With Sony and Microsoft releasing their console upgrades - PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio, gamers will be enjoying games at better framerates and higher resolutions. However, there begs the question: do gamers need to buy new consoles every two years or so to fully enjoy games? Microsoft's head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, expresses his honest opinion on the matter, saying that the future beyond Xbox Scorpio is uncertain and that he doesn't plan to release a new console every two years.
In a recent interview with Gameinformer, Spencer mentioned what "gaming beyond generations" will be during the Project Scorpio announcement at E3 2016. The head of Xbox actually admitted that he could not be certain that customers in general will need new hardware on a regular basis. He also mentioned that he's not sure that another console should succeed the Xbox Scorpio.
"We're thinking about it." said Spencer. "We're looking at consumer trends and what the right performance spec and price would be, and [asking ourselves], 'Can we hit something that has a meaningful performance characteristic that a gamer would care about?'"
Microsoft's Xbox head also does not feel the need to release a new console too often to get his customer to purchase it, according to WCCFTECH. Spencer added that: "I don't have this desire to every two years have a new console on the shelf; that's not part of the console business model, and it doesn't actually help us."
He also compared the Xbox gaming to NVIDIA's and AMD's GPU market, where release dates of the high-end performing cards are being released periodically, and concluded that this is not the direction he was looking for.
"I'm not trying to turn consoles into the graphics card market where every so often NVIDIA or AMD come out with a new card," said Spencer. "And if I want a little bit more performance I'm going to go buy that new card."
He further explained, "I think for consoles it's different. I think you have to hit a spec that actually means something in an ecosystem of televisions and games."
Microsoft's Xbox Scorpio, which is said to accommodate true native 4K gaming without any compromises, will be released sometime around 2017.
