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Xbox Handheld Xbox Series speculations

Nintenmo

Nintenmo

Trainer Red
Banned
The YouTuber known as Phawx, who specializes in handheld gaming PCs, makes a convincing prediction in his video that Microsoft is planning to release a handheld version of the Xbox Series S (Series P?) for the holiday season of 2024. And the least that can be said is that it makes a lot of sense:



Imagine a world where you don't hesitate between playing a game for free on gamepass or buying it on Switch to play it on the go.
 
Watch everyone try to release a handheld and Nintendo move in a different direction with future Switch hardware.
 
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Derachi said:
If I’m reading correctly it’s the same as a Series S, just portable
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I haven't watched all of it, but I see him talking hypotheticals like "What if it was given a newer CPU with similar performance but more efficient?" or "What if it needed less power because it used 4 CPU cores handheld instead of 8?" which definitely don't seem like they'd work automatically.

EDIT: And here's a "What if it uses less GPU power because it targets 720p?"

EDIT EDIT: He ends by saying he thinks the Series S is a Trojan horse and the builds designed for that would all just automatically work on this hardware... but that seems pretty far-fetched to me.
 
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JoshuaJSlone said:
I haven't watched all of it, but I see him talking hypotheticals like "What if it was given a newer CPU with similar performance but more efficient?" or "What if it needed less power because it used 4 CPU cores handheld instead of 8?" which definitely don't seem like they'd work automatically.

EDIT: And here's a "What if it uses less GPU power because it targets 720p?"
Click to expand...
Oh I was just going off the text in the OP, I didn’t see the video.

No more Xbox specs! Some devs apparently already don’t like the S. Maybe if this was basically the same as a Steam Deck?
 
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They already have to worry about making sure their games work on 2 versions of one console so I'm not sure they'd want to have to worry about 3.

Unless they're planning on making a pretty beefy handheld.
 
I would like it a lot, having gamepass games at 720@60 and more with streaming would be great, also portable devmode for emulation would be a godsend
 
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I really doubt this will happen. They have been pushing a lot the cloud gaming, I don't think they will spend money on a weaker Xbox sku to have 3 platforms to develop games for when you can just play with your phone. Xbox makes more money from the subscriptions than from the consoles, and they are pretty obviously focused on that market.
 
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A portable Gamepass machine does sound cool, but, yeah, that's 3 different SKUs to develop for.
 
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I'm not even sure Xbox knows what they're doing anymore. They keep throwing money at things and hope that it sticks.
They have enough problems as is, solve them instead.
 
Watch this being the same concept in the end as Sony's Q Lite project; it would actually make even more sense for Xbox to produce a dedicated device for that use case, given their greater focus on streaming.
 
I don't really see that happening (or being successful for that matter). We have the Switch, a Switch successor coming up soon, the Steam Deck, Sonys rumored handheld / streaming device... what niche would Microsoft fill with that? They are arguably already struggling to maintain momentum with the Series S / X and I can't see them turning a significant profit with this.
 
unless it's a window gaming handheld with a stripped down OS allowing for less "useless" background tasks and a meaningfully better pause and resume function and a "console friendly" interface I don't see that happening as it'd be imposing another sku for devs to worry about.

And I don't see a straight up Series S performance level device possible with : reasonable battery life, reasonable cooling and/or reasonable pricing.

Finally would seem kinda counterproductive when Microsoft is already pushing XCloud so I'd expect them to do a dedicated cloud gaming handheld like the rumored sony one.
 
As much I would be into this, I think Microsoft has been pretty consistent on their answer to a more portable option for years now: streaming / cloud services. And they have sunk a lot of time and money into that path, for better or worse. The idea of “just” jamming a Series S into a portable shell is silly
 
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Mbolibombo said:
I'm not even sure Xbox knows what they're doing anymore. They keep throwing money at things and hope that it sticks.
They have enough problems as is, solve them instead.
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With the rumors of Sony introducing a detachable disc sku, a new streaming only handheld, and a pro unit after they only just released a new vr headset, they also seem oddly desperate despite how well PS5 is selling worldwide. Clearly they've heard the rumors of the Switch successor is coming to punch their lights out and they're trying to be ready for the #NintendoSweep

