Nintendo Switch 2 rival in development from Xbox

Phil Spencer, love him or hate him, sure knows how to keep getting Microsoft’s name into the headlines.

In an interview published yesterday regarding Microsoft’s future plans for Xbox and beyond, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming dropped a casual bombshell out of nowhere - we’ll probably be seeing an Xbox handheld in the near future.

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Dina Bass, Spencer was asked about Microsoft’s plans to bolster their portfolio of mobile games.

“We definitely want to be in the market,” Spencer told Bloomberg, “and when we can find teams and technology and capability that add to what we’re trying to do in gaming at Microsoft, absolutely we will keep our heads up.”

It’s from here that things get juicy though, as Spencer followed this up by talking about Microsoft’s own hardware ambitions within the handheld market.

According to Bloomberg, such a device would be “a few years out” - although Spencer did confirm that it’s something they are actively looking into.

Nintendo Switch will get a successor next year, with Pokémon Legends Z-A supposedly being a launch title.

He added that the “expectation is that [Microsoft] would do something” in regards to producing their own handheld hardware, and that they have apparently already devised some prototypes of their own.

It seems that while it’s something that Microsoft and Phil are considering, they aren’t in any rush to push a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck competitor out the door any time soon.

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

I have to wonder exactly what an Xbox handheld would end up looking like. Steam has the powerful, PC-equivalent market cornered and Nintendo has the family-friendly, affordable handheld crowd on lock, so would an Xbox handheld just land somewhere in the middle?

Hopefully, Phil will just offhandedly mention some more info regarding their research soon, because we’ll have to settle for theorising until then.