Microsoft and Sony will introduce the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 later this year. While their hardware enhancements are difficult to argue with, they’re arriving in an unprecedented era of media usage: Netflix on iPhones, Kindle on tablets, Spotify on PC, all three interchangeable on each piece of hardware. As videogames follow that exact same path, the primacy of the specced-out console itself appears progressively in doubt.
After all, tweens who play Fortnite currently understand that everything can be a console It’s a vision Xbox itself is promoting. Yet at the dawn of a brand-new age of consoles, it’s hard not to question whether these mega-powerful boxes we plant in our living rooms will even exist in 10 years. In spite of its enormous push for the Xbox Series X, Microsoft is hedging its bets that a decade from now more and more gamers will be taking a “no gods, no masters” technique to where and how they play. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, thinks whether consoles will exist in 10 years is the wrong question to ask.
” In the long run, to me, it’s a concern about the viability of the television,” stated Spencer recently in an interview with WIRED. “There’s this calculus, this chess match we’re playing,” states Spencer. “It’s no longer checkers.”
Spencer’s chess match isn’t versus Sony or Nintendo; it’s against the ever-changing patterns in how 2 billion gamers worldwide take in media. When the Xbox Series X gets here in stores later this year, it will end up being a part of Xbox’s chimera technique– alongside its cloud video gaming service, Job xCloud, and Xbox Play Anywhere— to catch players any place they are. With xCloud, you’ll pay a currently undefined subscription to stream AAA games onto your mobile phone and tablet. With Xbox Play Anywhere, you can purchase, say, Forza Horizon 4 and play it on both Xbox One and Windows 10 on PC.
” We’re going to be focusing on the gamer and the gadgets that they have that fit in their way of life,” states Spencer.
When the Xbox Series X launches, it will be the console maker’s most powerful game machine yet For spec fetishists, it’s got a customized processor that’s 4 times more effective than the Xbox One’s. It will support approximately 120 frames per 2nd, and its GPU can