Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been dropping hints about portable Xbox for months, but what about Windows gaming laptops? says Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s vice president of Next Generation. Edge We should expect to see a change in the Windows mobile gaming experience within this calendar year.
Ronald was a roundtable panelist this evening at AMD and Lenovo’s “The Future of Mobile Gaming” event, which was mostly an coming-out party for Lenovo’s new Legion Go S device. But he hinted on stage that Microsoft plans to bring the Xbox experience to Windows PCs, not the other way around — and we expanded on that significantly after we caught up with him later.
“We’ve been really innovating for a long time in the console space, and as we partner across the industry, it’s really about how do we bring those innovations that we’ve incubated and developed in the console space and bring them to PC and bring them into the mobile gaming space,” Ronald said.
And after we caught up with him after the event, he confirmed that Microsoft is looking to bring the Xbox and Windows experiences together – and that we should see changes this very year, rather than having to wait for a portable Xbox that may still be years away.
“I would say it brings the best of Xbox and Windows together, because we’ve spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really console-constrained,” says Ronald. “What we’re doing is we’re really focusing on how we bring these experiences for both gamers and developers into the broader Windows ecosystem.”
Right now, Windows sucks on mobile, frankly, to the point that a community-created fork of Valve’s SteamOS experience could be a much better way to pick up and play games. Ronald is clearly aware of these issues. “We’re focused on simplifying this and making it more like a console experience. Our goal is to put the player and their library at the heart of the experience, not the be all and end all.” [Windows] The work you have to do today.”
Microsoft has created compact modes for Xbox apps on Windows that focus on improving the mobile experience, but they’re more like putting lipstick on a pig rather than addressing the core experience. “I think we’ll have a lot to share later this year,” teases Ronald. “I think it’s going to be a journey and I think you’ll see a lot of investment over time that you’re already starting to see, but we’ll have a lot more to share later this year.”
How Microsoft goes about integrating Xbox and Windows will be key, but it doesn’t look like the company will suddenly port a custom Xbox operating system to Windows. It’s as if Microsoft wants to improve Windows on gaming with the Xbox experience on top so that the annoying desktop, notifications, and Windows legacy are tucked away.
“I think, ultimately, our goal is to make Windows great for playing on any device,” says Ronald. “The reality is that the Xbox operating system is built on Windows. So, there’s a lot of infrastructure that we’ve built in the console space that we can bring into the PC space and deliver that premium gaming experience on any device.
Specifically, Microsoft has to address a lot of the same fundamentals to make Windows more console-friendly and have that Xbox experience driving things instead of the taskbar, Start menu, and other elements. “There are certain things in Windows that it’s not designed for if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse, like support for joysticks or trackpads and things like that,” Ronald admits.
“There are core interaction models that we’re working on to make sure that no matter the specifics of the operating system, it feels very authentic and feels like a gaming-focused device and a gaming-centric experience.”
The goal, Ronald says, is to put the Xbox experience at the center — “not the Windows desktop you have today.”
