Xbox chief Phil Spencer has been dropping hints about an Xbox handheld for months, but what about Windows handheld gaming PCs? Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s VP of “Next Generation,” tells The Verge that we should expect to see the Windows handheld gaming experience change within this calendar year.

Microsoft has said that it plans to bring the best of Xbox and Windows gaming experiences for handheld devices.

Last January at CES, Microsoft chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2024 the “year of the AI PC.” And whether you believe that prediction came true or not—many new PCs come with AI-accelerating neural processing units onboard, but far from all of them—you can't deny that Microsoft did try very hard to make it happen.

The last time I tried playing games on Windows handhelds, it was a weird process. For all the flexibility of Windows and the freedom to run multiple app stores and customize however you'd like, a lot of things act weirdly and are very hit-and-miss.