Insider Shares New Details About Next-Gen Xbox Console
The next-gen Xbox will reportedly be a PC with a “TV-friendly shell.”
The next-generation Xbox console will be a TV-friendly PC, a well-known Microsoft insider has said. The claim suggests that the Xbox Series X/S successor will mark a significant shift in Microsoft’s gaming hardware approach.
Rumors about the next-generation Xbox console have been circulating online since the early 2020s. Microsoft itself started teasing its upcoming hardware in 2024, when its top executives pledged that the next Xbox will aim to deliver the “largest technical leap” ever made in a single console generation.
While details on the upcoming system remain scarce, some unofficial information has now been shared by Windows Central’s Jez Corden. Speaking during an early March 2025 episode of The Xbox Two Podcast (via TheGamer), the long-time Microsoft insider characterized the upcoming Xbox console as “a PC in essence, but with a TV-friendly shell.” The Series X and Series S are already architecturally similar to a PC, on account of using AMD’s APUs with Zen 2 CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs. However, Microsoft is now supposedly planning to bring its consoles even closer to PCs by using an OS that’s much more similar to vanilla Windows.
Next-Gen Xbox Console Games Could Be Straightforward to Develop
By turning its next console into a TV-friendly PC, Microsoft could greatly simplify its game development requirements. Instead of learning unique APIs and hardware quirks, developers would essentially be creating PC games while still targeting fixed hardware requirements, making optimization much easier than for PC. This shift in hardware approach would also allow Microsoft to delay or even skip the devkit phase. As Corden explains it, recent rumors about a next-gen Xbox devkit being in circulation are “not accurate” because the PC-centric concept of the upcoming console generation means all developers really need is a list of hardware specs to target—at least for the time being.
Next-Gen Xbox Console Possibly Coming in 2027
Elsewhere during the podcast, Corden reiterated his previous prediction that the next Xbox generation could materialize as early as 2027. In November 2024, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that the company was also working on a handheld device, but hadn’t yet made it past the prototype stage at the time. It’s hence unclear whether the handheld device will be part of the next Xbox generation, assuming it’s even meant to be a full-fledged console rather than just something like a streaming gadget in the vein of the PlayStation Portal.
Between Microsoft’s decision to embrace multi-platform game publishing and its declining Xbox hardware revenue, it remains to be seen whether the next generation of its consoles will be able to find anything beyond a niche following. As of late 2024, the PS5 has been outselling the Xbox Series X/S three-to-one, and Microsoft’s pivot away from permanent first-party exclusives likely won’t help reverse that trend.
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