It was rumoured over and over again for more than a decade that Microsoft would release a portable Xbox, especially when Sony decided to enter the handheld race with PSP back in 2005. But as we know, this never happened and today, even Nintendo has been forced to reconsider their portable efforts with a hybrid console and smartphone games.
Now it turns out there actually was a whole lot of talk about this at the Xbox team. This was revealed by Robbie Bach, who was one of the top Xbox bosses between 2001 and 2010, during the New York Game Awards (transcribed by Gamespot):
"During my time at Xbox, there were at least three groups that presented portable Xbox presentations. They always got called 'Xboy' for some reason. Would have been a trademark problem, I'm sure. All three times we decided not to do it."
Bach explains that the Xbox team simply didn't have the resources for this, and ultimately decided to focus everything on the regular Xbox consoles instead:
"It would have meant starting up another team. It would have been like starting Xbox [again] except creating a handheld. And we just didn't have the bandwidth to do that."
Today, you can play your Xbox games on your smartphones with a peripheral like the Razer Kishi, but would you have bought an Xboy if it ever had been released?