You’ve seen it here, but you’ve probably also seen it around you: portable PC consoles have been making a comeback for a few months now, and the range is becoming much denser. We recently tested the MSI Claw 8 AI , which comes up against the Asus Rog Ally X… And things aren’t going to stop there this year, with quite a few products in the pipeline. The end of 2025 could even be spiced up with the arrival of the Switch 2, but also a Microsoft mobile device, stamped Xbox…and running Windows. So, is a portable Xbox console on the way for Christmas 2025?
Last year, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, said that his company was looking into the possibility of creating a handheld console, although he did not give an official release date. It is possible that this Xbox handheld console is now at a more advanced stage. For some time now, Microsoft has been throwing pebbles at its gaming strategy. At CES 2025, Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s vice-president for new products, explained that his company’s aim was to bring together “the best of Xbox and Windows” for future portable PCs, apparently via a new operating system or a new version of Windows targeting the gaming world. We could be talking about an overlay or a Windows light designed to compete more directly with SteamOS.
Windows is a problem, the Xbox catalogue is a major asset
Over the past few hours, in an exchange with Windows Central, it has been clarified that Microsoft’s portable console project, codenamed Keenan, will be a product developed with a partner brand, with ASUS, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, etc. all being mentioned. The console will have an Xbox button, but in reality it will be a partner device, similar to Lenovo’s SteamOS partnership with Valve. This attempt by Microsoft could be the first step towards merging the PC world and the Xbox mode. An experiment to test the portability of a Windows OS on mobile platforms which, for all their potential, are currently handicapped by the Windows OS.
