Xbox Reporter 'Pretty Sure' New Console Is Set To Launch In 2027

I hope its 2027. I am not excited about next gen at all whether its PS or xbox. Let current gen shine.

Also I wish MS could at least re-stock and try to sell xbox series that they recently refreshed with 3 new revisions. Especially closer to GTA 6 release date - thats easy several millions of consoles sales just because GtA is that big.

Making xbox a PC is a most logical move for MS. BUT, I have SO many questions:

Is it going to be dual boot system with 2 OS (xbox os and Windows fully separate)?
Will xbox be just an overlay in windows?
Will we have PC bugs, optimization issues, shaders rendering and such?
Will there be free online?
Do I have to sub to PC game pass or GPU?
What happens to my current xbox collection? Many games (esp 360 ones) are not on steam and even xbox pc store.

I just dont know how they can make it work and I am afraid instead of “best of both worlds” we will be having “not good as a regular PC, neither as good as traditional console” type of device

There are three good things that would (or could) come of the Prime releasing in 2027 would mean to me:

1. We might actually have some sort of vague understanding of what Microsoft are doing in relation to their home developed games. Right now we just stumble around in a darkness created by Microsoft, with no real idea of what they are doing, or how it impacts us. We might have a better understanding come 2027, but knowing Microsoft, we probably won't!

2. My Game Pass subscription would have run out then. That would mean that I wouldn't be looking to buy the console in order to see out my subscription. If I do choose to buy the Prime I'd be doing so based entirely on what the console offers to me.

3. We may get E-Day this year after all, as some of the rumours have posited, though I think that 2026 remains the most likely. Of course, the flipside of that, is if E-Day is a Prime launch title, then that would mean we will be left waiting until 2027 to play it...!

Anyways, Corden has been wrong before, and he could easily be wrong again. My money remains on 2026...

Next gen console being essentially a PC is the most logical decision from my perspective. We have seen the blowback from the PS5 Pro price. Next gen top tier model (excluding the everything is an xbox, as even just your TV by itself can be an xbox...) will likely be similarly priced & get blowback if it is a device only for gaming.

I am old enough to have lived in a world where your phone now replaces multiple devices (phone, camera, GPS, game boy/entertainment...). We accept current high sticker price of phones because they do so much. It is getting absurd that you pay so much and have so much power in a gaming box & it doesn't replace the need to also have a PC or the reverse.

It's pretty clear that Microsoft can't launch new Xbox as a closed ecosystem. It would too niche and devs would probably stop supporting it.
So making a PC with Xbox shell sounds pretty logical. But it's a case of "how will you implement." Because on paper it sounds good.

We would have access to many more games thanks to PC ecosystem including PlayStation games. It would basically solve "will devs support a platform" problem. But there are many questions that needs to be answered.

Late 2026 announcement (coinciding with the 25th anniversary) with a 2027 release makes the most sense to me.

@Fiendish-Beaver man be strong. You told us multiple times prime is 2026 with eday as launch title. This Corden guys knows nothing.

I'm not buying. At least not in any hurry. This gen is barely starting.
I'll stay on Series until games are no longer made for it. Then we'll see.

@GoldenPants i would argue there is no need to have a PC at all these days. Most companies give you work laptop and things like email and files management are done with phones now.

For MS gaming seems like they are looking for a way to retire xbox console without losing these 50M customers across xbox one and series. Going prebuilt PC may be a way out just not sure how this hybrid going to work

@Millionski They should take a massive hit and put Series S out for $199 the week before gta vi. Throw in a $10 store voucher too. Even if its just a temporary price.
If they do though, they'd better start making those now cos they fly of the shelf.

@Lup planning to do the same. Next gen will be even more underwhelming with inevitable cross gen and PRO-level improvements at best.

I also want to see how MS handles new gen to decide if I want to even be with them.
Love my SX though - best console.

@Fiendish-Beaver I'm tiptoeing into conspiracy theory territory here, but if I was Xbox, I d want everybody - Sony especially- to anticipate 2027.
Xbox know how vital it was to the 360's success being out a year before ps3.

@NeutronBomb I have a strong feeling they not gonna do anything at all. Seems like they are trying to stop consoles at all. Hence more PC rumours and it make sense if they want to retire consoles - they just dont want to sell more.

@Millionski oh totally. Xbox won't lift a finger, for sure. It's frustrating.

Honestly I’d rather keep my Halo edition Series X as a nice reminder of what Xbox was while I move my game library elsewhere.

