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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been drop hints on an Xbox handheld for months, but what about Windows portable gaming PCs? Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s VP of “Next Generation,” says The Virgin that we should expect to see the portable Windows gaming experience change in this calendar year.
Ronald was a roundtable panelist tonight at an AMD and Lenovo event titled “The Future of Gaming Handhelds”, which was mostly a coming out party for the new Lenovo. Legion Go S. But he hinted on stage that Microsoft plans to bring the Xbox experience to Windows PCs, rather than the other way around – and expanded considerably after we caught up with him later.
“We’ve really been innovating for a long time in the console space, and as partners across the industry, it’s really about how we take those innovations that we’ve incubated and developed in the console space and bring them to PC and let’s take them to the portable play area,” said Ronald.
After catching up with him after the event, he confirmed that Microsoft is looking to combine the Xbox and Windows experiences together – and that we should see changes this year, rather than waiting for a portable Xbox. that may still be years away.
“I say it combines the best of Xbox and Windows, because we’ve spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really locked to the console,” says Ronald. “What we’re doing is we’re really focused on how we bring those experiences for both players and developers to the broader Windows ecosystem.”
Now, Windows sucks laptops, so to speak, to the point a community-created fork of Valve’s SteamOS experience may be a much better way to pick up and play. Ronald is clearly aware of the problems. “We are focused on really simplifying this and making it much more like a console experience. Our goal is to put the reader and his library at the center of the experience and not all the [Windows] work you have to do today. “
Microsoft has made compact ways for Xbox applications on Windows that are focused on improve the hands-on experienceBut it’s a lot like putting lipstick on a pig instead of addressing the core experience. “I think we’ll have a lot more to share later this year,” jokes Ronald. “I think it’s going to be a journey and I think you’re going to see a lot of investment over time that you’re starting to see already, but we’ll have a lot more to share later this year.”
How Microsoft fits into this merger of Xbox and Windows will be key, but it doesn’t seem like the company will suddenly bring a custom Xbox operating system to Windows. It seems more like Microsoft wants to make Windows all the better in gaming with an Xbox experience on top, so the annoying desktop, notifications and legacy Windows are hidden.
“I think, at the end of the day, our goal is to make Windows great for gaming on any device,” says Ronald. “The reality is that the Xbox operating system is built on top of Windows. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that we’ve built in the console space that we can bring to the PC space and really deliver that premium gaming experience on any device. “.
In particular, Microsoft has to tackle a lot of the basics of making Windows more controller-friendly and getting that Xbox experience to really drive things instead of the taskbar, Start menu, and other elements. “There are just certain things in Windows that weren’t designed for you if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse, like thumbstick support or joypads and things like that,” Ronald admits.
“There are fundamental interaction models that we’ve worked on to make sure that, regardless of the details of the operating system, it feels very natively as a game-centric device and a game-centric experience.”
Ronald says the goal is to put an Xbox experience at the center — “not the Windows desktop you have today.”
