The Xbox One’s Successor Is Likely To Release By 2018

The Xbox One launched last November but there are some of us that are already looking for signs of the next Xbox.  The Xbox One has been confirmed for a ten year lifespan, which means Microsoft is committed to supporting the console entirely with software updates and games during that period.  What a lot of less-informed fans and even professional writers/editors are assuming is that Microsoft won’t have another console to talk about until the end of that ten-year span.  But there are several facts that should be considered when looking at the release cycle for the Xbox going forward.

The Xbox One Is Already 3 Years Old – Don’t call me crazy, this is pretty accurate.  GDDR3 and your standard DDR3 memory have been widely available and affordable for a few years now.  While SDDR3 memory is still a go-to memory standard found in all low and high-budget machines, GDDR3 is only found in low-end graphics chips that typically retail for $60-$90 while GDDR5 is found in basically all mid-high level GPUs.  Microsoft’s Xbox One console doesn’t opt for the GDDR5 that Sony went for but instead went with GDDR3 with the eSRAM module that can handle a maximum of 32MB of data at a time.  Microsoft were likely trying to make the console as cheap as they could without drastically sacrificing performance so that they didn’t lose money on each console, something that could indicate that the company doesn’t intend to champion the Xbox One as the best you can get for a full ten years as graphics technologies will be extremely advanced well before 2020.

New Graphical Technologies Are Already Surfacing – Something called “tracing” is rearing its head in the graphics space and is a technology that greatly advances things like lighting effects in real time that currently would take a few Xbox Ones to power (or so we’ve been told).  This comes straight from the mouths of Microsoft’s software engineers who are trying to tie in these new graphics technologies into first-party games but have to get creative since the hardware currently isn’t quite up to snuff to outright run the games.  Platforms like DirectX 12 will boost the available resources of the Xbox One by bringing the software and hardware operations closer than ever before, but that doesn’t offer the kind of upgrade that would radically drive the Xbox One to the point where 1080p & 60FPS will be standard with every title regardless of complexity or size.  Even deactivating the Kinect sensor to open up an additional 10% power for the Xbox One’s GPU is only going to get the Xbox One to the point where more games can achieve 1080p.  In cases like Bungie’s upcoming Destiny game 1080p will likely be achieved yet the smoothness of 60 frames per second will be deducted to 30 to reduce stress on the graphics platform.  A reasonable trade off, but one that shows that the hardware is not up to snuff to hold out for another 9 1/2 years while greater technology comes rolling out.

Hardware Refreshes Are Practiced Company-Wide – Microsoft’s newly-acquired Nokia division that supports hardware like the Lumia brand are seeing product refreshes every year.  The same can be said about the Surface tablets, to which the Pro line of the tablet has already seen its third revision in under two years.  Just like all things hardware in the computing industry, Microsoft will likely move to a refresh cycle that brings in a new console well before the previous generation is retired from support.  Should that be the case, we’re probably talking a five-year release cycle.  Previously, this would be tougher to do since consoles seemingly danced between hardware configurations like x86 CPUs, PowerPC, cell processors, etc. that made it tougher to move onto new hardware without poaching your previous generation console since backwards compatibility could be tricky or non-existent at times.  Now, the Xbox One runs the same CPU base that the first Xbox ran on (x86) which is also the same core technology that AMD and Intel use in their desktop/laptop processors.  These are widely used and can be lower cost when purchased in bulk, which consoles hardware always is, making it easier to transition from generation to generation.

A five-year rolling console refresh would be the smartest way to proceed at this point if Microsoft wish to support their Xbox One console.  Five years is enough time for the product to come down in price without falling so far behind in technology that it becomes insulting to experience games on antiquated hardware.  Five years is a long time to go without refreshing your PC, why would gamers adopting consoles feel any better about it?  Games can be released on simultaneously on the Xbox One and its successor since they would run the same core technology and developers would merely scale back their graphical or processing detail to make sure the game runs tight on the One while its successor would be able to allow gamers to enjoy the technology that game companies are actively rolling out.

