What you need to know
- Microsoft recently held an Xbox Games Showcase, announcing a number of new games and sharing updates on previously announced titles.
- All of the first-party games from Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks are coming exclusively to Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.
- Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty confirmed in an interview that the first-party teams are completely focused on the latest hardware, meaning there won't be new Xbox One titles.
While a large bevy of first-party games are on the way from Xbox, Xbox One players will no longer be able to play them natively.
Speaking with Axios, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty confirms that there won't be any new Xbox One games developed at the first-party teams across Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
”We’ve moved on to Gen 9,” Booty said. This doesn't mean existing games are being cut off though, with titles like Sea of Thieves and Halo Infinite continuing to be updated on older hardware. Instead, this means that any new games are going to built specifically for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.
At the recent Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft showed off a number of titles such as Fable, South of Midnight, Avowed, and Starfield, all of which are being developed exclusively for the latest machines.
Any Xbox One owners that want to play these games will need to upgrade, though they also have the option of streaming games to their Xbox One via Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Windows Central's take
Getting direct confirmation is cool, but this really shouldn't be surprising. Even back in 2022, most of the games announced from Xbox have been exclusive to Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. There were a handful of cross-gen titles, such as the excellent Pentiment, but the trend has been clear for a while.
This is the way of the world, and it's a good thing, as developers will be building games for a higher-spec baseline that can take advantage of the additional GPU and CPU power these machines provide, as well as building games around an ultra-fast internal SSD.
