What Microsoft has been saying about Xbox lately strongly implies that this is a Windows handheld designed to solve software and user experience problems with using current Windows handhelds. And signs are pointing toward the next Xbox console coming sooner than the next PlayStation and essentially being a PC running a console version of Windows. Some speculation on my part, but I’m not the only one coming to those conclusions.
Maybe they should focus on it quicker. Surely it cannot be that difficult to build a handheld based on how quickly Steam Deck competition hit the market within, what, a year of the Steam Deck release?
(I’m lazy and did not read the article, only the headline.)
That few years is going toward making Windows less of a hindrance on handhelds and likely not so much into the hardware itself.
It’ll [attempt] to make Windows less of a hinderance on THEIR handheld. If all these other Windows-based devices are now rivals, why let them benefit from hard work when you can force them out?
If they released one NOW they’d probably be shooting themselves in the foot. At best they’d get mid-generational performance improvements whereas likely in the next year or two Valve is probably going to drop a true SteamDeck 2 with significant improvements. All speculation at this point, but if you’re a bean counter at Microsoft, speculation is like 90% of your job. Unless they abandon the standard console release cycle and shoot for faster iteration, they’ll want to come out absolutely swinging to compete.
Not really. PS6 parts have already been selected and the chipset entered production in 2022.
Sure, but we’re talking about a handheld. Yes, performance is improving generation over generation, but in the handheld space power usage and heat dissipation are equally important. If you’ve been keeping up with recent innovations, you’ll see that generally we are making more powerful parts, but they’re getting much more power hungry for every little percent of improvement they bring in raw horsepower. So far it doesn’t look like you could even get Xbox series S performance in a handheld yet. At least not at a reasonably portable size, cost, or battery life. You could get a little better than PS4 pro performance in a handheld at present, based on what I’ve seen. Which is not a full generational leap over what’s out there.
I think they’ll be fine. They don’t need to be the most powerful. Steam Deck is weaker than Rog Ally but remains the more popular option due to a better user experience and the Switch was significantly underpowered compared to the competition but remains a popular option to other things they bring to the table.
Microsoft won’t push for an expensive handheld so anything they bring out would likely be weaker than the top end of the market. It really comes down to what other offerings they bring.
With any luck they actually want to bring true innovations to either Windows or Xbox. Getting support for gyros, accelerometers, back buttons or touchpads into Xinput would even benefit gaming on Linux since most games seem to default to that as a lowest common denominator.