The Xbox 360 to Xbox One hardware jump was minor compared to what we got when we went from the Xbox to the Xbox 360.  The One offers roughly 8x more power than the 360 does but it comes eight years after the 360.  Microsoft opted to run this hardware because they wanted to run with the One and the Kinect in the same box and likely accepted slightly lesser hardware as a result.  Had Microsoft decided to omit the Kinect from the same package from the get-go then perhaps Microsoft could have opted to run a $449 package with stronger hardware, but that wouldn’t be as necessary if they intend to update the hardware well before that ten-year support period ends for the Xbox One, which should be expected without hesitation since the 360 is still being supported until the end of 2015 (most likely).  With gaming already on the verge of pushing to 4K resolutions with games like Star Citizen, the Xbox One, Wii U and PlayStation 4 all stand to look pretty weak by 2015 or 2016.  Games like Halo 5: Guardians will likely keep gamers satisfied with the performance of the XB1 into 2016, but because we’re using x86 architecture instead of PowerPC, there’s a good chance that developers will learn how to squeeze every ounce of power out of the console much quicker than they did with the 360.

 

Seven Ways The Xbox One Can Improve Within 3 Years

If you’re like me, you enjoy your game console very much and use it quite religiously.  Microsoft’s Xbox One is the game console I personally chose because of how flexible it is as a console compared to the PlayStation 4.  Let Sony rant all they want about how gamers come first, but if you haven’t noticed the dead dear in the back of your van that is the consolidation of electronic products, the PlayStation 4 sits in the past whereas the Xbox One places an obvious bet on the future.  That’s not to say that the PlayStation 4 is an absolute failure of a product.  In fact Sony does get some things right with their new console, but the lack of vision and media capabilities make the PlayStation 4 stale for anyone that might even consider doing more than playing Killzone.  Still, consoles can sometimes overcome some of their own hurdles.  The Xbox One had a great launch and, while Sony’s PS4 currently leads sales, the Xbox One has had fewer overall hiccups and launched with a lot more in the software section.  That doesn’t mean the Xbox One is perfect though, and here’s what Microsoft can do to brighten the current and potential customer views.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize – The Xbox 360 went crazy mid-life because of two things: Kinect and software support.  The Xbox 360 went through several iterations and transformations before reaching its fantastic finalized state that is the Xbox 360 Dashboard.  It was perfect for using your controller or voice commands.  On top of that, the operating system’s improvements, or optimization as you might call it, helped make the system somewhat faster overall.  Microsoft is definitely working on this, but it’s important to continue to work on it through the years.  Making the Xbox One’s operating system (or systems, seeing how it uses 2 unique OS installs that has a third to tie them together perfectly) lighter, more responsive, and better organized will help current owners celebrate their consoles as well as entice new owners to choose it.  After all, it is a multimedia powerhouse compared to something like an Apple TV or Roku, and making it simple to use and easy to find all the wonderful things it has to offer only increases the chances of netting more purchases from gamers and media enthusiasts.

