Microsoft Could Release Four Xbox Models For Next-gen Console Cycle

The next generation of consoles from both Microsoft and Sony are going to be undoubtedly interesting, and as expected, the number of leaks has been bordering on ridiculous. Of course, we’re not sure what sounds that plausible, but a new set of leaks does seem possible, given the aggressiveness we’ve seen from Microsoft in gaming lately.

For all of the next-gen consoles, it seems like AMD is going to be gracing them all, as NVIDIA seemingly has more interest in every other one of the areas it focuses in (especially enterprise). It’s been said that Sony is pretty much directly responsible for AMD’s Radeon Navi architecture, which could be the reason we haven’t been hearing too much of it as a desktop gaming series lately.

Microsoft will also employ AMD GPUs, and based on this newest leak, there’s going to be a lot of ground to cover for the Radeon folks. In 2020, Microsoft could start the rollout of the next Xbox, which will see a total of four different SKUs – at least initially. Bear with me:

At the forefront would be an Xbox One X follow-up (Anaconda) – the big gun, with as much horsepower as AMD and Microsoft can jointly shove into a console while keeping costs sane. An Xbox One S variant (Lockhart) would also be released, catering to those who don’t want to shell out more than $500 for a console.

Where things get interesting is with a “Maverick” device, one that would cater entirely to streaming, foregoing a disc drive. Since Microsoft’s very familiar with offering cloud services, notably with Xbox Game Pass, it seems likely that we’ll see the company continue to expand those offerings for the next-gen. Finally, a fourth unit seems similar to the Xbox One S, but somehow whittled down and skewed towards cloud play – even though it still has a disc drive.

The gaming landscape is quite different today than it was when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launched. Cloud gaming is now a much bigger focus, and when current consoles struggle to play games at 60 FPS, we’re really in need of some new hardware. I love the idea of Microsoft releasing multiple consoles, because it lets everyone get involved with their particular budget. I fail to believe a cloud-only console would be ideal for online multi-player, but at least there’d be the option for those who are fine with that, or are not interested in online play.