Report: Latest Xbox Lockhart rumors point towards an August announce

The (yet unconfirmed) idea that Xbox’s next-generation debut would take the form of a multi-console family of systems has circulated for some time now, but even with the Series X mostly unveiled those rumors haven’t died down.

The latest rumblings suggest that Xbox is looking to reveal a sister system for the Series X via online showcase in August. According to Eurogamer, those in the know say the system once codenamed Lockhart is likely to be the Xbox Series S, and was originally planned to be announced alongside the Series X before the global pandemic complicated those plans.

At the end of last year, and before the Series X was officially unveiled, insiders confirmed to Kotaku that a dual console approach was still in the cards for Xbox’s next generation. Just last week, security researcher TitleOS (via WindowsCentral) found mention of Lockhart in the release notes for the June Xbox Development Kit, particularly of a profiling mode that’ll let developers target different specs depending on the system.

As with earlier mentions of Lockhart, these latest reports bill the console as a lower-powered (and likely more affordable once next gen prices are revealed) alternative to the full Series X, similar to how the Xbox One X compares to the Xbox One S but launching all at once rather than over the span of years. 

On the other side of the next-gen console watch, no such rumors exist for PlayStation’s PlayStation 5 line. Instead, the competing console maker has opted to announce two versions of the PlayStation 5 with only one key difference: the option to buy an system without a disc drive and leave all concerns of physical media behind.