Intel is set to make a significant foray into the portable gaming market, having announced the development of a new handheld gaming platform featuring a dedicated chip. This strategic expansion, revealed at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), signals the company's intent to deepen its roots in gaming hardware and challenge existing players in the handheld sector.
The upcoming platform will encompass both hardware and software components, as confirmed by Daniel Rogers, Intel's Vice President and General Manager of PC Products, during his CES presentation. It will be engineered around the company's Intel Core Series 3 processors, codenamed Panther Lake. These processors, initially unveiled last year, are already being integrated into various PC systems.
Crucially, the future platform will incorporate a chip specifically optimized for handheld gaming devices. This detail was initially reported by IGN and subsequently confirmed by TechCrunch.
The Panther Lake chips represent a milestone for Intel, being the first to be built using its advanced 18A manufacturing process, which commenced production in 2025.
Intel is no stranger to the gaming industry, having developed chips for gaming PCs since the 1990s. The company further intensified its focus on gaming in 2022 with the introduction of its Intel Arc GPUs.
Entering the handheld gaming segment presents an intriguing challenge, as the market is currently dominated by rival AMD. Coincidentally, AMD also made significant announcements at CES, unveiling its new Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor designed for gaming PCs, alongside advancements in ray tracing and graphics technologies.
Rogers indicated that Intel plans to release more comprehensive details regarding its new handheld gaming products later this year.
