With so many games being made for mobile devices, as well as popular games like Fortnite and PUBG getting ported over, it seemed like only a matter of time before someone came up with this: a gaming smartphone. Razer, a well-known gaming hardware developer, came out with their first smartphone designed specifically for gamers in November of last year. Other companies quickly latched onto the idea and started working on their own projects. The market is clearly there, but the question is: is there a such thing as too much?

ASUS certainly doesn’t think so.

The ASUS ROG phone is not only spec’ed out to smoothly run games, but is being released with some serious extra firepower in order to deliver the best possible gameplay experience. This beast boasts the following:

-8 gigabytes of RAM
-A vapor cooling chamber
-Two front-facing speakers for better gaming audio
-A pair of back-facing cameras
-A customizable back light
-Multiple USB ports on different parts of the phone (since most games are played in landscape, having the one USB port on the bottom of the phone tends to get in the way. The ROG has extra ports on the sides so there’s no worry of tangling with a cord)
-Two shoulder buttons that can be used to trigger shortcuts
-A COOLING FAN that snaps onto the back of the phone and can be controlled via an app
-Dual screen dock (kind of like the Nintendo DS setup), allowing you to play a phone game and stream it simultaneously
-Expandable gaming pads to snap onto the sides of the phone, giving you more screen space and keeping your fingerprints off the surface
-A desktop dock so that you can hook up to your home computer.

Wow. Let me just say, I think this is not only a great device, but an awesome idea all around. There has certainly been a fair share of vocal opponents to the idea of a “gaming super smartphone”, but I would ask them, “what’s not to like about this?” Sure, it might be a little silly on the surface…but hasn’t everything in gaming seemed silly at its conception? The history of video games is fraught with stories of someone trying something out, someone telling them that it isn’t practical or that it’s totally pointless, and them sticking with it until it catches on.

It wasn’t so long ago that the idea of a “gaming computer” was a far-off concept. Now we have millions of people buying high end systems with the best graphics cards and memory space (and yes, cooling fans) in order to maximize their gaming experiences. Video game tournaments were an underground thing not too long ago; now they’re a part of a huge subculture with corporate sponsors, prize money, live broadcasts, and millions of spectators. Our entire gaming world has grown out of seemingly pointless things such as the ROG phone that some scoff at, but others go, “hang on, this might actually be something.”

So no, the ASUS ROG is not “too much” and people shouldn’t be turning their noses up at it. People will drop seven or eight hundred dollars every year on the newest iPhone, so why shouldn’t someone try to make a phone that’s geared towards a particular set of people? You know what, give me more! I want a phone that’ll let me play my game, live stream it with a video of me posted in the corner, play four-person split screen on my living room television, and tell my smart fridge that I need a beer in the next two minutes.

This is our community, and we got here through people trying out ridiculous things until they worked. Bring it on.