The future of Microsoft’s handheld gaming plans includes a marriage between the best of Xbox and Windows.
That’s according to Microsoft’s Xbox hardware veteran Jason Ronald, who also teased that the company would have “a lot more to share later this year” on what exactly its Windows-powered handheld vision might look like.
“We’ve been really innovating for a long time in the console space,” Ronald told The Verge during an interview this week at CES 2025, “and as we partner across the industry it’s really about how do we bring those innovations that we’ve incubated and developed in the console space and bring them to PC and bring them to the handheld gaming space.”
Ronald is speaking specifically here about Microsoft’s plans for handheld gaming on Windows devices, which sounds like something we’ll see bear fruit sooner than Xbox’s much-mooted gaming-specific handheld.
Indeed, Xbox boss Phil Spencer – who has spoken repeatedly of his desire for Microsoft to launch an Xbox handheld – said in November that such a device was likely still a few years away.
“It’s bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together, because we have spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really locked to the console,” Ronald continued, discussing the Xbox console interface. “What we’re doing is we’re really focused on how do we bring those experiences for both players and developers to the broader Windows ecosystem.