The next generation Xbox is coming. Allaying fears of having lost interest in the actual hardware, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to the new generation of gaming hardware. The heart of this beast? Once again, AMD, forging a power pact that promises to redefine console gaming.
Together with AMD, Xbox is raising the stakes! On a recent huge announcement, President Sarah Bond revealed a multi-year partnership to build the future of gaming silicon. Prepare for some eye candy: deeper immersion, luscious graphics, and AI-generative gameplay that will blow your mind. Oh, and your currently owned Xbox games will be carried over!
A May 2022 leaked presentation (part of the great Xbox leak) gave us a rare sneak peek into the ambivalence that Microsoft still entertains around the next gen Xbox. The larger questions that loomed around the new Xbox: Will they still stick with AMD for the processor and GPU, as one slide hinted? And what about ARM? The “Arm64 decision” remained an open question. Come present day, and it is now clear that Microsoft is going ahead with the AMD and dumping all the ARM suppositions.
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Forget about the AMD deal-that’s just a shiny headline Bond put, pushed forth. If you dig a little farther, you find juicy secrets spilled from the video: the real story is not about what she said; it is about what she hinted at.
That clever statement from Bond was like a bread crumb. On the surface, it did get into some AI undertones and then burrowed into a leaked Microsoft strategy. So, indeed, AI agents and machine learning in future Xbox titles are not just rumors-the whispers are probably a faint echo of what the company is investing heavily in. Take Bond’s statement as the secret announcement that Microsoft’s AI game is only now leveling up.
As Bond put it, Microsoft and AMD are joining forces to transform gaming. Their co-engineered silicon, which is powering the next-generation Xbox consoles today, is ready to set itself free outside of the living room. Now imagine that level of Xbox power not just in front of your TV, but actually in your palm! This sets the stage for a whole new class of portable Xbox experiences to explore, besides the AMD-powered ROG devices landing on shelves later.
Bond assures gamers that their loved Xbox titles will remain forever in their collection when next-gen Xboxes will be “compatible with your existing library.” An assurance of backward compatibility is always a welcomed one, which rings true to the commitment Xbox has to keep gaming legacies alive.
But the real bombshells dropped when Bond hinted at the big question over Xbox’s future. Imagine a gaming platform that would travel with you everywhere, one that would not be chained to a particular store or device. Play your games your way, anywhere, on any screen-is that what Xbox would be.
In the entire “single store” phrase, the time feels so quaint as if we were reminiscing about it, especially seeing what Xbox has been working on for ROG handhelds. Forget those walled gardens! These Windows-based devices are slowly turning into an open gaming bazaar. I’m talking about Xbox PC app, remote console play, and cloud gaming as the very basics. However, this is only the first stall. Soon, other stalls will be opened to you, with more or less titles from Battle.net (thanks to the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard!), Steam, GOG, and countless others. and will you remember that EA Play resides within Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass? Or that Ubisoft+ is already out there walking on Xbox? So, this is less of a single store and more of a universe for play.
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The idea of a future where your digital game library isn’t tied to a single storefront is an intriguing one. A future when walls come down between platforms. The seeds of this revolution have been sown already. Remember when Valve had an open invitation for Game Pass to integrate Steam? Or maybe when Microsoft welcomed Steam and Epic Games Store into its very own PC app store (it must’ve been a hard sell to convince some on revenue sharing). If only a few years could see these tantalizing possibilities see the light of day and finally release gamers from walled gardens.
But how will Xbox integrate these into console experiences? Liz Bond offered a very tantalizing window in suggesting a synergy with Windows to change the nature of gaming completely. “We’re building a really deep partnership with the Windows team… so Windows will remain the unquestionable number-one choice for gamers,” she offered as a suggestion. Such a close collaboration would imply that Xbox consoles might then serve as an entryway into the broader ecosystem of games on Windows.
Is Bond really giving clues about the future of Xbox? He never said this outright, but I was intrigued by the little PC gaming joke. Could the next Xbox be a wolf in sheep’s clothing-a full-fledged Windows PC disguised as a console? Jez Corden at Windows Central stoked the fire further a while back when he said an Xbox “is a PC, in essence, but with a TV-friendly shell.” The pieces are coming together.
In such a way, this smaller segment would provide a much clearer target for developers to nurture their crafts, somewhat like the Steam Deck. Optimization for so large a set of operations is next to impossible, and this is one much more focused target. Could the Xbox interface seen in the Ally X herald future streamlining of big-screen experiences?
Imagine an Xbox stripped to its bare essentials and beefed up; something representative of the Microsoft efficiency on the Xbox Ally hand-helds. It is not a mere dream. An Xbox with a streamlined OS could have a truly unified ecosystem, thereby encouraging the very blurry line between console gaming and PC gaming. It’s a heaven for developers, where making games for both platforms would be the easiest task. And with Microsoft’s fast-paced perfectionist streak for optimized Windows on ARM, all courtesy of the Copilot+ PC agenda, this world is much nearer than you’d think.
Xbox’s grand plan remains shrouded, likely for another two or three years. But the potential payoff? A seamlessly interwoven ecosystem where Xbox and PC gaming blur into a single, fluid experience across all your devices. The future of Xbox isn’t just about consoles, it’s about ubiquity.
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