Microsoft still unenthusiastic about portable gaming

If you thought it was only a matter of time before Microsoft entered the profitable handheld market with a super-powerful Xboy of its own, you'd better think again.

Microsoft's entertainment and devices president Robbie Bach has been speaking to Canadian newspaper the Edmonton Journal and casting doubt that any sort of handheld announcement might be coming from Microsoft in the near future.

"We don't talk about what we are doing, but generally when I look at the hand-held space, we haven't seen anything there that says, 'gosh, we wanna go make a big investment there.' It's a fairly tough area, a place where Sony and particularly Nintendo are doing a pretty good job", he's reported as saying.

Reading between the lines it seems like there's some wriggle room there in terms of Microsoft adding gaming features to its Zune multimedia portable device - although we've been saying that for a while - but going up against DS or PSP isn't on the cards.

And as for his views on what constitutes a 'pretty good job', all we can say is we're glad we don't work for Robbie Bach.