Report: Microsoft to Release More Powerful Xbox One in 2017, Xbox One Slim in 2016

A couple of months ago Microsoft's Phil Spencerannounced that the company was considering a new strategic direction for the company's Xbox gaming platform: Instead of releasing a new console once every 5-10 years, Microsoft might start following the smartphone model and "decouple" the Xbox One's hardware from its software systems and introduce upgraded versions of the console on a regular basis. Now, a report from Kotaku's Keza MacDonald and Jason Schreier has confirmed this strategy and offered some more information on the future of the Xbox One.

The big news is a new model of the Xbox One that will include a more powerful GPU and the technical capability to support the Oculus Rift. According to three sources independently confirmed by Kotaku, this console is currently codenamed "Scorpio" and it should launch sometime in 2017. The report also indicates that Microsoft will continue to release regular incremental upgrades similar to Apple's iPhone and iPad release schedule.

In less dramatic news, Kotaku's also reports that Microsoft will be releasing a slimmed-down and less expensive hardware revision of the current Xbox One later this year. According to sources, that unit may feature a larger, 2TB hard drive and should be revealed at Microsoft's E3 press conference in June.

This strategy is part of what sources say is called "Project Helix," Microsoft plan to bring together the Xbox and Windows platforms closer together. This is in line with what the company has already announced about the move towards increased connectivity and game parity between the Xbox One and the PC, which was also outlined during Spencer's talk back in February. Sources describe a "new mandate" to release future games (including new games in the Halo series) across both platforms--though it's unclear if this mandate is only for first-party games and exclusives, or if this pressure is also being put on third-party publishers and developers.

I'm curious to see if Microsoft will address this report either in the coming days or at E3. Everything here is philosophically in line with what Spencer told the press a few months ago, so it could be that the company is ready to pitch the public this new vision soon, too. On the other hand, as a potential Xbox One buyer, the knowledge of the "Scorpio" model makes me want to hold off on the Xbox One slim--and I'd wager that I'm not alone in that. Now that this info is out there, it makes the current Xbox One hardware a pretty tough sell, even if it is a cheaper and lighter-weight unit.

We'll find out how (or if) the company speaks about these initiatives in less than three weeks--Microsoft's Xbox briefing is on June 13th at 9:30am PT. Expect live, caffeinated reactions from us as usual.

The great 2016 console arms race begins..

It's a good thing I didn't dump all my 360 stuff and jump on that Amazon bundle a week or two ago.

Austin you are crushing my wallet

People have been saying this is the last console generation. Instead it's the penultimate. The last one will consist of pure digital boxes called "Playstation" and "Xbox" (and maybe not even the latter) with spec revisions every couple of years until the end of time.

Sure feels like every other week some story hits that just makes the upcoming E3 look even stranger than usual.

Personally, I don't want rapid releases for consoles unless it's going to come with subsidized pricing like cell phones. I'd be OK with paying a little more for XBL or PS Plus each year if it meant I was going to get a steep discount on a new console every, let's say, two or three years.

guys you should make a PC

Now the only right way to do this would be to offer an upgrade plan for existing users, from both Sony and Microsoft. I don't trust developers to keep making really playable versions for 1.0 PS4 and Xbox One, "old" systems will be 20-30 FPS at best, unless both Microsoft and Sony start establishing some ground rules, constant 30 FPS at 900p minimum would be very welcome for both "current" platforms, guaranteed 60 FPS at 1080p for at least 2 years would actually make me buy a console again (sold PS4 a while back and came back to PC for the framerate). I actually don't enjoy reading forums and fiddling with settings to get constant 1080p 60 FPS on my PC, PS4 Neo and new Xbox sound appealing to me BUT please Microsoft and Sony, work with developers of AAA games to absolutely guarantee 1080p 60 FPS. Is that too much to ask ? You want the PC crowd with the new consoles, right ?

Xbox 360 is still the console I play the most >_>

As an Xbox One owner I'm not even the slightest bit upset.

I might even consider buying the slim for its reduced size and way bigger hdd.

I'll be buying both, thanks.

I will skip a Slim Xbox One and would be open to buy a new Xbox One in 2017. Not sure if I will be their at launch though.

I know the Xbox One is not as powerful but I am happy with the exclusive line up they delivered since launch. Even with PS4 being the Indie darlings, Xbox One also has seen their fair share of great indie games.

What's the point of buying a new console every year? Why not just buy a PC instead? The main reason I would buy a new console would be to avoid frequent and expensive updates.

So a phone is a must have item in today's society. A console is a luxury item. They are trying to sell a luxury item the same way as a must have item is sold?

I dont see how this can be successful in any way. Even if they go full force with this, its a much more economical move for the consumer to go the PC route now that leaps in everything but GPU have plateaued. Meaning PC components will last you longer than they ever have. And we are already at the point where you can get comparable to XBONE and PS4 performance on components from 2010.

