We're 'Probably' Getting Mid-Gen Xbox & PlayStation Consoles, Says Take-Two CEO

Generally, upgrading my console would be a reflex action.. There is a new one therefore I purchase it. However even for me this seems like a tough sell, given almost all of the Series games run perfectly well on my old Xbox One X.

If we had proper next gen games it would be a completely different argument.

Please just no, this gen has barely started

Waiting for the Xbox Series XXX, personally.

Yeah we’re 2 years in and it still feels like this generation hasn’t really started, I just wouldn’t be interested in a mid gen upgrade. Devs have been struggling optimising for the consoles we have now, throwing other consoles into the mix would be even worse I feel.

It would be funny seeing what both companies promise though, 8k again? 🤣🤣

I really hope not

there has hardly been anything to push the series x to its potential and i was going to hold back at Xmas thinking there may be another console getting released soon
but I gave up and got a series x due to the series x not reaching its full potential and Microsoft focusing on cloud gaming

Releasing a new xbox just doesn't seem logical at this point in time especially with no games

Playstation I could see them releasing something but xbox I really hope not

well i wouldn't be buying them. barely any games that use next gen hardware and even less of those are good games. plus playing Tears of the kingdom shows me i don't need the cutting edge to enjoy my games if they are good games.

Why though? We have barely got any games this gen that haven't been held back by the previous one and if anything those games are only just starting to come along.

What exactly would an improved Xbox entail? Most of the issues that Developers have with the Xbox relate to optimising for the S, not the X, and I cannot see Microsoft agreeing to leaving the Series S behind, as to do so would see a huge swathe of (rightly) unhappy gamers who believed they were buying a console that would see them through an entire generation. The issue is generally with the games themselves. Getting them to run well on the consoles that is the problem. It is a matter of game optimisation, rather than a console related issue. So exactly what would having an even better console achieve, when Developers are actually the issue not the consoles?

That said, I can see Microsoft going the PS5 route and having two identical consoles, one with a disc-drive, and one without. I don't think they will make the mistake of having one console inferior (albeit slightly) to the other, as this has resulted in numerous problems.

The only other thing that I can perhaps see would be a more powerful console that would enable ray-tracing to be utilised all the time, rather than something that most people switch off to enable a game to perform better, but just how much more would such a console cost? I cannot imagine that it would be a small hike in price.

The one thing I do believe is that Microsoft won't want to cede the title of most powerful console to Sony, meaning that they will produce something, and it is likely to be special (and maybe costly!)...

I hope we don't get mid-gen upgrades but if they do happen they best be the end of compromises. 4K 60FPS with Ray-Tracing.

It was fine when the options were "not 4k@60fps" and "is 4K@30fps" but we're now at the point where we're deciding between actual graphical features and 60 FPS. We really shouldn't be at the point where we're forced to have games look good or play good.

This has been a very unusual generation, and there haven't really even been any series x exclusive games yet. If Microsoft is smart they won't even talk about a new machine until they manage to get some games on the shelf.

I had the same conversation with a work colleague yesterday. He thought a new powerful PlayStation Pro. Where I was maybe a PlayStation Slim or a slightly upgraded Series S with more RAM & 1TB SSD. As like he agreed. We are at the tail end of the transition from last gen to current gen.

How does this change much with the baseline in place. Games will still have to be developed with the series s in mind

The last gen definitely needed that mid gen refresh, especially the Xbox One, as it was to underpowered to cope with the games it wanted to run. But this gen has barely started, Co-vid19 delay production, so it's only now that the masses are really getting into Xbox and PlayStation for this gen, but what is hold them back is the last gen, time to drop last gen compatibility and focus on the current gen

Please yes, I'd love 60 fps with RT lighting and reflections.

With COVID and chip shortage, this generation is almost starting. I don't see upgrades happening in the next future.

@Fiendish-Beaver Given Series S is mostly used as a Game Pass machine, leaving Series S native releases behind resulting in cloud via GPU being the only way to play upcoming games on Series S like how Starfield would be playable on XB1 could also prove the CMA's argument about the cloud market.

