It's been about two and a half years since Microsoft's Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles first went on sale in November 2020. Since then, Microsoft bought a bunch of game development studios, including all of ZeniMax Studios, to make first-party games for those consoles.
The number of teams under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella (not counting third-party teams that are having their games published by Microsoft) is now at 23. We got to see what some of them were working on a few days ago at the Xbox Games Showcase event. However, all of them were being made for the Xbox Series S/X consoles and the PC.
In a chat with Axios, the head of Xbox Game Studio, Matt Booty, confirmed that Microsoft's first-party game teams are not making any games that will run natively on the company's older Xbox One console. Booty stated, "We’ve moved on to Gen 9", which is Microsoft's designation for the current generation of game consoles on the market.
If you do own an Xbox One console, the good news is that if you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you will still be able to play all of Microsoft's future first-party Xbox Series S/X games. That's because they will all be available to play via Xbox Cloud Streaming. Booty stated in the interview, "That’s how we’re going to maintain support.”
At the moment, Microsoft is still requiring that all Xbox Series X games must also run on the less powerful and cheaper Xbox Series S console. Booty says that developers have learned how to get more performance from the Xbox Series S so it's unlikely we will get any Xbox Series X exclusive games for some time. A model of that console with a black color and 1TB of storage will be available in September for $349.99.
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