the A1 Pro while the crowdfunding campaign around the A2 should be launched very soon on the Indiegogo platform.
