Leak Suggests Next-Gen Xbox Planned for 2028, AMD Zen 6 & RDNA 5 Considered

[T0@st]

A comprehensive leak of documents—from a FTC versus Microsoft case—has exposed short and long-term plans in the world of Xbox. It seems that a relatively mild refresh of current generation Xbox Series X and S is lined up for the second half of 2024, but presentation material (dated April 2022) also reaches far into the future with strategies for next-gen gaming hardware. The bigwigs at Xbox were projecting a "full convergence" of their proprietary "xCloud" gaming platform and physical console hardware to deliver "cloud hybrid games" for 2028—schemes and priorities could have shifted in the interim, given various legal challenges and takeover bids.

One of the slides points to Microsoft getting the technical nitty-gritty sorted by CY2023—with two main options presented for consideration: a licensed ARM 64 design or a "Zen 6-based" AMD 64 processor. The next-gen Xbox's GPU aspect could incorporate a Navi 5 design (RDNA 5)—weighing up either a co-operation with AMD, or an IP license of said graphics architecture. VideoCardz theorizes that: "the latter option seems more likely if the ARM 64 chip is chosen over the Zen 6 APU." A key goal in this area seems to be an implementation of "Next-Gen DirectX Ray tracing" and "ML-based Super Resolutions" features. A Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is marked as a key provision for the 2028 console—granting some nice-to-have perks including: latency compensation, frame rate interpolation and various enrichments of the user experience.



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[AnotherReader]

Going with ARM64 would be silly considering the vast number of PCs that get Xbox games.

 

[Denver]

Microsoft needs better management of its gaming arm and a better strategy than buying all the studios and making the games PC/Xbox exclusive...

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Going with ARM64 would be silly considering the vast number of PCs that get Xbox games.

This are likely BS especially for a console seemingly 5 years away if this was a 2026 release I'd semi start paying attention to leaks.

 

[AnotherReader]

This are likely BS especially for a console seemingly 5 years away if this was a 2026 release I'd semi start paying attention to leaks.

Microsoft has signed up to ARM's new total access model. They might be exploring ARM64 use in Xbox to justify that cost.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Microsoft has signed up to ARM's new total access model. They might be exploring ARM64 use in Xbox to justify that cost.

A company as large as Microsoft has to have as many bases covered as possible they may be making an Xbox streaming box which to me would make a lot of sense for an arm based product.

Maybe they'll make something that is a hybrid of the two. My point if you can even call it that is its way too soon for any hardware specs to be taken seriously without a ton of salt.

From Mr. Xbox himself.

https://x.com/XboxP3/status/1704233222752571842?s=20

 

[Jism]

When i read those slides, likely half of that are inhouse AMD featuresets.

 

[alwayssts]

10. Years. Ago.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

10. Years. Ago.

Who can forget the Crackdown demo lmao

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

FWIW, arm64 was considered for the current series of Xbox consoles. AMD with x86-64 won out on flexibility and cost, but who knows what that might look like for the next generation.

I can't remember what company was going to have have produced the Arm chips - possibly Nvidia?

 

[Naito]

So, a disc-less, always-connected console? Would hate not to have reliable and fast internet...

Also locking the user into only being able to buy from a price-fixed online store...

 

[Zubasa]

FWIW, arm64 was considered for the current series of Xbox consoles. AMD with x86-64 won out on flexibility and cost, but who knows what that might look like for the next generation.

I can't remember what company was going to have have produced the Arm chips - possibly Nvidia?

OG Zen was also designed with an ARM variant in mind. So even if Microsoft decided to go with the ARM route it can still be based on a variant of Zen6.
The biggest difference between the ISA is the front-end and instructions decode of the CPU.
I remember Jim Keller in an interview a few years ago expressed, that he was disapointed it never saw the light of day.

 

[sephiroth117]

Going with ARM64 would be silly considering the vast number of PCs that get Xbox games.

In reality mobile phone and the very popular Switch are both on ARM, so developers have quite a lot of experience on this platform.
And, more importantly, your game development is, to some extent, abstracted by the engine which is tasked with compiling your code to either x86 or ARM.

