An upgradable Xbox One? Think this one through, Microsoft

(credit: Dan Adelman)

While Microsoft might have hoped that its free-to-play PC version of Forza would grab headlines, its press showcase in San Francisco was far more notable for Xbox chief Phil Spencer's strong hint that the Xbox One's hardware will be upgraded.

After neglecting the PC gaming market for several years, it sounds like Microsoft may now go much further than merely throwing the likes of Quantum Break and Gears of War onto the platform. Microsoft may be trying to apply the whole concept of PC gaming—that is, extremely wide backwards compatibility along with various hardware configurations—onto the appliance-like console market.

"Consoles lock the hardware and the software platforms together at the beginning of the generation. Then you ride the generation out for seven or so years, while other ecosystems are getting better, faster, stronger," Spencer said. "When you look at the console space, I believe we will see more hardware innovation in the console space than we've ever seen. You'll actually see us come out with new hardware capability during a generation allowing the same games to run backward and forward compatible because we have a Universal Windows Application running on top of the Universal Windows Platform."

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