Head of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer once again teased the upcoming Xbox handheld in an interview with iJustine, recorded as part of Microsoft's 50th anniversary. The interviewer asked him what kind of exciting things Xbox fans could expect this year, and Spencer said:
I really love the work that the team did around putting Xbox everywhere and our marketing campaign around that. We always tend to just follow where we see people playing, and it's just been amazing to see the number of people now that are playing Xbox via cloud. It's literally tens of
millions of hours every single month and growing dramatically. Obviously, people finding Xbox on PC and we have a lot of work to do there.
We've teased and talked about handhelds and I'm very excited because we both travel some and sometimes you can't always take your console or my whole gaming desktop with me. But it is really around building the experience around the person and that's the part that gets me most excited. This is not a single device at the center, it's not one game, it is the player at the center and make sure all of your games are available, all of your save games, all of your entitlements are available wherever you go, so that gaming can continue to grow as a form of entertainment.
Based on the latest rumors, an Xbox handheld made by ASUS, codenamed Project Kennan, should be released this year. ASUS also recently shared its own tease, and Xbox seemed to confirm it had to do with the company's next handheld with a tongue-in-cheek reply.
A Microsoft-made Xbox handheld is also reportedly in development and should launch in 2027 alongside the successor of the Xbox Series X console. At CES 2025, Vice President of Xbox Gaming Devices and Ecosystem Jason Ronald said that the portable device will blend the best features of Xbox and Windows.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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