Massive Microsoft leak reveals new Xbox console and controller designs, games, roadmap

Confidential Microsoft documents have been leaked, seemingly by mistake, revealing a roadmap for the company’s new products and their designs. The leak suggests a new all-digital Xbox Series X console refresh, an upgraded controller with additional haptic feedback, and new game releases in 2024.

The leaked documents, marked as confidential business information, originate from the legal dispute between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Microsoft. The documents seem to have been left unredacted by mistake and first appeared on the Resetera forum. The leak includes many emails, Xbox presentations, and other communication, as well as a roadmap to 2030.

The damaging leak is the third major blow to Microsoft in the last three months. In July, the China-linked threat actor “Storm-0324” managed to compromise and steal signing keys, granting access to the emails of United States government employees. Two months later, a misconfigured Azure storage exposed 38TB of private data. During the time, Microsoft was criticized for negligent security practices.

The latest leak is a goldmine for gamers as it reveals current Xbox plans up until 2030. However, the leaked documents are potentially outdated, as they originate from the beginning of 2022.

New games, devices, and features

Xbox Series X, Microsoft’s most powerful current-gen console, is about to receive a facelift (circular “beautiful and innovative new design” without a DVD drive), get more (2TB) storage, and go all digital. The refresh, codenamed “Brooklin,” will maintain a price tag of $499, will offer faster Wi-Fi 6E, and consume 15% less power. The launch was planned around November 2024.

This console is supposed to come with a new “Sebile” controller, updated with new haptic feedback and accelerometer features, a rechargeable and swappable battery, modular thumbsticks, recycled materials, and some new functions, such as lift-to-wake. The controller launch was projected to be earlier, around May 2024.

The truly next-gen console is expected to arrive in 2028. Microsoft has yet to choose the CPU architecture between competing ARM64 or x64, plans to balance Big/Little CPU cores, and to offer next-generation Raytracing, among other features.

The Xbox leak also includes a game release schedule that includes as yet unreleased games including Indiana Jones, Doom Year Zero and DLCs, The Elder Scrolls VI, Project Kestrel with expansion, Fallout 3 Remaster, Dishonored 3, Project Platinum, and others. According to the leaked slides, Xbox Gaming CSA revenues are expected to reach $36 billion by 2030.