Microsoft is reportedly set to release an Xbox handheld gaming PC in 2025, but it apparently won't be the one making the device itself.

We will see if how they f that up though.

Ive posted about this before, but yeah the subscription multiplayer model is probably the biggest hurdle keeping xbox games from going fully cross compatible with pc, even more than the technical challenges.

Microsoft could dump funds into a compatibility layer making xbox games work via their UWP-based App store, but they cant because of what that means for their monetization of multiplayer.

People wont welcome them charging for multiplayer on games theyre playing on their PC, so MS would rather focus on a streaming only future, where subscription is mandatory to play.

They will never be good guy Microsoft unless forced. I dont think theyre desperate enough to eliminate the multiplayer subscription, and they will probably liquidate the brand before they ever give up that income stream.

if i had to guess that's because their subscription is cheap, was even cheaper before, and offered a lot more than ubisoft. enshittification spiral is relatively recent

Lol, gamers hate on Microsoft constantly, I don't think their image is remotely white washed.

And the primary reason that Microsoft is so heavily associated with gaming (and CAD software, etc), is because they're the ones who built DirectX, which creates an abstraction layer that developers can target without worrying about the underlying hardware and graphics cards.

Nowa days we finally have OpenGL and it's successors, but Microsoft's link to gaming was established by spending decades being basically the only company willing to create a more flexible and open gaming platform than consoles. Is that as nice as having open source code and standards as the abstraction layer? No, but it's a lot nicer than Apple, Sega, Nintendo, Sony, etc who all wanted to tie the hardware directly to the games.

4GB is still like 3GB more vs running Bazzite or SteamOS.

There's also the storage aspect, windows on its own with what it needs for windows updates can use like 50GB+ of space, and since most of these console come with small SSDs in the 128GB-512GB range that's a huge downside.

Then there's the lack of small screen optimization, lack of touch optimization, and all the garbage that runs in the background, uses resources, and constantly bothers people like onedrive and teams and other junk.

i'd be more concerned about battery life and how easy it is to get rid of the stock OS

Sounds about right for Microsoft. Def don't have the highest hopes for this lol