Next gen Xbox may only support Xbox Series X/S games through emulation

Microsoft has accidentally revealed its next gen Xbox plans, which seem to revolve around Steam integration and a move away from console development.

Microsoft has said almost nothing about its next generation Xbox console so far and yet the rumours of the last few weeks, suggesting that it is essentially a ‘PC in a box’, have been very easy to believe.

The rumours may not be officially confirmed for a while, but they almost were on Thursday evening, when Microsoft accidentally put up a graphic showing an Xbox dashboard with a Steam tab on it.

Not only that but a few hours later a report emerged that Microsoft is planning to ditch the current ERA development environment of the Xbox Series X/S in favour of Win32, making the next Xbox literally a PC and meaning that current gen games will only be backwards compatible via emulation.

Microsoft has already talked about ‘bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together’ but until now it’s never been clear what that means.

However, a blog post entitled Opening a Billion Doors with Xbox accidentally used an image of an Xbox dashboard in which you could clearly see a ‘Steam‘ tab, although it was not selected or referenced in the text.

The UI is brand new and is shown running on a TV, a tablet, and a handheld device. It’s clearly just a mock-up though as the Owned and Action-adventure tabs are both shown twice, so there is a possibility the Steam tab was a mistake – although someone still went to the trouble to create the Steam tab for the purposes of the image.

According to The Verge, Microsoft’s current plan is to create an Xbox app that shows every game you have installed on your PC, including from other launchers such as Steam and the Epic Games Store.

How much Valve and Epic are currently on board with this is unclear, with the app apparently being fairly early in development and not guaranteed to launch with those features.

A response to the unintended leak from Windows Central suggests that Microsoft’s attempts to embrace PC gaming with the Xbox brand go even deeper.

It’s claimed that the bespoke ERA development environment for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S is being phased out in favour of the standard Win32 environment for PCs.

The implication is that this is preparation for the next gen Xbox console, which increasingly sounds like it’s going to be more like a branded PC than a traditional console.

One of the differences this will make to ordinary gamers is that automatic backwards compatibility with previous consoles will become impossible and they’ll have to be emulated instead, which often results in technical issues.

The aim seems to be to get every Xbox game that you own also playing on PC. Although, as Windows Central points out, this could run into legal complications with third party publishers.

While the leak is obviously real, since it comes from Microsoft themselves, it’s unclear how much of it is aspirational and whether it is a concrete plan for the next generation.

Given the ever declining sales of Xbox consoles, and the recent rise in popularity for PC gaming, it certainly makes sense for Microsoft to go on in this direction, even if it’s still unclear exactly how the details will play out.

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