Why isn't there an Xbox handheld?

[DarkDesent666]

Adinnieken said:

@DarkDesent666

1. No idea what you mean here but a phone is not a gaming handheld and MS can't make hardware, the 360 worked in their perfect enviroment didn't do too well in the real world.

2. A handheld can't have BC aside from digital and there's no way a handheld could play 360 games, xbox original maybe, but those games are still 6ish gigs each where's the memory going to come from. Also didn't adress my point about no games for the system. MS just doesn't have the studios no matter how compatible it is someone still has to make something for it.

3. Microsoft would need something on a handheld. Also I said friendly not impossible, even on the vita shooters aren't a portable friendly genre. Platformers and rpgs are the most friendly ones, both genres MS fails in.

4. There are plenty of reasons MS isn't doing well in japan and not having a handheld isn't one of them.

5. lol okay buddy, so far I haven't seen anything on a phone that isn't either a port from a previous console or that couldn't be done with heavy javascript, phone games suck and they will never get close to current gen handhelds. The vast majority of phone games are on par with free flash games (many of them direct ports)

6. How is a phone going to be a handheld? You can make a handheld that takes calls but you can't make a phone a gaming handheld and no matter how you cut it, it would weaken their phone promotion.

1. MS can make hardware, RRoD on the Xbox 360 was a blip. An engineering issue and an eventual lesson learned. It's made hardware successfully for years, and since resolving the RRoD issue it's made millions of Xbox 360's. Having said that, a proof-of-concept would be an example of a Windows Phone 8-based mobile gaming platform similar to the Xperia Play.

2. Why can't it have BC? Just because they haven't in the past doesn't mean they can't. Code compatibility is a matter of ensuring the calls made by the code on one device match the calls made on another. A game relies on the application layer of the OS to ensure that the calls to the OS work. As long as you provide code compatibility in the OS and all the necessary hardware functionality is there to match call for call (i.e. GPU, etc) it'll work. The Xbox 360 uses a PC-based processor, not a Cell processor. BC is much easier to accomplish there than on the PS3 with the Vita. And where BC would be important is with Xbox LIVE Arcade games, not so much on disc-based games.

Supposedly the next major version of Windows Phone, Xbox OS, and Windows 8 will be code compatible. Some rumors are that they'll all be based on Windows 8's kernel. Microsoft has also committed itself, ages ago, to being forward compatible. That is games available on the Xbox 360 will be compatible with a future console, as well it has suggested that Xbox LIVE will be available on the PC. Thus the possibility is that Windows and Xbox gaming may merge and you'd be able to run Xbox 360 games on a PC.

If that functionality does eventually exist, that would imply code compatibility. At what cost, who's to know but code compatibility between two distinct devices isn't impossible. It just takes planning.

3. Unfortunately you fail to understand the importance of Xbox LIVE Arcade and the games available on it. Microsoft doesn't need first party studios to create great games, and there are plenty of great games available through Xbox LIVE Arcade and at a lower price than most PS Vita or 3DS games. Not to mention, any game studio that wouldn't take a chance on a Microsoft mobile gaming platform would be stupid.

4. Fair enough, but I believe personally they would have done better with a mobile gaming platform rather than a home console.

5. Just because someone doesn't do something right doesn't mean that there aren't better ways to do it. Whether you'd like to admit it or not, the Apple iPhone and Android-based mobile phones are killing it in mobile gaming. They may not be able to duplicate the console gaming experience, but that hardly matters if developers are making and selling games on those platforms like hotcakes. The Xperia Play was the right concept, but the wrong implementation. Had Sony put all of its efforts behind the Xperia play rather than develop a single device gaming platfom in the Vita, it would have been able to win the hearts and minds of more gamers. Instead, the Xperia Play is a device that Sony can hold up and say "Look we have a Smart Phone for gaming too!". So, no the experience on the Xperia Play is no better than that of any Android phone. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been different.

6. I'm not sure I follow you. You can build a mobile phone that's a slider with a hidden game pad like the Xperia Play and offer a better/true gaming experience. Why you think you can't, just because Sony hasn't, I don't understand. If a WP8 mobile device also included a game pad, and WP8 supported that game pad, and Microsoft's development tools supported the game pad, then I'm not sure why it couldn't make a great gaming platform. Potentially, with a game like Ilo Milo, you could have both a smartphone experience with the game or a console experience with it.

You're arguing possibilities which aren't fixed in stone. What can be done and what will be done in hardware and software is not always predetermined. Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that higer capacity flash memory chips were being produced so that in the next year or so you'd see higher capacity SSD available. That means those flash memory chips and lower capacity ones will be coming down in price, making flash memory even more affordable than it is today. In the next couple of years IC sizes will be shrinking even further, and new imaging technology means we likely could see them shrink even smaller faster than what was predicted five years ago. That will allow faster, more efficient processors and memory.

So, I'm not sure how you can say with any certainty that what is possible, isn't. Given the fast-paced changes of technology and the ability, with software, to make things happen, why a company couldn't make a mobile phone and gaming device. And with Nokia as a Microsoft partner, why it couldn't be Microsoft.

1. It took them 5 years to fix the 360 and all of their devices has a higher failure (not as bad as 360 though), the only reason it was profitable is because the skimped on the warrenty while still avoding being sued. Their hardware just isn't up to par and I still have no idea what you are talking about with the proof of concept. 

2. I stopped reading this at the first sentance, here's your answer to that. The technology doesn't exist to make something as powerful as the 360 and as small as the vita yet atleast not anywhere near anything affordable and even if it did you'd max out at 5 or 6 BC games per biggest memory card. 

3. MS has 12 studios working on 360 counting the xbl ones even if you made all xbl games work on both 360 and the handheld there still wouldn't be enough games to go around and lol 3rd parties are not going to back a MS portable. 

4. Maybe maybe not, but they can't support both and it's not going to magically going to make japan love their products. 

5. Phones are never going to win over gamers like me. Have you seen Gravity Daze? That's what I want not angry birds, not even Infinity blade comes close to handheld games. If Sony put all their eggs in the xperia basket it probably would of sold better but not done anywhere as near as well as vita will and there would have been a lot less good games made. The only reason phone games sell are because they are cheap, the market is already staturated and full of clones. There are a lot of good little innovative games but again they aren't anything more then flash games for the most part and gamers will never be statisfied with that. 

6. You can't make something cheap enough to sell as a portable and sell it as a phone without losing a ton of money because most of the people who buy it won't buy enough games. Either it will be too expensive for anyone to buy or too inexpensive to turn a profit with a bunch of people buying it because it's cheaper then phones. Almost everyone buys a phone on a plan but you can't do that with a gaming device.