Microsoft shifts development focus of first-party games to Xbox Series X/S, leaving Xbox One behind

Microsoft's internal studios are moving on from Xbox One titles and developing new games solely for Xbox Series X/S.

News of the switch was revealed to Axios by Xbox game studios chief Matt Booty.

Microsoft said it will still support Xbox One hardware and titles such as Minecraft and Sea of Thieves. It will also still offer the option for Xbox One users to play Xbox Series X/S titles on the platform via the cloud.

Microsoft Game Studios currently houses 23 game studios, which includes those gained with the ZeniMax Media purchase 2021.

Xbox Series X/S released in 2020, and when announced in 2019, Microsoft said its 15 Xbox Games Studios, at the time, were developing "the largest and most creatively diverse lineup of Xbox exclusive games" in its history, while also stating it didn't plan to make Gen-9 exclusive games until at least a year after Xbox Series X/S launched.

It kept this promise almost three years later, but now, the firm will focus solely on developing games for current-gen.

In January 2022, Microsoft stopped manufacturing all Xbox One console skus to focus on the production of Xbox Series X/S, so it was only a matter of time before Xbox Studios stopped developing games for it.

However, this doesn't mean third-party developers have given up on Xbox One yet, so it still has some life left.