Phil Spencer has been the head of Xbox Dropping hints about an Xbox handheld For months, but what about Windows handheld gaming PCs? Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s “Next Generation” VP, explains Verge That we should expect to see changes to the Windows handheld gaming experience within this calendar year.
Ronald was a roundtable panelist this evening An AMD and Lenovo event Titled “The Future of Gaming Handhelds,” it was mostly a coming-out party for Lenovo’s new Legion Go S. But he hinted on stage that Microsoft plans to bring the Xbox experience to Windows PCs, not the other way around — and expanded on that considerably after we caught up with him later.
“We’ve really been innovating in the console space for a long time, and as we’re partners across the industry, it’s really about how we bring the innovations that we’ve nurtured and developed in the console space and those into the PC and bring Get them into the handheld gaming space,” said Ronald.
When we caught up with him after the event, he confirmed that Microsoft is considering merging the Xbox and Windows experiences together — and that we should see changes this year instead of waiting for the Xbox handheld. That may still be years away.
“I would say it’s bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together, because we’ve spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really closed with consoles,” Ronald says. “What we’re doing is we’re really focused on how we bring those experiences to the broader Windows ecosystem for both players and developers.”
Right now, Windows sucks on handhelds, to put it rather bluntly, up to this point. A community-created fork of Valve’s SteamOS experience There may be a better way to pick up and play games. Ronald is clearly aware of the issues. “We focused on making it really simple and making it like a console experience. Our goal is to put the player and their library at the center of the experience and not all [Windows] The work you have to do today.”
Microsoft has made brief mods for Xbox apps on Windows that are focused on Improving the handheld experienceBut that’s like putting lipstick on a pig instead of addressing the core experience. “I think we’ll have a lot more to share later this year,” teased Ronald. “I think it’s going to be a journey and I think you’ll see a lot of investment over time that you’re already starting to see, but we’ll have a lot more to share later this year. .”
How Microsoft goes about this merger of Xbox and Windows will be important, but it doesn’t look like the company is going to suddenly port a custom Xbox operating system to Windows. It seems that Microsoft wants to make Windows all the better in gaming with the Xbox experience on top to hide the annoying desktop, notifications and legacy of Windows.
“I think, at the end of the day, our goal is to make Windows great for gaming on any device,” Ronald says. “The reality is that the Xbox operating system is built on top of Windows. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that we’ve built in the console space that we can bring to the PC space and really deliver a premium gaming experience on any device.
In particular, Microsoft has to tackle a lot of the basics of making Windows more friendly to controllers and getting the Xbox experience to actually run things instead of the taskbar, Start menu and other elements. “There are things in Windows that weren’t built for if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse, like thumbstick support or joypads and things like that,” admits Ronald.
“There are basic interaction models that we’re working on to make sure that regardless of the details of the operating system it feels very fundamentally like a gaming-centric device and a gaming-centric experience. “
Ronald says the goal is to put an Xbox experience at the center — “not the Windows desktop that you have today.”
