Xbox Boss Teases 'Awesome' Future In Hardware, In Response To Handheld Rumours

A native handheld. Sounds awesome to me. Perhaps they are waiting for a native "Series S" experience and more battery life based on new ARM chips that translate x86 operations.

Hopefully he convinces MS to get windows better suited for these kind of devices before it comes. He has mentioned that in the past when talking about the Rog Ally. I want this thing to have windows.

Handhelds are kind of my obsession right now. I have like a cool dozen of them now (mostly emulation devices). Out of the higher end ones I have; Steam Deck (Steam OS/Linux), ROG Ally (Windows), Odin 2 (Android), and Switch (proprietary). I would say that Windows is my preference just because of the versatility. SteamOS and Switch provide solid console experiences but it's so limited with what you can do on them or need a runaround. I hope Xbox can bridge the gap between the console experience and Windows even better than Steam Deck does between the gaming mode and "desktop" mode. Armory Crate on ROG Ally is solid and makes it appear like a console library but that requires a bunch of updates, windows requires updates here and there, and each app (Xbox,steam,GOG, etc) needs their own updates. It can be a handful, especially if you are just booting up for the first time in a few weeks.

Yes please! I would love a handheld that can play games natively so I can sit next to my wife while playing!

Would be nice if it allowed me to play both my pc and xbox games on it. Like I'd want to be able to play my steam library as well as my xbox.

Steam deck is already it. It plays steam library native, it can use xbplay to stream from series x. I really have no idea what they can offer that the current handheld devices do not, so I will be happy to be surprised.
If its just a series S in a new form factor that does not really get my attention.

@Mooky779 Streaming games from a Series X to a Steam Deck isn't really a solution for Xbox. It requires new users to buy a home console as well as the Steam Deck, it wouldn't grow Xbox's users at all. New users would just buy the Steam Deck and the games on Steam.

Xbox is doable on Steamdeck but far from pleasant. ROG Ally is slightly better with the actual Xbox PC app to run gamepass games natively or cloud stream. They could improve the Xbox app here and make our entire digital library available natively. There is room for a full-on Xbox handheld experience in my opinion. I would love if their handheld had an Xbox mode and a windows mode similar to Steam Deck's desktop mode. Or a much more fleshed out PC App on a straight windows device.

And above all there is no harm in it doing what the other devices do. Xbox/Microsoft can get in on the emerging market as well. Xbox is much more of a name brand in gaming than ASUS or Lenovo. It wouldn't really be a very compelling industry if everyone just said "that's Steam's thing, they can have that." The more options the better IMO.

Access to GP on Steam deck only gives you access to GP games supposed by xcloud. Your personal library is not available. MS having their own handheld likely means native support for your full library AND GP. What would be awesome is if the Microsoft handheld allowed you to run all of your steam games.

ROG Ally already ticks all the boxes for me. All except a more console like experience in Windows. It’s somewhat mitigated by apps like Playnite, but I’m interested in what Phil and the team will come up with. If it plays more than just Xbox games, I might be interested.

@gollumb82 Armory Create and/or Steam Big Picture should be console enough though I find i just disable that save use the desktop normally. Idk why, but desktop icons are still more functional than the Switch and PS5 UIs.

@NEStalgia
Yeah, Armory Crate is okay I guess. I’m waiting for the revamp Asus announced for July. I hope it’s more smooth and responsive as it tends to act up at times. I dunno, I’m not a huge fan of Steam Big Picture mode. I find it irritating that it always displays ads for whatever game is currently discounted when you start up Steam. Playnite is the best option hands down as it allows you to even integrate emulated games from all platforms fairly easily (also has themes, background music etc). It’s already more than enough for me, but it can always be better.

I just wish they would integrate Gamepass into Steam so any GP that is also on Steam can be downloaded, like EA Play does, so I can play on Steam Deck without having to mess about with Windows or XCloud. Unfortunately, if they really are making their own handheld I assume that just isn't on the cards

@PapaGlitch The way I see the trajectory of Xbox what I see is them shifting to becoming a Steam competitor instead of being a Sony competitor. So I don't see that happening. Sony now seems to be a partner. Steam is the enemy now.

Only problem with the model is the windows store is missing 90% of games on steam. The windows store is missing 70% of the games on the Xbox store ....

@NEStalgia Steam will never be the enemy, thats why they keep releasing so many games on Steam but just a handful on Sony. it will always be sony

An "Xbox Series Mini" would be so awesome! Being able to continue playing away from home (using cloud saves) would be a dream come true.

Good, so presumably a hypothetical Xbox handheld would not have the same stringent Home Xbox requirements that we are currently familiar with. That was my biggest concern with such a handheld. My second biggest concern is that its specs exactly match those of a pre-existing Xbox home console (ideally Series S, but if it must be Xbox One X then so be it), as Xbox going for a third console with again different specifications is not what I think it needs right now, but maybe I'm overthinking that.

We can’t even play games without an internet connection. How exactly is this going to work?! B

@demian Eh, I don't think so, long term. I think at some point their PC strategy will focus on having other stores that are Steam competitors (Epic, etc) but not Steam itself, and may not put their own games on Steam if they go to push Windows Store as a steam alternative. For now Windows store is a horrid joke though ,so there's kind of no choice.

@BHPM X1X has a stronger GPU than Series S. Series S has the stronger CPU and newer GPU features though. I think it woudl be 1S vs Series S. 1X and SX GPUs are just too beefy for a handheld.

@NEStalgia Great point, I hadn't considered that. I would hope then that if they were to do this, they would opt for Series S over One S, even if that would cost as much as I'd expect it would.

@BacklogBrad Not sure, but this handheld comes from Xbox not Microsoft it will likely have a customOS based around Xbox rather than windows. I doubt it would even support steam to be honest.

As it will most likely have a customOS Xbox would likely need an agreement with steam to support the app on the systems. I could be wrong I just doubt it would be anything more than a handled Xbox system. Basically what we would have expected the ps portal to be before Sony became cheap and took advantage of its user base.

@Mince I disagree but hopefully we will see soon. Spencer had talked multiple times about how windows should be better suited for these handhelds. There were also the rumors the microsoft surface team could be involved with this.

I think it could easily give both experiences, much like the steamos. The steam deck has the console like "gaming mode" and a desktop mode in the background for the more tech inclined users. It only makes sense that the company behind windows would use that for the back end with an xbox interface.

I actually think the home console eventually switches over to windows backend with an xbox interface.