Jul 22, 2009

Portable Xbox..?

You may have heard a whisper here and a whisper there about the possibilities of Microsoft joining the ranks of Nintendo and Sony in the handheld market. Today kikizo.com have posted an interview with Shane Kim, a Microsoft corporate VP, in this interview he goes onto share with us that the big M is indeed thinking about making a portable Xbox.

So when would said device be available I hear you ask well Mr. Kim didn’t really say much in terms of when but rather “If we chased after a mobile or handheld market, we wouldn’t have the resources and ability to do things like instant-on 1080p HD, Face book, Twitter, Project Natal”. So by the looks of it Microsoft have focused all the attention on the living room, which I believe is a smart move because they still aren’t doing too well in the console wars. He went on to that preparations for a handheld were coming along in “building a service into Live that will… extend to other platforms.”

This all good and well but I’m always nervous about a new handheld, like with the new PSP, Sony have concentrated on the design over anything else and I believe they have missed the mark with the GO’s look. This leaves only the DSI which isn’t really any different from the DS lite’s now 5 year old look and on top of this looks like Nintendo took some really strong design elements from Apple. A very clever move, to be fair because the only other portable system that has any merit is the iPhone/iTouch, but as of yet I don’t see it as a hardcore handheld games platform. Nintendo should be taking note though because this view is changing every time I buy a 59p game for my iTouch.

So I guess we will have to just sit back and wait and see what Microsoft come up with, I’m sure there will be many more rumours and fake photos of what the new handheld will look like. Maybe I’ll take a stab at designing what a Portable Xbox would look like.

If you liked the above post why not check out some more related posts from the list below.