Xbox is building a handheld but it’s likely ‘years away’, says boss

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has confirmed that Microsoft is working on handheld gaming prototypes, but claimed that any potential device is still years away.

Microsoft’s gaming CEO has repeatedly hinted that it could create its own Steam Deck-style Xbox device, and in a new interview with Bloomberg, the exec said that the “expectation is that we would do something” in the category.

Microsoft is working on prototypes and considering what it might do, Spencer confirmed, and he’s asked his hardware team to analyse the market and “develop its vision based on what it learns”. Any device is a few years out, he said.

In the near term, Xbox will focus on making its app work better on existing portable devices, and partnering with hardware manufacturers to make sure their products sync, he added.

“Longer term, I love us building devices,” Spencer said. “And I think our team could do some real innovative work, but we want to be informed by learning and what’s happening now.”

In March, Windows Central claimed Microsoft was working on “fully native Xbox handheld” prototypes. And in a Polygon interview published a few days later, Microsoft Gaming CEO Spencer discussed what he’d like to see in a potential Xbox handheld.

The executive returned to the subject during an IGN interview following this summer’s Xbox Games Showcase, in which he dropped his biggest hint yet that a handheld could be in the works.

When it was put to Spencer that Xbox has been building its business around the strategy of being where the players are, be that on PC or more recently on other console platforms, he said: “So we should have a handheld? I think we should have a handheld too.”