MSI teases CES 2025 gaming handheld announcements with possible ONEXPLAYER X1 rival in development

MSI was rather late to the gaming handheld market. While ASUS and Lenovo only arrived last year themselves, the likes of AYANEO, GPD and One-Netbook have been releasing Windows gaming handhelds for years, well before the Steam Deck became the go-to for a powerful gaming handheld. Nonetheless, it seems that MSI has plenty of future products in development beyond the Claw 8 AI+ 'A2VM' and Claw A1M Fallout Special Edition model that it showcased at Computex 2024 earlier this week.

On the one hand, it has confirmed that it will be eventually selling a new 7-inch model, full details of which we have covered separately. On the other hand, Cliff Chun, MSI's System Product Management Director, has hinted at gaming handheld releases throughout 2024, 2025 and 2026. Understandably, Chun was rather coy about MSI's plans.

For example, he initially stated that MSI had no plans to offer AMD-powered options. However, Chun then added that MSI may have AMD-related gaming handheld announcements planned for as early as Q3 or Q4 2024. Moreover, he clarified that MSI is not working on a smaller Claw, adding that although the company had experimented with a 5-inch design it considered the form factor to be too small. Likewise, Chun claimed that 6-inch and 7-inch displays feel too similar in-hand to to justify offering gaming handhelds in both sizes.