Microsoft Kills New Games For Xbox One
Microsoft won't be producing any more games for the Xbox One.
We all knew this day was coming; after discontinuing the Xbox One console some three years ago, Microsoft and its first-party studios finally pulled the plug on the Xbox One games. This means that the majority, if not all, gaming titles Microsoft featured on its latest game showcase won’t arrive on the console—unfortunately, this applies to Fable as well.
According to Kotaku, the Xbox game studio chief Matt Booty, who recently discussed why Xbox exclusives take so long to make, also confirmed that Xbox wouldn’t produce or develop any first-party games for its discontinued Xbox One console. This marks a major shift in this console generation, with Microsoft finally switching its focus on the Xbox Series X|S consoles now that the company has developed and continues to polish a whole slew of gaming exclusives, some of which should arrive by the year’s end.
Now, let’s clarify a few things. While Microsoft and Xbox won’t be making any new games for the Xbox One console, it’s important to note that the support for the hardware wasn’t actually shut down. In fact, it likely won’t be shut down for years to come, considering that Microsoft still supports Xbox 360, which is celebrating its 18th birthday this November. Booty confirmed this in his interview, stating that some of the internal teams at Xbox will continue to provide security updates and performance patches for the console.
The eighth generation of video game consoles, including both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and their respective redesigns, have had a pretty long run, mostly due to semiconductor shortages induced by the Covid-19 lockdowns. This made ninth-gen consoles largely absent from the market, and to compensate, Sony continued the production of PlayStation 4 to supplement the market for the shortage of PlayStation 5. Microsoft, however, decided to go the other way around and pulled the plug on the production of the console.
At the same time, the company has upped the production of Xbox Series S, the smaller console in the Series series, as it requires nearly half of the semiconductor materials needed to make the bigger Xbox Series X console. The discontinuation of Xbox One allowed Microsoft to reallocate its resources to producing the newer console, but with the short supplies, both first- and third-party studios—the ones who actually live off software production—continued making games for the previous generation.
And here we come to the bottom line; the last generation console still makes up a pretty big portion of Microsoft’s gaming console market. Xbox can afford and should actually pursue the development of exclusives for its newer console at the expense of the old, but that doesn’t mean that third-party developers are ready to do the same. Let’s take a small step back and remember that Hogwarts Legacy dropped for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 just a few weeks back, drastically increasing its already record-setting sales.
It’s safe to assume that Xbox One, though now devoid of new first-party releases, is still likely to entertain its owners for years to come, at least until the next generation of consoles hits the market, and that’s not likely to happen before 2026 at the latest—please note that this is pure speculation based on market observation.
