Microsoft wants to combine the best of Xbox and Windows for handhelds

Hardware guru and vice president of the new generation of Xbox, Jason Ronald, spoke at CES about the changes for Windows handhelds that should come this year. When introducing the new Lenovo Go S console, it indicated that it wanted to bring the Xbox gaming experience to Windows, not the other way around.

Ronald expressed himself as follows at the AMD and Lenovo event panel discussion:

“We’ve been really innovating in the console space for a long time, and as we’re partners across the industry, now it’s really about bringing those innovations that we’ve incubated and developed in the console space to PC and also to the handheld gaming space.”

They plan to bring the changes to the Windows handheld before they create their own Xbox handheld, which may still take several years. Next, Ronald mentioned the overall Windows ecosystem:

“I would say it brings 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 tied to the console. What we’re doing is we’re really focusing on how to bring those experiences to the broader Windows ecosystem for both gamers and developers,” Ronald continues, “We’ll be bringing you a lot of information later this year. I think it’s going to be a long journey and you’re going to see a lot of investment over time that you’re starting to see, but I’ll be able to bring a lot more information later this year.”

The Xbox gaming experience must be at the forefront

Microsoft has already made several changes that make the Xbox app more compact for handhelds. However, this doesn’t change much about the overall experience of using Windows on a handheld, and we’ll see how they deal with this issue. They want to improve it, but Ronald says it’s important to put the Xbox gaming experience at the forefront, not Windows as we already have it:

“There are certain things in Windows that were not designed to be used without a keyboard and mouse, like thumbstick or joypad support and the like. There are core interaction models that we’re working on to ensure that regardless of the details of the operating system, it feels very natural as a gaming-focused device and gaming experience.

We’re focused on really simplifying the whole thing and making it much more of a console experience.”

We can expect more significant options of the Xbox application and less need to solve things in the system itself. We will learn more this year.

Source: www.sector.sk