Games, Games, Games – This one is pretty straight forward, too.  Games drive a games console, and while Microsoft made a big hoopla about media capabilities, it also recognizes the need for the best of the best for titles from both first and third party developers.  Games like the coming TitanFall and Halo 5 are unique to Xbox One (and PC, in TitanFall’s case), but what about others?  We know other new entries into the AAA gaming sphere are in the works, including the super cool idea that is Quantum Break.  But what else is coming?  We can’t know what we’ll be playing in 2-3 years, at least not likely, but Microsoft need to make sure they’re spacing their games out perfectly throughout each calendar year.  The holidays is an obvious choice for launching big games to get the best sales, but it’s also important to realize that gamers play all year, and many of them will save/spend the money to get the best that money can buy.  Using scientific ideas like the ripple effect, Microsoft could drop big-budget titles throughout the year and reinforce their games library steadily, instead of dropping big titles with a few months of each other.  This creates the notion that Xbox is a better game release platform if Sony can’t stay in stride, because you’ll always be hearing about some big title that just launched or is launching in 3 or 4 months.  Knowing that something like Halo 5 is launching, followed by Quantum Break 4 months later, and then a new Gears of War entry another 3-4 months after that will greatly benefit the platform.  You as a gamer get a steady stream of excellent games to play that are unique to the platform.  If you ever have gaps, there’s always blockbuster 3rd party titles like Battlefield, FIFA, Call of Duty, etc. to keep you going if those exclusives don’t last you several months.  To close this segment off, there’s the quality of games.  Introducing a Call of Duty clone would be disastrous.  People want to play something new, fun, and unique.  Taking inspiration is definitely fine, but giving a game its own identity is crucial as is delivering an excellent experience all around.  Ryse is a great example of a game that was good but was shorted critically because, while it was fun to play, it didn’t seem like they took it all the way.  Microsoft: build your games out and think big!  We gamers don’t mind waiting an extra couple of months if that’s what it takes to experience something incredible.  Hitting certain milestones on a calendar can prohibit a game from being excellent, something that the old Windows head Steve Sinofsky reportedly did that pissed off developers and killed some cool ideas that would have made their way into Windows.

Actually Get Social – Improve your social aspects.  Finding friends and talking to them can be a huge pain.  Skype is perhaps the most consistent social experience on the Xbox One, and it’s a great addition to the platform, but other aspects like simple in-game voice chatting and invitations to join games can be cumbersome or fail to work at all.  These little things pester gamers and can take away from a good experience.  Heck, just last night while playing Call of Duty: Ghosts my friends and I went through a period of several minutes where I couldn’t hear them or they couldn’t hear me.  Every once in a while, the cycle would repeat, making it hard to have conversations or communicate on what’s happening in-game.  The devil is in the details, and the details need to work as intended.  The Xbox One could use some improved social features and also include Twitter and Facebook integrations that the Xbox 360 had so we can interface with our friends without having to use the Internet Explorer app.  Yes, IE11 on Xbox One is surprisingly good almost all of the time, but it isn’t streamlined and most of us don’t always feel like reaching for a smartphone to type stuff in.  Having a Facebook feed that utilizes something like a notification could be benefit.  A little blue bar pops up and says something like “James Maddison commented on your status update” could be a great way to use the power of push-notifications, to which if you hold the Xbox Button down, as you would with an achievement or party invite, you’ll maybe bring up a snapped version of the Facebook app.  Many of us like to be social and know what’s going on with our friends all around the world.  Food for thought.

Partnerships That Matter, Partnerships That Deliver – Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL is a great example of how far the Xbox has come and the pull it has in big industries like the NFL, MLS, and more.  Having apps like ESPN and NFL on the Xbox One is quite awesome, but there’s a bit of a problem with them.  I put in a TV provider, Comcast/Xfinity, into my Xbox and ESPN allowed me to see their live programing across several of their channels.  When I tried to do the same with NFL, I couldn’t watch any live programming from the channel nor was I able to enjoy something like Thursday Night Football or get any access to live games on Sunday.  I understand you maybe can’t have it all, but when you spend millions upon millions of dollars to drop in a partnership with an organization as big as the NFL, please deliver something more than just a highlights channel and don’t cut us off at the knees and prevent us from watching more content through our Xbox One just because we don’t have one of the four available partnered service providers.  It’s tacky and annoying.  People like watching sports, it’s no secret.  Buying a subscription to MLB.com ports over to your Xbox 360, and likely will port over to your Xbox One when the app is launched (assuming it will be).  It’s not drastically expensive and you can watch live games or games on demand.  It’s an excellent service.  Why can’t we do the same for the NFL or MLS?  Heck, Microsoft directly sponsors the Seattle Sounders FC and the Seattle Seahawks (Bring has a HUGE patch on the practice jerseys of the Seahawks), and Microsoft’s Xbox, Surface and Windows ads are all over NFL and MLS games.  So, like the other mainstream sports, can we please have access to games live?  Working out a deal with the NFL where a user can pay $25 a season to watch their team live or on-demand through their Xbox One/Xbox Live would be hugely helpful.  A lot of people can’t afford cable/satellite or opt not to because it’s a bad investment for how much they actually use it.  The organizations get more cash, people get what they want, and the Xbox gets more use – everybody wins in this scenario.  Oh, and why hasn’t the Xbox One allowed DirecTV integration yet?  It’s only the largest satellite TV provider in the United States by a country mile and often has more network-based perks than cable (though cable networks like Xfinity seem to offer better On-Demand services).  Lets get this tidied up, shall we?

