Microsoft teases Xbox Series X's successor, promising "the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation"

Xbox president Sarah Bond has said the next-generation Xbox will mark the biggest jump in hardware capability we've ever seen from one console generation to the next.

In today's Xbox business update, Bond said Microsoft has been "invested in the next generation roadmap" and said, "what we're really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation."

In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft gaming head Phil Spencer teased new hardware with "unique" qualities: "I'm very proud of the work that the hardware team is doing, not only for this year, but also into the future. [We’re] really thinking about creating hardware that sells to gamers because of the unique aspects of the hardware. It's kind of an unleashing of the creative capability of our hardware team that I'm really excited about."

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Of course, this all follows high-profile reports claiming a number of Xbox games would be coming to PlayStation consoles imminently, including first-party exclusives like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Starfield. This led to some speculation that Microsoft was planning to exit the console business entirely after the Xbox Series X, although Spencer reportedly was quick to shut down those claims internally.

Now, Spencer said during the same big Xbox podcast that, on the contrary, "It's all about putting Xbox in the best position, and our hardware is a critical component of that. The absolute best experience that someone has on Xbox is on hardware that our team built."

While the Xbox team did announce that four Xbox games are coming to other consoles, Spencer decisively shut down multiplatform concerns and said the next-gen Xbox console will "respect the investments that people have made" in the platform. That said, the Xbox boss also said he believes exclusive games "are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry" within the next decade.

There's still a lot to pick from the best Xbox exclusives available now.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.