Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently sat down with IGN to discuss why Xbox fans will not be seeing a more powerful version of the Xbox Series X or Series S any time soon. According to Spencer, Microsoft isn’t focused on any new hardware right now because the current consoles still have plenty of power that developers apparently haven’t fully tapped into yet, while in a separate interview with Eurogamer, Spencer warned that releasing too many consoles would make Xbox too much like PC. Spencer’s comments come amid rumors of Sony launching a PlayStation 5 Pro in the relatively near future.
“No, no. We’re focused right now on the increased storage Xbox Series S,” Spencer told IGN when asked about whether he had any news about a mid-generation refresh for Xbox Series X/S. “But no, like I said, we’re kind of at the end of the beginning in my mind. So I think we need to let devs settle on this hardware and get the most out of it.”
“But in terms of increased frame rate and increased resolution, I just look at what goes on on PC with high-end GPUs and high-end CPU, and it’s not always just about pixel count or frame resolution. I think there’s lighting techniques. There’s a bunch of things that go into what makes a game look and feel great. And we have a ton of headroom as an industry there.”
I think what we get ourselves into is this world of like, ‘Should we do a mid-gen refresh? Because we think every game should be 4K 60fps. And we’re not seeing that right now so, clearly, we need to mid-gen refresh.’ As soon as you start doing mid-gen refreshes, you’ve got a bunch of issues in front of developers, on what platform they target. And it starts to feel a lot more like PC – which is clearly a good ecosystem that’s healthy, but then I’m like, ‘Okay, well, what’s the difference then between console and PC, if we’re in this mode of every two years, a new GPU comes out, or CPU?’ And there’s a bunch of things. I mean, we are the Windows company. We know what it means to run a platform that’s more continuous and, I will say, open. I actually love that for console gaming. I love having Discord on our platform, which is something 10 years ago, Xbox would have been like, ‘no way!’