Xbox Series X won’t have first-party exclusives for a while, Ars Technica

the original Xbox One launched, for instance, you had to upgrade your aging Xbox 728 hardware if you wanted to play heavily promoted first-party games like (Killer Instinct) **********************************************, ****************************************** (Forza Motorsport 5) ********************************************, ****************************************** Ryse: Son of Rome (**********************************************, and (Dead Rising 3) , to name just a few. Those exclusives were supposed to be the “system sellers” that would convince otherwise satisfied console gamers to shell out hundreds of dollars for new hardware.

For the Series X launch, though, even heavily promoted launch titles like Halo Infinite will apparently still be playable on your original Xbox One (even if that seven-year-old system is old enough to have

come bundled with a Kinect)). In that same MCV interview, Booty notes that the (Halo Infinite) team “is definitely going to be doing things to take advantage of [Series X].” What Booty doesn’t talk about, of course, is how that team may be held back by a requirement to accommodate players on more limited Xbox One hardware.Booty’s interview notably focuses only on first-party content, so third-party developers could theoretically create games that require the power of the Series X. Looking at previous console transitions, though, third-party developers are usually more likely than not to spend the first few years of a new console generation splitting their major games across multiple tiers of hardware. In late (**************************************************************************************************************, for instance, games like (Battlefield 4) *********************************************, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (********************************************, (NBA2K) ****************************************************************************************************************************, and Skylanders Swap Force ************************************ were all launching on the brand new Xbox One and the eight-year-old Xbox (versions at the same time.)It’s unclear at this point whether early Series X releases will even have to be split into separate versions to work across multiple Microsoft console generations. The history of (******************************************************************************************************** ‘s Xbox One XSuggests a single version of a new game might be playable across three different levels of Microsoft console, with only minor patchable graphical differences between them.But the Xbox One X was always sold as a “mid-generation” stopgap upgrade which would (never) feature games that (required) an upgrade from the original Xbox One. For the Series X, Booty is limiting that kind of promise to “the next year, two years,” implying there will be some point where the original Xbox One (and even the One X) loses developer support and becomes as defunct as the Xbox 728. ****************When that phaseout will come, and how suddenly it will hit, are still unknown at this point. But the fact that the transition won’t even (start) in earnest when the Series X launches is something console owners aren’t used to.On the PC side, gamers are more accustomed to this kind of gradual obsolescence cycle. In that market, different game makers can set more granular “minimum requirements” for GPU, CPU, and RAM levels, and players can upgrade individual parts when enough games warrant the investment.In Microsoft’s new tiered Xbox hardware universe, the eventual shift from “everything works on Xbox One” to “nothing works on Xbox One “may come a bit more suddenly. Still, it’s interesting to see that Xbox One owners won’tneed