Microsoft Xbox Handheld

[shams]

There is one other significant reason MS would be reluctant to release a handheld - and no one has touched on it yet.

MS's software development technique (and chain) is designed around maximising potential of POWERFUL computers. They like to develop an OS, use libraries, drivers, layer their code with APIs, have a hard-disk for virtual memory usage, and so on.

MS would *never* develop a piece of hardware as "tight" as the DS (something that requires solid assembler coding to maximise it properly, uses direct memory address programming and so on).

Its simply against their philosophy. They could do it - but with a lot of pain, and little efficency in the process. This would blow the cost out, and make it much less competitive against other devices.

...

When handhelds literally become small PCs (hard disks, lots of memory, fast 3d-accelerated chipsets) expect to see MS jump into the market - because it will be easy for them. Much of their software would be easy to port to the device as well. Until then, I think they are just experimenting (i.e. such as with the Zune).

Its going to be interesting to see what MS do about mobile phones next. That will be the next big threat to their PC dominance, as phones will (soon) be able to replace PCs completely (the main thing they are lacking is a sophisticated OS - something Nokia is working on).