26
votes
Xbox's new hardware plans begin with a gaming handheld in 2025
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- Title
- Xbox's hardware fightback begins with a gaming handheld planned for later this year, with full next-gen consoles targeting 2027
- Authors
- Jez Corden
- Published
- Mar 10 2025
- Word count
- 1020 words
I’m glad for more competition in the Steam deck space!
(I will not be buying one because I don’t support windows 11 or their telemetry practices)
I just wish Valve would announce a successor to the deck already so I knew what to buy. I do not want any of this windows shite either but I am growing impatient.
Steam Deck was just released 3 years ago, they had an OLED refresh just over a year ago, and they said that new hardware wasn't going to come until they were good and ready.
Yeah, I don't want yet-another-device-to-update-every-year.
I've had my Deck for 3-years and if I were to do it all over again, I'd still buy the Deck again today.
To my mind, the killer features of the Deck are SteamOS and the massive amount of customization that's possible and the touchpads. I know the touchpads are out of place and whatever, but the ability to use them in a variety of ways is just icing on the cake and I refuse to buy a handheld without them. I spent hundreds of hours playing Transport Fever 2 long before they implemented gamepad support and I still prefer to play using the Deck controls as a M&KB. My right touchpad is the mouse itself, triggers are for clicks and then left touchpad is my mouse wheel.
I've played tons of hours of Vanilla World of Warcraft on it as well. Again using the right as mainly a mouse, but then having one of my buttons for a mode shift so I can then use the Right as a mouse wheel as needed. The left touchpad I've got setup as a touch menu; so touch it and it brings-up a a wheel of hotkeys to quickly choose from and again, I can mode shift and I then have access to less essential hotkeys.
It's just a great machine that gives me the options I want. Sure the hardware isn't the most amazing, but given the controls and access to Steam OS, it expands my options for games well beyond stuff that is designed exclusively for a gamepad. Plus when you have something a little less powerful, you start looking at the stuff that will run on it, rather than hoping the latest AAA stuff might; it gets you to look at your library a little differently and give a try to stuff you may not have considered in the past.
Slightly off topic, but I also really love the touchpads and they have me wishing for a tablet-like device with a haptic interface like that. Like, my dream would be an iPad with one of those trackpads on the righthand side with like a blackberry keyboard underneath it or something.
I think we're in a post-teraflops world when it comes to games. The SteamDeck is a gaming appliance that has adequate horsepower for its display. The majority of games play on it easily. The ones that don't probably should be played on a bigger screen with the horsepower to display at the higher resolution.
If you're waiting for a price drop, I bet you can find a good used one.
Actually I think it's near to it but not yet adequate for its display.
For the two games I would have hoped to have a good experience with: Trackmania 2020 and Elden Ring, its not near a good experience.
At 40 fps for Elden Ring its really not a good experience when used to the game at 60 fps on desktop.
And for Trackmania, it's either you want good game feel with Immediate CPU/GPU Synchronization settings activated but the screen is a pixelated mush, or its visually okay but at 30 fps and a delayed synchronization so the game feels less responsive to your actions.
Either way not a pleasant experience.
I maybe expect a bit much for a portable experience, but I wholly regret my Steamdeck purchase after just using it like I wanted to :/
With the new lineup of AMD's APU, I would hope for a steamdeck refresh hoping to at least have a good experience for these two games
This is a weird mindset. You are impatient to buy something, but apparently don’t know what. At least, that’s just my perspective from that comment.
Just so you know, some new handhelds from third parties are starting to ship with SteamOS. You can also install Bazzite on some, which should give you near the same experience.
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338405/valve-steamos-beta-other-handhelds-beyond-steam-deck
I see two problems -
More 'open' alternatives exist. Steam Deck, all the ASUS and MSI systems, etc. Microsoft needs to undercut them on price or blow them out on performance and compatibility or they risk just being 'another' handheld.
Circling back to 1, to undercut them on price, Microsoft might make a 'Gamepass Handheld' for streaming and then it's basically the same as the Sony handheld, which means it's not competing in the same market as the Deck and others.
Basically, I don't have an interest in their offering right now but we'll see. Microsoft is coming to this market late though - doesn't mean they can't disrupt it!
I'm not necessarily interested in the hardware if it means that Windows gets better at operating in the handheld space. Similar to the Surface being the example for Windows touchscreen interaction, but not flying off the shelves, if it means Windows isn't built to be navigated around a Keyboard and Mouse that may or may not be there, that's fantastic.
As for Point 2, Logitech G Cloud was officially branded as an Xbox Cloud gaming device, and it at least had Android on it to load other games and apps on it. So I don't see this necessarily being a bad thing. Would it be better if it was the Xbox OS, maybe? But you'd trade side loading for a more consistent experience, and I want to withhold judgement until I see how it goes down.
I definitely think it's going to be a bespoke version of Windows, like the Xbox's OS, i.e. a console first and foremost. I doubt it'll be a full Windows handheld.
I think they're trying to compete more with the Switch 2 than the Steam Decks and ROG Allys if that makes sense.
Literally all Microsoft needs to do to destroy Valve’s hardware dreams is to make touch-friendly interfaces for Windows, I think. That, and offer it to OEMs in a package that isn’t full of the full Windows 11 bloat.
It feels so ironic that people hated Windows 8’s metro design because at the time most people didn’t have touchscreens, but now that Microsoft has abandoned it touchscreens are ubiquitous even though modern windows is pretty terrible with touch. When I am dealing with students I will often be startled with movement when I point at their screen and my finger grazes it. Scrolling up and down websites kind of feels like it’s the only thing that touchscreens on laptops are good for.