Xbox already conceded the console wars to Sony, so throwing more money into direct competition with them to keep up doesn't make sense. They need better and more stable games. I still have moments where I sigh and remember that it's Microsoft (some of us still remember the good old Windows PC days). Nintendo doesn't seem to have these moments, even though I'm hoping for a Switch refresh.

i bet they make starfield run at 60 fps only on the upgraded series xtwo.

What happened to MS optimizing nVidna or the AMD’s scalable AI for resolution optimization and frame rate?

Use the tools you have. I feel developers are getting slammed due to the size and expectations of games now by the press and working on optimization AFTER launch because the product is now finite. Before a game launches, everything is on the table still.

I’m heavily invested in the Xbox ecosystem but I’m only playing TotK and PS5 first party games (all from PS4 upgrades) due to the lack of goods on the Xbox. My Series X is used for streaming now. I hardly launch Gamepass anymore.

@Ralizah I wonder what the Xbox Series XXX expansion port would accept….

My names have always been Series S2 and Series X2, much better than Series XX 🤣.

This is genuinely ridiculous. Release a console, nobody even bothers supporting or optimizing specifically for it, then just sell the better replacement. I really don't understand why anyone would buy a launch console next generation if this is the cycle. The launch console is just a stop-gap half-finished placeholder with poor support until it's "patched" a few years later for the "real" console.

Optimize the darned games rather than just throwing you hands up saying "oh well the hardware's not powerful enough for what we want, just make the customer buy new hardware."

@Ralizah Six hundred sixty nine US dollars.

I expect that's when we'll start getting most Japanese games on Xbox.

@abe_hikura "4K 60FPS with Ray-Tracing."
It would have to be a $3000+ console for that, and even then would be sporradic.The tech just isn't there.

@themightyant If you need a redo of the hardware to make the generation worthwhile above the previous one, it's a different way of saying the original hardware was a failure and shouldn't have been released.

Nintendo's been running 7 years with a 10 year old console. They're still eating both MS and Sony's lunch in hardware sales. There's a lesson in this somewhere. They didn't need Switch Pro to finally move past 3DS.

I don’t want or need a mid gen refresh on my Xbox. I have a Series X and I love it. Still waiting for them to start utilizing the power it has under its hood. I heard from insiders that if there’s a mid gen refresh, it would probably be so you can run ray tracing without taking a big hit on performance. I’ll stick with what I got.

@Kaloudz I would imagine a new Series X² would simply be fast and powerful enough to run games at 4k/60fps instead of forcing players to pick between performance and quality.

I would not expect a Series S², instead I would expect an even smaller and cheaper Series S. Hell, if they manage to shrink the chips enough, and keep maybe we finally get a truly portable Series S that can run on battery power for a few hours.

@Lucylu1983 I would expect a Series X² to not arrive any earlier than 2024, by then, I think the tune of “Xbox has no games would have changed.

We would already have Forza, Starfield, Hellblade and maybe more, with Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed around the corner.

Who benefits from these rumours honestly? Surely it's not current producers of these consoles because it hurts them more (don't buy current console, better one is right around the corner!) than it helps them.

Refreshed versions make sense only in some cosmetic areas like blue ray drive, maybe bigger storage...there is no need for stronger hardware when game developers can't even utilize all those 8 CPU cores and in many games GPU is just waiting for CPU at 20-30% usage to do something 😂 so ofc developers just want people to throw more HW at their unoptimized games 😂

@themightyant With this current cycle we're looking at it basically means the launch console is little more than an incomplete beta pending the final version later. Why upgrade to the incomplete beta that never even gets fully deployed, or if it does gets fully deployed for like a year before it's replaced and that's when the "real" generation gets started?

If that's the predictable cycle, the only reason to buy a launch console is FOMO, it's nothing but a placeholder prototype otherwise.

Xbox has a problem though because their whole cloud infrastructure is Series X. If they upgrade their console and then their cloud servers are behind the times that's a bad look, and if they upgrade the cloud that's probably costs in the billions. Unless they really DO end the "generations" concept this time.

"Vote with your wallet" is a terrible response to any criticism. Just like voting for politics, I can write in as many ballots for Elmo for president as I want, but it has no value unless many, many others can be persuaded to do the same. And I am 100% committed to that goal.

