Why has Microsoft never attempted a hand-held console?

[Keatah]

..and for sales and marketing, that's good enough!

[Tanooki]

I see this back and forward, and then I saw the Shield line(nvidia) brought up as filling the gap, then arguing it kind of didn't. But then also Nintendo comes up, and you know what, maybe they actually kind of did it and with Nvidia. Keep in mind the Switch is some custom job using the Shield console 2017 upgrade for their 4K shield TV mircoconsole. Take the joycons off, you basically have a shield tablet console with the android UI ripped out of it with the basic Nintendo layout on top. Lock those 2 gamepads on the side, and then you have that problem solved of worrying about having to carry a controller larger than the device, plus trying to get some way to mount it and play on a controller at the same time.

 

Nvidia backed off doing a Shield 2 line of consoles and tablet, and instead they took their existing tech, boosted it marginally for a 4K TV device, then customized it further and threw that huge bone to Nintendo, and the Switch is that bridge that gaps the annoying ass problems of tablet gaming and wanting a handheld that doesn't blow ass for most genres that can't to touch play well without a controller. If someone hacked the bejeesus out of the Switch in time, given the guts, I would not in the slightest bit be shocked at all if they rammed a version of Android on there and it worked fine. You have a 10pt touch panel, 2 bluetooth controllers (1 on each side, yet custom software could be made to read them as a pair for 1 as Nintendo Switch does stock), and given the meat of the hardware it could run circles around whatever really out there now in that environment. It essentially could in theory be the perfect solution perhaps more android tablet makers should be taking a page from and learn a lesson.