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All upcoming Xbox Game Studios titles are now in development exclusively for the current-gen Xbox Series X, Microsoft has confirmed.
"We’ve moved on to gen 9," Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty tells Axios, referring to Xbox Series X and S. Booty confirms that outside of support for older ongoing titles like Minecraft, first-party development on Xbox One is done. Instead, Microsoft plans to "maintain support" for the older platform purely through cloud gaming options, which do allow you to play Series X games on Xbox One.
Prior to this, almost every first-party Xbox Series X game has also launched on Xbox One, from Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 to Grounded and Minecraft Legends. The most notable exception is Microsoft Flight Simulator, a game that pushed even the most high-end PCs to their absolute limits. Microsoft still has a less powerful piece of hardware to scale its games back for with Series S, but it seems current-gen games will soon have a lot more room to meet their next-gen potential.
The transition between generations has been a particularly slow one this time around, and not just for Xbox. Even first-party graphical showpieces on PS5, like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West, have launched with PS4 versions, too. Whether due to the years-long supply shortages for both consoles or some other reason, many studios - both first and third-party - have kept the old-gen alive much longer than usual.
There is, of course, a cost for next-gen ambitions - development time. Booty acknowledges that modern triple-A game development cycles, which used to be two or three years, are ballooning to "four and five and six year" timelines. "There are higher expectations. The level of fidelity that we're able to deliver just goes up."
These are the upcoming Xbox Series X games you should know about.