@Sherhi The problem is the PC mentality. Optimization doesn't exist, just wait for fasterer hardware to brute force it. Customers that want everything to perform well should just replace their GPU every 6 months. Developers don't want to optimize 60fps on current hardware when they can tell you to just go buy a newer GPU and their janky code will run well enough. Then when the pro is out and their janky bloated code starts frame dropping again the devs will just call for the need for a new faster generation to arrive. The "state of the art" tech demo games require hardware that won't be released for 6 months after the game to work right.

That's how it's always been on PC, and now that console and PC are pretty much the same games, it's the same messed up mindset.

@Banjo- Xbox SeX2U. Sony's going down.

@NEStalgia it's not all games but even 2-3 highly anticipated titles screwed at launch per year spread bad reputation like a plague...usually those games are patched constantly until, maybe a year after game's release, it's finally playable how it was meant to be and that "weak HW" can play those games just fine with plenty of headroom.

Lazy developers were always present, there were always some games that pushed the graphical limits way up high in their specific GPU generation but that's not the case today, studios upfront calculate with post release fixes at the expense of a consumer...and these games don't even look that stunning. Many successful games these days rely on less demanding graphics, all it takes is decent gameplay and decent graphics, people don't really care about "realisticly blinding reflections of sunrays coming out of dog's pissing on a sidewalk", contrary to what many AAA studios believe.

So create more consoles with performance ceilings that will never be met much as the current consoles are not? Sweet! Sign me up!

@NEStalgia Nintendo has some good ideas for names: We&You, NSMBUDX...

@themightyant I think there are some people doing that. But this goes beyond that. This is, "why does PS5 XSX exist if it's nothing but another pro model for the 4/One, and/or why did they not just wait until the "proper" jump existed before bothering to launch the things?

Either the X/5 just sucked, was released to early and was entirely unnecessary, and we've been made for fools in buying them, or these machines are fine, a "pro" is an unnecessary excuse for devs t continue releasing inefficient code and demand the consumer just brute force it with continuous hardware upgrades. Selling a treadmill of minor upgrades is the PC gaming arena. It doesn't even work in mobile anymore, sales dropped off a cliff once people stopped doing that.

@Sherhi It's a mindset that was started mostly by the GPU mfrs, and the GPU mfrs injecting cash into developers to target their "next-next-next-gen" features into games to move more hardware. It happens to appeal to the technophile devs that just love pushing tech for the sake of pushing tech, on someone else's dime. And it appeals to technophile enthusiasts that love being wowed by impressive computer graphics more than they like playing games.

But it's new that it's crept into the console space. I've said for a while that AAA is nothing but a vanity project for technophile "creatives" at this point, it doesn't need to be how it is, the market isn't demanding it to be like it is outside that handful of technophile part of the market. It's how the devs and marketing people insist it's supposed to be to be "better" because image realism is the measure of the quality of the game.

I think 60fps should be a minimum baseline due to how many modern displays work. If they have to do it at 720p to make it happen, then do it. Forget the ray tracing. It's still 15 years too early for that to matter. All this obsession with visuals is based on staring at still frames. Of course devs think it matters, their job is looking at still frames half the day. In motion, the rest pretty much gets filtered out by the brain.

The real problem is the tech arms race is pointless. The month BEFORE the "Pro" comes out, it will be known to be obsolete, PC GPUS will already be sailing far past it, devs will have moved on to the RTX 5985, games will then go back to running at stuttery 25-40fps slideshows on the Pro, devs will start complaining about the limitations of the generation, and within a year technophile fans will be demanding it's time for a new generation so things can run right. Then a month before the new gen launches the RTX7584 comes out, people start talking about how the console is obsolete before it launches, and within a year the Pro rumors start again. Nobody actually wants the tech they have available, they want some theoretical tech that will exist the following year. Every year.

Meanwhile like people keep saying nobody's even USING most of the overhead available on this hardware, cores sit unused most of the time because games are still one giant thread on one core like it's 1999, and the game industry still just wants a Pentium 6 at 6Ghz. PC parts stores sell gamers on these 12 core behemoths so they can run their games that use maybe 2 threads tops. It's surreal.

@Banjo- I thought Nintendo took the more direct route and just went with "bend over."

