While the Xbox Series sibling consoles are just about to hit their three-year anniversary, unsurprisingly it would appear that Microsoft is already looking ahead to the future.
According to recent court docs stemming from the FTC v. Microsoft court case that wrapped up a few weeks ago, the next Xbox system appears to be planned to release in 2028.
Plans for the road ahead
These details were discovered by Axios, which published details from the case that reference a launch plan that was discussed during a meeting that took place in May 2022 between CEO Satya Nadella and various other Microsoft execs. Of course, this included the likes of Phil Spencer, who is the Head of Gaming over at Microsoft.
According to the documents, one executive who’s not a part of the Xbox division inquired as to whether “the plan for 2028” would involve sticking to the established console release formula that Xbox currently has, or whether it would pivot to “force a Windows-like flexible/capabilities like model.”
This question was answered by Kevin Gammill, who is the Corporate VP of Gaming Ecosystems, where he pointed to the dual-release formula of the Xbox One, Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, and Series S as evidence of a change to more “flexible” formula. But, he further elaborated on the notion by saying “We need to be even more flexible going forward with gen 10, but also provide the ability for creators to take advantage of unique hardware capabilities.”
What is Team Xbox cooking up?
From the snippets of this meeting provided by the court documentations, it’s not totally clear if Microsoft will once again release two models at once for a single console family, as is currently the case with the Xbox Series S and Series X. But, it does appear that such an idea is at least on the table, as it was directly referenced.
As for the timing of the next-gen release, 2028 seems logical considering that console generations have typically trended in the direction of ranging from 5-8 years. In the case of the three generations that Microsoft has participated in so far, the original Xbox was produced from 2001-2005 (four years,) the Xbox 360 was produced from 2005-2016 (eleven years) and the Xbox One family was produced from 2013-2020 (seven years.)
The 360 era was notably long and so was Sony’s PS3 which had a similarly lengthy lifespan. One thought for why this generation (the 7th) lasted for so long is due to both systems having a hard time finding their footing in their early years, leading to them both hitting their strides around the midway point. The financial crisis of 2008 also likely didn’t help matters.
Nevertheless, the succeeding 8th-generation of systems came far closer to the average. Thus, Microsoft’s apparent projections for starting the 10th-gen in 2028 would give the Xbox Series systems an even eight-year run.
Of course, plans can and do change, so there’s no telling if internally such a goal has already been altered. Ultimately, time will tell.
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