Microsoft has announced that it is not going to make games for the Xbox One platform anymore. In an interview with Axios, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty revealed that no internal teams are working on games for older-gen consoles except on support for Minecraft.
”We’ve moved on to Gen 9,” Booty said, and added that the Gen 9 games can be played on the Gen 8 Xbox One console via cloud streaming on Xbox Cloud Gaming. That means the support for new games will still be there, but they won’t be released for the platform. Microsoft tried this approach in March 2022, making A Plague Tale and The Crew maker Asobo’s Flight Simulator available on Xbox One via Cloud Gaming.
Xbox One launched in the second half of 2013, and was superseded by the next-gen Xbox Series X|S in 2020. This next-gen console is going to carry forward the legacy of Xbox gaming through the new titles that keep on launching.
The newer Microsoft games, especially those set for launch this year, like Starfield and Forza Motorsport, won’t launch on Xbox One. More games are likely to follow their path.
Game Development Cycles to Get Longer
The Xbox Game Studios head also revealed in the conversation that developers at Microsoft will be putting in more time for their high-end and biggest-budget games. As per him, high-end games will now take “four and five and six years” instead of two or three years.
The Cyberpunk 2077 Story
Are longer development times a good thing? They can be if we get a polished product instead of one bugged with issues. Remember Cyberpunk 2077? It did become a success after being patched up multiple times, but when it first launched, the picture was not rosy at all. The launch game build suffered from performance issues and a buggy disposition. There were even reports of system crashes. Just before the launch, the hype was huge, with CD Projekt Red finally bringing to market the game that took years to make. Cyberpunk 2077 created launch day records on platforms like Steam and Twitch. But due to the multiple reported issues in the game, CD Projekt Red had to apologize to buyers and issue refunds for some of them too.
The Future
The future of video games holds challenges for developers. One, the market is already flooded with quality titles. So, there is the competition angle — to make your product shine commercially above the rest. Secondly, games will become more complex to develop; plus, they would need advanced lighting and 4K-compatible graphics support. Such a need would cause developers to spend more time developing them, hence the extended development cycles.
Ending support of games for Xbox One was going to happen sometime in the future, anyway. It’s been nearly ten years since Xbox One came out, and technology has taken rapid leaps in that time frame, making plenty of older gadgets and technologies obsolete. Microsoft has undoubtedly made its intentions clear of changing the old guard. So, no new games for Xbox One from now. If you have been playing on this console for a while, you’ll have to stick to the available titles, which are still a great many, or rely on cloud support for some of the newer titles.
