125-709: The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series . Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part of the ninth generation of video game consoles , which also includes Sony 's PlayStation 5 , released the same month. Both superseded the Xbox One . Like the Xbox One, the consoles use an AMD 64-bit x86-64 CPU and GPU . Both models have solid-state drives to reduce loading times, support for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and spatial audio ,
250-461: A TOSLINK port for digital audio, but this was eliminated in the final design. The console has an IR receiver in its controller pairing button next to the front USB port. The Xbox Series S is comparable in its hardware to the Xbox Series X, similar to how the Xbox One S relates to the Xbox One X, but has less processing power. While it runs the same CPU with slightly slower clock frequencies, it uses
375-522: A USB-C connector for wired use and charging (with the optional battery kit) rather than USB Micro-B . Many of the first-party accessories designed to work with the preceding Xbox One remain compatible with the Xbox Series X, including the Xbox Stereo Headset and Xbox Wireless Headset. Spencer said that the Xbox Series X will likely not have immediate virtual reality (VR) support at launch, and that they expect that any VR support will be based on
500-533: A "Project Lockhart", a second, lower-end console that accompanied Scarlett. Confirmation of the Xbox Series S naming was affirmed through early Xbox hardware accessories that some had been able to purchase. Microsoft officially announced the Series S console on September 8, 2020, revealing that it would also be released alongside the Series X in November 2020. Microsoft pointed out that the Series S had been discreetly placed in
625-454: A "network effect", whether having these games on other platforms will better support the franchise and thus worthwhile for Microsoft to help dedicate resources towards it, such as they had with Minecraft . Xbox Game Studios has allowed some of the content developed by its studios or that was previously published exclusively for the Xbox and Windows systems to be released on Nintendo systems, notably
750-473: A "soft" transition between generations, similar to PC gaming , offering the "Smart Delivery" framework to allow publishers to provide upgraded versions of Xbox One titles with optimizations for Xbox Series X/S. Critics praised the Xbox Series X/S for the hardware improvements over Xbox One and Microsoft's emphasis on cross-generation releases, but believed that the games available at launch did not fully use
875-515: A "soft" transition from Xbox One to Scarlett, with Scarlett supporting backward compatibility with all games and most hardware supported on the Xbox One. During a presentation at The Game Awards 2019 , Microsoft officially revealed the design of Scarlett and its branding, "Xbox Series X", as well as a late 2020 release date. After the event, a Microsoft spokesperson said Xbox Series X was a fourth generation of Xbox hardware, which will be branded simply "Xbox" with no subtitle. Microsoft planned to detail
1000-614: A European office in Reading , England, headed by general manager Phil Spencer . Moore opted to leave Microsoft in July 2007, so to move back to the San Francisco Bay area with his family and to rejoin Electronic Arts. Don Mattrick was named as his replacement as the new vice-president of the Xbox and Games Business, which included MGS. Later in 2007, Bungie amicably split from MGS to become
1125-403: A PlayStation-exclusive, further prompting Microsoft to purchase Zenimax. Both U.S. and European Union regulatory agencies approved the acquisition by early March 2021, and the acquisition was formally completed by March 9, 2021. The total price of the deal was $ 8.1 billion Bethesda Softworks, the primarily publisher for all of ZeniMax's games, remained as an operational unit under Microsoft with
1250-422: A battery or battery pack. Earlier home consoles were typically built from a selection of standard and highly customized integrated computer chips, packaged onto circuit boards and cases. Over time, home console design has converged to a degree with personal computers , using similar component and system design, including standardization with main computer chip architecture. Consoles remain as fixed systems, lacking
1375-438: A compact form factor, resulting in the tower-like structure. To meet the acoustics factor, the system includes numerous sensors for controlling the speed of the fan, and the large open top was necessary to ensure good airflow through the system. While certain elements like the optical drive, air flow requirements, and heat sink size fixed certain dimensions in the overall form factor, they were satisfied they were able to end up with
SECTION 10
#17328446816761500-495: A complex mix of technical and licensing challenges, but the team is committed to doing everything we can to continue to preserve our collective gaming legacy." It is possible for advanced graphic processes options not originally programmed into these older games to be worked into the game when played on the console, such as automated high-dynamic-range rendering (HDR) support using machine learning , framerate doubling, 16x anisotropic filtering , and resolution upscale. Work done by
1625-439: A custom 7 nm (6 nm in refresh) AMD Zen 2 CPU with eight cores running at a nominal 3.8 GHz or, when simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is used, at 3.66 GHz. One CPU core is dedicated to the underlying operating system. The integrated GPU is also a custom unit based on AMD's RDNA 2 graphics architecture. It has a total of 56 compute units (CUs) with 3,584 cores, with 52 CUs and 3,328 cores enabled, and will run at
1750-470: A cylindrical design that drops the optical drive, draws less power, increases internal storage to 2 TB, and improves wireless connectivity with Wi-Fi 6E . The updated Xbox Series S, codenamed "Ellewood", would retain the same design as the current Series S, reducing power consumption and adding Wi-Fi 6E and 1 TB of internal storage. Both console refreshes are planned to ship with a new Xbox controller, codenamed "Sebile". The new controller will be named
1875-437: A display device, such as a television , and an external power source as to play video games . While initial consoles were dedicated units with only a few games fixed into the electronic circuits of the system, most consoles since support the use of swappable game media, either through game cartridges , optical discs , or through digital distribution to internal storage. There have been numerous home video game consoles since
2000-497: A distribution framework known as "Smart Delivery" that will automatically download Xbox Series X/S versions of backwards compatible games for the console when available; Microsoft has positioned this feature at publishers who plan to release Series X- or Series S-specific versions of games after releasing on Xbox One and to users moving from an existing Xbox One to an Xbox Series console. Microsoft does not bar developers from releasing games that can only be played on Xbox Series X/S, but
