Microsoft may adopt a similar strategy to the Microsoft console released in 2005 for the next generation of consoles, which could be here sooner than we think.

A Call of Duty insider, TheGhostofHope, based on reliable sources, claims that the console that will come after the Xbox Series (whose name we won’t try to guess because no one would have guessed that the Xbox consoles would be called Xbox 360, then Xbox One, then Xbox Series…) could be out by the end of 2026. That’s about two and a half years from now. It would not be surprising if the launch titles would include a Call of Duty episode from that year.

This is not the first time we have heard about this date. Back in December, RedGamingTech, a YouTube user, mentioned this year, and he believes that Microsoft will use an AMD Ryzen Zen 5 CPU in the console, since the Zen 6 architecture won’t be in stores by then. It was also said that there would not be two SKUs (versions) on the market, as it is now, so that only one version would be released by the Redmond-based company, which hopes to repeat the success of the Xbox 360, which beat rivals PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii by a year, and that this advantage has paid off for Microsoft.

In 2014, the company reportedly sold 84 million Xbox 360s, a significant improvement over the 24 million Xbox 360s and roughly 58 million Xbox One units sold. The Xbox series pair is currently at around 27 million sales. Releasing the new Xbox earlier would be risky, but at the moment Microsoft doesn’t really have a better choice. All this is interesting because Xbox president Sarah Bond recently said that they want to make the biggest technological leap with the new hardware.

So there would be no mid-gen upgrade now, and when PlayStation 6 is released (around 2027-2028), Microsoft could lower the price and the improved performance of PS6 could be followed by an updated/mid-gen console. The NPU (AI accelerator) and AI could also play a role, but this is not official yet…

Source: WCCFTech