Thanks to the world of cloud computing, there’s a recent argument going around that home consoles are starting to become less and less necessary in the world of gaming. Why, the logic goes, would you need a hunk of parts in your home when all of the computing can be done server-side instead? That logic dictates that Microsoft might be stepping out of the home console business following the Xbox One. I know, it just got here, but the consideration that the machine might be the last of its kind is a weird one.
What with all Microsoft’s talk of magic cloud gaming, whereby most or all of a game’s operations are performed on servers, you could be forgiven for thinking the Xbox One the last of an endangered species. After all, what need we a boxful of RAM on the coffee table when there’s a supercomputer cluster just down the road? Will Microsoft ever find it necessary to release an Xbox Two, or will it just upgrade the server farms with new graphics cards, CPUs and the like – even streaming games direct to a display device? Hold your horses, says Studios boss Phil Spencer.
