Microsoft announces plans for Xbox hardware upgrades and cross-platform gaming

If Microsoft's plans go ahead, the Xbox gaming experience would become much similar to how it is on PC

The Xbox One at its launch event in 2013 (GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Microsoft wants to merge its Xbox One and PC gaming platforms into one cross-platform ecosystem, Xbox head Phil Spencer has announced.

The company is also looking at the possibility of making the Xbox's hardware more like that of a PC, releasing regular hardware upgrades rather than an entirely new console every few years.

Spencer revealed these ambitious plans in a keynote speech at the Xbox Spring Showcase event in San Francisco at the end of February.

The company hopes PC and Xbox can be brought closer together with Universal Windows Applications (UWAs) - a single platform which is compatible with both systems.

Microsoft has taken steps to bring the two closer together already by making the Xbox One compatible with Windows 10, its latest operating system.

If Microsoft's plans go ahead, games built as UWAs would be playable on PC, Xbox, and any other platform which is compatible with the format, since they wouldn't be tied to any one piece of hardware. Importantly, they would stay playable well into the future, even as new hardware comes out.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed his ambitious plans at the Xbox Spring Showcase event in San Francisco (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Upgradable Xbox hardware would help this become a reality - rather than having to replace their console with the latest model every seven or eight years, gamers could simply buy upgrades and add-ons to improve the machine's capabilities, without losing access to their old games.

As the Guardian reports, Spencer said in the speech: "We can effectively feel a little bit more like what we see on PC, where I can still go back and run my old Quake and Doom games, but then I can also see the best 4K games coming out."

"Hardware innovation continues and software takes advantage. I don't have to jump a generation and lose everything that I played before."

This vision of a modular Xbox getting minor hardware upgrades is still far away, and Spencer reportedly didn't reveal any details of Microsoft's specific plans in this area when pressed.

However, he seems committed to the idea. Speaking to Polygon, he said: "I look at the ecosystem that a console sits in and I think that it should have the capability of more iteration on hardware capability... For consoles in general it's more important now than it's ever been, because you have so many of these other platforms that are around."

He added: "I want to make sure that people see that what we are doing enables us to be more committed to what consoles are about than we've ever been and innovate more consistently than we ever have. That's the key for me."