2125-436: A fixed 1.825 GHz. This unit is capable of 12.155 teraflops of computational power. The unit ships with 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM , with 10 GB running at 560 GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 6 GB at 336 GB/s to be used for the other computing functions. After accounting for the system software, about 13.5 GB of memory will be available for games and other applications, with
2250-421: A larger range of hand sizes. They include same key buttons as the past controllers: two analog joysticks that can be depressed, a circle pad , four action buttons, two system buttons ("View" and "Menu"), the main Xbox home button, two grip triggers (left and right), and two shoulder buttons (left and right). The new controller adds a "Share" button alongside the "View" and "Menu" buttons; pressing "Share" once takes
2375-474: A low-cost version following a similar scheme as the Xbox One family of consoles, with major emphasis on game streaming and backward compatibility . By March 2019, further industry rumors had led to speculation of two consoles within the Scarlett family under codenames "Anaconda" and the low-cost "Lockhart" version. Microsoft confirmed Project Scarlett at its E3 2019 press conference. Microsoft said they wanted
2500-411: A new "Deep Tech" team inside its Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) unit; the new team is charged with working with top developers outside the company to build next-generation applications on top of Microsoft platforms. While Mattrick had overseen much of the development of Microsoft's next console, the Xbox One , he left in July 2013, prior to its release, to take over as CEO of Zynga . Mattrick
2625-506: A presence in the game development and licensing space. Nintendo remains the only competitor having taken a blue ocean strategy by offering more original console concepts such as motion sensing in the Wii and the hybrid design of the Nintendo Switch . Within the home video game console market, the leading consoles have often been grouped into generations, consoles that were major competitors in
SECTION 20
#17328446816762750-564: A privately held independent company, with MGS retaining the rights to the Halo property. Bungie continued to develop two additional Halo games for MGS, Halo 3: ODST (2009) and Halo: Reach (2010). Simultaneously, MGS founded 343 Industries as an internal studio to develop future Halo games without Bungie. In 2008, MGS disbanded Carbonated Games and announced the formation of internal studio Xbox Live Productions to develop "high-quality digital content" for Xbox Live Arcade . Microsoft as
2875-709: A proprietary SSD expansion card inserted into the back of the console, which was manufactured exclusively by Seagate Technology on launch and limited to a 1 TB size when first released. Later versions included 512 GB and 2 TB versions and were released at the end of 2021, while expansion cards manufactured by Western Digital were released in June 2023. As with the Xbox One, the consoles will also support external USB storage, but only backward compatible games (which can also be transferred directly from an Xbox One console) will be able to run directly from external USB storage. Xbox Series X- and S-native games must be stored on
3000-542: A publishing contract with Undead Labs for their game State of Decay , the rights to the Gears of War series from Epic Games , and the Rise of IP ( Rise of Nations and Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends ) from Big Huge Games . Microsoft Studios assigned Gears of War to Black Tusk Studios, which was later rebranded in 2015 as The Coalition. In July 2014, it was announced that Xbox Entertainment Studios would be closed in
3125-621: A reason to exist that is demonstrably different than what came before", and that likely their next hardware would be for the future tenth generation of consoles. When Microsoft's Xbox development team started work on the successor to the Xbox One consoles around 2016, they had already envisioned the need to have two console versions similar to their Xbox One X and Xbox One S models to meet the needs of different markets. By developing both units in concert, they would be able to make sure games developed would be able to be played on both systems without exception. As has been tradition with past Xbox projects,
3250-403: A screenshot, while holding the button begins a Game DVR recording. Microsoft found that by aiming the size to fit an eight-year-old's hands, they were able to make the design fit a larger section of the population; it thus features more sculpted grips, and has reduced and rounded trigger buttons. The D-pad is a new concave design that senior console designer Ryan Whitaker said was a means to merge
3375-434: A second board would act as a Southbridge board for slower input/output (I/O) functions. The boards mounted on opposite sides of an aluminum chassis helped to create air channels for cooling. The remaining components—the heat sink , the electric shielding , the power supply , the optical drive , and the cooling fan —were then arranged in a Tetris -like fashion, according to principal designer Chris Kujawski, to achieve
3500-608: A second studio in Digbeth, Birmingham. By the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 in June 2011, Microsoft Game Studios was quietly renamed to Microsoft Studios. Later in 2011, Microsoft Studios acquired Twisted Pixel Games . In early December 2011, Microsoft Studios created Microsoft Casual Games , a division to revamp its past casual games for Windows (like Windows Solitaire and MSN Games ) using more up-to-date software delivery platforms. In 2012, Phil Harrison ,
3625-522: A series of home video game consoles begins in a generation and lasts to another generation, it is listed in the generation the series began. This list does not claim to be complete. This list does not include other types of video game consoles such as handheld game consoles , which are usually of lower computational power than home consoles due to their smaller size; microconsoles , which are usually low-cost Android-based devices that rely on downloading; retro style consoles ; or dedicated consoles past
3750-503: A similar user interface (UI) as the Xbox One, but use 40% less memory to improve its speed. According to the UI development team, the Home section loads in about half the time as it did on the Xbox One. Other changes include adding rounded UI elements, a more-readable font for text elements, rearrangement of certain aligned features, and improvements to the sharing functions. These changes were brought to
3875-481: A single dedicated game, such as home Pong consoles. Documented consoles of this generation can be found at list of first generation home video game consoles . 128-bit (SIMD) 128-bit (SIMD) 128-bit extensions Xbox Game Studios Xbox Game Studios (previously known as Microsoft Studios , Microsoft Game Studios , and Microsoft Games ) is an American video game publisher based in Redmond, Washington . It
Xbox Series X and Series S - Misplaced Pages Continue
4000-525: A slower GPU, a custom RDNA2 with 20 CUs at 1.55 GHz for 4.006 TFLOPS, compared to 12.155 TFLOPS of the Series X. It ships with 10 GB of RAM, with 8 GB running at 224 GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 2 GB at 56 GB/s to be used for the other computing functions, and a 512 GB SSD storage unit with a raw input/output throughput of 2.4 GB/s. It does not include an optical drive, so all games and software must be obtained digitally via Microsoft Store . It
