I think a better deal might be to go all the way with their support for the DS for now. They've supported it relucantly(with Rare being the only dev to actually make DS games) and I think for now it might be better to support the DS more and get the devs more accustomed to a portable device then when they're ready make their own.

I know it's unlikely to happen but they could even team up with Nintendo if they weren't sure about it.

Hope ones made 2 years from now.

...until they can manage 360 graphics on their handheld and strike up a deal with one of the cell phone companies to have wireless connection anywhere there is service, forget hot-spots, this way we can get a portable Gears and portable Halo with online matches on the go. A man can only hope and dream...atm.

its their problem that they are facing with the 360.notice how m$ plan isnt games to extend their life cycle. thats becuase they cant compete in that category. instead its other things peripherals.

they cant bring out a handheld and only have the support of thrid parties look at sony. the psp went though a drought because of this.

I hope it's still a few years out.

For me, its not a matter of when it comes to market, its whose portable brings the better games. We already know how Sony's handheld turned out thus far.

It will likely be an extremely different concept then today's portables.

It will rely more on the idea of a server-terminal system and even cloud computing.

If i was going to design a handheld it'd be more in tune to a remote-control for the xbox 360/MS OS. It would rely on a extremely high-bandwidth connection between the server(a pc or xbox) and the terminal(handheld) because of this, the handheld would require almost no real hardware since all computing would be done with the Server. Since it would likely only have a touch-screen, controls, wi-fi, accelerator/gyro and a simple pgpgu it would be relatively cheap. This would also allow for the largest possible battery-life, top of the line graphics and the ability to stream any media you have stored on your PC/Xbox.

The concept would be extremely similar to that of what onlive uses, but instead of using their servers it would take advantage of a personal wireless connection between only the handheld and whatever equipment the user has synced with it, this would help keep lag spikes, and connection issues to a low.

The other nice advantages to having the handheld set up in this fashion is that developers would be able to take advantage of tools already available, and ms would hand an even larger install base to woo developers.

this patent explains how the handheld console would use the PC or 360 as a computational device.
http://appft.uspto.gov/neta...

there would likely be a subscription model to sell the games however, and the price and price modeling would likely be the toughest part of the concept.

You could probably hot potato with an xbox portable. Hehehehehe.

On a serious note, no. Microsoft needs to concentrate all of its resources on the 360 right now. Having another console to look out for will be spreading them thin.

DS and PSP are still the top. Xbox portable? where is it now? ahh, it is a failure! sad!

The only thing that really interests me about a MS handheld is the fact that they take care of North Americans, and those great features the psp has in Japan *should* work good over here. I find the nice little extra features the psp has in Japan has me a bit jealous. If MS can make their handheld do what the psp does in japan, I'm sold (unless there's some silly sub fee for using it).

so I don't want another portable console. Plus my PSP is flashed to hell and I don't pay for games on the thing!