Mid life revisions for home consoles aren’t exactly new. They’ve been a thing going as far back as the Atari 2600; indeed, revisions in the middle of a console’s life allow hardware makers to refresh their manufacturing process, possibly selling their system at a higher margin, while also injecting some life into possibly sagging sales. And, on rarer occasions, a revision also allows manufacturers to have some re-branding for their system, and possibly change perceptions regarding their hardware.
Given all of this, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that speculation has already started that Microsoft may be working on a revised Xbox One console. And all of this comes from one single LinkedIn listing for one Daniel McDonnell, who’s a senior manager at AMD and worked for the chipsets of the new consoles.
The listing says “Successfully planned and executed the first APU for Microsoft’s XBOX One Game Console in 28nm technology and a cost-reduced derivative in 20nm technology” and “Assembled and grew two cross-site execution teams for 2 successive XBOX APU revisions. This included developing key technical leads into senior positions allowing for successful execution and future team expansion to handle more SOCs.”
Which, upon very little thought, seems to imply that a cheaper Xbox One console has possibly already started development, one that will change the manufacturing process by moving to a 20nm process, that could lead to a slimmer, smaller overall form factor.
Personally, I’d be excited to see what the revision looks like, especially given how good the Xbox 360 S was to the original, ungainly Xbox 360.