Xbox has no plans for a Series X mid-gen refresh as "we're at the end of the beginning"

(Image credit: Xbox)

Don't expect to hear any news about an Xbox Series X refresh anytime soon.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been doing the media rounds at Gamescom 2023, and one of the more common questions he's tackling centres around concerns a mid-gen refresh for the Xbox Series S and X.

When asked by IGN if there was any news to share over a mid-gen refresh, Spencer simply replies "no," before explaining that he sees the team being at the "end of the beginning" of the console's lifecycle. The important thing for Spencer, right now, is to let developers settle on the current hardware before advancing from there. That's not to say that no improvements are going on, to be fair, as the Series S is getting increased storage.

Expanding on the topic further to Eurogamer, Spencer says "that when we do hardware, it should have a reason to exist that is demonstrably different than what came before."

"I think that's important," he continues. "Gen 10 - now you get more of my religion on this - I think what happens for us as an industry - and other people with other platform affinities are going to argue with me about this - but sometimes you feel really great about the price performance of the console early in the generation.

"And then later in the generation, we look at what's happening on a PC. And we say, 'how come our consoles can't do that?' And the reason is, because when you plan for a console, you start two or three years before you launch it, and you kind of lock-in to a hardware spec. And then that's the spec you're gonna have for five, six, seven years. And because the pricing of consoles have gone up, it's closer to PC than it's probably ever been in terms of price and performance."

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I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.