For anyone paying close attention to the growing handheld gaming field, you may have seen a rumor or two over the last year that Microsoft is supposedly working on an Xbox handheld. It would stand to reason the company would jump on the bandwagon after Steam and Asus blew the doors off with wild success, but then again, Microsoft is currently losing the console war, so it’s understandable the rumor was often disregarded since the company looks to be more interested in boosting Game Pass and Cloud Gaming than investing in console exclusives, with the Xbox spending over a billion dollars a year on securing Game Pass titles.
Well, no longer do we have to rely on rumors, as the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, has revealed in a Bloomberg interview that Xbox handheld prototypes are currently being worked on. The caveat is that this hardware is still a few years out. So it would appear the rumors that Microsoft is working on an Xbox handheld are indeed true, but we sadly won’t see the results of this work for some time.
An Xbox handheld is official
And Microsoft’s mobile gaming store plans have been paused
The company has hinted at interest in making a modern gaming handheld in the past, where Spencer said quite plainly at Summer Game Fest 2024 that “we should have a handheld.” This, of course, spurred more rumors about an Xbox handheld, but now that it is official, we can finally lay those rumors to rest.
We also learned from Bloomberg’s interview that Microsoft’s planned mobile game store is delayed while the company further researches the market, which sure doesn’t sound all that promising we will be seeing AAA games from Microsoft on mobile anytime soon. And frankly, when awful titles like Age of Empires Mobile are what we are currently getting from Microsoft and its partners, perhaps some extra market research is very much needed before the company launches a mobile game store.
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So there you have it: Microsoft is working on an Xbox handheld, but we won’t be seeing it anytime soon, and recent plans to launch a mobile game store have been halted for further research. So when it comes to mobile gaming, be it through PC handhelds, Android handhelds/phones/tablets, or mobile game stores, it’s looking like we won’t be seeing a ton from Microsoft in the near future.