Microsoft prepares a mobile Xbox?

According to Reuters, Microsoft is also working it’s way to the budding mobile gadgets market. At this time there is very little information available, but it would seem to be a gaming device with multimedia playback features, thus challenging Sony and Apple.

Mobility is a real mega trend these days, but many seem to forget that it is not a new phenomena. Nintendo had a portfolio of pocket size electronic games, such as Donkey Kong, back in the early eighties and music has been portable ever since the Sony Walkman. Mobile game consoles had pioneers like Atari Lynx in the early 90’s. Mobile phone makers have been pushing their devices’ entertainment features since Nokia’s Snake-game became hugely popular.

This wave of mobile multi purpose devices has been pioneered by Nintendo’s GameBoy series. Nokia N-Gage combines a lot of phone, multimedia and game features but it lacks the gaming performance as it is entirely based on few years old cellular phone technology. Apple of made the MP3/AAC players suddenly fashionable, rather than toys for geeks, with their iPod. Sony PSP really pulled mobile gaming to the next level, but the device is so large that it really is not mobile - therefore the name portable.

It will be most interesting to see what market niche the Microsoft will aim at. The mobile phone makers are pushing to extend their features to cover just about everything. Apple has already expanded the iPod concept to cover video as well. Sony’s PSP has been somewhat successful, but it really is not a competitor for the previous two. We’ll just have to wait and see, as according to the source it may take a year or even two before the product is launched. And two years really is a long period in this industry

Source: Reuters