Console generations not necessarily a thing of the past for Team Xbox…
We’re a day away yet from the release of the Xbox One X console (check out our recent review!) and already we’ve been hearing that a next-generation console from team green is something that shouldn’t be dismissed. While Phil Spencer has stated on numerous occasions (but never in an official capacity) that the market is moving ever forward towards a world without generations it seems inevitable that tech will change at some point in a fashion that requires a whole new model.
In a recent interview with the team over at IGN, Albert Penello, Microsoft’s Xbox Marketing Head addressed this idea stating that he doesn’t necessarily see console generations ending completely so much as further iterations of a console will remain compatible with past ones.
“That’s the question we’ll have to see how it goes. I mean, part of it is, this is a grand new experiment that both us and Sony are on with this concept. And right now, we have to sort of build trust that the stuff you’re buying will work, that this ecosystem will make sense for people, for developers, and that is what will inform what happens next.”
“But I think there will always be step changes in technology. I don’t think we’ve ever said that console generations go away because of this idea. But I do think that it changes the nature of how you think about compatibility, which has always been an afterthought for the most part on consoles… there have been some who have done a great job of it, but we’re doubling down on it, going back even further. And Phil said this a lot… we’re making a huge effort for backward compatibility. A lot of the stuff you saw, the tools that we are doing for 360, are tools that were necessary to make Xbox One, S, and X games compatible. We’re building a lot of that strength in software to do that.”
Penello further noted that should a new Xbox console come into play at some point that it would very likely be compatible with the Xbox One family of hardware as it’s an important focus of Microsoft to continue on that path.
“So I think compatibility will be a more important focus. And then, there will be step changes in hardware, there will be evolutions. I am not sure what the next thing will look like, but I would certainly say we are doubling down on our commitment to compatibility, we will try to keep it compatible with our existing library of games, that is super important to us.”