seems a silly question, you need games to sell handhelds and invest in third parties, if one of them is failing to do so it is MS.

They would be smart to basically just make it a portable PS5 pretty much, make the specs high enough so PS4 games can basically just run in back compat mode, and high enough that developers can easily just resolution scale their PS5 games down to like 720p (or maybe FSR them from native 540p up to 1080p) and have them run with minimal porting effort required. If the specs aren't high enough to make porting from PS5 easy, and then they also waste first and 2nd party studios supporting this handheld with exclusive software like they did on Vita and are still doing on PSVR2, they would be making a very bad choice imo.

As for Xbox, I don't think it would hurt them if they tossed their hat into the open PC handheld ring alongside Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, MSI Claw, Lenovo Legion Go, etc., the field is crowded but Xbox does have good hardware engineers so they may be able to make a PC handheld that stands out among the crowd (then again, MSI Claw is kind of the stand out PC handheld right now, with it's styling and being the only one of them powered by Intel rather than AMD, whereas an Xbox handheld would likely be yet another AMD powered one). A closed ecosystem Xbox handheld would be a big mistake I think. I agree they need to get Gamepass onto Steam, it will grow PC Gamepass subs by leaps and bounds, not to mention it would be great for gamers, as modding games on Steam is way easier than trying to mod them on Windows Store/UWP. 

Finished Palworld (achievements wise, the latter bosses were a pain because of its time limit);

Ended the game with a lucky catch :)

Looks pretty cool actually!

If there wasn’t a reason to try AoE 4 before

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All of 7 posts from me? Not a lot. Here is 1 now!!

Just so you know there are multiple towers so that is just one of many.  Not sure what level you are at but they can get really tough.

Really, So MS bringing out a handheld like the Steam Deck but with a stripped down OS that allows it to play all PC games, including their own.  I believe you may be looking at a handheld the wrong way thinking it has to be like years of old but MS only needs to produce a handheld that supports both PC and their Xbox to be competitive.  If you really think about it, MS could modify the Xbox OS with its smaller footprint to support a broader range of PC devices and software.  MS also has the money to make it to scale at a price point that is very competitive with every PC handheld on the market.

The smartest move for MS is to get that stripped down mobile version out and let all the PC manufactures do their own thing and license it.  MS could pretty much do what they do with the Surface where they have their own hardware but which would be a sort of high mid level standard and go from there.