But if the console is 2027 (pure speculation as Jez Corden isn’t a credible source at all) it makes even less sense on why they’re not restocking the current console pretty much anywhere outside the MS Store.

My take, for what is worth, is that they go down the Surface route and manufacture a high end & expensive console (£1000+)

MS will not be competing with Sony or Nintendo in hardware sales but will be by then mostly a software company as "everything is an XBox"; however I would expect them to want to have a console to show off their games as best as possible

From a games preservation point of view I really hope it is not some Cloud based hybrid machine
I would be OK with it being some sort of PC in console form, as long as it is still recognisably a console

@Millionski Xbox One and Series X|S are x86 console-computers that run Windows. Microsoft was able to translate the Xbox 360 game code from a PowerPC console. I have no doubt after seeing what Microsoft's engineers have done with Xbox One that they will be able to easily run the whole backwards compatible catalogue on future consoles that are basically Windows computers, maybe even letting the door open for stores other than Microsoft Store, like Steam, thus including Sony's games in the process.

I'd love a new pc for the telly concept, but if it runs windows its dead to me. It has to be a new optimised OS otherwise its just as pointless as any other PC under the TV, for me at least.

@IOI maybe they already decided internally to go full PC next gen and simply slowing production and logistics as they dont want more people on consoles.
Counter-intuitive imo as why not sell revised SX white and SS 1tb that prob is not sold at a loss now as usually with slim versions/mid gen revisions. But maybe its a push to abandon console sooner than expected.
I personally dont care at this point (i mean I like speculating but overall will be just as fine on another platform) and moreover really interested to see this pc-xbox hybrid if that happens. Not sure they can actually pull it off but who knows.

Honestly PC gaming is on the rise and any form of it would be good for a consumer. I just like many else likes the box under TV format so if Valve or MS or else can figure it out properly where its a PC that feels like console but also supports MKB, mods and such - thats great.

@GlasgowGuy “we are not gonna win with $1000 consoles” Mr Phil said. Maybe he means 999 tho lol. But i believe regardless if its a console or hyrbid it will be priced at 600-700

@Titntin i think thats what they essentially want to do but not sure they will succeed as its a very hard task basically. Have best of both worlds seems too good to be true

Whilst I doubt you're as old as me, @GoldenPants 🤣 what you say makes a great deal of sense. One of the biggest omissions from your list of things that a mobile replaces these days is Walkman or an MP3 player (for the younger amongst us!). Thus, as you say, having a console that is more PC like in capabilities would be something that could be sold with a higher price attached to it, and which would be more acceptable to the buying public.

Just how much of a PC like experience it can be, I'm not yet certain. Maybe it will be modular, which would be an interesting step. So instead of replacing the entire console every 7 or 8 years, you replace a particular part such as a Microsoft specific graphics card, or some such...

@Banjo- it runs on a very restricted version of windows. Now to have steam, mods and such it should be just windows where xbox will be an overlay. Such solutions usually dont work fine. I have more trust in steam engineers and steam os

I think having a PC-like experience in console form would be a great step on behalf of Microsoft, which the cynic in me says they are unlikely to take it!

However, putting that aside, I actually believe this is what Microsoft will do. What I will say though is all those believing that the Prime will also have Steam on it, I find difficult to accept, simply because if Microsoft take that step, then people will be completely disincentivised to buy games on the Xbox Store because games can be bought more cheaply on (or for) Steam than it is possible to buy games on the Xbox Store. Two examples are right now you can buy Split Fiction for for the Xbox on CDKeys for £34.99 whereas it is £31.99 for Steam. When it comes to first-party games, the Premium Edition of Avowed is £71.99 for the Xbox, and £63.99 for Steam.

People would quickly become wise to this and would soon be shopping for bargains over buying directly from Microsoft. Essentially, if Microsoft do take this path, then it would cost them billions in lost sales, and would be yet another massive act of self-harm...

@Millionski Obviously, Xbox One and Series X|S don't have all the Windows features because they don't need them at all and would make them slower and less efficient, but that's another reason for not doubting that the next console will play backwards compatible games. Dropping Windows OS has zero probability, in my opinion. Replacing it with a third-party OS and dropping the full Xbox and Play Anywhere catalogue on top of the backwards compatible catalogue makes no sense for Microsoft and for the Xbox ecosystem.

