Xbox: A New Horizon

Xbox has a new horizon, and has officially revealed plans for its next generation of hardware. Following the agreement of a multi-year partnership with AMD, President of Xbox Sarah Bond has announced that the two tech giants are developing the next generation of Xbox consoles “in your living room, and your hands” – all while maintaining compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.

She continued by saying something that represents a truly ground-breaking moment for the gaming industry:

“This is all about building you a gaming platform that’s always with you, so you can play the games you want across devices anywhere you want, delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device. That’s why we’re working closely with the Windows team, to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming.”

This follows on from the reveal of the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, and Xbox Ally X – devices met with strong contention from Xbox console users because, contrary to the previous statement we’ve just read from Sarah Bond, these new handhelds won’t support your entire Xbox digital library.

For those that maybe don’t know what this device is, or missed the news entirely – I’ll recap it as quickly as I can. It provides some really important context to explain how Xbox’s latest announcement differentiates itself from this new partnered device from ASUS and Xbox.

The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally is a PC gaming handheld. It will support games bought on any storefront that supports games for Windows.

That includes Steam, by the way.

ASUS’s latest device is partnered with Xbox because they’ve collaborated to make the controller handles feel more familiar and ergonomic, button accents are very Xboxy, and there’s a chunky Xbox button on it that really is where the magic in this device lies.

The differentiator between the ROG Xbox Ally and the non-Xbox Ally is the gamer-first UX-UI layer – but it’s worth noting that this version of Windows will also be supported by other PC gaming handhelds in the near future.

This partnered device runs a version of Windows that has been optimised for gaming. It strips out all the unnecessary bloat and background processes that Windows typically relies on to deliver something that effectively resembles an Xbox flavoured version of the Windows operating system.

This reimagined version of Windows is a result of the Xbox and Windows teams working closer than ever before to deliver a PC gaming handheld experience that feels like an Xbox.

Microsoft proudly called the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally “an Xbox” – which, when we think back to that “This is An Xbox” ad, aligns with Xbox’s current messaging in terms of it being able to do things like access your Game Pass library, remote play and stream via Cloud.

Because it doesn’t support your full Xbox console library though, the unilateral push back from Xbox console players was: “Hey, I can’t call this an Xbox because it doesn’t play all my Xbox games.”

With all that context in mind, let’s go back to Sarah Bond’s words announcing Xbox’s next-generation plans, and talk about why they’re so significant:

“A multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices including our next-generation Xbox consoles, in your living room, and in your hands – all while maintaining compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.”

“This is all about building you a gaming platform that’s always with you, so you can play the games you want across devices anywhere you want, delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device.”

Xbox consoles in living-rooms and portable form-factors – delivering an Xbox experience not locked to a single store, or tied to one device.

In simple terms: Microsoft has just confirmed it’s building proprietary gaming PCs for your living rooms, and to take on the go, that will support your Xbox digital back catalogue – as well as games on stores like Steam, Epic, etc.

For the console-war afficionados reading – that means that with this next generation of hardware, you could hop onto Steam, Epic, or wherever and buy stuff previously locked away from the Xbox platform.

And yes – that includes games like The Last of Us, Spider-Man, the Horizon series, Uncharted, God of War and more – on an Xbox.

An actual one, that plays all your Xbox console games.

Effectively, Microsoft is drawing a line with Sony (and other publishers) by saying:

“You might not feel inclined to make games for our console users so, with our next generation of hardware we’re giving our customers access to that content whether you like it or not.”

Congratulations console warriors, it’s finally over. You made it through this imaginary conflict you’ve had with strangers on the internet for the past insert-embarrassing-length-of-time-here.

The days of Xbox being gate-kept from content only available on PC and PlayStation are actually coming to an end – putting this frustrating culture of list-warring on Twitter into (further) irrelevancy.

Pack up, go home, and wait about a year post-console release for the majority of PlayStation’s 1st-party offering to come to PC.

There will still be outliars, and I do fully expect Sony to keep putting the squeeze on PC players by continuing to gatekeep content – but the reality is this industry just doesn’t really like exclusivity anymore.

It’s becoming the exception, not the rule – unless you’re Nintendo, when apparently, you can do whatever the f*ck you like.

There’s ambiguity around whether or not something like Astro Bot could make its way to PC. I’m inclined to think it’s unlikely though.

Astro Bot is themed around PlayStation hardware and IP. The game makes so much sense when you’re playing with a DualSense, but I could see the illusion falling apart outside of PlayStation’s proprietary hardware.