4125-492: A square footprint for the unit. Xbox head Phil Spencer said that Microsoft was prioritizing high frame rates and faster load times over higher resolutions; the Series X achieves this via the better-matched capabilities of the CPU and graphics processing unit . Compared to the Xbox One X, the CPU is about four times as powerful and the GPU is twice as powerful. The Xbox Series X is powered by
4250-617: A whole announced layoffs of up to 5,000 jobs across all divisions in January 2009 due to slowing sales of personal computers as a result of the Great Recession . Within MGS, the studio had already planned to disband Ensemble Studios after the completion of Halo Wars in early 2009, while the new layoffs led MGS to also disband Aces Game Studio. Microsoft acquired Vancouver-based BigPark in May 2009, using
4375-479: Is a launch feature, with Microsoft having put more than 500,000 man-hours in validating thousands of games from the supported Xbox One library; Spencer said in December 2019 that he himself had been helping to test backward compatibility games. As Microsoft neared launch, they reopened the means for players to suggest additional games to add to backward compatibility, stating "Resurrecting titles from history often presents
4500-408: Is a predesigned piece of electronic hardware that is meant to be placed at a fixed location at one's home, connected to a display like a television screen or computer monitor, and to an external power source, to play video games on using one or more video game controllers . This differs from a handheld game console which will have a built-in screen, controller buttons/features, and a power supply like
4625-548: Is intended to render games nominally at 1440p , with support for a 4K upscaler , at 60 frames per second, although it can go as high at 120 frames per second at this resolution. It starts at $ 299.99. Selected games can support native 4K resolution output on the Series S, such as Ori and the Will of the Wisps . Otherwise, the console has the same functions as the Xbox Series X, including ports, expansions, and game support. Microsoft designed
4750-421: Is the internal storage, a custom NVM Express (NVMe) SSD . On the Series X, this is a 1 TB SSD (802 GB available) with a raw input/output throughput of 2.4 GB/s. An on-board compression/decompression block includes both the industry standard zlib decompression algorithm and a proprietary BCPack algorithm geared for game textures , and it gives a combined throughput as high as 4.8 GB/s. Within
4875-728: The Forza series of racing games. In September 2002, Microsoft Game Studios acquired Rare , who had previously extensively developed for Nintendo platforms. In 2003, Microsoft recognized that the EA Sports label was in a far stronger position to develop sports games for the Xbox console, and among realignment steps, laid off about 78 employees within Microsoft Game Studios that were developing sports games in-house, and sold Salt Lake Games Studio, now named Indie Games to Take-Two Interactive in 2004, where it became Indie Built. Peter Moore
5000-457: The Fable properties, as it sought to secure a Fable sequel for the upcoming Xbox 360 . MGS folded the staff of Digital Anvil into the larger studio in 2005, following the release of 2003's Brute Force , and closed down the studio entirely in 2006. FASA Studio was closed three-and-a-half months after the May 2007 release of their last game, Shadowrun . In 2007, MGS announced the opening of
5125-566: The Microsoft Gaming division led by Phil Spencer , who is chief executive officer of the division. In the early 1990s, Microsoft published a few video games. It published subLOGIC 's Microsoft Flight Simulator and several Microsoft Entertainment Pack compilations of minigames , but was best known for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows . In 1992, the company began increasing its focus on games. It announced Microsoft Golf for Windows, based on Access Software 's Links , and expanded
Xbox Series X and Series S - Misplaced Pages Continue
5250-530: The Nintendo Switch versions of Cuphead from Studio MDHR and Ori and the Blind Forest from Moon Studios, and allowing for the titular characters from Rare's Banjo-Kazooie into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate . However, the division stated that these releases were generally "existing commitments to other platforms" that they allowed studios to honor, but they otherwise have "no plans to further expand our exclusive first party games to other consoles." Near
5375-614: The Windows Mixed Reality components contained within the console's Windows 10 components, but was otherwise not a focus of the console's development prior to release. An updated Xbox Series S with a matte black finish and 1 TB of storage launched on September 1, 2023; the internal design remains otherwise unchanged. Unrelated court documents from the 2022 court case FTC v. Microsoft included plans for refreshed mid-generation consoles planned to be released in 2024. The updated Xbox Series X, codenamed "Brooklin", would feature
5500-527: The Xbox Series X , Booty stated that titles developed by Xbox Game Studios in year or two following its release will not be exclusively for the new generation of consoles, but instead will support both Xbox One and the new console, with some games receiving enhanced performance when played on the new console lineup. Booty said that with the large number of studios they had recently acquired, as well as ongoing external partnerships and their Xbox Game Pass service,
5625-418: The CPU and GPU on the newer consoles frequently entered their idle states even with the other enhancements in place, and so they sought ways to use the unused processing cycles to further enhance the older games' performance. As of May 2021, about 97 games were updated to support FPS Boost. Home video game console A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to
5750-399: The Series S to easily fit inside of a small bag or backpack for portability and travel usage. The Series S unit is about 60% smaller by volume than the Series X, measuring 275 by 151 by 63.5 millimetres (10.83 in × 5.94 in × 2.50 in) in its vertical orientation. In this orientation, its large side surface features the major exhaust port for active air cooling, similar to
5875-465: The Series X and Series S support real-time ray-tracing and support the new features of the HDMI 2.1 standard including variable refresh rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) that are currently being incorporated into newer televisions. The console will have dedicated audio hardware acceleration. A feature called "audio ray tracing" will use the graphics ray tracing processors to process spatial audio in
6000-720: The Studios are able to support a "breadth of offerings in the portfolio" designed to attract a large number of players. Further, in an interview in November 2020, Phil Spencer said during an interview regarding the future of the Xbox brand that he intends to put more focus on outputting RPGs , which had to that point been underserved. Microsoft and ZeniMax Media announced on September 21, 2020, that Microsoft planned to acquire ZeniMax and its family of studios, which include Bethesda Game Studios , Arkane Studios , id Software , MachineGames , Tango Gameworks , and ZeniMax Online Studios , for over US$ 7.5 billion in cash. According to Spencer,
