Could Switching to ARM Save the Xbox?

Microsoft’s all-in on Windows on ARM, and it looks like the push for ARM won’t be a temporary fixation this time around. Considering its latest obsession, I can’t help but wonder whether Microsoft plans to switch next-gen Xbox consoles to ARM too, and whether this move could save the waning Xbox brand.

The “Windows on ARM” Push Could Spill Over to Consoles

There’s no denying that Microsoft is pushing for ARM-powered Windows PCs harder than ever before. We already have dozens of Copilot+ Windows laptops powered by the Snapdragon X system on a chip (SoC); by the looks of it, this flood of ARM-powered Windows computers is just the beginning.

Windows 11 already works great on ARM, and if the company sees ARM as the main CPU engine powering its operating system, a logical next step would be to make the next generation of its gaming console ARM-powered, too.

After all, Windows and Xbox are two of Microsoft’s largest consumer-oriented business branches, so it would be natural for both of them to embrace ARM. Also, we know from the leaked FTC documents that Microsoft’s Xbox division is considering pairing the next-gen Xbox with an ARM CPU.

A Perfect Match for the Handheld Xbox

Next-gen Xbox consoles embracing ARM makes even more sense if you consider that Microsoft might also be working on a handheld Xbox console.

Now, discussing whether x86 or ARM is more power efficient is pointless because the instruction set architecture (ISA) matters less than the actual microarchitecture design. Just look at what AMD has done with its new x86 Ryzen mobile CPUs, which achieve performance parity with Intel and Snapdragon X Elite laptop counterparts while using almost half the power.

There’s no denying that, for all these years, ARM designs have been focused on bringing power-efficient designs that achieve the highest performance possible at low-power envelopes.

In other words, an ARM-based CPU powering the handheld Xbox would probably be a better solution than an x86 processor because ARM designs have always been focused on energy-efficient solutions. We have only recently started seeing ARM CPUs targeting the performance levels of x86 designs.

As Arm (the company, not the CPU instruction set) stated in a recent XDA Developers piece, “Arm has always concentrated on energy-efficient computing from its very inception, and this has enabled Arm’s partners to derive solutions that consume lower power than their competition while delivering on the performance that is required.”

The last part of the sentence is what’s important here. With an ARM CPU, the handheld Xbox could achieve the performance required—likely 30fps in most games that boast flashy visuals—while sipping power, allowing the console to offer a battery life longer than a couple of hours at maximum power.

Remember, this is a console we’re talking about, not a PC. In the world of handheld consoles, long battery life is at least as important as satisfactory performance. The current king of handheld consoles, the Nintendo Switch OLED, offers about 4.5 hours of battery life at max power. That’s double what the Steam Deck OLED is capable of when you push it to the max, which is a handheld PC powered by a surprisingly power-efficient x86 CPU.

If Microsoft wants next-gen Xbox consoles to recapture a slice of the console market that it has lost in the last few generations, those consoles have to offer a best-in-class gaming experience, which includes an impressive battery life when it comes to the handheld Xbox.

ARM Could Be Right at Home on a Next-Gen Xbox

Another area that ARM designs excel at is scalability. For example, Apple’s M1 offers half of the CPU performance of the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The GPU performance of the three scales even higher, with the base M1 achieving less than a third of the graphics performance of the M1 Max, while the M1 Pro falls right in the middle.

In other words, a regular next-gen Xbox could share a CPU design with the handheld Xbox but offer much higher gaming performance due to scalability. The same rule would apply to the GPU portion of the chipset, which would pack many more computing cores in the home version of the next-gen Xbox.

This would allow Microsoft to utilize the same base design for both of its next-gen Xbox consoles, thus enabling the company to save cash and streamline the design process instead of using different architectures for the two consoles: ARM for the handheld and x86 for the one that goes under the TV.

Moving to ARM wouldn’t mean abandoning Xbox’s impressive backward compatibility program either. Microsoft’s Prism translation layer does a solid job of translating x86 apps to work on ARM, and we know that Microsoft is focused on keeping its backward compatibility program alive and well into the future.

While game compatibility on Windows on ARM laptops is less than stellar you have to remember that on Xbox, Microsoft is at the helm, not Qualcomm. This means that Microsoft has complete control over making old Xbox games compatible and performant enough to keep its backward compatibility program alive and well on next-gen Xbox consoles.

In-House ARM Could Be More Cost Effective Than Licensed x86

It’s possible that Microsoft itself, not Qualcomm, is designing the ARM CPU at the heart of next-gen Xbox consoles.

After all, Microsoft is no stranger to in-house ARM designs. The company’s ARM-based Azure Cobalt CPU, used for general computing “with a focus on performance per watt,” is already deployed in Microsoft Azure cloud computing servers.

Perhaps the company realized that switching its gaming consoles to ARM, as well, could be a step in the right direction, especially if we take into account Microsoft’s recent push towards its “Xbox gaming without an Xbox” cloud gaming initiative.

It could be more cost-effective to have racks of efficient ARM SoCs powering the cloud streaming service instead of less efficient x86 designs. This is currently the case since Xbox Series X server blades, powering the current-gen xCloud gaming data centers, are x86-based and pretty expensive to run.

ARM Could Be a Step in the Right Direction for Xbox

The fact of the matter is that Xbox issues are multifaceted. Switching from x86 to ARM won’t magically mend Xbox and make gamers flock back to it, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Releasing a handheld next-gen console in addition to a home console while focusing on Xbox Cloud Gaming could be easier and cheaper if the hardware is ARM-based. If Microsoft solves potential backward compatibility issues in time for the release of next-gen Xbox consoles, there’s no reason why Xbox switching to ARM could be anything but a net positive.