“The management team said ‘it’s not worth it’”

Jun 26, 2015 05:24 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft enthusiasts might recall that approximately one year ago, rumors of a potential Xbox Surface tablet emerged for the very first time, as it was believed that the Redmond-based tech giant wanted to expand in the tablet market with a new device specifically designed for gaming.

While this device never came to be, former Microsoft Xbox executive Robbie Bach, who spent no less than 22 years at the company, says that Redmond indeed considered such a project, but it was slightly different from the one we imagined when we first heard the rumors.

In an interview with Polygon, Bach says Microsoft had several ideas in mind to expand the Xbox business, including an Xboy that would have competed against the PSP. A dual-screen Xbox-branded tablet was also proposed at some point, he revealed, which could have been the 7-inch Surface Xbox that we expected to see daylight as part of Redmond’s efforts to expand in the tablet business.

Not approved by the management

Bach says that the management team rejected these ideas, explaining that both the Xboy and the Xbox tablet “were just not worth it.”

“Unfortunately it had such an appeal emotionally that the idea kept coming back,” he says.

On the other hand, Bach explains that the Xbox team should have designed an Xbox-branded phone called Xphone to offer phone and gaming capabilities in the same package. This would have really been a tough competitor for the iPhone, he says, mostly because Microsoft already had the know-how and the necessary phone technology to start working with touch screen even three years before the iPhone came out.

“The irony is, the thing we missed about that was it should have been a phone. What we should have done was the Xphone, not the Xboy. I don’t think it would have been an obvious thought at the time. This was still pretty early. This is three years before iPhone. But if we’d been prescient enough to start looking at phone technology, looking at touch screens — if we managed to think that all through, we might have said, 'Oh gosh, we should do an Xphone.' That could have been ... who knows? Hindsight is 20/20,” he said.

Right now, Microsoft is again trying to rethink its mobile strategy, so while the Xphone is unlikely to ever hit the shelves, other exciting projects are said to be developed behind the closed doors at Microsoft. Windows 10 Mobile will bring us several new flagships featuring plenty of new technologies, including iris scanners and face recognition systems that will work with tools that are directly integrated into the operating system.