6125-521: The U.S. market. The NES helped to revive the console market and gave Nintendo dominance during the late 1980s. Sega took advantage of the newfound U.S. growth to market its Sega Genesis against the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1990s in the so-called "console wars" and emphasized the notion of " bits " as a major selling point for consumers. The consumer adoption of optical discs with larger storage capacity in
6250-446: The Xbox 360 so it can be migrated to a Series S/X console as well. Xbox Series S can play Xbox One games with improved performance, texture filtering , and auto HDR support, but it does not support Xbox One X-specific enhancements. Microsoft is providing tools for developers to check the performance of their Xbox One games on the Series X and S consoles, which can suggest optimizations "as easy as changing three lines of code" to support
6375-639: The Xbox Advanced Technology Group prior to launch was focused on how far into the backward-compatibility library they could take these improvements, including into original Xbox games, adding in features like HDR or improving the framerate of games that may have been programmed to be locked at a specific framerate. Backward compatible games are supported under the Quick Resume feature as well. Cloud saves can be used to migrate from Xbox One, and Microsoft stated that it would also add free cloud saves to
SECTION 50
#17328446816766500-428: The Xbox One , thus allowing the new consoles to support four generations of games. To achieve this level of compatibility, Microsoft announced in June 2019 that they would no longer be bringing any additional Xbox 360 or original Xbox games into the Xbox One backward compatibility program, and they would instead be using their manpower to make sure these older games were playable on the Xbox Series X. Backward compatibility
6625-408: The Xbox One edition of a game, though Video Games Chronicle reported that Microsoft had urged publishers to keep the upgrade path free if they took that option. CD Projekt RED and Ubisoft have committed to using Smart Delivery for their upcoming releases. Electronic Arts affirmed that Madden NFL 21 will have a free update patch from the Xbox One version to the Xbox Series X version prior to
6750-457: The Xbox One system software, the Windows' Xbox application, and the Xbox mobile application around September 2020. Based on system previews, about 200 GB of space was reserved on the internal drive of the Xbox Series X for system files. Xbox Series S and Series X support "Quick Resume", which allows users to suspend and resume up to three games at once. Games can also be resumed after a reboot of
6875-436: The Xbox Series X and its games as part of an "Xbox 20/20" series. This included an Xbox Games Showcase on July 23, 2020, featuring games principally from its first-party Xbox Game Studios . On July 16, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had ended production of the Xbox One X and all-digital version of the Xbox One S in preparation for the new products. The existence of the Xbox Series S had been guessed before E3 2019, based on
7000-482: The Xbox Series X first, leaving the choice of adding Xbox One support to their development studios as they went forward. In June 2023, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty stated that its in-house studios had "moved on to Gen 9" and were no longer working on new games targeting Xbox One. Microsoft has not placed any similar requirements on a soft transition for third-party developers and publishers, allowing them to offer Xbox Series X exclusives or other routes to upgrade from
7125-643: The Xbox Universal Controller and will include a rechargeable, swappable battery. Microsoft released refreshed versions of both consoles on October 15, 2024, which included a 1TB Xbox Series S in a white finish, an Xbox Series X in white without the optical drive, and the 2TB Xbox Series X Galaxy Black Special Edition. The new Series X models use a redesigned motherboard with a smaller system-on-chip, and replace its vapor chamber cooling mechanism with copper heat pipes. The new models were reported to have slightly reduced power consumption. Both consoles have
7250-491: The Xbox brand to support gaming across all the devices it supports. At E3 2019 , Xbox Game Studios announced it had acquired Double Fine , and established a new internal studio dedicated to Age of Empires headed by Shannon Loftis, bringing their total studio count to fifteen. This studio, later named World's Edge , does not directly develop any games, but oversees efforts from external studios, such as Relic Entertainment , Forgotten Empires and Tantalus Media , to assure
7375-485: The Xbox division in November 2015 for the development of HoloLens and Microsoft Edge , and other projects that could improve means of human interaction, including voice and gesture. Tsunoda's role was filled by Hanno Lemke and Shannon Loftis. In 2016, Microsoft was perceived as "unifying PC and Xbox One" platforms. In March 2016, Microsoft canceled development of two major projects: Lionhead's Fable Legends and Press Play's Project Knoxville , shuttering both studios in
7500-531: The ZeniMax acquisition was intended to give Microsoft a large library of games known around the world, and to expand the library of Xbox Game Pass and XCloud . However, during 2023 hearings regarding the Federal Trade Commission 's concern over the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft , Spencer said that Sony Interactive Entertainment had made sways at Bethesda to keep Starfield as
7625-466: The ability to connect and interface with a particular handheld game system, which certain games can leverage to provide alternate control schemes, second screen gameplay elements, exclusive unlockable content or the ability to transfer certain game data. The first commercial video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey , developed by a team led by Ralph H. Baer and released commercially in 1972. It
SECTION 60
#17328446816767750-424: The ability to convert games to high-dynamic-range rendering using machine learning (Auto HDR), support for HDMI 2.1 variable refresh rate and low-latency modes, and updated controllers . Xbox Series X was designed to nominally render games in 2160p ( 4K resolution ) at 60 frames per second (FPS). The lower-end, digital-only Xbox Series S, which has reduced specifications and does not include an optical drive,
7875-465: The acquisition and retained all its current leadership. With the acquisition, future games from the studios will be exclusive to Xbox consoles, but existing commitments to other platforms (such as Arkane Studios' Deathloop and Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire: Tokyo , which are contractually exclusive to PlayStation 5 for a period of 12 months before their release on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S ) will still be honored. Spencer stated that Game Pass
