Xbox wrapped up its summer games showcase with the announcement of a new digital Xbox Series X along with new color options, as introduced by Xbox president Sarah Bond. But Bond also took the opportunity to publicly reaffirm that the company is planning to remain in the console race.
“It’s our mission to make Xbox the best place for you to play–by including the titles from our own studios in Game Pass at launch, by bringing your games into the future with our commitment to game preservation, by pushing the technical boundaries in our future hardware, and empowering you to play your games anywhere you want on Xbox consoles, PC, and cloud,” Bond said near the end of the presentation. “This is what defines Xbox today and in the future, and we’re hard at work on the next generation.”
While the comment was relatively standard for a console manufacturer, Xbox has been dogged by questions about its future business model recently. It heavily committed to high-value acquisitions like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, and Phil Spencer has publicly commented that Xbox lost the race against the PS4 in the last generation, which was a crucial period when a lot of gamers were first building their digital libraries. Meanwhile, Xbox has recently begun putting more of its games on competing hardware like PS5.
All of this, combined with a spate of studio closures, has led to a sense of uncertainty around how Xbox plans to move into the future. And while leaked emails had previously stated that Xbox was working on next-gen hardware, it’s different for Bond to have emphatically stated it as part of its biggest public presentation of the year, and to reference pushing technical boundaries in future hardware. The company has now put a stake in the ground for the next generation, so we can expect at least one more generation of Xbox.
For more, check out all the biggest announcements from the Xbox games showcase.
