Microsoft is gearing up for a giant vacation season on the finish of this 12 months. Throughout yesterday’s much-hyped Official Xbox Podcast, Xbox president Sarah Bond teased information concerning the corporate’s {hardware}, in addition to its plans for its next-gen gaming units. “What we’re actually targeted on there’s delivering the most important technical leap you’ll have ever seen in a {hardware} technology,” she mentioned.
The most important query about Microsoft’s subsequent guess, then, isn’t whether or not or not it can proceed to make conventional consoles that plug into your tv. It’s if Microsoft will comply with within the footsteps of firms like Nintendo and Valve to make a console you possibly can carry round. Gaming has lengthy superior previous the purpose of handhelds solely offering a separate, smaller expertise; you possibly can play the whole lot from battle royale megahits like Fortnite to expansive, open worlds like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and not using a full TV setup.
Different Microsoft opponents like Sony have already dipped into handhelds. Along with the corporate’s efforts just like the PlayStation Vita, which it stopped producing in 2019, it launched PlayStation Portal—which lets you stream video games out of your PS5—final 12 months.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has expressed admiration for his opponents’ methods. Throughout a current interview with The Verge, he says Microsoft has been “form of studying from what Nintendo has finished through the years with Swap … After I have a look at Steam Deck and the ROG [handheld] and my [Lenovo handheld] Legion Go, I’m a giant fan of that area.” What retains gamers from gaming extra, he says, is extra than simply sleep or the common obligations of life. “A few of it’s simply entry,” he instructed The Verge. “Do I’ve entry to the video games that I wish to play proper now?”
Even when requested immediately about whether or not Microsoft could be making a handheld, Spencer refuted the thought. “I’m a giant fan, however nothing to announce.”
Doubling down on conventional consoles this vacation season isn’t surprising. In September, Microsoft by accident leaked details about its launch plans, together with a have a look at its mid-gen console refresh and a brand new controller, by means of unredacted paperwork. If nonetheless correct, the paperwork additionally included info on its next-gen Xbox console, pegged to 2028, as a “hybrid sport platform” that might use the cloud.
Though cloud gaming presents a pretty resolution for some gamers seeking to keep away from the trouble of a console on the shelf of their dwelling leisure middle, Xbox execs have at all times been agency that conventional consoles are essential to the enterprise. “Once we have a look at our {hardware} … it is the place you get essentially the most flagship, seminal expertise of Xbox,” Bond mentioned in the course of the podcast. “And it additionally represents a developer goal. Our builders can construct the specs of our {hardware}, and we make investments to verify after they do, that the video games are going to run nice on our {hardware}, however they’re additionally going to have the ability to be accessed throughout any display screen due to all the opposite investments we make.”
As Microsoft opens up its video games to extra platforms, it must make its signature {hardware} extra interesting past a group loyal to the model itself. Spencer himself could agree; eagle-eyed followers have seen him liking tweets calling a handheld “inevitable.” Microsoft doesn’t should make a technological leap to make nice video games accessible; only one that permits you to go outdoors infrequently.
