Xbox Hardware Isn’t Dead But ‘Big Changes’ Are Coming, Says Digital Foundry
In recent weeks, and in the wake of the ROG Xbox Ally, there’s been lots of speculation about the future of Xbox hardware and where Microsoft is taking things – and over the past few days, the folks over at Digital Foundry have had their say on proceedings. The DF team believes that Xbox is still taking hardware seriously, but that it’ll undergo “big changes” for the next generation.
We’ve chucked their lengthy discussion up above for you to take a look at; where Richard, John and Oliver make a number of interesting Xbox hardware-related points. Oliver talks about how they believe Xbox will become more like Windows Surface – where multiple manufacturers produce Xbox ‘systems’ rather than one defined next-gen console.
“We see this in the Windows space with Surface devices, where Microsoft participates in the Windows ecosystem but they’re not necessarily the only players in that ecosystem – they are one of many players in the ecosystem.
The Xbox, traditionally with the last four generations of hardware, has been a pretty strong vision. Here is an Xbox Series X, we’re going to support it for a generation, it has a console OS, it has exclusive games […] it will go to-toe-to with PlayStation with competitive pricing… this isn’t that, or at least to some degree it’s not that – in significant ways it’s not that vision.”
John goes on to largely agree with that sentiment, adding that Windows-like devices feel like “the only way forward at this point” – after the ROG Xbox Ally announcement and everything else that’s gone on with Microsoft over the last year or two. John believes that there’s “not really any reason for consumers to embrace” a traditional console from Microsoft as it begins to sell its ‘Xbox is anywhere’ vision to players on pretty much any device.
Anyway, we think this is a pretty interesting discussion, and while Microsoft is the only one that truly knows its next-gen plans, we do think DF makes some very logical and valid points here. Xbox hardware is indeed sticking around, but it’s clear that the next generation will be very different in terms of how a traditional console cycle plays out.
