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[Windows Central] How Microsoft could build an empire of mobile Xbox gaming handhelds

Is there are a market for dedicated cloud gaming devices like Logitech G Cloud and Razer Edge?


  • Total voters
    87

pasterpl

Member
If you can get Xbox series s to handheld form factor + allow streaming in higher quality from series x blades when available, then they might have interesting offering.
 

reinking

Gold Member
I don't think so. The only way a handheld for MS will work is to basically make a handheld powerful enough to play current games. That is why the Switch works in handheld mode. I
 

01011001

Banned
MS needs steam deck like handheld, instead of just counting on 3rd party.

yeah that's what I'm saying.
that's absolutely what they should do.

Series S Portable with a TV dock.

AMD's APUs are getting really damn powerful. they just announced one that has the GPU performance of an RTX3060.

2 or 3 years down the line it should be no problem to make a handheld Series S
 

Crayon

Member
They should do a handheld Windows PC.

If they did a handheld it should be like a handheld xbox. Steamdeck shows that you can spin an os that is better for that use case than desktop windows. I think the xbox custom version would be pretty good, if not a full pc. I think that would be a lot better for what I bet would be more buyers than the steam deck. Bigger pool of people tends to have less percentage of enthusiasts and the simpler to operate, the better.
 

acm2000

Member
if i cared about mobile gaming id just get a phone mount for my xbox controller and play game pass cloud, but i have no use for games on the go.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
It just seems like the people designing these things are overthinking the hardware quite a bit. Honestly, take the chromecast ultra hardware and put that with a screen and battery and focus on the lowest cost possible and a compact size. If your product costs as much as a handheld (Switch/SteamDeck) and is almost just as big as those two are as well, it doesn't really have a purpose for existing.

For a true portable Xbox, they'd need to get the XSS profile running on a portable device. It would be the best handheld around instantly with a complete library of games all with settings tailored to the device, and MS wouldn't need to support a separate library for it. Might be something worthwhile for them to do as the generation moves along, even if it was released near the end of the gen you'd still have the cross-gen phase for new titles plus the existing catalog.
 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Why would MS build a portable xbox when the steam deck is basically a portable xbox at this point? MS just need to focus on creating more studios and releasing games.

Plenty of reasons:
- to market the machine properly
- to sell the product in retail stores
- to benefit from third party sales in your own "garden"
- to hit a more mass market price eventually
- a system where all games work 100% of the time
- a true dockable system in the box like the switch

If they launch a system similar to series S in power, ports would be very easy and take very little resources.
 

01011001

Banned
If they launch a system similar to series S in power, ports would be very easy and take very little resources.

not similar to a Series S, it needs to be a shrunken down Series S.

that would automate everything for developers and it would instantly support all Xbox One and SX games
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
not similar to a Series S, it needs to be a shrunken down Series S.

that would automate everything for developers and it would instantly support all Xbox One and SX games

Sure, even better if technically possible.
 

vj27

Banned
None of these will catch on with casuals unless you can sell that at t-mobile or Verizon or something. Used to work there and parents come in to get kids tablets (with data so than can be preoccupied in the car) all the time. Because with these just working on WiFi it’s kinda pointless, might as well just get a switch or a steam deck especially with the prices for a lot of these devices.

But I will say I wouldn’t be surprised if I was proven wrong and their flooding the market tactic with a shit ton of products eventually catches on, kinda like netbooks and Chromebook’s did, but it won’t be until there as cheap as an old switch/the aforementioned devices regardless.
 

coffinbirth

Member
They need to have AMD make them a specified APU to bring down the power draw for a portable Series S. Holding out for Zen3 for off the shelf parts ala a Steam Deck(but with Zen2) seems unlikely, so I'm guessing the spin up time for that would take a while...especially if they weren't already working on such a thing prior to this handheld renaissance.
 

Quasicat

Member
For this to hit the mainstream, it has to be perfect almost all of the time. I can use Xbox Streaming on my iPad at home and at work, but there have been some times when it has been inconsistent and I’ve had an issue with lag or it just won’t start up. I guess that’s why it says it’s in “beta” still.
 

Crayon

Member
So all Windows only games perform the same or better on Steam OS with proton/wine?

There's a few that do but should be considered outliers. I think performance is mostly even, now. What's more a problem is games that work great but have some or another random glitch. Like for some reason xcom 2 has a bug on proton where you can't click on anything once the first mission starts... weird. Stuff like that. I rarely hear about performance issues. When proton first came out, there was definitely a little chunk of performance lost but that was almost 5 years ago now. And even that was a big improvement from the opengl wrappers that were being used for linux versions at the time. Outside of the game, linux is lighter on resources. That kde desktop they use on deck is probly the slowest part. People love that shit but i don't like kde that much.
 
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Crayon

Member
Depends on the emulator, and depends on the game. Yuzu has issues on SteamOS not present in Windows version, and CEMU , and Xenia...it's still a mixed bag.

Oh all three? I had only ever heard of cemu being a problem and I thought even that was fixed because they go the vulkan renderer in place. Well, looks like just emulators up to those are fine but I though everything was good to go.
 

Valonquar

Member
As someone that has to support imaging Surface tablets, MS couldn't handle handheld hardware with MSI supporting it and ASUS taking the blame.
 
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Reactions: TLZ

TLZ

Banned
This article reads like an announced hardware press release. But that doesn't exist. Why'd they go through all that trouble?
 
I'm half expecting Xbox to just straight up miniaturise a Series S revision and release a handheld themselves. I'd buy 2, one for me and one for the kids to fight over.

A Surface + Xbox crossover for a handheld could be very sexy and really go at Steamdeck models over say a Switch.
 

coffinbirth

Member
Oh all three? I had only ever heard of cemu being a problem and I thought even that was fixed because they go the vulkan renderer in place. Well, looks like just emulators up to those are fine but I though everything was good to go.
Yup. To be fair, I haven't updated CEMU or Xenia in awhile though.
 
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