I don't think there will be a significant mid-gen refresh... at least not in terms of performance.

Maybe a black Series S and a white Series X... Maybe also a Series X without the disc player

As for PS... Maybe a smaller and more refined design.

However, rather than a mid-gen performance bump, I think the next gen might arrive a year or so earlier instead... I suspect MS already have their eye on what that is going to look like.

I'm gonna ride my Series X until the next proper gen arrives.

@Kaloudz I would assume above the X. No point to anything below it.

@Ralizah
Club Vandersexxxxx

Legitimate question… WHY? I mean devs are so utterly lazy they haven’t bothered to use the full power or even feature set of the current consoles, and what are they going to charge for these more powerful machines? £550? £600? Who is going to pay that? Considering RTX 4090 can’t even run some of these games at a decent frame rate, due to incredibly poor optimisations, I think this rumour is BS or just stupid.

I'd probably buy a mid gen upgrade.

Completely optional purchase that each person can come to their own conclusion on whether it is worthy of their money.

@themightyant

Perfect response to the "mo power" arguments.

The Xone and Ps4 first 2 years destroys the forgotten generation that we are currently playing

@grumpypotato I think it would be possible for ER to run at 60 on SX and PS5 but from software is not very good at frame pacing and optimization.

@grumpypotato that’s From’s fault not the Series X, they suck at optimising.

@NEStalgia The lack of loading time alone is enough for me to want the X or PS5 over the previous gen. Technology is constantly improving, why would we not expect consoles to do the same?

Then I’ll PROBABLY be buying a PC.

Honestly tired of buying consoles only for the mid-Gen refresh.

Done with all the Sony vs ms vs Nintendo vs the world crap too. Let them all devour each other to our benefit.

Oh well. I didn’t buy last gen’s mid upgrade and I won’t buy this one either. Honestly at this point I have been dissatisfied with games on either of the twins so this may be my last gen with them. Especially now that sony is putting their games on PC.

@FatalBubbles Actually just sticking an SSD in the old PS4 Pro got to nearly the same performance for the "cross gen" (read: Nearly all) games. X1X didn't have removable storage, so that's a little bit different, though.

Still, it's a pretty damning statement when the main reason to buy the whole generational "leap" launch console was "faster hard drive" while waiting for the ACTUAL next gen console to launch a few years later. The meme has been "PS4 Pro Plus" and "X1X-X" and that kind of reiterates that being true. Do I like my "PS4 Pro Plus", sure. Do I want to buy a PS4 Pro Plus Plus" a few years later and be told that my PS4 Pro Plus was never going to be good at much other than running PS4 Pro games beter-er? Not really. Either release annual consoles and become PCs for real, and list the cutoffs and performance specs for each iteration, or ship the "next gen console" when you've actually assembled the next gen console, not selling the final spec in increments.

I kind of find it hilarious these companies will all go on about becoming "green" then continue to sell us throw-away toxic electronics in incremental steps every other year, rather than doing it right the first time. Every time a tech company says "green" we should each light pile of tires on fire.

Those against these upgrades saying you hope not shouldn't care anyway as you aren't being forced to buy one. There won't be any exclusive games for those systems so you can carry on with your Series S/X without worrying.

@NEStalgia I guess I don’t get that line of thinking. I know that every time a new console comes out it will do things better than the previous. I also know that a new one is coming in 3-4 years. So to not buy the launch version and wait on the mid gen one is odd because then I’d just say in reply, we’ll why buy that one when we know the launch version after will be better?

I brought up the SSD because that alone makes me happy with my purchase. I’m also happy I get 60fps the majority of the time. I like quick resume. Just examples, I didn’t mean the only reason you get one is for the SSD.

If they do it before using the potential of the current system I'm switching back to PC. Basically this makes people who bought the console at launch nothing more than paying Sony/Microsoft to be part of a beta program.

@FatalBubbles I think Jimbo really put the best perspective on how the industry views all of this when he was boasting about the success of PS4 Pro during it's first few months (ironically sales tanked and they basically never talked about it again after that, it was just the early adopter rush before the rest of the market just ignored it existing which still makes me wonder if they'd actually bother doing it at all), but he ascribed the success to gamers being "irrational", just wanting the latest thing [because it's new.] Rarely do I agree with Jim, but that's one of those times. Though it's still nasty to exploit that irrationality, so while I agree with the assessment I don't agree with the solution.

