Xbox president and chief executive officer, Sarah Bond, has already put down any notions from players wondering if Xbox is still making consoles and hardware. A next-gen Xbox is on the way; there's seemingly no question about it. Questions about what will be packed into that new box and what it'll look like, however, won't be answered anytime soon. Though, according to Bond in a new interview, we can expect it to be three things: a "very premium, very high-end, curated experience." It's also worth noting that those three probably also mean a fourth thing: very expensive.
In a new interview with Mashable, discussing the ROG Xbox Ally X handheld that ASUS created in collaboration with Xbox and Microsoft, Mashable asks Bond if they could say anything about next-gen Xbox hardware, and if they can comment on rumours floating around that Microsoft is looking to make the next-genertion of Xbox hardware some kind of inbetween a console and a PC.
Essentially, taking the experience you get on an ROG Xbox Ally/Ally X handheld, where you can play your Steam, GOG, BattleNet, EA Play, etc., games, and your Xbox games on one device. That's the rumour, anyway, that Mashable refers to.
The beginning of Bond's response is a comment on what Mashable had already said about the next-gen hardware, saying, "Well, I can tell you you're right, that the next-gen console is going to be a very premium, very high-end, curated experience."
Then, while gesturing to the ROG Xbox Ally X sitting between her and Mashable's tech editor, Bond continues, "You're starting to see some of the thinking that we have in this handheld, but I don't want to give it all away."
On the one hand, this is simply an executive hyping up her company's next major product. Of course she'll say it'll a "premium, very high-end" experience. On the other hand, her short comment regarding how we're already starting to see where Microsoft and Xbox are thinking of moving its hardware forward in the ROG Xbox Ally X, is arguably the most interesting part of this.
An Xbox console where you can access and play all the games in your PC gaming library across multiple PC launchers and digital storefronts, that delivers a console experience for your PC games, does sound like exactly the kind of thing that could make Xbox consoles interesting again.
If the rumours are to be believed, we'll see if that'll be reality sometime around 2027. In other Xbox hardware news, after Microsoft raised the prices of the consoles players buy in stores, it also raised the price of Xbox development kits for game developers. If you're looking for more on the ROG Xbox Ally X, then you can check out my review of the device, as well as my interview with two ASUS executives who confirm that the ROG Xbox Ally line of handhelds is the way forward for ASUS and its ROG handheld devices.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
