Should Xbox be worried about not releasing a PS5 Pro competitor?

The PS5 Pro is on the way, and it boasts better ray tracing, PSSR AI upscaling, and graphics. Yes, graphics. When all of that is on the table, who could possibly resist pulling out their phone and hastily remortgaging their house for a new console that does all the same things your existing one does? Did I mention that the PS5 Pro costs $700?

Exactly, nobody could, and that’s why Microsoft is probably kicking itself right now. No, not for ditching the award-winning Hi-Fi Rush studio, or laying off around 2,500 staff from Microsoft Gaming this year alone, or even raising the price of Xbox Game Pass. It’s because it won’t be releasing a new console, obviously.

One has to wonder what the hell the executives at Microsoft were thinking when they decided to lay off hundreds of people just a couple of days after the PS5 Pro announcement. All the bewilderment around the console’s exorbitant price was washed away by Microsoft’s internal announcement of more job cuts. Only true business geniuses get high-tier jobs at one of the world’s most expensive companies.

Putting aside jokes and mismanagement of unfathomable proportions, Microsoft’s Xbox is the only PS5 competitor on the market when it comes to high-end console gaming. Nintendo continues to occupy a league of its own, and we’ll get more information on the Switch successor later this year. But it’s all quiet on the Microsoft front, after a few leaked console revisions that didn’t pan out.

The Xbox Series X is technically the most powerful console on the market and will continue to be until the PS5 Pro launches, so it’s hard not to wonder what Microsoft will do now. It’s no secret that Xbox sales haven’t quite kept up with PlayStation this generation, and Xbox Game Pass subscriber counts may have already peaked. 

From what we currently know, Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox will debut in 2028, and there’s no reason to believe that plan has been pushed up. Those plans are at least a year old, and we know that some of the slides revealed during the court battle between Microsoft and the FTC were out of date even at that time, but I feel safe in saying that there won’t be a Pro console in the Xbox Series line.

A better question is, what does this mean for Xbox in the short term, and what happens next? In the immediate future, Xbox isn’t likely to be a hot-ticket item at Christmas, but over the course of the next year, things might be different.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is the decider, in my opinion. As a console exclusive, the PS5 Pro will undoubtedly be the best place to play the game if visual clarity at any cost is what you’re after. I don’t doubt that there are legions of GTA fans champing at the bit for a new game after more than a decade, in fact, I think there are too many.

The PS5 Pro will, in my estimation, sell out for the launch of GTA 6, but there will still be many more fans eager to play the game – some of those fans are GTA die-hards that play few other games, if any. Believe it or not, these people still exist, just like the friends you knew who only played Call of Duty and FIFA (or Madden, if you’re American). And yes, some of those fans are still happily playing GTA Online on a base PS4 or Xbox One, happily ignorant of whatever else is happening in the gaming zeitgeist.

GTA 6 is going to inevitably pull them out of that heist-induced haze and force them to smell the coffee. The game isn’t coming to last-gen systems, and many players will need to upgrade. That’s where Microsoft steps in.

Some people just want to play the game as soon as possible, at any cost. Heck, there are even a bunch of kids and teens that are going to beg their parents for the game, and they just might buy it for them, age rating be damned. And when those people walk up to the counter in their local game retailer – or, more likely in the modern age, search for the most cost-effective way to play the game – they’ll discover that the Xbox Series S can play the game and, on a good day, will cost half the amount of any other GTA 6-capable machine.

I have no doubt that online fanboys will flex Digital Foundry’s results that show the PS5 Pro has the best image quality of any available console, but those boasts will be completely ignored by a bunch of people who are just playing the game. 

This isn’t a new thing, PC players who call their computer a “rig” can boast all they want about high frame rates and amazing visuals, but console players are still just playing the games, ignorant of all that. The fact that the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch have sold so well these last few years proves that visuals are something only the most hardcore (and possibly online) players care about.

Again, I believe the PS5 Pro will sell out when GTA 6 hits the shelves – some people spend thousands on watches, others spend hundreds on game consoles – but GTA 6 itself will be a sensation, selling millions more copies than PS5 Pro units have even been produced by that point. It will sell millions on PlayStation, it will sell millions on Xbox, and it’ll sell millions again when it finally hits PC. Fingers crossed, it might even sell millions on Nintendo Switch 2.

A rising tide lifts all ships, and assuming the rising tide hasn’t literally submerged the planet by then, GTA 6 will sell consoles – literally every console it launches on. When that happens, I don’t think Microsoft will be regretting the lack of an Xbox Series Z. Or X Pro. Or whatever. As long as it runs well on Xbox Series S, GTA 6 is going to sell consoles, and Microsoft won’t need a new machine.