Not an official announcement, but it’s probably safe to assume an Xbox handheld is in development.
“Hey boss we have the tech from Surface Division to form factor the new Xbox and portable the same. People could just buy one device.”
*Out the Windows boardroom guy meme*
Exactly my thoughs.
I would never buy an Xbox handheld. Why would you want a handheld that is locked into Microsoft’s ecosystem even more than a Windows handheld? You’ll get maybe ten to fifteen years out of it, then it will become a brick that Microsoft has abandoned. You will never have fond memories of playing on the Xbox handheld that you can recreate with physical hardware. You’ll never get to show your kids what gaming was like on the thing, because the authentication servers were shut off years ago, and now it is a worthless paperweight.
Microsoft could just drop a Windows handheld that can play Xbox games natively.
The Xbox already runs on a custom VM based on Windows 10/11. Microsoft themselves are the only ones keeping the two who systems separated by artificial software limitations.
They could, but they won’t.
They could also release a handheld gaming PC that runs Windows under their Surface brand, if they wanted to go that route.
That’s something that could have even saved them money on R&D for the Xbox itself, but there’s no way in hell they would allow you to use your gaming console as a desktop.
It is fascinating how they are willing to waste a shitload of money just to lock users into an ecosystem. Imagine how easy it would be to just run Windows on the Xbox and allow to boot into desktop or game mode as needed. That would have been a huge selling point against Playstation, but “make life better for your users” will never be part of MS’s philosophy.
I’m assuming it’s gonna be a lame attempt to capitalize on the steam deck’s success with hope that popular DRM game exclusives will drive sales.
Although I’m pretty sure the MSI Claw already proved that won’t work. Even if it had been good in hardware, the addition of only a few select games didn’t justify the cost or performance of windows on a handheld.
Unless they put some actual development and research behind it, which they won’t, it’ll probably last only a few years before they have to cancel due to sunk cost and lack of game sales.
They’d need to properly place DirectX with a clean NT kernel on some good hardware, and make a completely new (and usable) UI like Xbox without sacrificing battery power, which even the deck struggled to accomplish.
Considering how cruddy windows 11 has been, Xbox nuking teams left & right, and MSFT throwing all their budget at AI, I just don’t see it happening.
Yeah. Not interested with anything that made by microsoft.
“Quick, fresh bubble, flood the market!”
If Microsoft stuck with what it already does, it would be better. They already have cloud streaming technology which makes playing games on their ecosystem possible on any screen. Having a separate handheld console would complicate things. I just don’t see the appeal.
They are risking Linux becoming an actual thing in the portable, desktop & living room spaces.
I said this earlier in the thread but I am very confident at this point that Microsoft already lost this battle to Linux in the longterm. Particularly because Linux operating system devs don’t care about AI and Microsoft is obsessed with it like all other dumb massive tech companies and honestly it is going to lead nowhere in terms of providing a useful basis for an operating system especially if the foundation you are working from sucks (glares at Microsoft and Windows). So volunteer Linux devs actually have a huge lead here even though Microsoft has wayyyyy more resources and money because Microsoft is firehosing it all at the stupidest shit while they fire core team members left and right destroying their longterm capability to create quality products.
You really have to understand AI as the dream come true from sociopathic tech CEOs standpoint, they can finally get rid of the humans, fire most of the programmers and suck up so much data that they can create an UBER AI that knows all…. except reality doesn’t work like that. No matter, reality is kept safely at bay always at least 4 kilometers from the Microsoft C-suite at all times.
The shift just hasn’t happened yet like a dead tree limb hanging on until that gust of wind comes along and the whole limb comes crashing down abruptly weeks after the storm that weakened it.
Yes, devs work on Linux. Now, since the Deck, people (2%) are starting to game on Linux. The next battlefields are the desktop and the living room. The latter could be solved by a Deck 2 (and a new dock) with E-GPU support. That is trickier, there needs to happen a lot of things, and is much more complex.
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People thought the same about portable, yet they did things for it to happen. If a company as inluential as Valve does the same for desktop, it could become a thing. I don’t mean dominate, I mean like a noteworthy event, just like the Deck.
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Why would anyone buy this? You can already do this streaming through the Deck or any of the other handhelds, if Game Pass is your thing.
A big part of the Deck outselling the competition is price. An Xbox handheld could be sold at a loss (like the deck) with the plan of making the money back on Microsoft store/Xbox store sales.
“if only we had a way to like, take a desktop pc and make it, like, not tethered to a power outlet. and made the mouse and keyboard a part of the case. and added a screen and speakers too. too bad we have no idea how to do that.” -Microsoft, as they shove the 10,000 laptops off of the desk. “guess we will have to do it ourselves.”
(yeah yeah a laptop “isn’t a handheld” but you get the stupidity all the same, surely. MS abandoned their platform just to make a different, more constrained platform, and charge people for multi-player. and they want to act like they couldn’t do that 25 years ago for free. fuck off MS.)
To be fair, gaming laptops kinda suck (at least they did when I owned one). I would probably recommend a steam deck + a desktop over a gaming laptop.
Same. Every gaming laptop i have ever had the displeasure of using has been absolute garbage.
The steam deck on the other hand? Pure kino.
Oh, I was wondering how it was going to happen. So many of these games look fantastic and like a good strong future ahead for Xbox. So I was wondering how they were going to screw this up.
Xbox Remote Play already works on the Steam Deck and Android devices. Not sure on iOS, I haven’t tried that, but I’ve personally run it on my Android tablet and Steam Deck.
Phil Spencer holding a steamdeck and looking over at a switch: After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I have a handheld system.
