It’s a handheld-packed edition of Rumor Killers this week. Adam Standing questions whether he’ll be collecting GamerScore, rampaging through Stilwater, and travelling through portals - all on the go.

Portable Xbox confirmed?

Rumors of a Microsoft handheld have been circulating for some time now, partly because they’re the only one of the big three platform holders to not have one, and partly because it’d be so awesome to earn achievement points at the office. But last week Kikizo spoke to Microsoft’s Corporate VP Shane Kim, who pretty much confirmed that a handheld console based on the Xbox would be coming in the future:

"For us, it’s a matter of focusing on ‘when’, because if we chased after a mobile or handheld opportunity, we would not have the resources and ability to do things like… Project Natal. So we’ve chosen to focus on the living room experience from a hardware standpoint, if you will, but we’re building a service in Live that will extend to other platforms. So the question will be, how do we enter into that market -- do we do our own device, do we create our own phone -- that’s a question for the company itself."

So it sounds like once Natal gets released and the boy wonder Milo is let loose on the world, we might see some more movement towards a handheld device that incorporates Live. What that actual device will be still seems up for discussion, and I suspect that a gaming system might still be some time away. It was as far back as 2006 that Microsoft promising Live Anywhere, the service that would bring online gaming and their entertainment network to mobile devices, and we’ve still seen nothing of it. My guess is that the integration of the Live service onto a future Zune (HD) will be Microsoft’s focus after Natal’s released, as I can’t see Microsoft investing in such an expensive venture for quite a few years yet. The handheld market is swollen with the DS, PSP and iPhone, and we’ve already seen the N-Gage and Gizmondo go up against strong, established competition and splutter to a painful death - I wouldn’t like to see Microsoft do the same.

TGR says: Very unlikely – for now