For those that are saying "BS". Nope not BS. Im running an i7 930 at 3.8Ghz (CPU from Q1 of 2010), RAM, Mobo, Hard drives (10krpm Vraptors) from that same time, and a GTX 470 (released March 2010). And everything runs on medium to high (read: console visual fidelity or better). For instance I run Fallout 4 at High settings with FPS locked at 45 with no dips. Thats 150% FPS of the consoles and at better visual fidelity.

With GTX 1070 upgrade the CPU will not be bottlenecked at least until 2017 when Cannonlake 10nm process comes out.

So when all is said and done my CPU/RAM/Mobo will have lasted me 7-8 years. GPU 6 years, PSU/Case etc well over 10 years.

And this wasnt even a crazy build back in 2010. Was around $1100. Which paid for itself more than twice if you take into account buying new games for 60$ instead of $20-40 over these years.

Really the whole thing about PCs being a money sink is a grotesquely misrepresented piece of information. yes it was that way in 1993 when Every year you basically doubled your PC performance, we saw huge leaps, and components were $1000 each. This is still the case in semiconductors, we still are getting better and better performance yearly, but in game performance we kind of plateaued.

Everything's askew now.

People are acting like this is new. Consoles have generally sold on a 5 year cycle, but there have been 4 and even 3 year cycles in the past. This would just be a 4 year cycle (2013-2017)

The long life of the 360 and the PS3 was caused by a global recession. Did people really think the PS4 and Xbox One (which launched underpowered) were going to last 8 years? The original Xbox only lasted 4.

@spacepuddled: Getting a new smartphone doesn't instantly make your old one unplayable. Same with this. There'll be additional features and whatnot but you won't be forced to buy every new model.

Man this is one weird generation but I'm interested if they can justify why we should upgrade out current Xbox Ones.

Yeah, I know nobody is going to hold me down and literally force me to buy anything. I think you misunderstood my point.

A PC is an open system that allows the user to upgrade at any point. A console is a closed system that changes less frequently in large jumps.

My point was: if you can upgrade both (PC and console) annually, what's the point of having a console? Consoles are becoming more like PCs, except they are closed systems.

Man this E3 is going to be straight up bizarre. Unsure how I feel about a new XboxOne as I just sold mine about a month ago because of the lack of games. I guess it is a necessary step in order to start looping in Oculus things.

Just make the PC games great please Mr.Spencer.

@duxa: I completely agree. Said much of what I was coming here to say and then some.

This is all crazy. The fact that Microsoft and Sony are both doing this new iterative stuff, and that Nintendo is releasing a new console, all in 2016/2017--when new consoles were just released 2.5 years ago--is going to lead to some real confusion (and apathy?) among people who don't keep up on this stuff.

@thenewgameplusdotcom: The other aspect of this is that the reason it wasnt very feasible for Valve to jump in with Steam machines was because Sony/MS could offer a box that lasted a very long time. Now that people will be given upgrade options every few years and the price of being a "console gamer" skyrockets it will be much easier for Valve to jump in with Steam machines designed to last that same amount of time. Especially if MS/Sony are doing the "consumer training" for them... you know the whole, upgrade fairly regularly training as opposed to expect buy once last close to a decade mentality.

For me personally, I think it's going to lead to more PC gaming.

It's going to be interesting to see how they spin this.

Part of me wishes they go in the opposite direction of Sony and make the new "Scorpio" much better and have exclusives that take advantage of that.

I'm not even a "PC Master Race" elitist and I own an Xbox One (and a shitty PC) but I feel like consoles bottleneck software, when it comes to games at least.

There are very few AAA games made to take advantage of even middle end GPUs and CPUs (unless we're counting 4k and VR) since they all need to play on everything to maximise profit.

Make that two of us. I still absolutely love my Xbox One and am on board with them continuing to respond to market demands. Now that they've addressed basically everything on existing owners' wishlists, I'm cool with them offering new versions that up the hardware to potentially bring in some new owners. The bigger hard drive was needed (though my 2 TB Seagate has been great), and apparently the size was an issue for some people (though that's still a weird complaint to me). As for the "Scorpio" model, hopefully that grabs some of the PC/VR market. I'm not optimistic there, though, as the PC master race crowd seems FAR more interested in mocking existing console hardware than embracing a more powerful version of it, while the Oculus stuff so far hasn't been overly impressive, IMO. Regardless, I'm interested to see how these versions fare. They're giving people what they claim they want. Unfortunately, sometimes that still isn't good enough.

the other side to this news is that this is potentially big for Oculus in the battle for future market share with HTC Vive. We haven't seen much of the Oculus touch controllers so we can't say how distinct the experience between the two is going to be... yet... but native support on an Xbox platform will put Oculus in direct comparison/competition to Sony's Morpheus and leaves the Vive in a position where it'd potentially need to distinguish itself significantly to get a solid market presence and compete effectively.

The video game console market is definitely changing. It'll be interesting how consumers will react to this new path that Sony and Microsoft are going with new upgraded consoles every 3 or so years. Meanwhile, Nintendo seems to be doing there own thing like they've always done but even more so this time around with the NX. Interesting times.

@error52 said:

See I went the other way....

