While there have been quite a few questions about the future of Xbox at Microsoft as a whole, especially in light of the company’s attempts at turning more of a profit from the division with its recent pricing decisions, Xbox president Sarah Bond has said that the company still want to make more things. In an interview with Variety, Bond spoke about the future of Xbox, next-generation console hardware, and how the company wants to continue making things.
“We are 100% looking at making things in the future,” said Bond. “We have our next-gen hardware in development. We’ve been looking at prototyping, designing. We have a partnership we’ve announced with AMD around it, so that is coming. What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and to bring gamers another choice, in addition to our next-gen hardware. We are always listening to what players and creators want. When there is demand for innovation, we’re going to build it.”
Since the interview was primarily about the recently-launched Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handheld gaming systems, Bond also mentioned that Microsoft is working on bringing in more improvements to the two devices through software updates. Since both of the Xbox Ally handhelds run on Windows 11, the company can simply push out updates that bring in bespoke features if it wants. Among these upgrades, Bond noted, will be further optimization of the handheld experience, as well as expansions to Xbox’s Handheld Compatibility program.
“There’s a ton more innovation to come, including things like further optimizing the experience here, scaling out the handheld compatibility program, offering more benefits and improvements to the experience and other features and adds that we’re going to give to people and more choices and more games,” she explained.
Interestingly, Bond, along with Xbox Devices partner head of design Carl Ledbetter recently provided Good Morning America a tour of its Microsoft Building 87, where they also showed off the part of the building where the next-gen Xbox was being built. While we didn’t get to see too much of that part of the building, with Bond noting that it is “top secret”, the fact that the company is willing to talk about it at all bodes well for its next-generation Xbox.
“This is where the team is actually designing, prototyping and testing for the next generation of Xbox,” said Bond about that part of the building. “It is top secret. So we very, very rarely take people in here.”
While the next-generation console hasn’t yet been officially unveiled, the fact that Microsoft has been working on it is something of an open secret in the industry. A recent report, for instance, has indicated that the company was in talks with its partners with an eye at launching the next Xbox some time in 2027. The console is expected to be powered of an AMD APU, codenamed Magnus, which will be capable of quite a bit of horsepower, especially when compared to current-gen consoles.
