Microsoft announces three-year timeline for new Windows releases

The Windows as a service program, introduced by Microsoft around the time of Windows 10’s launch, long before Windows 11, appears to be coming to an end. The new plan takes a bit of a step back in time, setting a fixed 3-year timetable for the release of new OS versions.

In terms of organization, the change appears to be a simple tweak to the Windows update schedule, in that so-called Feature Updates can’t continue indefinitely after that OS version has already been released.

According to information obtained from sources Microsoft intends to re-impose a fixed schedule for the release of major Windows versions, with the “prefix” changing no more than 3 years after the last major revision. Thus, with Windows 11 announced in 2021, the next major revision of Windows should arrive in 2024. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily have to be called Windows 12, as Microsoft management can come up with any brand strategy that suits the moment.

What we can say with some certainty is that the successor to Windows 11 will not be known by the codename Sun Valley 3, as this project that never saw the light of day has already been shelved. In other words, Microsoft has already applied a “correction”, involving at least the abandonment of a project for which quite a lot of resources have already been allocated, moving at least in terms of Powerpoint presentations to something entirely new and visionary.

However, it looks like we’ll be dealing with Windows 11 version 22H2 (Sun Valley 2), which could represent the pinnacle of the Windows 11 generation, before Microsoft changes “course” to something completely new.