Xbox is already hyping up its next console and revealing its stance on handhelds. Xbox is one of the biggest platforms in the gaming space, but they are trying to do something dramatically different from its competitors. For the longest time, there wasn’t a huge difference between Xbox and PlayStation on a hardware level. It was more about the games you wanted to play, but now that’s changing. More and more first-party games are being made multiplatform with Xbox even announcing it will bring 4 of its exclusive games (reportedly stuff like Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush) to PS5 and Nintendo Switch in the near future. There will still be Xbox exclusive games like Starfield. With that said, Xbox is not going to go the way of Sega and become a third-party publisher.
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Xbox’s Sarah Bond revealed during a podcast that Xbox still has big ambitions for hardware and is planning to announce new hardware this holiday season. It’s unclear if that’s a revision of the current Xbox Series line or a new console or something else entirely, but Xbox is also planning for the next-gen Xbox as well. Xbox is planning on delivering the “largest technical leap” that we’ve ever seen between console generations, which is a pretty ambitious statement. Of course, we still likely have another 4 – 5 years before we get there, but Xbox is heavily investing in the future as is.
“There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday,” said Bond. “And we’re also invested in the next generation roadmap. And what we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building.”
As for whether or not we will ever see an Xbox handheld, Phil Spencer told The Verge that they have nothing to announce at the moment but are learning from Nintendo, Steam Deck, and other handhelds. Particularly, they’re looking at making Windows a more viable OS for these handhelds that already exist. Whether that leads to Xbox’s own handheld remains to be seen.
“Obviously we’re kind of learning from what Nintendo has done over the years with Switch, they’ve been fantastic with that. So when I look at Steam Deck and the ROG and my Legion Go, I’m a big fan of that space. We do have real work. One of the weak points in the experience on a ROG or the Lenovo [Legion Go] is Windows. How Windows works on controller input only on that kind of DPI, on a smaller eight- or seven-inch screen. That’s a real design point that our platform team is working with Windows to make sure that the experience is even better.”
