Details on Gen 10 Xbox planned for 2028 leaked in court documents

Cloud-Hybrid games and potential switch to ARM architecture

Thanks to the current court battle between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), we not only got the confirmation that the Gen 10 Xbox is planned for a 2028 launch date – even early technical details have now been revealed in yet another unsealed document.

“Develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences. Optimized for real time game play and creators, we will enable new levels of performance beyond the capabilities of the client hardware alone,” Microsoft described its vision for the Gen 10 in one presentation slide shown in the court documents.

Gen 10 Xbox presentation slides

US Courts / Microsoft

Microsoft's list of some of the key decisions about the Gen 10 Xbox.

US Courts / Microsoft

Another confirmation of the planned 2028 launch.

US Courts / Microsoft

Cloud and AI are key components of Microsoft's next gen strategy.

US Courts / Microsoft

An overview of projects involved in Microsoft's next gen vision.

This presentation is from May 2022 and was submitted to court in October of that year. It revealed that the key decisions about the technical specifications of the next gen Xbox would be made in Q1 of 2023 – so we can assume that those decisions have been locked in by now.

One area requiring such a call is the console’s CPU architecture, where a switch to ARM64 was considered. Of course, we have no way of knowing the outcome of that internal debate, unless that result will be published by the court as well. While signifying a technical leap, such a switch may make backward compatibility a bit more difficult to achieve.

Another key aspect of the coming Xbox console will be Cloud-Hybrid games, a vision Microsoft had originally stated for the Xbox One – technical limitations, however, thwarted this ambition. It seems likely the company wants to make another attempt with the Gen 10 Xbox, combining the powers of local hardware and cloud technology – a move that potentially has both benefits and disadvantages, and which indicates that Microsoft may do away with physical discs entirely.

However, it’s too early to say exactly what that Cloud-Hybrid element will entail in detail.

Published court documents also revealed the planned all-digital Xbox Series X refresh and leaked a whole bunch of unannounced Microsoft games.