8000-409: The architecture use a PCI Express 4.0 x2 link. Developers at The Coalition found that, without any changes to their code, Gears 5 loaded four times faster on Xbox Series X than Xbox One X due to the higher throughput on memory and storage and that they would be able to increase this further once they incorporated the new DirectStorage API routines. The consoles support external storage through
8125-415: The background of previous Xbox announcement videos featuring Phil Spencer during July 2020. During Gamescom 2023, Spencer stated that Microsoft is not likely to produce a mid-generation revision of either the Series X or Series S, as it would likely cause issues with specifications for games between the first such units and mid-generation ones. Instead, he said that "that when we do hardware, it should have
8250-453: The company has preferred a "soft" transition more in line with PC gaming , where developers can target optimal play on higher-end hardware, but still allow the game to be played with reduced fidelity on lower-end hardware (such as older Xbox One consoles). Initially, Spencer suggested that their first-party studios' games would support both Xbox One and Xbox Series X platforms for the "next couple of years", but journalists observed that some of
8375-857: The console. The March 2022 update added the ability to "pin" up to two games to Quick Resume, keeping them suspended unless otherwise closed manually, or the game must be updated. As with previous Xbox consoles, Xbox Series S and Series X use the Xbox network platform for online services. It supports the Xbox Game Pass service, which allows subscribers to download games from an on-demand library. In October 2021, Xbox Cloud Gaming —a component of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which allows users to stream games from Microsoft servers to Xbox consoles, PCs, and mobile apps —was upgraded from Xbox One S-based hardware to Xbox Series X-based servers, enabling faster server-side loading times. Apps for various streaming media services are available via Microsoft Store. The Apple TV app
8500-509: The consoles were given code names based on cities. The Xbox Series S was named Project Lockhart, based on the city of Lockhart, Texas , which Aaron Greenberg said was known as "the little city with the big heart". For the high-end console, the Xbox Series X, Microsoft's primary goals were to: at least double the graphical performance of the Xbox One X as measured by its floating point operations per second (FLOPS), and to increase CPU performance four-fold compared to Xbox One X while maintaining
8625-487: The creation of games that perform well on the Xbox One consoles yet take advantage of the new hardware with higher graphics throughput and faster frame rates , ray tracing , and support for the consoles' storage architecture. For some games, further game improvements from the Xbox One version to Xbox Series X/S version can be made with the capabilities of the Xbox Series X/S console; games with this support are marketed with an "Optimized for Series X" logo. Microsoft offered
8750-562: The customization options that personal computer components have, and most consoles include customized components to maximize space and reduce power consumption to provide the best performance for game playing, while lowering costs with reduced storage and memory configurations. Home video game consoles typically can play a multitude of games, offered either as game cartridges (or ROM cartridges), on optical media like CD-ROM or DVD, or obtained by digital distribution . Early consoles, also considered dedicated consoles, had games that were fixed in
8875-833: The deal the same day. During litigation on the merger with the United States Federal Trade Commission , internal documents from Microsoft c. 2020 show strong interest in re-acquiring Bungie, or acquiring Sega 's game development companies, Supergiant Games , Niantic, Inc. , Thunderful Group , Zynga , IO Interactive , Scopely , or Playrix as part of Xbox Game Studios, as well as publisher Square Enix to help bolster its Asian presence and mobile market share. In January 2023, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, which represented about 5% of its global workforce. Included in those layoffs were many employees from 343 Industries, The Coalition, and Bethesda Game Studios. On October 26, 2023, Microsoft announced
9000-466: The developers behind Minecraft , in late 2014. Microsoft spent US$ 2.5 billion to acquire the studio, and upon the deal's completion in November, the studio's key founding personnel, Markus Persson , Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh, departed Mojang. As a result, Persson became valued around US$ 1.3 billion . Microsoft Studios committed to keeping Minecraft available across multiple platforms, including rival PlayStation consoles. Matt Booty,
9125-462: The development of casual games for Microsoft's web games portal MSN Games , on the chat client MSN Messenger , and on the Xbox Live platform. Kim and Fries were instrumental for securing MGS' publishing deal with Lionhead Studios for their 2004 game Fable , which would serve as the first major role-playing game on the Xbox platform. Subsequently, in 2006, MGS acquired Lionhead Studios along with
9250-511: The dominant console type of the era, though not all consoles of those eras are of the same type. Some eras are referred to based on how many bits a major console could process. The "128-bit era" ( sixth generation ) was the final era in which this practice was widespread. This list only counts the first iteration of each console's hardware, because several systems have had slim, enhanced or other hardware revisions, but they are not individually listed here. The list also includes unreleased systems. If
9375-480: The electronic circuitry of the hardware. Some facets may be controlled by switching external controls on the console but the games could not be changed themselves. Most home consoles require a separate game controller, and may support multiple controllers for multiplayer games. Some console games can only be played with special, unconventional game controllers, such as light guns for rail shooters and guitar controllers for music games . Some consoles also possess
9500-444: The end of 2019, with the combined fifteen studios now under Xbox Game Studios, Booty stated that they now had more games than ever to handle, and were likely not going to acquire any additional studios in the near future, stating "we've been shifting our focus inside Xbox Game Studios from acquisition and growth, to a phase of execution and delivery". Additionally, as Microsoft started promotion of its fourth-generation of Xbox, including
9625-523: The exhaust port facing upward to maintain airflow. The Series S launched in a matte white case along with a matching controller, distinguishing it from the matte black that the Series X uses. Both consoles use a new storage solution, the Xbox Velocity Architecture, that includes hardware and software components to improve transfer speeds within the console, reduce the size of digital downloads, and give developers more flexibility. Central to this
