There are three new Xbox consoles coming out this fall featuring alternate colors and bigger SSDs. Microsoft announced pre-orders are available now with the hardware launching on October 15, just a day after confirming that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, its biggest game of 2024, will also be coming to PlayStation 5 early next year.
The new console variants were previously announced at Microsoft’s Summer Game Fest-adjacent Xbox Showcase. They include:
- All-Digital Xbox Series S 1TB SSD Robot White – $US350
- All-Digital Xbox Series X 1TB SSD Robot White – $US450
- Special Edition Xbox Series X 2TB SSD Galaxy Black – $US600
The new hardware arrives alongside big first-party fall releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in whatshould be one of the biggest string of game launches for Microsoft in a long time. However, some of the upcoming games like Towerborne are PC exclusive at first, while others like Indiana Jones are already confirmed to be coming to PS5 a few months after release (The Verge reports that it could arrive on Sony’s rival platform as early as April 2025).
“What I see when I look is our franchises are getting stronger, our Xbox console players are as high this year as they’ve ever been, so I look at it and I say ‘Okay our player numbers are going up for the console platform, our franchises are as strong as they’ve ever been,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said on Wednesday during an Xbox livestream regarding the ongoing multiplatform push. “And we run a business, it’s definitely true inside of Microsoft the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery we have to give back to the company, because we get a level of support from the company that’s just amazing and what we’re able to go do.”
He continued:
I look at this how can we make our games as strong as possible, our platform continues to grow both on console, on PC, and on cloud, and I think it’s just going to be a strategy that works for us. And the last thing I’ll probably say is I think as an industry, right now, there’s a lot of pressure on the industry, it’s been going for a long time and now people are looking for ways to grow, and I think us as fans as players of games we have to anticipate there’s going to be more change in some of the traditional ways that games are built and distributed. That’s going to change, that’s going to change for all of us. But the end result has to be better games that more people can play. If we’re not focused on that I think we’re focused on the wrong things.
Microsoft has been reinforcing this post-console strategy throughout the year, not just with games like Sea of Thieves coming to PS5, but also with investments in other hardware ecosystems, including PC gaming handhelds like the Asus Rog Ally which just got a big upgrade that puts it neck-in-neck with the Steam Deck. The company has also brought Game Pass to Samsung TVs and Amazon Firesticks, making it easier than ever for players to bypass expensive gaming hardware entirely thanks to streaming over the cloud.
Where that will leave the future of the Xbox console itself remains to be seen. Microsoft has promised it will continue making hardware with its next console being the biggest leap yet in terms of technical capabilities. In the meantime though it doesn’t sound like we’ll be getting a mid-generation refresh of the Xbox Series X like the long rumored PS5 Pro expected to be revealed in the next few months.
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