Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
---

Title: Xbox's AMD partnership sheds light on the future of the division's
ecosystem

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:09:40 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-am...

Microsoft has no plans to get out of the console business anytime soon. The
company has been reiterating for a while that it's going to make at least one
more generation of Xbox consoles. It's now been confirmed that AMD will power
the upcoming hardware, as it did with the Xbox Series X/S.

Xbox president Sarah Bond made the announcement in a short video. Under the
multi-year partnership, Xbox and AMD are "advancing the state of art in
gaming silicon to deliver the next generation of graphics innovation; to
unlock a deeper level of visual quality; and immersive gameplay and player
experiences enhanced with the power of AI, all while maintaining
compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games," Bond said.

A leaked presentation from May 2022 (which was part of the massive Xbox leak
the following year) indicated that Microsoft had yet to make a decision about
the processor and GPU for the next Xbox console(s), suggesting in one slide
that it planned to strike an agreement with AMD to supply those and in
another that it yet had to make an "Arm64 decision." As we now know, the
company is doubling down with AMD.

Microsoft

On the surface, the AMD agreement is the main news coming out of Bond's
announcement. But, if you read between the lines, there are lots of other
interesting details to tease out from what she said in the short video.

For one thing, the AI aspect of Bond's carefully crafted statement lines up
with details in the leak (and other developments) about Microsoft embracing
artificial intelligence and machine learning in future Xbox games, including
for things like AI agents. So the company is likely to keep going down that
path.

Bond said that Microsoft and AMD will "co-engineer silicon across a portfolio
of devices including our next-generation Xbox consoles, in your living room
and in your hands," implying that the company is planning more handhelds
beyond the Xbox-branded ROG devices that are coming later this year. Those
are also powered by AMD.

In addition, Bond said the next-gen of Xbox devices will maintain
"compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games." Xbox has made a
commitment to backward compatibility, but that's still welcome to hear.

Those are fairly interesting nuggets, no doubt, but there were two other
things Bond said that I think are starting to shed more light on the future
of the Xbox ecosystem. First, she said that her team is "building you a
gaming platform thatΓÇÖs always with you, so you can play the games you want
across devices anywhere you want, delivering you an Xbox experience not
locked to a single store or tied to one device."

That "single store" phrasing is a chin stroker, especially in light of the
new user interface Xbox is making for the ROG handhelds. The Windows-powered
devices won't only allow users to play games from the Xbox PC app, Xbox
consoles via remote play and the cloud. They'll integrate games from other PC
storefronts, such as Battle.net (which is run by Microsoft-owned Activision
Blizzard), Steam, GOG and more. Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass users
have long had access to EA Play games as part of their subscriptions.
Ubisoft+ is on Xbox consoles too.

Microsoft

Perhaps this concept of not being "locked to a single store" will start to
work in other ways. Valve said a few years ago that it would be happy to
integrate Game Pass into Steam, for instance. Likewise, Microsoft has said it
would welcome Steam and the Epic Games Store app onto its PC app store
(though Valve and Epic probably wouldn't want to give Microsoft a cut of game
sales). Maybe we might finally see those come to fruition in the next few
years.

But how might those integrations work on an Xbox console? Bond hinted at that
too. She said Xbox is "working closely with the Windows team to ensure that
Windows is the number one platform for gaming."

Sure, that could be a reference to PC gaming. But Bond didn't explicitly
state that, which has me wondering if the next Xbox console might be more of
a Windows PC that sits under your TV. That would align with comments made a
few months back by Jez Corden of Windows Central, who said the next Xbox is
"a PC, in essence, but with a TV-friendly shell."

As with the likes of the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs, this would
potentially give game developers a specific set of specifications to work
with (though ensuring their games are optimized for as many desktop and
laptop configurations as possible will still be a complex task). Perhaps the
user interface Xbox is debuting on the Ally X devices is a sign of things to
come on larger displays.

Moreover, the Xbox and Windows teams are stripping out unnecessary aspects of
the operating system in the Xbox Ally handhelds to make them run more
efficiently. What's to stop them from doing the same in the next Xbox
console? That could enable Xbox to offer a more unified ecosystem across all
platforms, while streamlining things for developers who want to make games
for both PC and Xbox. Don't forget that Microsoft has been making a real
effort to make Windows run more smoothly on ARM-based processors as part of
its Copilot+ PC push.

We might have to wait two or three more years to get a fuller sense of
Microsoft's vision for the future of Xbox consoles. But it certainly has the
opportunity to knit its platforms more closely together and make playing Xbox
(and PC) games across devices a more seamless experience.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-am...
future-of-the-divisions-ecosystem-200940253.html?src=rss

---
VRSS v2.1.180528