Xbox announced a multi-year agreement with AMD to provide the processors “across a portfolio of devices, including our next-generation Xbox consoles.”
The video announcement by Xbox President Sarah Bond should assuage speculation that Xbox will stop making consoles now that they are releasing first-party games on competing platforms. The next-gen Xbox consoles, plural, are real.
And that’s not all. The partnership announcement also made mention of not just a console, but an entire portfolio of Xbox devices. We just seen the announcement of the ROG Xbox Ally, a handheld gaming PC with a full-screen Xbox overlay. And this could be the green team hinting that a proper handheld Xbox, which has been rumoured, might be real. Or it could just be hinting of more handheld PC similar to the Xbox Ally releasing down the line.
The announcement also mention how this partnership also to “maintain compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.” In other words, backwards compatibility will be support on the next-gen Xbox. Custom AMD chips were used to power the Xbox Series consoles.
The announcement ends with a statement of Xbox’s current vision: “delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device.” Xbox playing nicely on PC by releasing first-party games on competing stores like Steam, as well as having games ported to PS5 and Switch, are just part of the new plan, which see the old Xbox Play Anywhere feature, where a purchase of one game on Xbox also allows the player access to the game on PC (via the Xbox app/Microsoft Store) and cloud streaming, at the forefront again.
The current 9th generation of consoles cycle began in late 2020 with the release of the Xbox Series X, the Xbox Series S and the PS5. We’re now essentially mid-way through the console generation, as PlayStation has released its mid-gen upgrade of the PS5, the PS5 Pro, and Nintendo finally releasing their next-generation console, the Nintendo Switch 2.