Will Nvidia’s Arm gaming CPU come to handhelds first?
In January, Qualcomm hinted to The Verge that it might finally bring its powerful Arm-based Snapdragon processors to Windows gaming handhelds at the 2026 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco — just in time to challenge Nvidia’s own first Arm gaming CPU and Intel’s first dedicated handheld gaming chips.
But plans have shifted, Qualcomm now tells me. It won’t announce any updates to its Snapdragon G Series gaming chips there, nor offer the recently announced updates to the Snapdragon X line for journalists to try or benchmark.
“Snapdragon X Series and Snapdragon G Series processors are pushing the PC, desktop, and handheld gaming device industries forward. Our commitment remains strong, and we can’t wait to share more information about these areas,” reads part of a statement to The Verge via Qualcomm spokesperson Cassandra Garcia-Bacha.
Qualcomm didn’t say why plans have shifted, but it’s not hard to imagine that RAMageddon might have something to do with it. In Qualcomm’s February earnings call, president and CEO Cristiano Amon attributed a big dip in its chip business “100 percent” to the memory shortage, telling investors that the AI industry’s appetite for components would likely define the entire scale of the phone industry all year long.
In that same call, Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala testified that the company has already seen device manufacturers reduce how much they’re building. “We just wish there was more memory,” said Amon.
And we’ve already seen other impacts in the handheld gaming space. Valve’s Steam Deck is largely sold out; it all but missed its fourth birthday, February 25th, because it says the shortages are preventing the company from keeping it in stock. They will also impact the Steam Machine, and may reportedly impact the Switch 2 and delay Sony’s PS6.
But the Windows gaming handheld delay could also have something to do with Microsoft, which has worked very closely with Qualcomm on previous Windows on Arm launches and tightly controls partner announcements. Microsoft just got a new gaming CEO, who is still figuring out her entire strategy for Xbox.
Either way, RAMagedddon is expected to get worse, not better, in the second half of the year. Today, IDC just forecast the largest drop ever recorded in worldwide smartphone shipments, a dip of 12.9 percent, across 2026. Samsung just announced new phones that start $100 pricier than last year for minor updates, and a Samsung exec told me today that’s partly due to RAM.
Whenever they arrive, there seems to be potential for Arm gaming devices running Windows titles. Valve has quietly been the architect of a push to bring Windows games to Arm, and the early results are promising.