A new rumor has appeared that should be ending a few questions some gamers have been asking about Xbox’s future.
Jez Corden shared this claim in a new report on Windows Central:
“To that end, I’ve recently been told that Xbox’s next-gen console hardware has now moved past its early pitch stages and has been fully approved and costed all the way up the chain.”
Previously, we’ve heard rumors that Microsoft is planning to release a console as soon as next year. And so it seems that Jez has just nuked that rumor completely. Because even if Jez is saying that Microsoft is set to manufacture units of the console, they certainly would not take as little as a year to start that process. But we will concede, it’s possible that this earlier rumor was based on real assumptions about Microsoft’s timetable at the time, and they may be delayed from their plans by only a year or so.
What we do know for sure is what Microsoft has in mind when it comes to designing this next Xbox. In Phil Spencer’s words from just earlier this year:
“I want people to pick hardware based on the capabilities of that hardware and the choices that they want to make about where they want to play. We want our hardware to win based on the capabilities that we have.”
And Spencer explained this new selling point to be how they intend to keep selling Xbox consoles when Microsoft has decided to make their games multiplatform moving forward.
It’s certainly worth noting that Spencer referred to capabilities, and that does not necessarily mean power. It must be said, from what we’ve seen so far, Xbox Series X has objectively compared well to games published on the PlayStation 5 Pro. While Sony has yet to get all PS5 Pro certified games to make full use of PSSR, those same games perform just fine on Microsoft’s console.
But one could say that Smart Delivery and Quick Resume are some unique capabilities on Xbox, and these could have won over some gamers to get one of their consoles. These are capabilities that the most powerful PCs cannot match, and Microsoft may be thinking of even more unique features and abilities to sway the most high roller PC players to come over as well.
Spencer had once said that the eight console generation was the worst one for Microsoft to lose, because it was when gamers started building their digital game libraries that would carry over to this generation. But it’s also clear now that he conceived of Game Pass as a response to this issue, solving the problem of both having a constant stream of revenue, and of enticing gamers with a pool of new games that they didn’t have to pay for individually to collect.
Spencer may be the most patient executive in the video game industry’s history, as he’s finally started seeing his well laid plans from these last two console generations bear fruit. Microsoft is already the largest video game publisher in the world. Will Xbox be able to fight back with their tenth generation console? And what big pitch will they make that will win gamers back? This may end up being more interesting than we all expect.