9750-519: The first commercial unit, the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Historically these consoles have been grouped into generations lasting each about six years based on common technical specifications. As of 2024, there have been nine console generations, with the current leading manufacturers being Sony , Microsoft , and Nintendo , colloquially known as the "Big 3." Past console manufacturers have included Atari , Fairchild , Mattel , Coleco , Sega , NEC , 3DO , Fujitsu and SNK . A home video game console
9875-399: The first generation, which have games built in and do not use any form of physical media. Consoles have been redesigned from time to time to improve their market appeal. Redesigned models are not listed on their own. The list omits the more than 900 home video game consoles known to have been released in the first generation of video game consoles , those that were generally game consoles for
10000-400: The first major studio acquisitions following the division's formation was Bungie in June 2000, in the midst of its development of Halo: Combat Evolved . With the acquisition, Halo , which had been planned for release on personal computers, became a Microsoft-published title as well as a launch title for the Xbox on its release in 2001. Turn 10 Studios was established in 2001 for work on
10125-501: The first-party games introduced in the Xbox Game Showcase in July 2020 omitted mention of the Xbox One, and their websites later updated to omit mention of the Xbox One. While none of these games were believed to be launch titles, they were expected to be released within the window Spencer had previously suggested. This led to Aaron Greenberg, general manager of Xbox Games Marketing, to clarify that these games were being developed for
10250-448: The following months. Around the same time, changes to Microsoft Studios' website indicated that further studios—BigPark, Good Science Studio , Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), Function Studios and State of the Art (SOTA)—had been closed, Microsoft Studios clarified that all of them had been consolidated into other Microsoft Studios teams over the past several years. In September 2017, Spencer
10375-569: The following months; the closure was completed by October 29. On March 4, 2015, Microsoft announced that they were merging UK-based studios, Lift London and Soho Productions for further games development, with the amalgam continuing to operate under the Lift London name. On March 7, Microsoft announced at the Game Developers Conference that HoloLens games were coming to Xbox One. On March 9, Microsoft announced that Kudo Tsunoda's role
10500-599: The former Sony worldwide studios head, joined Microsoft as head of Microsoft Studios Europe and IEB. Microsoft Studios acquired developer Press Play , known for developing Tentacles and Max & the Magic Marker . They also announced a new development studio in London, England. Later in 2012, Microsoft downsized Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver due to the cancellation of the Kinect family title Project Columbia and announced that
10625-501: The games division from two to six people with the intention of commissioning more products from other developers. Microsoft acquired FASA Interactive in 1999 for its MechWarrior game series, Access Software, and Aces Game Studio , which worked on Flight Simulator . The Games Group had also established long-term publishing deals with developers like Ensemble Studios ( Age of Empires , Age of Mythology ), and Digital Anvil ( Starlancer ). Under Microsoft, FASA Interactive
10750-411: The hardware capabilities. Xbox Series consoles have estimated to have sold over 28 million units worldwide as of June 2024. Industry rumors of new Xbox hardware had started as early as June 2018, with Microsoft's Phil Spencer confirming they were "deep into architecturing the next Xbox consoles" at that time. The hardware was believed to be a family of devices under the codename "Scarlett", including
10875-691: The hardware specifications and launch games for the Series X at the 2020 Game Developers Conference (GDC) and E3 2020 , but the events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic . Microsoft scheduled online presentations over the same days in March 2020, while the company planned to reschedule its E3 presentation. Detailed specifications were presented by Microsoft, Digital Foundry , and Austin Evans of Overclock Media on March 16, 2020. Starting in May and running until launch, Microsoft planned to have more digital events around
11000-491: The improvements in backward compatibility. In February 2021, Microsoft introduced FPS Boost, a feature for select backward-compatible games that the company said can improve the framerate of these titles on the Xbox Series X and Series S by two to four times. This is a feature that Microsoft's engineers must prepare for each game, with five games supported initially and more to be rolled out over time. Microsoft developed FPS Boost after finding that for many backward compatible games,
11125-569: The internal SSD or an expansion card in order to be played, but they can be moved to a USB storage device to make room for other games. The DirectStorage API was released in March 2022 for Windows-based computers for graphics cards that support DirectX 12 and NVMe SSDs, though games must be programmed to take advantage of the DirectStorage API. DirectStorage was planned to be a built-in feature along with Auto HDR for Windows 11 at release in late 2021, as well as offered within Windows 10. Both
11250-433: The main power button and an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive. The top of the unit is a single powerful fan. Spencer said that the console is as quiet as the Xbox One X. The Series X includes an HDMI 2.1 output, the storage expansion slot, three USB 3.2 ports, and an Ethernet port . The console does not include an infrared blaster or HDMI pass-through like the Xbox One line, supporting HDMI-CEC instead. An earlier leak had suggested
11375-460: The marketplace. There have been nine generations of consoles since the 1970s, with a new generation appearing about every five years. There are more than 1000 home video game consoles known to exist, the vast majority of which were released during the first generation: only 103 home video game consoles were released between the second and current generation, 15 were canceled. This list is divided into console generations which are named based on
11500-529: The mid-1995 led many console manufactures to move away from cartridges to CD-ROMs and later to DVDs and other formats, with Sony's PlayStation line introducing even more features that gave it an advantage in the market; the PlayStation 2 , released in 2000, remains the best-selling console to date with over 155 million units sold. Microsoft, fearing that the PlayStation 2 was threatening the competitive edge of
11625-495: The new consoles. Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty said that Microsoft wanted to ensure that those who had recently bought Xbox One consoles would still "feel that they made a good investment and that we're committed to them with content." Spencer said many of the Xbox Game Studios subsidiaries were familiar with developing games on personal computers, where there is a wide range of hardware targets to meet. This approach allows