@Millionski Well I hope they succeed in losing windows, as it's not a console at all if it still runs windows. That OS is not at all efficient and means you will lose performance from the hardware that should be powering your game.
They are a multi trillion pound software development corp - if they cant make a simple games playing OS for their new machine it would be pretty pathetic... everyone else who has ever made a games console has managed it.

I'm pretty sure it will launch in 2028 and not 2027 but what do I know?
2027 still seems to soon for my liking.
Anyone should take what Jez Corden says with a pinch of salt anyway.

Im just fine and dandy with my series x there's enough games to look forward to and wait for without even thinking about a new console 2 years down the line!

I'm not tech guy, @Titntin, but what would an a new OS do for playing existing games that you have in your library? Would a new OS render them unplayable on the Prime...?

@Millionski I think making the PC into an Xbox is a better approach.

What I mean by that is bringing Xbox OS to PC or any other cable hardware (with minum specs defined).

This would be in line with the 'This is an Xbox' marketing and would make sense as Cloud Gaming uses Xbox OS just as the consoles.

The only hardware the doesn't have Xbox OS on the ecosystem is the PC.

So bring Xbox OS to Windows through the same subsystem technology they used to run Linux inside Windows (WSL).

Xbox OS would allow every Xbox game to run on PCs, including Backward compatible titles.

It would also allow for the future Xbox handheld to carry the users library from the home console.

This would make Xbox hadrware themselves more relevant, as developing for PC, handheld, cloud means developing for Xbox hardware (home console).

@eduscxbox That's exactly what I think that will happen: the version of Windows that has been built for Xbox will run on future console-computers, with regular computers being able to run the console version of Windows, too. Microsoft has already confirmed that they are bringing the Xbox experience to a handheld PC, everything else falls into line with that. This makes the most sense for Microsoft because of several essential reasons:

1) they own Windows,
2) they keep the full Xbox and Play Anywhere library intact,
3) they keep the backwards compatible catalogue,
4) and Xbox Cloud is based on Series X.

A TV friendly PC is great but it all comes down to cost. If you want an all singing box under there, then you best start saving.

If you go for a budget PC at a console price then it's pretty pointless.

Then you have to look at letting folks access other store fronts such as steam, epic, gog, etc... Buying from these literally cuts off any money from the sale from MS.

So many questions that only time will answer I guess. My money is the next xbox will be a handheld and a streaming box.

@Fiendish-Beaver No mate, the games you have a license for are easy to track and the new OS would be able to recognise that you have and own those games, so it should not affect your access to your games library imo. As long as they have robust systems allowing you to play your owned games then you should be good regardless of the OS front end.

If you were a steam user for instance and they launched the rumoured new 'Steam Box' there would be no issues accessing your owned games on the new box, and I would hope this would be the case for any new MS box too.

@eduscxbox we are forgetting the elephant in the room - pricing. Consoles are sold at a loss for several years (until production and cogs is optimized) because companies recoup on sales thru proprietary storefronts where they get 100% revenues. Now why MS want to sell xbox-pc hybrid that runs steam with free online and cheaper games at a subsidized cost? Such hybrid could be really expensive. On top of that if it’s outsourced to MSI, Lenovo and such - they have to charge their markup as they are hardware companies.

My 2 cents this xbox-pc hybrid is too good to be true. Expect issues with performance and higher price tag

@Titntin I put my money on steam OS. Desktop steam os is rumored to be in the works and seems steam machines 2.0 are inevitable.
And PC gaming is NOT MS. PC gaming is steam.
They also already have tech that is working almost flawlessly- steam os on steam deck. We see how they handle compatibilty and such so we have already biggest library on steam deck than on any console.

I put my money on steam here.

Xbox themselves said when it would happen. Why would we listen to anyone else?

@Millionski I would do so to. When I buy games on PC, I buy through Steam, even Forza Horizon games. The MS app has been in a state for years and they do so little with it. Steam works and I'd prefer to access PC gaming via Steam any day. Steams 'Big Picture mode' is pretty much a console OS already, and as its based on Linux, it's a more efficient game launcher than windows already..
I have yet to use a handheld steam deck, but I bet they have tweaked that to have a very good OS..

@Millionski Microsoft having a “baseline” set of hardware for a PC might prevent some of the issues you are talking about with PC ports.

Shader compilation wouldn’t be a problem because the package downloaded to a machine identified as an Xbox PC could come with all the shaders pre-compiled for the system.

Developers can thoroughly test the game against that set hardware to ensure performance is solid for that system as well.

