It’s an inevitability for any console that at some point, support - both via system updates and games releasing for it - will stop. All good things must come to an end, after all, and eventually we’re forced to accept that those loyal devices that we’ve spent countless hours with are simply getting old.
Unfortunately, it seems that that time has now come for the Xbox One. This November, the console will be a full decade old, and with Microsoft’s two new-gen consoles now well-established and continually growing in popularity, it’s no wonder that the company would decide that it’s time to move on.
Take a look at this super satisfying Xbox 360 restoration below.
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In an interview with Axios, Matt Booty, the head of Microsoft Studios, confirmed that, simply, “We’ve moved on to Gen Nine.” The ninth generation of consoles in Xbox’s case refers solely to the Series X and Series S - the poor Xbox One and all its variants count as Gen Eight.
Booty revealed that zero internal teams are currently working on games for any older-gen Xbox consoles, with the exception of supporting ongoing games like Minecraft. However, the company plans to maintain some level of support for the Xbox One by continuing to have ninth generation games playable on the previous-gen console via cloud streaming. It’s better than nothing, I guess?
Last year, it was revealed in an investor presentation that Sony plans to stop new PS4 game releases by 2025, so Microsoft has cut things off for its previous-gen console significantly sooner than its rival. With that said, PS5s were notoriously difficult to get hold of for years, whereas the Series S has been readily available since launch, so Sony’s hesitation makes sense - for a long time, many customers simply wouldn’t have been able to buy its new games at all if they’d not been on PS4.
Despite the Xbox One’s disastrous reveal, it saw some fantastic releases in its time, so this is a rather sad end of an era. With Microsoft fully focusing on new-gen games now though, let’s hope that it leads to even more greater things.