The future of the Xbox will probably be a lot like the iPhone

The days of having to ditch your old games when you get the latest video game console might be a thing of the past.

If you've been following along with the hardware news coming out of Xbox, you'll know that it just released the Xbox One S, a smaller, somewhat upgraded version of the original Xbox One that launched in 2013.

The Xbox One S still plays all the same games as the original Xbox One, and it's a slightly improved iteration rather than a completely new console with a new library of games.

Slated for release sometime next year is an even more upgraded Xbox One model, currently codenamed "Scorpio." Unlike the Xbox One S, the Scorpio will supposedly offer a much larger jump in performance - including the ability to run high-fidelity virtual reality games - but Xbox promises that every single game on the current Xbox One will be playable on the Scorpio.

Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's head of Xbox games marketing, said in an interview with Engadget that this is the way Xbox will approach console releases from here on out.

"For us, we think the future is without console generations," Greenberg said. "We think that the ability to build a library, a community, to be able to iterate with the hardware - we're making a pretty big bet on that with Project Scorpio. We're basically saying, 'This isn't a new generation; everything you have continues forward and it works.' We think of this as a family of devices."

"There appears to be a lot of demand and interest around Project Scorpio, and we think it's going to be a pretty big success," Greenberg continued. "If the games and the content deliver, which I think they will do, I think it will change the way we think about the future of console gaming."

This approach to new consoles would bring them much more in line with the world of PCs. There, most games can be played on most PCs, but users have to tweak various graphics settings according to the performance of their individual machine.

Similarly, both the original Xbox One and the Scorpio will be able to play "The Witcher 3," but the version running on the Scorpio will probably have quicker load times and a better overall framerate.