Phil Spencer: No Xbox One ½ Upgrade after PS4.5 Reports

It was recently revealed that Sony was working on a hardware upgrade to the PlayStation 4, which is being referred to as the PS4.5 or PS4K. This has lead some to call for a Xbox One upgrade. However, the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, Phil Spencer, has shot down all hopes of us seeing a Xbox One and a Half. Spencer recently stated that he has bigger plans for the Xbox brand.

Recently, at a Build Developers Conference, Phil Spencer discussed the possibility of a Xbox One hardware upgrade, saying (via Screenrant):

“I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers… For us, our box is doing well. It performs, it’s reliable, the servers are doing well. If we’re going to go forward with anything, like I said, I want it to be a really substantial change for people--an upgrade.”

In some ways, the Xbox One has actually been downgraded since its initial launch. The system, which was initially bundled only with a Kinect 2.0, has since been released without the peripheral. The Kinect is available separately, but the company’s focus has shifted away from the motion sensor.

However, the company has opened the Xbox One up for backwards compatibility. Recently, Xbox Platform team member Bill Stillwell discussed how this came to be, in a livestream, saying (via PC World):

“What we’ve done to make this happen -- which we didn’t think was initially possible -- was we built a virtual 360 entirely in software -- and we take the old 360 games and put them in the emulator and we put them in emulation.”

What do you think of Phil Spencer’s comments? Would you like to see an upgraded Xbox One? Do you prefer the system with a Kinect? Let us know your thoughts on the subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page.