@iplaygamesnstuff Exactly. The whole point of buying a console is you buy once and you're done for the generation, everybody gets the same game performing the same way. That's the entire appeal of console. If we're going to walk the upgrade treadmill, always looking over our shoulders of being up to date and the other guy getting a better experience from a game while we're shafted on our older hardware, etc, then why not just do PC and take it all the way with all the benefits that go with it? Makes no sense.

@UltimateOtaku91 By that argument they should discontinue this generation and move onto PS6/SeriesY next year. It'll be cross-gen so nobody should be upset.

we had one generation that had a hardware refresh introduce stronger systems rather than just part efficiency and now everybody sees it as industry standard... its not the best idea to make devs have to work on so many different hardware profiles as is. aside from nintendo, the output just hasn't been there on either xbox or playstation. We really don't need a stronger model of a generation we really haven't walked into yet.

This is a bash at Xbox but I can’t understand why they would release a more powerful console when they haven’t fully utilised the series x yet

I spent £450 on my console after all the trailers they showed off and have been underwhelmed so far

I can’t understand who would buy a more powerful xbox now I’ve lost faith in Xbox

Neither the ps5 or xbox needs a new console its just them bleeding gamers dry if they do neither console has even come close to using the power of these consoles yet ps5

@Meehanuk_1987 pointless buying an xbox fall stop till the the exclusives start dropping hopefully starfield is the 1st big one

So far I have very little demand for a higher-performance version of our current consoles. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that cross-gen games are still common and there really hasn't been much that has been pushing these consoles to the max yet.

@iplaygamesnstuff Yeah honestly, if they keep pushing for this, I will probably just use whatever money I would use on a upgrade console to build a new gaming PC, where I will just be able to install whatever upgrades whenever.

Take-Two just needs to focus on Rockstar and GTA VI, stop speculating about new consoles and release a new game this decade please

@Stnkygrngo 80's porn on VHS?

To me the question is why? Do people need much better and can't scale their games better. Is the power really worth it if games are still pretty much like the old anyway. Their engines are changing but is the design changing no even with the SSDs, CPU and RAM for more power it's still not enough for them.

We don't have games pulling away from walls to climb through techniques in these current gen only so answer me that developers hmmmmmmm. Otherwise yeah what's the naming, where does it fit above Series X/PS5 or does it in between Series S and the others? Where is the 8K on the box yet they have yet to achieve it once 8K TVs have content for them gaming on tv shows and movies to the home? Do they want people to spend a $700 ($1000 probably in my region where they are $700 for the $500 USD price, not to mention other countries were it's probably just as expensive and people get older consoles, still use the online aka free PS3 online or have modded consoles) on a console when they can get a certain spec PC at that point?

We don't have many even doing certain things they should be able to reach and the game design also is the same. Why so many things are scripted too I don't see many improving to showcase much cooler design or triggers for even boss fight health bars being the same as 2 decades ago than to push the SSD more with cool set pieces, triggers being different and more 'organic' things going on (aka Rift Apart why have a fake small section for a boss fight why force me there why not a more timed/organic back and forth hmmmm nope has to be scripted and it's not convincing anymore) that I know are possible but don't happen and have the same tired design.

Also when games are rushed. Do they not optimise well do they not go 'oh we should make way for this'. I mean without ray tracing you also have a bit better performance too hmmmmmmm. Like seriously doing 4K is fine do we have any 8K games yet because it says 8K on the box is it a misprint? Will only Indies achieve it? I mean we saw many 1080p games in 7th gen but no 8K in this gen yet so I am hopeful but still prove to us it's possible. I don't care for resolution at all I can play at any and not care it's just the marketing/actually delivering that I care about and good frame rates and good game design I actually want to play. Do we have any do certain limits at 120 yes but many not really.

We have parts that are capable. I don't know what AMD equivalents are or the custom parts but I mean if a 2000 series AMD equivalent which is what I assume is in there for GPU why aren't they meeting limits on the 3000/4000 series or other parts on PC with such game design to match either even though they make for consoles.