So PC + ARM consoles is not going to be an issue, truth be told current consoles APU are quite different than something like a 5600 or 7800X3D anyways so it's not like 1:1

 

[AnotherReader]

In reality mobile phone and the very popular Switch are both on ARM, so developers have quite a lot of experience on this platform.
And, more importantly, your game development is, to some extent, abstracted by the engine which is tasked with compiling your code to either x86 or ARM.

So PC + ARM consoles is not going to be an issue, truth be told current consoles APU are quite different than something like a 5600 or 7800X3D anyways so it's not like 1:1

You're ignoring compatibility with older games. Nobody is going to recompile them for ARM.

 

[Naito]

You're ignoring compatibility with older games. Nobody is going to recompile them for ARM.

Microsoft is very good at translations layers and virtualization. 360 was Power PC and runs on all modern Xbox fine.

 

[AnotherReader]

Microsoft is very good at translations layers and virtualization. 360 was Power PC and runs on all modern Xbox fine.

That Power PC was a slow in-order processor ala the first Atom. Zen 2, on the other hand, is a modern out-of-order processor and so far, ARM implementers outside Apple have failed to reach AMD or Intel's performance on native code, let alone emulated code.

 

[Tomorrow]

So PC + ARM consoles is not going to be an issue

You're ignoring compatibility with older games. Nobody is going to recompile them for ARM.

Exactly. Porting is already difficult. I cant imagine porting from ARM64 to x86. Game compatibility suffers massively too and if Sony stick with x86 it will fracture even console development, not just PC porting. Going with ARM64 would make sense if Windows itself would move to natively supporting ARM.

Microsoft is very good at translations layers and virtualization. 360 was Power PC and runs on all modern Xbox fine.

Just not so good at ARM emulation...

 

[SJZL 2.0]

Microsoft using Zen 6 and RDNA 5 (Both coming fall 2026) for their 2028 console is just quite moderate on how powerful & "next gen" Microsoft wants their console to be. For XSX & XSS, Microsoft used Zen 2 (2019) and RDNA 2 (2020) for their 2020 consoles. Now Microsoft could excuse this for their "hybrid use of cloud & client" but we don't know how are they going to do that and I would prefer Microsoft should give up on cloud to use Zen 7 or 8 & RDNA 6 on their consoles rather than gambling(?) on the questionable usage of hybrid cloud, similar to what they did with the current gen.

For ARM in their 2028 Xbox, its just like risking their chances of success on hybrid cloud. No one wants a 360 situation where they couldn't access all the 360 games on Xbox One, Microsoft doing extra work for translation layers & virtualization/emulation, and the performance loss for back compatibility. Just why does Microsoft want to use ARM in their hardware? It couldn't be power efficiency.

 

[Naito]

Microsoft using Zen 6 and RDNA 5 (Both coming fall 2026) for their 2028 console is just quite moderate on how powerful & "next gen" Microsoft wants their console to be. For XSX & XSS, Microsoft used Zen 2 (2019) and RDNA 2 (2020) for their 2020 consoles.

The problem with console hardware development, is that the manufaturers (MS and Sony) must finalise the specifications at least 2 years prior to release to allow develops to adapt to the new platform. This, plus costings, is why the consoles, while very powerful for the money, seem 'last gen' when released

 

[SJZL 2.0]

The problem with console hardware development, is that the manufacturers (MS and Sony) must finalise the specifications at least 2 years prior to release to allow develops to adapt to the new platform. This, plus costings, is why the consoles, while very powerful for the money, seem 'last gen' when released

Then I wonder why they didn't have that problem with Scarlett & Lovelace? RDNA 2 surely couldn't have been there since 2018. Not unless, Microsoft worked really hard with AMD to make sure they had the latest GPU tech for their release.

Their GPU specs were finalized months before the launch, even Zen 2's development goes shorter than that 2 year finalization before release you mentioned. This could however speak of "games not using all the console hardware features".