The now-scrapped refreshed of the Xbox Series S would've had power-upscaling AI capabilities

Microsoft scrapped a refreshed version of the Xbox Series S that would have had power-upscaling AI capabilities, according to RedGamingTech, a vlogger known to have insights on Xbox consoles.

Xbox wanted to release a refreshed version of the Xbox Series S with many capabilities, including improved specs, more RAM, machine learning features, and even an RDNA 3-based GPU, but the project was ultimately canceled due to several reasons.

The vlogger says the system’s APU wasn’t working, and that version’s capabilities would have made it a much stronger console than initially expected, and it would have been difficult to deal with such a product, from a marketing perspective.

The now-scrapped Xbox Series S would’ve not only had AI capabilities, but the overall improvements would have brought it very close to the existing Xbox Series X, so marketing the product would have created issues for the Redmond-based tech giant.

However, it’s worth mentioning that neither Microsoft nor Xbox confirmed these rumors, so at this point, we don’t know for sure if this version of the Xbox even existed in theory. But given the fact that Microsoft is indeed releasing a new version of the Xbox Series S, most likely, AI-powered Xbox was a conceivable notion at some point.

Xbox will release the new Xbox Series S version, Ellewood, sometime later this year, but this one won’t be much of an upgrade to the existing Series S, though. It won’t have AI capabilities, but it will come out with a bigger storage of 1TB and it will cost around $299.

However, the recent Xbox Business Update event, which took place last week, announced several important news for the future of Xbox: not only the Xbox exclusives will be released to other platforms, but Microsoft is set to unveil the next-gen Xbox soon, and it promises it will be the largest technological leap ever seen in gaming consoles, so the expectations were placed.

Now we only have to wait.

What to expect from the next Xbox console?

While we don’t know any details about the next-gen Xbox, it will most likely have several AI features. Windows 11, for example, recently got the new Auto Super Resolution, which is an AI-based feature that greatly improves the gaming experience.

Windows 11 will also sport the new 24H2 patch later this year, which is going to embrace the new NPU set to be released this summer. The next Xbox console will most likely be assembled with NPU as well.

Aside from this, there is not much speculation going on, but we’ll most likely find out more in the following months.