NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
Now that Sony is in the market and doing well with their Playstation Portal and Nintendo still dominating the market with their Switch handheld that converts from a console, should Xbox/Microsoft get into the handheld market? Nintendo just announced their Switch 2 and even offers a cheaper option with the Switch Lite. So far, only Xbox console gamers are missing out on the handheld market.
Currently, the only way to play your Xbox console on the go is via cell phone, with or without a Backbone device. Instead of diving into a growing market, Microsoft has focused on acquiring gaming studios to boost its brand. However, with more and more gamers converting to mobile gaming with the power of consoles, Xbox is not in on it just yet. Cell phone gaming isn’t what it could be and typically isn’t much better for games that resemble anything beyond a typical app. Yet, people are more on the go these days and there’s a shift to AR/VR gaming to play in physical space. PC has taken off the hardcore gamers and Xbox is easily integrated through Microsoft. The shift away from gaming at an old entertainment center might be slowly shifting, but it’s on its way.
With that being said, how late is Xbox to the party and should they attend at all? Currently, Microsoft already has a lot of balls in the air to juggle. They’ve got the Xbox, PC gaming, and ramping up purchases of exclusive content. How much more can they afford to spread themselves thin? Is the handheld market even making enough of a comeback to make it worth it?
What it really boils down to at the end of the day is cloud gaming. Now that you can play console games on a handheld without the worry about storage size for 50-100+GB games, it’s easier to take them with you on the go. The storage on a handheld device couldn’t keep up with the size of modern games. Now that cloud gaming is on option to stream on the go, why wouldn’t Xbox get in on the mix? After all, their last add-on device(Kinect) never took off so maybe that’s why they’re shy when it comes to new devices, but clearly the market is there. With all their recent acquisitions of studios, why wouldn’t they figure out a way to include these popular games on the go?
Mobile gaming no longer has to be limited to mobile phones. Now that the majority of places carry free Wi-Fi and cloud gaming exists, who wouldn’t want to keep up in the mobile market? Unless they have a secret project in the works, Xbox might be too little too late to the handheld market.
