Yet another Microsoft portable media / gaming device rumor

Now, you're gonna have to take this with a relatively large grain of salt, but Dean Takahashi of The Mercury News is reporting with some amount of certainty that Microsoft is, in fact, developing a portable multimedia and gaming device (that ain't the Origami), and that they're aiming to take over the world of portable devices. No, not "portable media devices" or "portable gaming devices." They're going after portable devices straight up, supposedly expecting to go head to head with the DS (Lite), PSP, and iPod -- three of the biggest brands in the (youth) consumer electronics market -- all at once. Takahashi also cites other examples of the project's progress, which is supposedly being led by J Allard, and designed by by Xbox system designer Greg Gibson, including some 30 supposed Transmeta engineers assigned to work on a secret MS project, which he speculates could hit in 2007.

[Via Joystiq]