Phil Spencer addresses handheld Xbox rumours

Phil Spencer had been pretty quiet ever since the announcement of the many studio closures going on at Xbox. That said, the executive emerged in an interview with IGN following the conclusion of Xbox’s Game Showcase, discussing a number of topics including the potential for an Xbox handheld.

Spencer in particular has in the past been pretty vocal about his desires for a handheld Xbox system, and while nothing has been officially announced yet, during an interview with IGN, Phil gave his most concrete hint at the possibility.

In response to the question “It's been rumoured, it's been talked about. We talked about it on the preshow, there was a big reaction from the audience here and that is an Xbox handheld?” Spencer replied “I think we should have a handheld.”

Phil continued, “The future for us in hardware is pretty awesome and the work that the team is doing around different form factors, different ways to play….I'm incredibly excited about it. Today was about the games. We showed some of our gen 9 consoles, Series S, Series X, the work that we are doing, but we will have a time to come out, talk more about platform. We can't wait to bring it to you guys.”

Finally, when asked whether this hypothetical handheld would be more like a Steam Deck or cloud-based, Spencer stated “I think being able to play games locally is really important” – suggesting the former.

It is interesting to see Spencer being both relatively open and yet vague at the same time. We will simply have to wait and see what all this future hardware winds up being.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Spencer’s responses? Would you like to see an Xbox handheld made? Let us know down below.

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