Xbox Has Always Chased Power. That's Not Enough Anymore
Specs go a long way. But in exclusive interviews with WIRED, the Xbox team explains why they're thinking outside the teraflops.
In interviews with WIRED, Xbox executives detailed a more holistic strategy going into their splashy November launches. As with the previous generation, Microsoft will offer a high-octane Xbox and a stripped-down alternative: the Xbox Series X and Series S. But Xbox's two-console launch is just the superscript. "So much of my experience as a gamer 10, 20 years ago was dictated by what device I played on," Xbox head Phil Spencer tells WIRED. Today, he says, he's pushing for a reality in which "the device doesn't dictate to me what I can do—I'm going to want to bring my experience to any device, whether it's a PC, my phone, or a great console."
"It was a pivot," says Liz Hamren, head of gaming engineering at Xbox, of Xbox's dual-console, next-gen strategy. "The truth is that the CPU and I/O performance is roughly equivalent between these two products. It's really around the resolution." The $500 Series X falls in line with Xbox's machismo hardware traditions, while the $300 Series S mirrors a more contemporary understanding of gamers—people less likely to stand open-mouthed in the "4K TV" aisles of Best Buy, and more likely to unwind after a tough shift with 30 minutes of brain candy wherever they park their body. While both consoles have essentially the same CPU, the Series S has no disc drive, less storage, and sacrifices the Series X's tricked-out 8K graphical capabilities. If you're in the business of comparing teraflops, a measure of a console's graphical power, the Xbox Series S has three times fewer than the Series X. But it's still a next-gen console; it will enhance some older Xbox games to a maximum of 1440p. (2017's Xbox One X supports 4K resolution.)
"There was a lot of debate. Should it have a disc drive or not? Is this next-gen performance? What does next-gen performance mean and how do we measure it?" says Hamren. Accessibility is one way; Hamren says the $300 price point for the Series S was an early objective. She also wanted people to feel comfortable gaming for just 20 minute sittings, perhaps a habit built off mobile and popular online games' pick-up-put-down designs. Xbox's new Quick Resume technology, available on both consoles, lets players suspend action in their Outer Worlds games and immediately resume wherever they left off in Yakuza 0. "I can walk into my house, maybe I have an Alexa or a Google Home, and I'm like, 'Turn on my Xbox.' I can sit down, I can play, and then I can go off and do something else, versus psychologically feeling like I need more time," she says.
Sarah Bond, who heads up Xbox's gaming ecosystem division, says the company has learned a lot from how players interacted with Game Pass on the Xbox One. "We see that people actually spend 20 percent more time playing games, try 30 percent more genres, and play 40 percent more total games, including outside the subscription," she says. "We have seen the highest levels of engagement ever on our own games and growth in the playerbase." After landing on Game Pass, she says, Grounded reached a million players in 48 hours. Microsoft-owned Minecraft's user base has ballooned to 132 million.
Rather than "power" or "performance," Xbox's big word this time around is "choice." Audiophiles and cinema geeks can enjoy music and film wherever they go; gaming is making that transition, too. Xbox head Spencer says that now more than ever the company sees customers on PC who they never see on Xbox. "We don't look at them as lesser because they didn't go buy one of our consoles," he says. "At some point, we're going to have Xbox customers who only know us on their phone, and that's also fine."
