XBOX fans who are yet to upgrade to the next generation of consoles might be in for a bit of a shock, as they may be missing out on games soon.
Developers within Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios teams have apparently stopped developing for the Xbox One, including the Xbox One X.
Xbox players will have to upgrade to a Series X or Series S console if they want to keep playing first-party games
That means all new games from Microsoft for Xbox platforms will only be released on the Xbox Series X and Series S, and not on the Xbox One or One X.
Existing live service games, like Minecraft and Sea of Thieves, that are on Xbox One already will continue to get updates, but there’s no word on how long the console will continue to be supported.
Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty told Axios: “We’ve moved onto Gen 9.”
New games will still technically be playable on Xbox One however, through cloud streaming provided by Xbox Game Pass.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can stream most games on the service to multiple devices, including smartphones, PCs, and Xbox consoles.
Not every Xbox game is available through Xbox Game Pass though, and users can’t stream their own games that aren’t included in the service.
Microsoft has committed to including all of its first-party games on Game Pass on day one, but many DLCs and expansions for games aren’t included.
Games like the recently released Redfall and the upcoming Starfield skipped the Xbox One, and future first-party games seemingly will too now.
Third-party developers can still choose to develop games for the Xbox One, but the gap between the One and the Series is so large that most triple-A developers have focused only on the Series in recent years.
While not officially announced like Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation studios have also largely moved onto developing solely for the PS5, foregoing the PS4 in the process.
The Xbox Series X|S and PS5 both launched in late 2020, but suffered significant stock shortages for almost two years following their launch.
Stock levels have largely normalised however, and most games and electronics stores regularly have stock for both Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.
