By Microsoft has made a significant shift in its gaming strategy, leaving the Xbox One behind and setting its sights firmly on the Xbox Series S / X consoles. According to a recent interview with Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty, the company has moved on to what he refers to as “Gen 9,” leaving behind the previous generation of consoles. This means that Microsoft’s internal studios are no longer developing new games for the Xbox One.
While Microsoft will continue to support the Xbox One hardware and games like Minecraft that run on it, their main focus is now on the Xbox Series S / X generation. They have been gradually working towards this point, leveraging the power of Xbox Cloud Gaming to offer games like Microsoft Flight Simulator to existing Xbox One users.
In the recent Xbox Games Showcase, there were no first-party games announced that will be natively compatible with the Xbox One. Booty explains that Microsoft will continue to provide support for Xbox One users by utilizing their Xbox Cloud Gaming infrastructure, ensuring they have access to the latest games. This is how Microsoft plans to maintain support for the previous generation.
Microsoft’s game developers are now fully dedicated to creating games for the Xbox Series S / X consoles. While there have been some requests from developers to drop mandatory Xbox Series S compatibility for the latest games, Microsoft remains committed to the console. The Xbox Series S, priced at $299, was initially marketed as a console capable of 1440p gaming at up to 120fps. However, some games have only achieved 1080p resolution without the higher frame rates found on the more powerful Xbox Series X.
The Xbox Series X boasts superior GPU power and 16GB of RAM, whereas the smaller Xbox Series S offers 10GB of RAM. Developers have faced challenges due to the limited memory on the Xbox Series S, but Microsoft has been actively working to improve graphics performance on the console and allocate more memory for developers to work with.
Building games for the Xbox Series S does require additional effort, as Booty admits, but Microsoft’s own Xbox game studios have managed to maximize the performance of their latest games on the console. To address concerns about storage capacity, Microsoft recently announced a black 1TB version of the Xbox Series S during their showcase.
With Microsoft leaving the Xbox One in the rearview mirror, Xbox chief Phil Spencer openly acknowledged that they “lost” during the Xbox One generation, where many players built their digital game libraries. However, Microsoft is determined to bounce back with the Xbox Series X / S after a relatively quiet year of Xbox releases in 2022. The Xbox Games Showcase demonstrated a solid lineup of first-party games set to launch in 2023 and 2024, signaling Microsoft’s commitment to the future of gaming on their latest consoles.