Massive leak reveals next-gen Xbox could be a cloud-hybrid console, Series X|S refresh...

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? A leaked court document has seemingly revealed Microsoft's plans for future Xbox consoles. First off, the company is working on hybrid machines that it says would leverage the "combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences." The document also claims that the console will be optimized for real-time gameplay and creators, and will offer enhanced capabilities beyond what the client hardware can offer.

Curiously, Microsoft is considering moving away from AMD (Zen 6) and looking at Arm for the CPU of its next-gen game console. Depending on the company's decision, the GPU will either be co-designed with AMD (Navi 5) or license AMD IP (Navi 5). Some of the features of the new console could include next-gen Raytracing, Dynamic Global Illumination, Micropolygon Rendering Optimizations, ML-based Super Resolution, and more. The documents also reveal that the 10th-gen Xbox consoles could launch in 2028.

While the next-gen Xbox consoles are still some way away, Microsoft is prepping to launch a redesigned Xbox Series X (codenamed Brooklyn) next year with new features. The new console is expected to come without a disc drive and could have 2TB of storage and a powered USB-C port in the front.

The document accessed by The Verge also reveals other aspects of the device, including Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. The device could also be more power efficient, as the PSU will have 15 percent lower capacity than the existing model. It could have the same $499 MSRP as the current Xbox Series X, and is expected to launch in October-November, 2024.

Alongside the new Xbox Series X, Microsoft is also working on a refreshed Xbox Series S (codenamed Ellewood) with 1TB of storage, and a targeted launch timeframe in August-September, 2024. In addition, the document also suggests that 'Edith,' possibly a codename for the existing Xbox Series S, will be discounted to $199 for Black Friday before being discontinued. The company is also planning to end-of-life 'Starkville' before the Brooklyn launch, but it's not immediately clear what that device might be.

A leaked render suggests that the new console could be more cylindrical than the existing model, and it will also have an accompanying controller (codenamed 'Sebile') with a built-in accelerometer, cloud support, Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and 'Xbox Wireless 2' connection. Other features include a rechargeable and removable battery, modular thumbsticks, and a lift-to-wake function.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100200-massive-leak-reveals-next-gen-xbox-could-cloud.html

 

[brucek]

Gaming on the cloud track record to date has been more bad than good in my opinion. I'm not excited to hear more weight being placed on it. And were it to go from being niche to mainstream, I'm not sure infrastructure would be ready to keep up even at today's not always ideal levels.

 

[SirDigby]

Moving to ARM will be a bit of a pain, but if it means they can save money on the CPU and put more into the GPU then that may be worthwhile?
Just acutely aware that PS3 architecture was not beloved by devs, so moving to a new architecture will just be another hurdle to porting (and bad ports are already all too common despite current gen consoles being very similar to eachother and PCs).

 

[kira setsu]

Going to arm seems stupid, pc games are pretty much bolted to xbox now, I see a future of terrible ports in the future.

the current ports were getting are actually quite good imo, the problem if there is one is that the consoles are actually good now spec wise and you have to upgrade your hardware on the pc side if your goal is high res/fps gaming.

 

[DeLoreanQC]

Awesome that nobody want to ask why the ftc leaked the documents...nothing to do with the activision problem....

 

[neeyik]

An interesting little snippet from the leak is in the graphics innovation part: ML Based Super Resolution. Whether that refers to Microsoft's DirectML Super Resolution, a feature of RDNA 4/5, or something that would be planned by the Microsoft-AMD GPU co-design obviously isn't clear, but it does show that MS wants to move towards CANN-based upscalers, rather than using FSR-type ones.

 

[m4a4]

That console and the new xbox controller renders are ugly.
Why wouldn't you want to keep the simple "box" shape lol

 

[Shaitan]

Yeah, no disk, no buy, thanks.

 

[Bamda]

I see this product failing big time.

 

[gamerk2]

"combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences."

They said the same about the XB1; problem is (again), if your latency is 32ms and you are targeting 60 FPS gameplay, you will automatically have a 2-frame latency just on transfer between the client and the cloud, before factoring in any processing the cloud is required to perform.

So I'll call BS now just as much as I did then.

 

[gamerk2]

Going to arm seems stupid, pc games are pretty much bolted to xbox now, I see a future of terrible ports in the future.

the current ports were getting are actually quite good imo, the problem if there is one is that the consoles are actually good now spec wise and you have to upgrade your hardware on the pc side if your goal is high res/fps gaming.

To be fair, almost no one does "cute" CPU optimizations anymore except in very specific circumstances. I've supported projects that run on multiple platforms; its not that hard in this day and age.

Now, if you make a ton of assumptions about the HW, liberally drop in CPU opcodes everywhere, or otherwise try and be smarter then your compiler, then yes, you'll run into problems. Otherwise, the CPU host architecture, aside from some endianness/byte swapping you need to handle, really doesn't matter (and it's not hard to deal with those issues in this day and age).

 

[McMurdeR]

Moving away from x86 has implications for backwards compatibility with current and last gen titles, and could frustrate developers. This might explain the 'hybrid-cloud' aspect, but that aspect is worrying for a number of reasons. Cloud gaming still isn't proven. MS ought to have learned very hard lessons from throwing their weight behind gimmicks, which is precisely what hobbled their last gen from the start, and they've been playing catch-up ever since.

I'm disappointed there isn't a price drop on the current gen refresh, especially for the S varient - that leaves an open goal for Sony, a PS5 price drop could render them irrelevant overnight.