Most of them are impossible to address. The only one that I can see some improvement is the UX situation.
Okay. I was wrong then. My mistake.
If Microsoft does release their own native handheld, I will be shocked because im not expecting them to do this at all. Weâll see what happens though.
Lets look at this from a business viewpoint. Microsoft is not guaranteed any income from game sales or mtx sales on PC Handhelds given the derth of game stores such as Steam, EGS, GOG, etc. Microsoft would get income from game sales and mtx sales on an Xbox Handheld.
The answer is: it is far better for Microsoft to release an Xbox Handheld.
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Because of that MS can not sell the device at a loss, meaning a $499+ device that has limited mass appeal and can not differentiate itself from all of the other gaming PC handhelds from OEMs that are simply happy to make a few million USDs in profit from life times sales.
If MS can sell 5-10 million dedicated Xbox handhelds thatâs 500 million-1 billion in ARR.
If you look at Steam Deck which only has the Steam Store, a few million Decks is probably an additional tens of millions of annual revenue for Valve. For a company the size of Valve, thatâs a no brainer to make such a device.
If people doubt the appeal of a Xbox handheld, just picture an ad showing some commuter with the Xbox handheld playing
COD,
Diablo,
WOW,
Halo,
Hellblade,
Forza,
Minecraft
3 months GPU for free.
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While Iâd love an Xbox handheld, Iâm not convinced that theyâd be better off sinking the money into a race where a ton of companies are making similar products that can connect to multiple storefronts. If they instead can make the OS super user friendly (to prevent companies from making non windows devices) and make their own games / pc game platform run great on these devices, so people buy third party products that license their OS and play games from their platform that does bring in mtx and game $s, they wouldnât have to make a handheld that can only play their games and would have to be sold on very narrow margins to compete with all the other devices.
Weâve already got Steam, Asus RoG, Logitech, and Lenovo along with a bunch Iâve never heard of ( Best handheld gaming PC in 2024 | PC Gamer ), MSI is supposedly doing something, and it wouldnât shock me to see a few more big names this year.
If Xbox does want to do something, I think they are going to have to do something dramatically different to get enough share. I canât see them being a cheap offering because they wonât want low end specs, so if they do release something it needs to pull enough of the high end players as possible to make sense. Iâd buy it, but Iâm not an average consumer.
If I were them Iâd work on making their stuff work on all of the main consoles and making stuff that people want to play, which theyâre already trying to do. That way they bring in money without having to compete and Lenovo, Asus, MSI, etc. all are helping them reach more gamers.
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Technically, theyâre not guaranteed any revenue or profit even with their own handheld because first and foremost, they canât sell it at a loss which they would most likely have to do and second, no guarantee that the market actually wants it and will buy it.
Isnât Game Pass on the ROG Ally or one of those handhelds? Also, you can play the Microsoft games on Steam Deck so if I bought a game on Steam because I want to play it on the go, thatâs extra revenue and profit that they wouldnât get from their own handheld because im a Steam user/consumer/player.
Also, not sure if youâre one of them but so many people here for the last few years have said that it was better for Microsoft to just put Game Pass and whatnot on the handheld devices that are already available instead of releasing their own but now, itâs the better decision?
This. This is exactly what Microsoft has started doing and should continue doing in my opinion. I simply donât see an Xbox handheld selling all that well. Too much competition, weak brand outside of NA so Microsoft should just keep doing what theyâre currently doing and just improve upon it all.
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Like I mentioned before all the PC handhelds including the Deck put together does not break 10 million in sales LTD.
A Xbox handheld will wipe the floor against all of them. Itâs dramatically different just by existing.
Is this Xbox is poor meme? lol
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Hahaha. No. Brit said that their own handheld guarantees income but if itâs at a loss, whatâs the point? Even if they get income via other ways, it wouldnât matter much depending on how much money they would be losing on each sale and Microsoft would then have to depend on those that do buy it to buy a lot of games and content for it.
In my mind, native handhelds are a thing of the past. Theyâre nothing but companion devices now and if youâre built around cloud streaming, then I truly donât see the point. But again, this is my own personal opinion and I wouldnât do a handheld at all if it was up to me.
I would prefer to see that money be put towards other stuff like more third party AA and AAA day one games on Game Pass and get more studios sooner rather than later, etc. I know people will say they can afford it and yeah, they can but at what cost? Look at all the layoffs in the industry in 2023. I think itâs fair to say that excluding the other trillion dollar companies, Microsoft has more money than all of them combined. I donât want to see other people get let go because Microsoft decided to go in the handheld market because hereâs the thing, just like people, those who have the money will always have the money because theyâre not sacrificing anything but if it means sacrificing those under them, they will.
Bottom line, I donât see Microsoft doing their own handheld anyway because they wouldnât have partnered with the others to get their content on them. But again, weâll see how it goes.
The income from a windows license on a 3rd party device is an insignificant fraction of the income from taking a percentage of every sale for the lifetime of that device, its a 1 time tiny sliver cut versus a lifetime cut.
This doesnât seem realistic. Theyâre portable places to game. Xbox has less to offer than the other devices if they donât let you also play other pc games on it so why bother?
Continue releasing pc versions of games, explore ways to make it easier to directly play Xbox games from the other devices through mobile versions or streaming or whatever, make your co strollers work well with those devices even, but no need to compete on the least profitable part of a crowded playing field.
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Yes, the windows license is absolutely tiny, no argument. But optimize the store and gameplay on those existing devices and get people to play your platform on a device you donât have to make while not ticking off oems that license your OS and working together sounds much more like the Microsoft we know. It also sounds more profitable to me.
Who knows? If they can differtiate themselves significantly than sure but otherwise itâs an expensive single purpose device with a lot of similar competitors for how most people would see it.
If they can make a portable Xbox that runs unmodified XSS games by 2025 then Iâm all for it. If they canât do it until 2028 then running XSS games isnât good enough.
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The way that Xbox has less to offer is a benefit. The PC handhelds have a complete OS which comes with the downsides of such a baggage. Bad perf, battery battery life, bad UX, limited compatibility with games, security venerabilities, requires initial setup, requires updating frequently, requires tinkering for every game to run acceptably etc.
Setting up the ROG Ally was a horrendous experience for me, and I love setting up new PCs. These handhelds are absolutely not mass market gaming platforms at all. Theyâre bad at playing newer games, and theyâre bad at being general purpose computing devices.
Less to offer in my example means you canât play stuff from other stores.
Thatâs not a benefit to most people who would consider something like this.
Anyway, Iâve said my opinion, youâve said yours, and who knows if they agree with either of us 
Do you own any Windows PC gaming handhelds?
It seems like there are different discussions getting mixed up here, and is leading to folks talking past one another. The desired results likely diverge more than converge.
- What is better for Microsoft as a company.
- What is better for the consumers.
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The best corporations tell the consumers what is better for them 
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This is a good point⌠I thought we were talking more about the likelihood of Microsoft offering something we want, and I donât see that happening because it seems like it wouldnât hit the curve of supplying what we want at a price point that would be efficient for them. Hence my argument that it makes more sense for them to try to approach supplying the games through competing devices in the handhelds market.
I really think the dedicated handheld market is a great opportunity for MS Xbox to compete in. If they can sell 60m consoles to compete with Sonyâs 100m and if they can sell 40m handhelds to compete with Nintendoâs 120m, success is achievable.
The biggest issue I can see is guaranteeing full 3rd party support for the handheld. That is where MS must really prove the OS and tools for game compatibility are strong.
If a Xbox handheld sells 40 million, they won gaming.
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