Demon Souls is another one that hasn’t made its way off PS5, and that was a console-exclusive launch title.

We’ve seen that timed-exclusivity gap between Sony’s tentpole PC ports decrease over time. Lost Soul Aside is launching day-and-date on PC. Stellar Blade just hit PC and sold like crazy in China, and Marvel: Tokōn is also coming to PC Day One.

Like I said, exclusivity is becoming the exception – rather than the rule.

We should probably talk about what this all means for console users. As someone who was strictly only on console until very, very recently – I can understand there will be questions about what Xbox’s announcement means for you as a console-only player.

Earlier this year, I built a PC – and I want to talk about that in the context of it being an extension of my Xbox ecosystem. Because its ecosystem, honestly, is now my favourite thing about Xbox. And it has been for some time.

This blending of experiences across devices is brilliant. Lately, I’ve been absolutely obsessed with The Alters, which launched Day One on Game Pass.

I started playing it on PC, put it down for a few hours to go to some chores, walk the dog, spend time with Mrs. Deadly, etc – and then fired up my Xbox Series X, which resides in my living room.

Open up The Alters, my console syncs to the Cloud and boom – I’m right where I left off on PC.

Couple days later, I’m Cloud Streaming – same thing. Open the game I want to play, from where I last played it, and we’re good to go.

And this happens across every single title that is in Game Pass. It just works.

Xbox is promising more of that in future.

Xbox Play Anywhere is becoming the backbone of this future, having a huge presence throughout Xbox’s most recent showcase. On this next generation of hardware announced by Sarah Bond, I think you’ll be seeing a lot more Play Anywhere titles on the Xbox ecosystem.

That means a game playable on PC and Xbox Series Consoles without having to buy the same game twice. I don’t think this will end up being the rule, I think we’ll still see some games that insist on you buying them twice.

*coughs* GTA 6 *cough*

Excuse me.

But hopefully this again becomes an exception, rather than a rule.

Xbox is slowly but surely breaking down the last remaining boundaries of its walled garden by allowing its users to access more of the content they want in their preferred way.

Funnily enough, a PC in the living room was the dream for the original Xbox. It’s nice that, after all this time, Microsoft is actually in a position to align Windows and Xbox to drive something that gives Xbox users a seamless experience on both console and PC – leaving PlayStation to basically just be a walled garden of its own.

This Windows-based future for console hardware has already sent console discourse on social media into a dizzying spiral – with goalposts being moved by the more outspoken hardcore Xbox detractors at a rate of knots.

“It’s a PC!” “It’s not a console!”

The truth is – it’s kind of both PC and console.

Ultimately, a video games console by definition is just a computing device packaged up to play video games in a way that is portable, convenient and relatively affordable.

All video games consoles run some form of operating system and are made of the same, albeit proprietary components that make up what is now just modern mobile computing.

What Microsoft is laying out is a roadmap for console hardware with an overhauled OS.

After all, Xbox consoles currently run on a version of Windows. It’s pretty locked down, and doesn’t support games developed for Windows – but the next iteration of Xbox hardware and the version of OS built into those systems is going to do just that; on top of supporting current digital Xbox libraries, meaning both Xbox and PC users get all their content in one place.

We don’t know what the specifics will be, like how flexible your owned games library is on Cloud for example – but Xbox announcing that its next generation of consoles will not only play our entire Xbox back catalogue, but also games from other digital storefronts too is a truly fundamental shift in Xbox’s offering.

After experiencing that on PC, and back again on Xbox – I can’t wait to see where this goes.

For a long time now, Xbox has been trying to go beyond just console in order to give users freedom of choice.

I reflected on a memory recently, in the context of what Xbox offers me now compared to when it first started to try help users spread their wings.

About 10 years ago now, Mrs. Deadly moved down from where she grew up, to live with me at my Mum’s. At the time, I had an Xbox One in our bedroom. I had a MacBook Pro that I partitioned Windows onto in order to be able to do some sort of remote play downstairs while she slept in our room.

It was clunky, didn’t work, had a crazy amount of latency – and actually just made me regret the money I spent on getting that to work on my Mac in the first place.

Today, across the PC in my home office, the console in our living room, and the Fire TV stick in our bedroom, or just Bluetoothing a controller to a laptop with a web browser – I’m gaming via Game Pass.

It’s all become near enough seamless – with the exception of not truly being able to access my entire Xbox console library anywhere.

All I wanted back then was the ability to get the same experience as I could on my console but in more places, and that future, that horizon… is finally here.