11750-485: The normal D-pad style on the standard Xbox One controller and the version on the Elite variant to accommodate a range of playstyles. Small tactile dot patterns have been added to the buttons to help players orient fingers on the controls. The controller continues to use two AA batteries , though a rechargeable battery pack is available as an accessory. Microsoft found from focus group studies that players were split nearly 50/50 on
11875-410: The ongoing development of free-to-play title Microsoft Flight had been ceased due to portfolio evaluation . The reduced Vancouver studios were renamed to Black Tusk Studios and tasked with making similar franchise-building title as Halo . In 2013, Microsoft established European studio Lift London , a studio that would create cloud-based games for tablets, mobiles and TVs. Later, they created
12000-457: The opening of a new studio in Santa Monica, California , entitled The Initiative , which would be led by the former Crystal Dynamics studio head Darrell Gallagher. In November, Microsoft Studios announced further acquisitions with Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment . The studio rebranded itself on February 5, 2019, as Xbox Game Studios, as to reflect Microsoft's intent to use
12125-403: The personal computer, entered the console space with its Xbox line in 2001. Internet connectivity had become commonplace by the mid-2000s, and nearly all home consoles supported digital distribution and online service offerings by the 2010s. With Sony and Microsoft's dominance in hardware capabilities, most other major manufacturers have since dropped out of the hardware business, but maintain
12250-430: The promotion of several employees in the company, including Sarah Bond being promoted to president of Xbox, overseeing all Xbox platform, business, and hardware work, and Matt Booty promoted from president of Xbox to president of Game Content and Studios, including the new responsibility of overseeing ZeniMax and Bethesda, with Jamie Leder still running Zenimax as a limited integration entity, but now reporting to Matt. In
12375-541: The release of the next Madden NFL game. The Xbox Game Preview program, which allows games to be released through an early access model, continued into the Xbox Series X/S line with Spacebase Startopia in January 2021. Microsoft stated that the Xbox Series X and Series S would support all existing games playable on Xbox One (excluding those that require the Kinect sensor), including Xbox 360 and original Xbox games currently supported through backward compatibility on
12500-527: The rising popularity of the personal computer and the economic recession of the early 1980s, led to the video game crash of 1983 in the U.S. market. Nintendo , which had released its Family Computer console in Japan that year, took several cautionary steps to limit game production to only licensed games, and was able to introduce it, rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 into
12625-476: The same acoustic performance from the Xbox One consoles. As the engineers collected power requirements to meet these specifications, they saw these parts would draw a large amount of internal power (approximately 315 W ) and would generate a significant amount of heat. This led to the decision to split the components onto two separate circuit boards ; one would house the CPU/GPU, memory, and power regulators, and
12750-564: The same manner to improve the audio immersion for the player. Another goal for Microsoft was to reduce the effects of input latency to improve responsiveness, adding support for HDMI 2.1 Auto Low Latency Mode and Variable Refresh Rate features, and "dynamic latency input" technology—a new input pathway that allows developers to incorporate potential controller lag into their games. AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution , an image upscaling technology competitor to Nvidia 's deep learning super sampling (DLSS) to enable higher resolutions and framerates,
12875-527: The second generation and led to a second boom in the video game industry in the United States and around the globe. During this time, Atari Inc. had been sold to Warner Communications , and several programmers left the company and founded Activision , becoming the first third-party developer. Activision's success led to a rush of new developers creating games without any publishing controls for these systems. The market became flooded with games, and combined with
13000-471: The series is being developed in the right direction, according to creative director Adam Isgreen. Booty has stated that with studios like Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and Double Fine, which have traditionally supported multiplatform games, they will determine if it makes sense for their future products to be treated as Microsoft-exclusive content for Xbox and Windows computers, or to allow these to be published across multiple platforms. That decision will be based on
13125-555: The software, a new DirectStorage API within DirectX allows developers to fine-tune priority to input/output aspects with other processing threads. The software provides sampler feedback streaming that aids in loading multiple textures in segments to deal with level of detail rendering, rather than having to read these textures as a whole before using them. The Series S includes a 512 GB SSD (364 GB available) with similar custom hardware and software specifications. All SSD storage on
13250-399: The studio to develop some of the first games for the upcoming Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360. Later in 2009, Phil Spencer was promoted to corporate vice-president of MGS, in order to replace the retiring Shane Kim. In 2010, MGS formed a mobile gaming studio, MGS Mobile Gaming , focused on developing gaming and entertainment multimedia for Windows Phone devices. It also expanded Rare with
13375-489: The studio's corporate vice-president in 2020, said the acquisition of Mojang served as the template for later acquisitions, as Mojang was left to run as an "unplugged studio" with limited integration into the Microsoft corporation, minimizing the disruption of Mojang's normal day-to-day business matters nor impeding on the studio's freedom. Additional intellectual property (IP) acquisitions by Microsoft Studios in 2014 included
13500-546: The system software only drawing from the slower pool. The Xbox Series X is intended to render games at 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, and can support up to 120 frames per second and can render up to 8K resolution . The Xbox Series X's console form is designed to be unobtrusive and minimalistic. It has a 15.1 cm × 15.1 cm (5.9 in × 5.9 in) footprint, is 30.1 cm (11.9 in) high, and weighs 4.45 kg (9.8 lb). Designed to sit vertically, it can also be used on its side. Its front has
13625-477: The third-largest gaming company by revenue, following Tencent and Sony . With the announcement, Microsoft also announced a major change to its corporate structure, with Phil Spencer becoming CEO of the new division Microsoft Gaming , with Matt Booty leading Xbox Game Studios under it. Once approved, Activision Blizzard would then become a subdivision of Microsoft Gaming. The deal was cleared by various national regulators by October 13, 2023, with Microsoft closing