Code names can be good and they can be bad. I think if you go too tough, like Venom or Blade you can look foolish. If you goi too far the other way into puns like Dreamcast, Wii, or even PlayStation is can go badly for you too. Early on people though PlayStation sounded dumb, "Ha, yeah WorkStation and PlayStation...very clever Sony [golf clap]." But it worked out for Sony and Ninetndo...the jury is still out on if Dreamcast was actually a good name.

I think the near term idea for a slightly better slim XBox One has merit. Their 2017 and beyond is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I'm confused with the reticence some have of moving to an incremental model. Having my older games come with me to new iterations of the consoles (Spencer has said he wants to see their games move across multiple devices, and Neo has the mandate that it must play all base titles, and vice versa)? Sounds good to me. An option to have a more powerful console for those who want it, and a cheaper base model for those who don't? Sounds good to me. Stopping trends like an 8 year console cycle (a la the X360) with severely outdated specs as computer hardware continues to update? Sounds good to me.

Seems like if someone doesn't want to get the updated console after ~3 years, they're probably safe for another 3 years (totally 6, the average console lifecycle) before I could see the platform holders abandoning support for the older system, and making the newer system the "base" version as they release another iteration. All of this looks to be a positive to me; I just can't see the downside, except that people resist changing the status quo.

No thanks, Microsoft. Smart phones are one of the worst things to happen to society in recent years and companies need to stop trying to model all their products on them. I already regret buying a PS4 and don't see myself buying another console ever again.

Also, Microsoft needs to stop trying to install Windows 10 on my PC without my knowledge.

So I only have to buy a ps4 to have all the games I want to play? Thanks Microsoft!

Welp. It seems this will be our new reality. Personally I won't be buying anymore Sony or MS consoles. I feel I can be content with just a Nintendo console and play everything else on my PC.

Fragmentation has certainly worked well for the mobile market...

If I wanted to upgrade every couple years, I would go back to PC gaming.

Good luck with that. The only reason I might consider a PS4.5 is for UHD and 4k output. And none of that is even certain.

Dont you see that the plan is to at the end of the day to have yearly consoles? With only supporting last 1 or 2. They cant support first gen XBONE throughout 2nd gen XBONE lifetime (if that lifetime is 3 years as you say), because then you have a 6 year cycle, something they want to leave behind.

PC/Mobile here

You ask me to drop another $450 on a console set for a 2 year cycle and I will tell you I can get better performance and more mileage out of my PC by buying components at the same value. This is made an even more attractive solution if the Xbox One and PC are made integrated platforms.

@duxa: For some games this might be true, but for others they can just have a difference in fidelity/texture quality/frame rate like console vs PC has right now.

For many games we're already at a point where more power doesn't make much difference. For games like Downwell (just released for PS4) obviously they could run on almost anything, at least from Playstation 1 onward. Then for games like Massive Chalice or The Banner Saga or what have you, they could run on anything from OG Xbox to now. It's only the AAA 'bleeding edge' games that might become incompatible, and even then companies will be hesitant to actually do that because of user base. Call of Duty came out on PS3 and Xbox 360 basically through last year. The new TMNT game released on both as well. It'll only be a relatively few games that won't run on the older hardware, and even then that will be limited by the market. There's no point in making a game that only 10 million people can play if, by pulling back on the graphics a bit, you could make one that 70 million people could access.

The PC crowd probably isn't interested because current PC hardware is probably already outperforming the eventual 3rd iteration of the Xbox.

So is the GPU there specifically to accommodate VR support or can they build that into the vanilla unit through software? At least when Sony announced it, they had all those caveats in place to prevent the userbase being split.

I honestly don't know if I'm ever buying another console, at this rate. 'cept maybe the NX because Nintendo does what Microshouldn't?

...came for the comment, stayed for the username.

As a PS4 owner this is good news for me since I get to buy a powerful new XB1, even get oculus support and begin purchasing all the multiplatform titles there. Everyone wins.

Not the wallet mate.. think of the wallet!

Watch them totally not mentioning any of this stuff at E3...

Well maybe XBox One Slim but who cares about that shit now that all thes rumors are going around.

Good. Have been very disappointed in the weak xbox one so far. Halo should have been glorious but instead it was a bunch of forge maps. Maybe they'll have the power to do some classic outdoor maps this time?! Give me Valhalla or Blood Gulch or NEW levels that are large and awesome. Come on 343.

The xbox ui is so clunky and slow. I hope the system is powerful enough to run a decent os. Why does the ps4 interface react almost instantly where xbox takes 10+ seconds to do anything? What a mess. As a huge xbox fan I was let down this generation. They should have kept the digital only route and kept a differentiator.

If you own a PS4 and wanted to get an XB1 sometimes down the road then it's still O-K. But if you never wanted another console or you didn't want to upgrade your existing XB1 then yah, I feel ya. I have no desire to buy that PS4 NEO for the exact same reason, but I did want to have an XB1 sometimes down the road for the few exclusives along the way.

Cool. So, how many people getting a 1080/1070?