Microsoft has been coming up with new strategies to cater and make their products more consumer friendly. Last year Microsoft had announced that Windows 10 operating system was going to be something more than just a PC platform. It was going to bring an Xbox app to Windows 10 PCs, allowing cross-platform play and a cohesive friends list across both platforms and later the Xbox One was updated to be compatible with Windows 10, bringing a new interface and features to the console. Recently Xbox head, Phil Spencer said that Microsoft is planning to unify its PC and Xbox One gaming platforms into one ecosystem running Universal Windows Applications (UWAs) while offering backwards compatibility for many Xbox 360 games, now playable on Xbox One.
There’s more interesting news for gamers. Spencer’s vision for the future includes an Xbox with upgradable hardware that gamers will be able to incrementally upgrade their console throughout its lifespan, just like how it’s done on PCs. “In other (consumer technology) ecosystems you get more continuous innovation in hardware that you rarely see in consoles because consoles lock the hardware and software platforms together at the beginning and they ride the generation out for seven years or so,” said Spencer. “We’re allowing ourselves to decouple our software platform from the hardware platform on which it runs.”
Adding to the importance of this innovation, he said, “We can effectively feel a little bit more like we see on PC, where I can still go back and run my old Doom and Quake games that I used to play years ago but I can still see the best 4K games come out and my library is always with me. Hardware innovation continues while the software innovation is able to take advantage and I don’t have to jump a generation and lose everything that I played on before.”
With this new development, it’s an interesting time for the PC and Xbox One owners as Microsoft doesn’t look like it’s going to back down from its platform-agnostic promise but at the same time, how effective would this strategy be is a question. It would be fascinating to witness the next Halo or Gears of War arriving on Windows 10 and to know whether the whole idea of cross platform gaming will please the consumers.
For now, Microsoft launched Gears of War Ultimate Edition for Windows 10, and also announced a new free to play version of Forza Motorsport 6 for PC.
