Potential Xbox Handheld Reveal Window Narrowed Down by Insider

An Xbox handheld will possibly be announced in 2025, a well-known leaker has said. The claim suggests that the rumored device might not be part of the next generation of Xbox consoles but instead expand the current one.

Chatter about Microsoft potentially entering the portable gaming market has been circulating online for the better part of 2024. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer even personally stoked Xbox handheld rumors back in February, by liking some tweets calling for the company to make such a device.

Something of the sort may indeed be announced in the near future, according to industry insider Jez Corden. Speaking during a November 4 episode of The Xbox Two Podcast, Corden fielded a viewer question about the status of the new gaming hardware that Xbox President Sarah Bond mentioned earlier in 2024, saying it would be showcased by year’s end. While the leaker opined that Bond’s remarks were referring to the new Xbox Series X/S models that launched in October, he noted that there’s a possibility Microsoft unveils some “genuinely new hardware” sometime in 2025. He also hinted at this hardware being of the handheld variety.

Specifically, Corden cryptically said that he sees 2025 as a good year for Xbox to reveal gaming hardware that fits in a palm. He also rejected his co-host’s suggestion that such a device—or lineup thereof—might be unveiled as early as The Game Awards in December 2024, saying that he doesn’t expect to see any hardware at the upcoming event. And while that may indeed end up being the case, Microsoft does have a history of doing hardware announcements at third-party events. E.g., the Xbox Series X/S was treated to its full reveal at TGA 2019.

Xbox Handheld May Not Be a Next-Gen Console

Although Corden himself previously claimed that the next-gen Xbox console lineup will include a handheld device, the chances of that product being the same as this mysterious console rumored for a 2025 reveal are doubtful at best. This is largely because Microsoft has been perfectly consistent with announcing its past consoles roughly 18 months ahead of their eventual market debuts. If the company were to continue this two-decade pattern, the handheld device Corden mentioned would theoretically hit the market by the first half of 2027, assuming it’s announced at the end of 2025.

This time frame doesn’t align with what Microsoft itself recently said was the release window for the next generation of Xbox consoles. During its mid-2023 legal tango with the FTC stemming from the then-pending Activision Blizzard acquisition, the company revealed that its next console generation is targeting a 2028 release. Therefore, if Microsoft were indeed to announce a handheld in 2025, such an offering would likely be a current-gen console or perhaps a streaming-only device like the Logitech G Cloud.

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