Easy Access To Cooperative/Competitive Game Leagues – MLG is a great gaming league that holds perhaps the largest gaming competitions anywhere in the world.  MLG supports the likes of Call of Duty, Halo, and more when doing competitions.  Perhaps Xbox Live can introduce some tournament style tie-ins to Halo 5 or TitanFall that would let you and your friends sign up for a scheduled tournament that has prizes for the best performers and multiple tiers of skill levels so that not just the elite can enjoy all of the spoils.  I mean, I’m pretty good at Call of Duty and Battlefield, but I’m not the best.  But taking 5 other friends with me to an online Ghosts tournament would be pretty fun.  Set up single or double elimination brackets.  Schedule the time for which the tournament matches will be played and get everyone into the match.  This may take some work as not all games include spectator modes or easy game lobby setups, but it can be done and it might be beneficial for Microsoft to implement something like this in all of their exclusive games as well as approach certain other developers on titles that would have a competitive appeal to gamers.  If your team doesn’t show up to the slotted time, auto-win for the other team.  Whatever – it’s the Xbox team’s job to figure this stuff out if they try to implement it.

Console Expansion Pack – Who remembers the glorious N64 console?  Anyone?  Yeah, you do.  Playing Super Mario World 64, Mario Kart 64, and Goldeneye was all I wanted to do in junior high/high school – at least, until Halo: Combat Evolved came out.  Those games were excellent, yes, but something interesting happened mid-life of the N64.  Perfect Dark was launched, and with it the option to plug in a cartridge, something that may have intentionally been designed to be upgradable, to allow for more graphically-intense games to be played on the console.  This replacement module took the 64-bit graphics card out of the N64 and replaced it with a then-whopping 128-bit card.  It made the new 3D games stand out a bit more and allowed for greater graphical density and lighting effects.  Back then, it was the bee’s knees, and it was simple to implement.  The Xbox One doesn’t seem like a console that has removable parts outside of its hard drive, which isn’t sanctioned by the manufacturer but is definitely possible if you should want to upgrade your hard drive to a 1TB option or a solid state drive (though it’s not exactly a huge performance boost, maybe 20-25% at best as it stands).  The Xbox One, however, could evolve like its predecessor, where Microsoft launched a total of 2 hardware revisions after the first-generation 360 was launched.  This included the Xbox 360 S (Slim) and Xbox 360 E, which made its way onto store shelves in the summer of 2013.  The S and E models actually opted for improved processors.  You wouldn’t necessarily notice it with games, but navigating the operating system and using certain applications seemed smoother and more responsive.  The Xbox One should definitely go this route as its using the x86 AMD-produced processors to power the console.

