In 2024, Microsoft did not release its “improved” gaming console, as Sony did, but earlier this year it announced that it was preparing “the biggest technological leap in generations” game consoles. There have been various rumors about what the new Xbox console might be like. Well-known journalist Tom Warren, who often has inside information from the Microsoft camp and has repeatedly communicated with Xbox executives, has published his expectations for what the next American consoles will be.
You can read Warren’s material in full on The Verge, here are the main points from it:
- Microsoft is preparing a radical rethink of the Xbox gaming platform. The next console won’t just be a more powerful device like the last generation.
- Phil Spencer has talked about how he wants to make the Xbox ecosystem more open and include PC stores like the Epic Games Store and Itch.io on the console.
- Based on Spencer’s statements, the next console will be able to run PC games. This doesn’t mean that Xbox owners will start booting up the familiar Windows Start menu on their desktop, but it could mean that the future Xbox console will be more like a PC in terms of creating games for it.
- This year, Microsoft created a new team dedicated to preserving existing Xbox games. This clearly indicates that the next console, whatever it may be, will be able to run current and past generation Xbox games.
- It seems like Xbox’s goal is to move away from the idea that Xbox and PC games are two different things.
- If Microsoft opens its consoles to third-party stores, it will radically change the economics of the device. Selling equipment at a “minus” will become unprofitable. Tom Warren expects the new Xboxes to be more expensive. Phil Spencer previously said that subsidizing equipment “in the modern world this is a more difficult task” due to expensive components and lack of overall growth in the console market.
- Given the plans described, we can expect that the company will make the Xbox system more open and allow other device manufacturers to release their consoles with the Microsoft gaming ecosystem.
- Tom Warren expects that all of these changes, if implemented, will affect both stationary game consoles and portable ones, the interest in the creation of which was confirmed by Xbox.
- Warren notes that if Microsoft succeeds in merging Xbox and Windows, it will truly be able to realize its “Xbox everywhere” concept – the idea that every screen is an Xbox.
Let us remember that the other day insider Jez Corden said that the first portable Xboxes could be from third-party manufacturers, and not from Microsoft itself.