13750-411: The top surface of the Series X; additional vents are then located on the top of the Series S. Like the Series X, the front of the Series S features one USB port and a controller pairing button with an integrated IR receiver. The rear of the console includes the power connector, one HDMI port, two additional USB ports, and an Ethernet port. Like the Series X, the Series S can also be placed horizontally with
13875-579: The use of batteries versus recharging and thus gave the controller the option to use either. The controller uses the same wireless protocol introduced by the Xbox One and is backward compatible with existing Xbox One consoles. Existing Xbox One controllers are also compatible with Xbox Series X. The new controller also supports the Bluetooth Low Energy standard allowing it to pair with mobile devices and other hardware supporting that standard, and has internal storage to remember those connections. It uses
14000-475: The wake of Matt Booty's promotion, Alan Hartman, then the head of Turn 10 , was subsequently promoted to head of Xbox Game Studios. On October 6, 2024, 343 Industries officially announced their rebranding as Halo Studios, additionally confirming that multiple Halo games were in development and that said projects would now use Unreal Engine 5 as opposed to the proprietary Slipspace Engine that powered Halo Infinite . On October 14, Rare creative lead Craig Duncan
14125-557: Was added to the Xbox Series X/S in June 2021. Both consoles support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos technologies. Dolby Vision was initially limited to streaming apps at launch, but was released for games in September 2021. The following table is a comparison of the major components of the fourth generation of Xbox consoles. The Series X and Series S ship with an updated version of the Xbox Wireless Controller intended to fit
14250-604: Was also fundamental driver for the acquisition. A preliminary injunction to block the acquisition had been sought in an ongoing class-action lawsuit that ZeniMax faced over Fallout 4 , with the plaintiffs in the case arguing that Microsoft could shield ZeniMax's assets from damages should they be found liable after the acquisition. The ZeniMax Board of Directors was dissolved following the Microsoft purchase. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal valued at $ 68.7 billion. Microsoft stated that this acquisition would make it
14375-406: Was designed to nominally render games in 1440p at 60 FPS, with support for 4K upscaling and ray tracing. Xbox Series X/S are backwards-compatible with nearly all Xbox One-compatible games and accessories (including Xbox 360 and original Xbox games that were made backward-compatible with Xbox One ); the newer hardware gives games better performance and visuals. At launch, Microsoft encouraged
14500-462: Was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows . It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, web-based portals, and other game consoles. Xbox Game Studios, alongside ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard , are part of
14625-486: Was expanding and that he would be the new studio team leader for studios such as Press Play, Lift London and a new internal studio called Decisive Games. Decisive Games was previously mentioned in job postings, saying that they were hiring for work on a "beloved strategy game" for Xbox One and PC, but this is the first public acknowledgement of the team's existence as a first-party studio. Twisted Pixel and Microsoft Studios agreed to split in September 2015. Kudo Tsunoda left
14750-413: Was more expensive than competitors and had too much focus on non-gaming functions. Under Nadella's direction, Phil Spencer was named the new head of Microsoft Studios to replace Jason Holtman, who had only been its lead for the prior six months. Spencer began looking for ways to expand Microsoft Studios to make it a profitable division for Microsoft, and began negotiations for the acquititions of Mojang ,
14875-512: Was named in 2003 as vice-president of Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division, which included MGS, the Xbox division, and Microsoft's home hardware market, reporting to Bach. In addition to pulling big publishers like Electronic Arts to the Xbox platform, Moore tried to push the Xbox in Japan by courting Japanese developers with support from MGS publishing. Such games included Phantom Dust and Blinx: The Time Sweeper . Around 2004, MGS established Carbonated Games as an internal studio for
15000-484: Was named senior vice-president while Ed Fries , a member of the former Games Group and instrumental for some of its acquisitions, was named as vice-president of the new division. Shane Kim served as the division's general manager. In 2001, the division was renamed Microsoft Game Studios (MGS). FASA Studio and Salt Lake Games Studio remained with Microsoft Game Studios. Digital Anvil and Ensemble Studios were acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and 2001, respectively. One of
15125-549: Was promoted to the senior leadership team, gaining the title of "executive vice-president of gaming". At this point, Microsoft Studios directly reported to Nadella. In January 2018, Matt Booty was promoted from leader in the Minecraft games business to corporate vice-president of Microsoft Studios. On June 10, 2018, during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2018 , Microsoft announced the acquisitions of Ninja Theory , Playground Games , Undead Labs and Compulsion Games , as well as
15250-405: Was released on Xbox platforms for the first time alongside the Xbox Series S and Series X. Microsoft allows all retail Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles to use an environment known as 'Dev mode', which provides developers with a sandbox environment to test their games and applications. At launch of the Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft positioned new games to be available for both the Xbox One and
15375-575: Was renamed FASA Studio, and Access Software became Salt Lake Games Studio. Microsoft transitioned the Games Group into a wholly separate division named Microsoft Games around March 2000, along with other consolidation of games-related projects within Microsoft. This came alongside the public announcement of the first Xbox console , with Microsoft Games to serve as a developer and publisher of titles for both Xbox and Windows. Robbie Bach , who held executive positions in Microsoft's entertainment divisions,
15500-492: Was shortly followed by the release of the home version of Pong by Atari Inc. in 1975 based on the arcade game. A number of clones of both systems rushed to fill the nascent home console market and the video game industry suffered a small recession in 1977 due to this. The Fairchild Channel F , released in 1976, was the first console to use game cartridges , which was then used by the Atari VCS and several other consoles of
15625-531: Was succeeded by Julie Larson-Green , who was named the president of the Devices and Studios Engineering Group, following a realignment of Microsoft's divisions, overseeing both the Xbox hardware divisions and Microsoft Studios. Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in February 2014. At this time, Microsoft was facing strong competition in the consumer market, and within the gaming sector, the Xbox One (released in 2013)
#675324