Microsoft has moved on from the Xbox One and is no longer creating first-party games for its previous generation of consoles. “We’ve moved on to Gen 9,” says Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty, referring to the Xbox Series S / X generation, in an interview with Axios.
While Microsoft will still support Xbox One hardware and games like Minecraft running on the previous generation, no internal studios are working on new games for the Xbox One anymore. Microsoft has been slowly pushing to this point, using Xbox Cloud Gaming to offer up games like Microsoft Flight Simulator to existing Xbox One users.
Microsoft’s recent Xbox Games Showcase didn’t contain any first-party games that will run on the Xbox One natively, and Booty says the company will continue to leverage its Xbox Cloud Gaming infrastructure to offer the latest games to Xbox One users. “That’s how we’re going to maintain support,” says Booty.
The new 1TB Xbox Series S.Image: Microsoft
Microsoft’s own game developers are now focused on Xbox Series S / X consoles, despite claims that some developers are asking Microsoft to drop mandatory Xbox Series S compatibility for the latest Xbox games. The $299 Xbox Series S launched as a console capable of 1440p gaming at up to 120fps, but many games have only hit 1080p and without the higher frame rates of the more powerful Xbox Series X.
Microsoft’s larger and more powerful Xbox Series X has more raw GPU power and also a larger 16GB of RAM, with the smaller Xbox Series S offering just 10GB of RAM. The memory constraints have been painful for some developers, but Microsoft has worked to try and improve the overall graphics performance of its miniature Xbox and free up more memory for developers to access on the Xbox Series S.
“Is it more work?” building for Xbox Series S, “sure,” admits Booty. But he claims Microsoft’s own Xbox game studios have been able to get more performance out of their latest games built for Xbox Series S. Microsoft also announced a black 1TB version of its Xbox Series S console during its showcase in an attempt to address concerns around the 512GB storage situation on the base Xbox Series S.
With the Xbox One firmly in the rearview mirror at Microsoft, Xbox chief Phil Spencer admitted recently that the company “lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games.” Microsoft is now attempting to bounce back with the Xbox Series X / S after a quiet year for Xbox releases in 2022. But the Xbox Games Showcase demonstrated a solid number of first-party games coming to Xbox in 2023 and 2024.
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