Somehow, it’s been just over three years since the Xbox Series X launched. But here we are! Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is already looking ahead to the fifth-generation console. These things take a long time to develop. But the company officially confirmed the development on Thursday on its official Xbox podcast, with the Xbox president Sarah Bond told Microsoft aims for “the biggest technical leap you’ve ever seen in a hardware generation, making it better for gamers and better for developers and the visions they create.”
She continued: “We are also investing in the next generation roadmap.” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer also spoke to The Verge in an interview published alongside the podcast, in which he teased the “unique aspects” of future Xbox hardware.
“I am very proud of the work the hardware team is doing, not only for this year but also for the future,” said Spencer. “[We’re] I’m really thinking about creating hardware that sells to gamers because of the unique aspects of the hardware. It’s a kind of unleashing of the creative capabilities of our hardware team, which I’m really excited about.”
Microsoft has increased the timing of a series of announcements after reports and rumors surfaced about the future of Xbox exclusivity and Xbox consoles. With little information available, the public began to speculate, and eventually a discourse arose where people thought Microsoft would stop producing hardware altogether. Microsoft Gaming is the company’s third largest business thanks to its merger with Activision Blizzard. according to its most recent financial reports, but it lags significantly behind Microsoft’s Server and Office divisions, both of which include cloud services. Console hardware is just one part of Microsoft’s gaming strategy and will undoubtedly continue to be an important part of the brand.
Still, the cyclone that sparked the discourse last week became so big that Complex wrote an article reflecting on it Xbox has completely shut down.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft hasn’t announced anything else about the fifth-generation Xbox console, but there was a hardware announcement that will be made “this holiday.” It will be part of what Microsoft calls a “robust and innovative multi-year hardware roadmap.”
We have an idea of what’s to come because in 2023, Microsoft released its own confidential documents related to the Federal Trade Commission case. One of those documents, a presentation titled “Roadmap to 2030,” outlined Microsoft’s hardware lineup for 2024. The documents were older, but outlined updates to the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S – the most dramatic of which was the Disc X-less Xbox Series . These documents also contained specifications for a new Xbox controller.
What’s still missing from the picture is an Xbox handheld, which has been rumored for some time. Spencer told The Verge he’s a big fan of handhelds, but he has nothing to announce.
