Xbox has teased its approach to its next-gen console.
In an interview with Mashable about the recently launched ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, Xbox president Sarah Bond was asked about the company’s broader plans for next-gen hardware. Of course, Bond noted that she can’t say much right now, but she did offer a small tease.
“The next-gen console is going to be a very premium, very high-end curated experience,” responded Bond. “You’re starting to see some of the thinking we have in this handheld [the Xbox Ally devices], but I don’t want to give it all away.”
Bond is likely referring to the fact that the Xbox Ally devices are a combination of Asus and Windows’ respective PC infrastructures with the integration of Xbox’s iconography and game libraries. This hybrid approach has informed much of what Microsoft has done in recent years. On the Xbox end, it’s de-emphasized the need for a console by bring its games to a variety of platforms, from PC and mobile to cloud gaming and even PlayStation. This led it to adopt a “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign in which it refers to all kinds of the aforementioned devices as “Xboxes.”
And earlier this year, the company teased that it wants to focus on bringing together the “best of Xbox and Windows” in handheld gaming PCs. The Xbox Ally devices, which run on Windows 11 and feature Xbox buttons, UI and game catalogues, are one part of this. Another of these is major partnership with AMD that Bond announced earlier this year a “to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices, including our next-generation Xbox consoles.” All of this is to say that the next-gen Xbox will probably be more PC-like than Microsoft’s previous consoles.
That said, this wider platform-agnostic approach has also led many people to question the reason to even buy an Xbox console. Besides Xbox hardware pricing having gone up twice this year (the most recent of which didn’t affect Canada), there’s much less of an incentive to get one of Microsoft’s consoles with so much of what they offer being available elsewhere.
In particular, pretty much every first-party Xbox game, like Gears of War, Forza and Microsoft Flight Simulator, has made (or is making) its way to PlayStation. The long-rumoured Halo: Combat Evolved remake is also expected to come to PS5 as well. And while the non-streaming Game Pass options are only available on Xbox and PC, the ever-rising cost of the service has been putting off a lot of people. All of this has led to sales of the Xbox Series X/S reportedly trailing those of the PS5 by tens of millions.
Given all of this, it will be interesting to see how many people will still want to buy a next-gen Xbox, even if it’s as “premium” as Bond suggests. After all, Sony is obviously working on a PS6, and it even recently teased that it’s excited to bring that to fans “in a few years’ time.”
In the meantime, a taste of what Xbox is likely planning for its next hardware can be found in the $799 Xbox Ally and $1300 Xbox Ally X.
Source: Mashable