/s for the second part of that
 
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TanookiTom said:
I don't really see that happening (or being successful for that matter). We have the Switch, a Switch successor coming up soon, the Steam Deck, Sonys rumored handheld / streaming device... what niche would Microsoft fill with that? They are arguably already struggling to maintain momentum with the Series S / X and I can't see them turning a significant profit with this.
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There's still a lot of Xbox content that isn't available on Switch or Steam Deck, especially considering the large number of Xbox and Xbox 360 games available. And though I've already said I don't believe Series S stuff would "just work" for a hardware like this video describes, if they DID pull it off it would mean a lot more content that's guaranteed to work well than narrowing down to stuff that's Steam Deck Verified.
 
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I doubt MS is going to do a less powerful Xbox series console with actual active support because that would be a lot to ask for the devs when they already have to optimize the games for the Series S.

Maybe it's unrealistic, but I wonder if a handheld Xbox One S (with SSD) could be feasible, paired with xCloud (and by then play any game you own xCloud and not only Game Pass games) would be a nice device. I could play a lot of native games there.
 
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I doubt the validity of the prediction but it would be really cool, hypothetically. My XBSS gets by far the least amount of play time between the three consoles and a portable edition would remedy that a lot. If it was only cloud gaming, though, meh for me.
 
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Nope. There's no way an Series S can be downscaled to 15W without a huge leap in the manufacturing node and uArch, which would mean that, at this point, it isn't a Series S Portable but rather something entirely different. The timing for a portable Series would have been at launch, in 2020, where they could have used the AMD Van Gogh (Which was actually a contracted SoC for a Microsoft Surface device) and released a Series P/ortable or Xbox Surface as a portable alternative of the Series family. That way, developers would make their games with the SKU in mind and wouldn't be prohibitely expensive like Phawx is proposing.

JoshuaJSlone said:
I haven't watched all of it, but I see him talking hypotheticals like "What if it was given a newer CPU with similar performance but more efficient?" or "What if it needed less power because it used 4 CPU cores handheld instead of 8?" which definitely don't seem like they'd work automatically.

EDIT: And here's a "What if it uses less GPU power because it targets 720p?"

EDIT EDIT: He ends by saying he thinks the Series S is a Trojan horse and the builds designed for that would all just automatically work on this hardware... but that seems pretty far-fetched to me.
Click to expand...
Yup. I agree.
Adulfzen said:
unless it's a window gaming handheld with a stripped down OS allowing for less "useless" background tasks and a meaningfully better pause and resume function and a "console friendly" interface I don't see that happening as it'd be imposing another sku for devs to worry about.

And I don't see a straight up Series S performance level device possible with : reasonable battery life, reasonable cooling and/or reasonable pricing.

Finally would seem kinda counterproductive when Microsoft is already pushing XCloud so I'd expect them to do a dedicated cloud gaming handheld like the rumored sony one.
Click to expand...
Regarding your first point, it's rumored Windows 12 will make usage of the abandoned CoreOS concept of the Windows 10X/Andromeda, which was of a modular Windows OS. MS could do a custom Windows 12 flavor that's tailored for gaming performance, down to optimzed UI, Services stack, RAM consumption and management, etc.
 
Compatibility with existing builds without any patches would be surprising. But who knows, we're talking about Microsoft, and they've already been doing this kind of magic with backward compatibility, FPS Boost and Smart Delivery.

Especially if this handheld would even be a bit more powerful in docked mode than a Series S with today's tech.
 
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Ghostsonplanets said:
Regarding your first point, it's rumored Windows 12 will make usage of the abandoned CoreOS concept of the Windows 10X/Andromeda, which was of a modular Windows OS. MS could do a custom Windows 12 flavor that's tailored for gaming performance, down to optimzed UI, Services stack, RAM consumption and management, etc
Click to expand...
That'd be pretty nice for not only an hypothetical Microsoft handheld but any of the current window powered pc handhelds on the market.
 
JorgenRaft said:
They already have to worry about making sure their games work on 2 versions of one console so I'm not sure they'd want to have to worry about 3.

Unless they're planning on making a pretty beefy handheld.
Click to expand...
You should see the hardware revision testing requirements for PC, lol
 
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