Gamers can expect another full round of Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft hardware. Nintendo's NX console may launch within the first half of 2016, hardware details of a PlayStation 5 have been sticking to the ground and now Microsoft's Xbox boss says he "fully expects" a new gaming device from his company.
The Windows 10 strategy is at the core of the Xbox One experience, connecting the console to other devices and services. Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox Division at Microsoft, says he loves that sort of console experience.
"Xbox One is our most important gaming device inside the company. There's no doubt about that," he says in an interview with The Verge.
With broadband now bursting with more powerful streaming capabilities and tablets at the throats of computers and handheld game consoles, the Xbox is not about to become an app anytime soon, according to Spencer.
"I fully expect that you'll see another console from us," Spencer says. "Our best customers are Xbox console customers, and I want to keep those people engaged both on the Xbox One and anything we might do in the future. I'm 100 percent committed to that."
The focus on the Xbox One's connectedness and the Windows 10 strategy was about making the OS users feel they are part of the whole experience as do gamers. On the other hand, the company doesn't want to water down the experience for Xbox owners.
"I want to expand what we're able to do for more customers," he says. While the Xbox will live on for another generation, there's a chance it'll look more like a streaming device than the disc-based consoles to which the world has grown accustomed.
It might not rely solely on streaming games from those Microsoft Azure cloud servers. The Xbox Two could hybridize the downloading and streaming of games, just as the system currently allows games to be played while being downloaded.
On the other hand, disc sales are alive and well and are only expected to drop by about 3 percent to $18.9 billion by 2019, according to PwC research. Digital sales will have climbed to around $12.9 billion, the firm forecasts.