Basically, it’s like a game getting Steam Deck Verified, but for a home console instead of a handheld.

As far as backward compatibility, Xbox essentially uses local Virtual Machine instances for everything anyways. So Microsoft could just make those work for PC.

Thanks, @Titntin, but my point was that if it is a different OS, would that mean that it would not be able to play games on our current OS? Like I say, I don't understand these things, so I look people with greater knowledge. As Microsoft would own both OS's, I assume that they would be able to do this easily, but then again, I don't know what I'm talking about...! 🤣

2027 sounds like a good year to release a new console

it sounds exciting but i’m taking it one day at a time, and not doom and glooming like everyone else is doing

@Fiendish-Beaver As long as there is a PC version of the game, yes you would be able to play it.
Although the front end of the OS would be very different, underneath that I assume would support for all the driect X features that help to power todays PC code. Ultimately the machine would need to run PC software, so it wont stray far from direct X and the drivers that help to make PC games run today. Having a locked hardware spec should get rid of issues associated with shader recompiling, as it would not need to do that on the fly for different hardware configs, it would all be pre compiled for the hardware available.

Obviously we are all speculating at this stage, but a custom type PC is very strong consideration precisely because it has the code to run existing PC titles - the OS changes would be to the front end and designed to be interfaced with a controller.

@Millionski "Now why MS want to sell xbox-pc hybrid that runs steam with free online and cheaper games at a subsidized cost"

That's not what I said.

Microsoft will keep launching Xbox the same way they always did, with their proprietary Xbox OS.

Microsoft will also allow Xbox OS to run inside the Windows PC (regular PCs, no need to built one for it as long as it has some minimum specs, like it is to run a game)

"PC gaming isn't Microsoft, it is Steam". Right, and still Valve launched a handheld console into the market.

Microsoft can do the same, bring the console into the PC.

@Millionski thats my thing, my work gives me a Windows Laptop. I can of course only use it for work. But thats all i would want to do with it. Windows sucks. I use my IPhone, iPad Pro with Keyboard as my daily driver and have an older MacBook Pro. There is nothing i need or would want with Windows. Once i shut off my work laptop i am so happy to be away from that OS. I want to see and hear more of how this would work. Cause i have my doubts on some of it, but there is a lot to like about it as well. At least on paper as we don’t have the details and likely won’t until 2026 as it nears its 2027 launch.

All I do on a PC is word, excel and internet. I’m sure the current Xbox could run those things. The current Xbox is more powerful than a chrome book. So it’s just software which is what Microsoft does.

What I think is, I wish they would just come and say.
Yes or no to.
Xbox partner handheld device
Xbox true handheld
Xbox home console.
Not sure why we have to have all this mystery.
We Sony are making a PS6 home console and working with AMD with FSR 4.
It would be nice to have some official speak on all this, especially considering the multi platform vibe and Xbox console future uncertainty.
It would help build some trust for us Xbox fans and give something certain to look forward to.

@OldGamer999
well, you need to wait, they don’t want to ruin the surprise otherwise

2026 / 2027 both make sense to me in regards to the cycle of a gen. But from what we know, including what was just put out on another news post here today, I'm very very excited.

I'm sure that made sense to you, @Titntin. Me? Totally lost...! 🤣

As usual with these next Xbox articles, lots of "Nintendo should have stuck with the Wii U for a few more years" energy in the comments

@Fiendish-Beaver Sorry mate.
You should be fine with your back catalogue is the short of it 😄

After a generation like this I think I'm over consoles for the most part.

@Millionski There are so many questions that arrive from this (e.g. what happens to the (Xbox store which helps to subsidize the console?).

YTubers have run away with this in a reckless fashion. The whole "the next Xbox can play PS games via Steam/PC stores" is routed as much in console war rhetoric as convenience. Instead of focusing on the most obvious product being a version (or mode) of Windows more akin to Xbox in interface and features. That could run on portables for Lenovo or ASUS. The more complex you get from there, the more unlikely it becomes.

We have PC available to play games on right now; we have for decades. This notion of "I don't want to install drivers" is absurd in this day & age. The rumors describe these people being spoon-fed a PC. They don't strike me as a reliable base you would want to gamble such a massive detour on.

PC becoming more like Xbox is the path of least resistance by far. Fewer constraints on power (electrical and performance), cost, heat, dimensions, and user competence.

Yeh I’d say 2027 would make the most sense because since Xbox Series X and S both were released in 2020, Then that would be around the average cycle for a console.