Microsoft Discontinues Developing New Games for Xbox One.

Microsoft is discontinuing support for Xbox One at the game development level. Instead, the company will focus on the Xbox Series S/X consoles. Microsoft’s internal studios will no longer consider the capabilities of the previous-generation console when shaping hardware requirements for new games.

Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, has stated that the company will use the Xbox Cloud Gaming infrastructure to offer the latest games to Xbox One users. The recent Xbox Games Showcase presentation did not include announcements of games that will support Xbox One at launch.

Some developers may want to drop support for the less powerful Xbox Series S, but Microsoft is not taking that step yet. Matt Booty acknowledges that optimizing games for the Xbox Series S takes more time, but he claims that the internal studios are currently managing it successfully.

Microsoft has also increased the console’s storage to 1TB, reducing the need for optimization of installation files. In the past, game development took 3-4 years, but with the increasing technological complexity of games, this period has stretched to an average of 5-6 years, partly due to the need for optimization for the older hardware.

Xbox head Phil Spencer recently admitted that the company missed out on many opportunities with the Xbox One generation, which held back game development. However, Microsoft is now focused on creating games for the new consoles and is using cloud infrastructure to support Xbox One.