Xbox One may get PC Like Hardware Upgrades : Phil Spencer

We all know that Microsoft is pretty serious about PC games, but what Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s Xbox Division head, share surprised me and a lot of people. He said that Microsoft is taking Xbox One towards PC direction, and in near future upgrading your Xbox One hardware could be a possibility.

Polygon Quotes Spencer :

“We can effectively feel a little bit more like we see on PC, where I can still go back and run my old Doom and Quake games that I used to play years ago but I can still see the best 4K games come out and my library is always with me. Hardware innovation continues while the software innovation is able to take advantage and I don’t have to jump a generation and lose everything that I played on before.”

“I still think a console is the best price to performance deal that is out there but when you look at the evolution … I’m not going to announce our road map for hardware … but what I wanted to say on stage for people when they see this vision of ours and question our commitment to console I want to make sure that people see that what we are doing enables us to be more committed to what consoles are about than we’ve ever been and innovate more consistently than we ever have. That’s the key for me.”

This means a lot coming from him, and future of Xbox One console. While nobody knows if the current Xbox One version can be upgraded or not, but it is possible that in future Microsoft might come up with consoles which could be upgraded to at least go some extra miles. So for example it took like 7 years to upgrade from Xbox 360 to Xbox One. While there are new versions that come out in between, but there is no major jump.

Microsoft wants to change it. So instead of locking hardware, and software platforms together, let there be an option where users can upgrade few things,and keep running the new software. Imagine if Xbox 360 users could have upgraded their component to run Xbox One new experience.

Another example will be 4K rendering which is available for Gears of War : Ultimate Edition for PC, but not Xbox One. So providing components to upgrade the Xbox Oone with 4K capabilities without having to buy a new console would be a great way to start.

However, there will be lot of challenges. Right now consoles are optimised for performance because they are locked down. Once you open the option to upgrade parts, the whole integration thing takes one step back, and lot of burden gets on the console makers to manage it. Something like PC where you can have different hardware, but your OS needs to make sure to handle it properly.

Source: Polygon