Xbox Handheld Console Seemingly Teased by Phil Spencer

Phil Spencer had a lot of interesting things to say during an interview with IGN following yesterday’s Xbox Games Showcase. One of the most compelling tidbits, however, was his teasing of an Xbox handheld console, which he said he thinks that the company should have in its lineup.

The interview, which took place during IGN Live yesterday, touched on a wide range of topics surrounding Xbox’s Showcase and their plans for the future. At one point, Spencer was asked if there were any plans for an Xbox handheld, and he responded quite enthusiastically:

Ryan McCaffrey: You’ve been building the business around this idea mantra of ‘go where the players are,’ whether it’s on PC or whether it’s through the cloud-

Phil Spencer: So we should have a handheld?

McCaffrey: I think so.

Spencer: I think we should have a handheld.

When pushed further on the topic, Spencer declined to fully confirm whether a handheld was in the works at Xbox, but he did hint strongly at the idea and also imply that if such a console existed, it would be a dedicated system as opposed to merely a streaming or cloud gaming device:

You’ll have to have Sarah on [to talk about handhelds]. Sarah Bond, our President of Xbox, which is awesome. But, the future for us in hardware is pretty awesome. And the work that the team is doing around different form factors, different ways to play? I’m incredibly excited about it. Today was about the games. We showed some of our […] consoles, Series S, Series X, the work that we’re doing. But we will have a time to come out and talk more about platform, and we can’t wait to bring them to you guys.

What I’m finding… I’ll do it this way: I like my ROG Ally, my Lenovo Legion GO, fantastic, my Steam Deck. I think being able to play games locally is really important.

Adding a handheld console to their lineup would certainly bolster Xbox’s ecosystem overall. While they’ve really leaned into multiplatform releases lately, features like Game Pass and extensive backwards compatibility still make the Xbox sphere worth entering, and a handheld would only emphasize that.

Whether or not Xbox ever actually goes mobile remains to be seen. We’ll be sure to update our readers as soon as we get any sort of confirmation.

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