At CES 2026, Intel announced that it is working on a full-fledged gaming platform for handheld consoles, which will be built on the new Panther Lake chips.
According to an exclusive report from IGN, the company plans to release custom variants of Intel Core G3 processors designed specifically for handheld devices. It is reported that these chips could outperform the Arc B390 integrated graphics presented at the exhibition, which, according to Intel, is on average 10% faster than the mobile RTX 4050, 82% faster than the Radeon 890M, and 2.6 times faster than the Adreno X1 in the Snapdragon X Elite at a 45W power limit.
IGN also notes that the transition to the Intel 18A process technology allows the company to take a flexible approach to chip production, allocating more resources to the graphics portion if necessary.
Intel Director Dan Rogers stated that details about the platform will emerge "later this year" when hardware and software partners join the project. Among them are already listed MSI, Acer, Foxconn, Pegatron, Microsoft, and CPD.
Previously, Intel had already tried to gain a foothold in the handheld segment by introducing the MSI Claw 8 AI+ model based on Lunar Lake. The device showed decent results in the 17W mode, which is critical for the handheld format, but still lagged behind solutions from AMD. Now, with Panther Lake and the new Core G3, the company expects to engage in direct competition with AMD and Qualcomm, which is preparing its own Windows-based gaming handhelds.