However, offering graphical upgrades could be an excellent and inexpensive way to keep your system graphically fresh without making owners antsy for something new.  After all, we’re old the One is expected to be a 10 year console.  This doesn’t mean that the next Xbox will have to wait 10 years.  Look at how bad the graphical content was on the 360 and PS3 compared to their PC counterparts just before these new generation of consoles were released (Tomb Raiders re-release on January 28, 2014 is a good indicator of the jump you get just from upgrading your hardware, and it could be even better).  Side-by-side comparisons of games like Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 vs Battlefield 3 on PC were gigantic.  Heck, previous-gen consoles maxed out at 720p resolution with medium detail and a 24 player cap.  At that time, a $700 PC could play Battlefield 3 with 64 players, Ultra detail settings, and 1080p resolutions.  Those same PCs can do that with Battlefield 4 (That’s how mine transitioned with a $200 Radeon 7870 GHz Edition from ASUS graphics card and a 3rd gen i5 processor – runs at a near-constant 60FPS @ Ultra detail and 1080p), and the games are absolutely gorgeous.  Don’t get me wrong, games on the Xbox One like Ryse and Forza 5 are sharp and the games coming out should look even better, but in 3 years the graphics industry in gaming could have twice the amount of detail in the best games that we see today, and having to sacrifice those visuals and experiences for 6-10 years (when another console could come out) seems kinda silly.  If you’re going to make us wait another 8 years or so, then make your machine upgradable.  Software improvements will help add some extra headroom with your launch console, but maybe adding a slot for a companion GPU to run alongside the APU would be a great way for owners to pay $99 and push the graphics capabilities of the Xbox even further.

This can be done MUCH EASIER than on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.  The reason is the new hardware, which put both the XB1 and PS4 back onto PC-based tech and why AMD makes the chipset, not IBM or some cellphone-based CPU manufacturer.  Adding a GPU would essentially put the console into a state similar to AMD’s Crossfire or Nvidia’s SLI mode, where the added GPU supports the APU, currently inside both the PS4 and XB1, and give you perhaps 50-100% more power.  It would all depend on the part you added in, but believe me this is definitely possible.  Will it happen?  Maybe not, but Microsoft should be looking into ways to do this.  On the developer side of things, they could implement a switch tool that would scan the hardware and see what resources are available and make the game run at a higher or lower detail set based on what you have in it.  Sound difficult?  It shouldn’t.  Your PC games have been doing this for decades.  Those game developers scale their games for 720p, 900p, 1080p, 1440p, and everything in between those resolutions and everything above, like 4K.  You can even determine how high or low you set the graphical detail in game, turning up lighting effects or turning down spell casting effect and choosing whether you want to run heavier or lighter anti-aliasing effects to make the game look more/less smoother to improve the look of the game or improve the consistently of your frame rate (everyone aims to run at a sustained 60 frames per second performance level).  Even more interesting is the fact that game developers already build their console titles to look incredibly beautiful from the get-go and scale it back until they get visual settings that let the game run smoothly and look best where they think it’s most important to look best.  So if developers are already doing this, making two different visual settings to account for a base Xbox One console and an upgraded Xbox One system would seem to be pretty straight forward.  Your existing Xbox One console likely isn’t capable of this because of the design, but perhaps a second-gen Xbox One that could come out in 2-3 years could offer a slot internally that could fit a small dedicated GPU with some extra graphics oomph.  Even just another 50% power could make for a noticeable improvement, because these consoles are pretty mighty as-is.  Graphics aren’t everything, but they are what we see and we like beautiful things.  This is a pretty sizable way to increase the legitimacy of your product without having to fully launch a new one.  If anyone from Microsoft’s Xbox division is reading this, just think about it.  Please?

Quick Patch and Upgrade Cycles – The old yearly Xbox 360 dashboard update was nice, but perhaps it’s better to not hold back all of your cool updates.  Now that the Xbox One features a low-power state that can allow it to download updates and fixes while you’re not playing or using the console, pushing for a quarterly update cycle would seem more prudent.  Address little things like disc read errors or glitchy chat features in a timely manner.  If you have it ready today, why wait several months to push it out?  Making your system better bit by bit has several advantages and resolves frustrations with the XB1 console owners quicker.  Otherwise it’s like waiting to fix the terrible spawning system in Call of Duty: Ghosts until the next game comes out.  Why wait?  Make this happen now and people might actually continue to play your game instead of getting so mad about something they quit playing and advocating for your product altogether.

Well, after all of that, I think it’s time to wrap this all up.  Feel free to add comments or your own ideas if you’d like.  After all, Microsoft says they listen to their users.  Gathering ideas and publishing them publicly is a great way to let them know what they can do to please their followers and rope in new customers.