Many PC players use 1660s or other certain cards let alone however much RAM/CPUs from certain generations. There is working with the cool new tech and there is making a product there is a difference.

CPUs seem fine I guess. RAM is pretty high too at 16GB I think how many on PC actually use the 32GB or however much really? They should have enough. Are we even reaching 120hz some games sure (let alone backwards compatible titles on Xbox which is nice) but many no but do they need it probably not.

Also ray tracing hmm if we don't enable it we get better performance hmmm. Like yes it has a place but do I care for more realistic lighting over performance I'd rather the performance and baked in old school techniques please.

Did the 3rd parties not agree to the 'yeah we would like this as a good enough for this gen' sort of agreement when Sony/Xbox asked what works for developers/publishers this gen. Do they think their customers will pay for higher end consoles in some cases I assume that's what they are betting on but to me it's ridiculous. The base models this time around compared to 8th gen which did but only kind of helped in terms of graphics the hard drive was limited the the other aspects were good but some games like Forza Motorsport 7 (before the Series X even came out) and Biomutant (before the current gen updates even came out too I might add and it ran well loading time length wise on Series X) push the Xbox One X to the point I was confused they are Series X capable not Xbox One X with such loading times.

Like PS4/Xbox One were laptop like parts or so I think and besides that getting 1080p again wasn't a bad thing when most games did 720p and a handful did 1080p on PS3 and the Xbox 360 DVD limits were being pushed but still did 1080p with certain games (some 60FPS many 30FPS and at 720p I forget if many were still 30FPS or 60FPS there) so the only difference was the RAM helping with texture quality as many PS3 games look horrible even besides the resolution because of the textures they used in certain games while others look good. CPU load things better for sure then PS3/360 of course too.

Besides that of course yes we had browns, greys and whites beside certain colourful ones. So when it comes down to CPU/RAM for more quality and loading things sure, but if they push consoles do you really think I care for the games to look realistic but have lesser gameplay no. XD

Wont be buying ...still are releasing Xbox one and PS4 games....it's a slap in the face to all who have bought a ps5 and series x

Such a stupid idea if this happens.

These consoles are perfectly capable of doing what they do. AMD just needs to get a better upscaler to compete with DLSS if RT continues to gain ground. Native resolution doesn't matter anymore.

Microsoft had been working on it's own ML Upscaler - which the Series X has custom ML hardware to handle.

There is so much technology specifically in the Series X|S that is just not ever getting tapped.

Now, when games start getting developed using current-gen focused engines and it's found that these machines can't seem to keep up, then I could see the possibilities of a mid-gen upgrade.

Right now, I just don't see the reason.

UE5, specifically, is much more efficient and capable than UE4.

I mean, if my paltry Surface Book 2 (with a mobile and outdated i7, 16GB RAM, and mobile chipset Nvidia 1060 6GB) can run the Layers of Fear UE5 demo at 720p, Low Settings, and Balanced TSR at an average of 85 fps, then a Series X|S is more than capable of running it maxed out.

I can crank the graphical settings up to 4K using the Ultra Performance TSR setting and on High, but my FPS tanks down to about 25fps. Putting the Quality settings to Automatic (which basically sets it down to Low) puts the upscaled 4K around 40fps.

Still impressive given the age of my laptop hardware and just goes to show how amazingly scalable and efficient UE5 can be in a DX12 environment.

Arkane should do what Epic did with Fortnite and upgrade Redfall to UE5. Fortnite is a locked 60fps on Series X|S and has a similar visual makeup - and that uses both Nanite and Lumen.

My point is, we have yet to see engines more suited for newer hardware get used. And, at least on the Microsoft side, engines that play better with DX12 haven't really hit the market.

When games work better with DX12, the Series consoles will benefit.

So he's saying that all those series x servers will be replaced or just outdated? Adding more SKUs for developers will make optimization easier and hardware that hasn't been utilized in any way will be replaced by newer versions with new chips in the current supply chain?

Right.....

People were already fantasizeing about the mid gen upgrades before these consoles launched... what's the obbsesion here? Sony i could see doing it as the PS5 did seem to be a rushed last minute revision to not be too far off the Xbox in terms of power. But the Series consoles seem like that's it for the gen. Forza Motorsport will be the first proper release for the current gen hardware from Xbox no?

