- Xbox are said to have prototype handheld devices now
- But there is no guarantee that any handheld device will make it to the market in the future
- Xbox president has promised exciting developments to come, but without being specific.
Developers at Xbox are working on a native handheld version of the Xbox, according to an industry insider.
Jez Corden, who is part of the Xbox Two podcast, claimed on a recent episode that Xbox has prototypes currently, which are native handhelds, rather than cloud. He later added that these are new prototypes and not the same as ones that have previously been mentioned.
However – again as noted in the podcast – just because developers are working on a prototype, it doesn’t mean that a product will arrive in stores in the future.
Handheld devices have been popular in the market for some time – Nintendo’s Switch has sold more than 100 million since it was launched, and a Switch 2 is in development and will be available late this year or early next year.
Other players have also released handhelds in recent times, including the PlayStation Portal and Steam Deck – as well as various Windows 11-based portable gaming PCs – so Xbox entering the market too would not be much of a surprise.
There was no timescale mentioned by Corden for when – or if – a product could make it to market.
However, there have been hints from the senior leadership at Xbox that their upcoming launches will be exciting to the market. Sarah Bond, Xbox President, said recently on the Official Xbox Podcast that there was “exciting stuff” coming out in terms of hardware and that the company had invested in the next-generation roadmap and was focusing on delivering the biggest technological leap seen in a hardware generation.
