This Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase 2024 came and went without the rumoured reveal of an Xbox handheld – the first such device and which would be the perfect partner to their Xbox Cloud Gaming tech. But, despite the reveal of new uprated Xbox X and S hardware (minor tweaks being a new discless X and a bigger capacity S) truly new hardware – in the shape of a Steam Deck-style portable console – failed to show.
Instead the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 was all about the games, wheeling out an impressive laundry list of grim and gory shooters with only Flight Simulator 2024 offering some light relief in amongst the blood n guts. And as well as the handheld no show, mobile failed to get any airtime with a scant verbal mention of King as being one of Microsoft’s studios being only acknowledgement of the company having any mobile assets or intentions at all.
Missing mobile
I think being able to play games locally is really important.
Phil Spencer
Of course, one could argue that with the likes of Valve’s Steam Deck, Asus Rog Ally, and the Lenovo Legion Go, an Xbox handheld already exists as all are able to stream games via Xbox’s Game Pass. Nonetheless even Xbox’s own CEO Phil Spencer can spot a gap in the market for something Xbox branded.
For while Xbox themselves have made no promises and are in no hurry for a handheld it remains the hottest topic with games press around the world. Winning their five minutes with Spencer post event IGN soon grilled the hapless head on the handheld holdout.
“The future for us in hardware is pretty awesome. The work that the team is doing around different form factors, different ways to play, I’m incredibly excited about,” Spencer said. “Today was about the games… but we will have a time to come out and talk more about platform, and we can’t wait to bring it to you.”
And when quizzed even more directly Spencer responded, “I think being able to play games locally is really important.”
Xbox handheld USP
And that would appear to be the key component to the rumour and the gap that Xbox could themselves fill. For while the current crop of machines can stream from their service (and PlayStation’s Portal handheld requires the owner to have their PS5 fired up for the hard work) perhaps a homegrown Xbox handheld would have the oomph to run games without a connection.
Download your catalogue directly onto the device? Instant console quality gaming regardless of location and connection? Plus seamless streaming of the Game Pass library? With all your saves and progression and a dedicated, familiar, Xbox-only, console-style front end with zero Windows trappings?
And with Nintendo’s Switch 2 on the way and all set to dominate, the case for Xbox fighting back with a rival just gets stronger.
But for now – like every other gaming outlet out there – looks like we’ll just have to wait.