I can see them selling a version with more built in memory at some point, maybe a slimmer version if the tech allows if but that's all.

The refresh for Xbox will probably just be a controller. I expect a newfangled one with gyros.

@Meehanuk_1987 totally agree, where are the games and what is the point?.
Makes no sense whatsoever, they need to remember the mega CD and 32X fiasco back in the day… this could seriously undermine consumer confidence in the brand and be more harmful than good.

I think the great little series S could be a stumbling block, Xbox would then have 3 consoles a game would have to run on, just making life harder for devs.

I'm not bothered by an upgrade as a Series X owner. I'm still paying it off, and in no rush to get something new that's for sure. Considering the Xbox One to Series upgrade was so slight when it came to actual performance and features a new console refresh would be imperceptible unless you had realtime FPS and resolution stats.

The REAL upgrade I'd want to see if that they start shipping the Series S with 1Tb and the X with 2Tb built in storage as standard. They did the same with the PS3 with the same hardware just larger hard drive as base.

The only refresh I need is a PS5 Slim so I can play some of those AAA exclusives. At this point I'm not even sure I would upgrade my S to an X.

How the hell are Xbox going to sell a midgen refresh after telling us consoles are not a priority for them and they’re not trying to compete? What’s the tagline going to be? ‘Buy at your own risk’ or ‘just one of the options to play gamepass on’…can’t imagine it will be ‘most powerful console in the world’ again.
They have so little faith in the console, so reluctant to market it, yet when it comes to releasing these things they’ll tell you they’re in the generation to win it, it ‘eats monsters for breakfast’, it’s going to be the best place to play exclusive games… etc, to get your £500…only for the following year tell you you’re stupid for having expectations on the console.

And all that noise doesn’t take into consideration that the consoles out don’t even have games taking full advantage of the hardware yet 🙃

I would love a mid cycle refresh that would let me play games like Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor at 4k 60 on its fidelity setting. To me that would be very much worth the money.

I want to see a Series XS. An X with a detachable S for on the go gaming. That way, they don't have to change their manufacturing processes either. I mean, it would still run Redfall at the same frame rate, so everyone would be mad and ask why they bothered, but people would buy it

The CPU was the problem last generation. Once developers make the most of Series X DirectX 12 built-in features, customised CPU and powerful GPU, we'll see breathtaking things.

I agree with @Microbius entirely. It'd almost be like admitting that the current consoles aren't powerful enough to run the games that are being developed for them.

And @robe, I am usually the same. New Xbox/Playstation tech, gotta have it. This feels different though, I really am not in the slightest bit interested in laying down another £400+ just for it to run the games that the X should be able to run.

Have to agree with most of the people on here... I feel like with the recent hardware shortages it would be a really shi*** thing if MS and Sony decided to release a "mid-gen" upgrade to consoles that still haven't had a game come even close to their potential.

I mean I was only able to get a Series X late last year from retail, didn't want an overpriced used console with no warranty... And now that I JUST GOT the damn thing they want to release a better one?! I won't buy it. Not unless it's the final years of this console gen and the updated console is cheap as f*** used. Even then, I may just wait for the next gen depending on how the timelines play out for these rumoured releases.

The Ps5 has shown to be extremely competitive with the Series X despite slightlly lower specs on paper, and the Series S... While a bit underpowered in the GPU aspect, can keep lower resolutions solid and still deliver a next gen experience with its far faster CPU and SSD combo.

When games leave behind the XB One and Ps4 gen, we will see what these new consoles can really do. The lowest common denominator will be raised significantly in many areas technologically.

Until then? The money making machine of having the newest shiniest toy doesn't appeal to me. Hell, I JUST upgraded to a decent 4K TV for my Series X. Aside from a patched up Cyberpunk 2077 and Gears 5 SX upgrade, I haven't seen anything software-wise that blows me away.

Take advantage of the current power of consoles to their potential, then show me why I should do a mid-gen upgrade. You give me enough reasons? I might be tempted. But until then, loving my Series X and at the same time frustrated that its hardware hasn't been fully exploited.

What's it going to be called? This is going to absolutely break Microsoft silly naming scheme.