Microsoft could also be pivoting to a multiplatform strategy for its greatest video games, however that doesn’t imply it’s abandoning {hardware} simply but. The corporate reportedly has an Xbox accomplice handheld deliberate for 2025 as it really works on its next-gen consoles aiming for launch in 2027. It appears to be like just like the Change 2 received’t be the one handheld console hybrid gamers have to select from this 12 months.
That’s based on a brand new report by Home windows Central. It claims the brand new system might be an Xbox-branded PC gaming handheld from an present OEM and that it’s codenamed “Keenan.” It’ll have an official Xbox information button and is at the moment deliberate to launch later this 12 months, with the successor to the Xbox Sequence X/S era of consoles greenlit for a deliberate launch as early as 2027. Notably, it sounds prefer it’ll be a single next-gen console, with the present Sequence S probably subsumed by the hand held if it’s profitable.
The report additionally claims that the following era of controllers would possibly function “direct-to-cloud connectivity.” It’s believed the Microsoft’s work with generative AI and the prevailing Home windows platform for PC will each play a higher function in Xbox’s future as properly. This dovetails with latest alerts from the corporate’s high management.
Final 12 months, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer mentioned the corporate was exploring a gaming handheld however that a completed product was nonetheless a few years out. It’s potential that’s nonetheless the case, and that this 2025 “Xbox-branded” handheld is taken into account extra of a half-step in that route. Earlier this 12 months at CES 2025, Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s VP of “Subsequent Era,” informed The Verge the corporate was the aiming to deliver the “better of Xbox and Home windows collectively” for future PC gaming handhelds, seemingly via a brand new gaming-centric OS or OS layer that might compete extra immediately with SteamOS.
Replace; 3/10/25 5:30 p.m. ET: As clarified in an exchange between The Verge’s Tom Warren and Windows Central’s Jez Corden, Keenan will be something of a reskinned “partner” PC Gaming handheld running this new software layer, not a full-blown Xbox device developed in-house.
These moves come as rumors swirl about Sony working on bringing again its personal line of gaming handhelds and with Nintendo’s Change 2 simply on the horizon. This time round, nevertheless, it doesn’t look like Microsoft plans to struggle the competitors with exclusives. The corporate began bringing its video games to PlayStation 5 and the prevailing Change final 12 months, and its extra highly effective specs counsel we’ll see much more Xbox video games on Change 2. Microsoft additionally beforehand dedicated to start out bringing Name of Obligation again to Nintendo’s platform in a single type or one other.
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