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PhilSpencer1

The gap between computers and consoles has been shrinking for decades — and at present, Xbox head Phil Spencer wants to eliminate it altogether. Microsoft is already taking steps to unify its Xbox One and Windows x experience, through features like game streaming beyond networks and cross-buy adequacy. Upgrading hardware, withal, is something else entirely.

Nonetheless, upgraded hardware appears to be what Spencer meant. "We run into on other platforms whether it be mobile or PC that you go a continuous innovation that you rarely see on console," Polygon reports Spencer as saying. "Consoles lock the hardware and the software platforms together at the starting time of the generation. And so you ride the generation out for seven or so years, while other ecosystems are getting better, faster, stronger. And and then you wait for the next large pace part."

PC vs. console

This graph shows the step function Spencer is referring to. PC performance increases over time at a fairly steady rate, consoles have long periods of static functioning, followed by a leap.

"When you look at the console space, I believe we will encounter more hardware innovation in the panel space than nosotros've always seen," Spencer said. "You'll actually see united states come out with new hardware capability during a generation allowing the same games to run backward and forrard compatible because we take a Universal Windows Awarding running on acme of the Universal Windows Platform that allows us to focus more and more on hardware innovation without invalidating the games that run on that platform."

A new console prototype?

Before we hit the software side of things, permit'south talk about long-term trends in console development. The truth is, the gap between consoles and PCs has been shrinking, bit by bit, ever since the Nintendo NES launched in the mid-1980s. In the 1990s, consoles adopted CD-ROM and DVD-ROM technology, even if they used customized discs and encoding schemes. Microsoft's Xbox was the beginning mainstream console to utilise an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU; both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 made integrated storage standard, even if Microsoft did technically sell a disc-only option. The PlayStation 3 could run Linux, until Sony patched information technology out.

Today, the Xbox 1 and PlayStation 4 are PCs in everything but name. They rely on commodity x86 hardware and consumer graphics cards. They're built around low-level APIs that have much in common with their PC brethren like Vulkan, DX12, and AMD's Mantle. This is slightly more obvious with the Xbox One, which literally runs a version of Windows, but there'due south nada at the hardware level that would prevent the PS4 from doing so as well.

The Xbox Ane and PS4 are PCs with highly integrated SoCs and custom operating system and software back up, combined with a few unique bits of hardware. That'south it. From a hardware perspective, there'due south nothing stopping Microsoft or Sony from creating a similar ecosystem around these devices, in which each iteration of the product is a superset of the hardware that came before.

It's easy to imagine what this might look like. A hypothetical Xbox Two could offer 8GB of DDR4-3200 (if Microsoft wanted to take the lower-toll road) or 8GB of HBM2. The GPU could exist substantially improved, from its current 768 shader cores to 1536 or more. A 14nm node transition would go far like shooting fish in a barrel to redesign AMD's Jaguar for college clocks, putting the new chip in the 2-2.5GHz range. Fix the core's half-speed L2 enshroud, and boom — you've got a substantially faster Xbox Two built on cut-edge 14nm engineering that's withal perfectly backwards-compatible with the XBox One.

What most software and sales?

Historically, this has been the major sticking indicate. Conventional wisdom says that console games are as fast and competitive equally they are thank you to extensive optimization for a unmarried hardware SKU. If developers have to target multiple SKUs for optimization, the thinking is, such advantages would exist lost.

It'southward not clear if this is however the case. First of all, previous consoles were completely different each and every generation. A studio that had specialized in designing games for the PlayStation 2 had to outset from scratch when the PS3 shipped. If Microsoft pursued an iterative upgrade policy, there'd be no need for an industry-wide reset every 5-8 years. Backwards compatibility would be assured cheers to a combination of software engineering and intrinsic hardware adequacy.

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The Sony PlayStation movement — or, equally I like to call it, the PS Wii

The other major argument against panel upgrades is the fact that add-ons for existing consoles tend to either sell poorly or transport with very few titles. Both the Kinect and PlayStation Move savage into this trap, equally did numerous peripherals in previous generations. At best, console add together-ons get niche products with fringe appeal in specific titles. At worst, they're expensive, overhyped doorstops with all the game-improving power of a dead manatee.

Again, nonetheless, one of the reasons developers never targeted these one-half-steps in nifty numbers is because they've virtually always been either a one-half-measure to extend the operation of a platform in need of refresh, or a gimmick that would work well in a handful of titles, at all-time.

With the Xbox I already standardized on Windows 10 and the DX12 API, Microsoft could feasibly define a feature level that corresponded to each version of the Xbox, with corresponding resolution, frame rate, and quality targets. While this would withal leave developers targeting more than ane platform, it would be orders of magnitude simpler than the current PC ecosystem.

I could argue that this trend towards a periodic refresh cycle began with the PS3 and Xbox 360. Consoles have always evolved over time, but before last-gen, those evolutions were subtle, and tended to focus on smaller form factors. The Xbox 360 and PS3, in dissimilarity, evolved significantly betwixt launch and retirement.

Another advantage to this model would be the ability to answer more than quickly to shifts in consumer demand. A traditional console launch is an extremely heavy lift. Microsoft invests years of work into launch lineups, content creation, hardware blueprint, marketing, partnerships, and long-term software support.

A fast refresh cycle would requite Microsoft the flexibility to iterate on VR, or AR, or any emerging consumer technology without asking developers to throw huge resources at hardware they knew had little staying power. Instead of edifice bleeding-edge hardware every v-eight years, Microsoft and Sony could iterate on solid (but non outrageous) engineering science advances every 2-three years. Give gamers guaranteed backwards compatibility for both peripherals and software, and I think rapid-iteration consoles could be a win for everyone involved. If Microsoft is serious well-nigh this plan, it would explain why AMD has been rumored to already be working on next-gen designs for a possible 2018 launch appointment.

My colleague, Grant Brunner, isn't nigh equally bullish on this possibility as I am. He lays out his reasoning in a different piece published this forenoon. Where do you stand on the concept of upgradeable consoles?