Remember how Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox at Microsoft recently hinted at Xbox One hardware upgrades as a future plan that the Redmond giant has? Well, it looks like a number of us jumped the gun here and took a different meaning of what he was trying to say.
Spencer went live with Major Nelson in a recent podcast and attended to the confusion – rather gave a reality check to the expectations of the fans, if I may – saying that “It’s not like I’m going to ship a screwdriver set with every console that comes out.”
Ain’t that a downer?
Anyhow, Microsoft wants to innovate in this specific area, and Xbox One hardware upgrades surely are on the table here, just not in the way that people were expecting. Yea, we are not blurring the line between consoles and PC.
Am I going to break open my console and start upgrading individual pieces of my console? That’s not our plan. There is something special about what happens with a console. You buy an appliance-like device; you plug it into your TV; it works when you plug it in. It’s not like I’m going to ship a screwdriver set with every console that comes out.
“As hardware innovations happen,” he says, that they “want to be able to embrace [them] in the console space as well. This is an aim at shortening the 7 t0 8 year wait that console games have to bear.
I’ve said the ‘end of a generation’ and this step-function that happens is not something I embrace. I think it’s something we can do better at.
He also hinted at digital content always staying with you regardless of where you are and, in some cases, which device you use. So maybe when they say Xbox One hardware upgrades, they are actually referring to upgraded Xbox One models being released after, say, two or three years; only to be replaced by new ones after the same amount of time.
What this will need is a good way of dealing with the previous models that people would have bought for hundreds of bucks. That is one of the many questions Microsoft will still need to answer if this is their plan going forward.
Since Spencer did not reveal, what do you think they have in mind?
