What comes after Xbox Series X? Microsoft's 2028 next-gen console plans revealed
Today's massive Microsoft FTC leak revealed an early roadmap for Microsoft's next gaming console – not the mid-gen Xbox Series X refresh, but the all-new next-gen hardware tentatively scheduled for 2028.
In unredacted presentations dated May 2022, Microsoft describes the next Xbox console as the keystone for its plan to double its gaming revenue by 2030 and "reach industry leadership, outside of China."
The next Xbox is said to double down on cloud integration, enabling "larger, richer, more dynamic open worlds with increased technical demands" as well as "cloud hybrid games" delivering "new game genres and types, unlocked through player growth and technical innovation."
This "hybrid compute" framework is a running theme for Microsoft's early draft, which predicts the "full convergence" of Microsoft's unified gaming vision in 2028. A timeline on one slide notes the advancements of each generation of Xbox hardware, putting this convergence into context.
The top-level view of what I'm calling the NextBox is: "Not a console generation. An ecosystem generation." This lines up with the increasingly broad Xbox platform, now spread across consoles, PC, Game Pass, and cloud streaming. Looking at 2028 to 2030, Microsoft is grouping browser, mobile, smart TVs, low and high-end PCs, consoles, cloud consoles, handheld devices, and streaming sticks into one big ecosystem under its Azure cloud umbrella.
"Our vision: develop a next-generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences," the leaked presentation reads. "Optimized for real-time gameplay and creators, we will enable new levels of performance beyond the
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