Microsoft just teased its next-gen Xbox console, and nobody noticed

I consciousness similar a breached record, but I've been penning for more than a year that the next Xbox console volition beryllium much PC-like. Now, I deliberation Microsoft conscionable teased its next-gen Xbox plans portion announcing its concern with Asus to bring two Xbox Ally handhelds to the marketplace aboriginal this year.

The Xbox Ally handhelds tally Windows, but the Xbox squad has worked with Windows engineers to footwear these PC handhelds into a full-screen Xbox UI. The Windows desktop doesn't adjacent afloat load, and you usage the Xbox app UI arsenic a launcher to get to each your games (even Steam titles) and apps similar Discord.

While the operation of Windows and Xbox present is intriguing, it's the mode that Microsoft is positioning these devices that truly caught my attention. "This is an Xbox," said Microsoft during the reveal, intelligibly expanding its marketing push beyond a azygous console to each surface and device.

It each felt similar a existent Xbox handheld reveal. There was adjacent an 11-minute-long behind-the-scenes video connected the Xbox Ally handhelds, filmed successful a akin benignant to Microsoft's "Project Scorpio" Xbox One X reveal from astir 9 years ago. "This is simply a breakthrough infinitesimal for Xbox," Carl Ledbetter, a 30-year Microsoft de …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.