Courtesy of the FTC, a load of confidential Microsoft slides are no longer…well, confidential. These slides detail the future of the Xbox console, including mid-gen refreshes, as well as the next-gen console. We’ll jump straight to the next-gen Xbox console, which is said to be a “hybrid game platform” capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences.
The next-gen Xbox console will be a drastic upgrade over the existing Series X|S consoles. As is the trend in the PC space, it’ll leverage a hybrid Zen 6 CPU with a mix of performance “big” and efficiency “little” cores. A hybrid core CPU for a console is only fitting as the power ceiling is much lower than a high-end PC.
On the GPU side, we’re looking at an RDNA 5 (Navi 5) GPU “co-designed with AMD” or developed using an AMD Navi 5 license. This is where it gets interesting. Like many next-gen processors, including Intel’s 14th Gen Meteor Lake processors, this Xbox console will feature an NPU unit for accelerating machine learning instructions, most notably AI-based upscaling. Microsoft has certainly taken note of NVIDIA’s DLSS superiority.
The next-gen Xbox console will leverage “next-gen DirectX Raytracing”, “Dynamic Global Illumination”, Micropolygon Rendering Optimizations”, “ML Based Super Resolution“, etc. All these technologies are already available on existing PC APIs, so a console version 5 years from now isn’t hard to fathom.
Coming to the mid-season refreshes, we’ve got a Series X as well as a Series S Refresh planned for FY2025 (2024). “Brooklyn“, the successor to the former, will feature a cylindrical design. It’ll be fully digital, delivering 4K gaming performance with higher storage capacity, support for WiFi 6E, USB Type-C, increased efficiency (node shrink to 6nm/N6), and a price point of $499.
The Series S Refresh “Ellewood” will retain the slim, rectangular design of the Series S with storage beefed up to 1 TB, an improved controller, and upgraded connectivity (WiFi 6E, BT 5.2), all at the same price of $299. The Series S Refresh will be released ahead of the Series X Refresh in late summer 2024.
