I don’t think we’re getting any ‘next gen’. I think Xbox is getting dissolved into an AI brand and becomes an afterthought. And no I don’t blame Spencer per se. He was just doing his job within a very narrow mandate. The problem is these companies want a future where ownership is a thing of the past. It’s about cloud and AI, all the way to the end now. We’ll be renting GPU’s in ten years time as well. No one will own anything because these trillion dollar corpos are brute forcing that future whether we like it or not. AI is a big part of that gameplan. What we’re seeing here is way, way bigger than ‘gaming’. It’s politics.
Clearly the PS6 is happening, so if what you were saying was true it’d just gut the brand completely as everyone would either stay on their existing Xbox or move to PC or PS6 - particularly with the huge backlash against AI use in gaming.
Yes streaming will probably become the primary method way off into the future in the way it has for music and video, but at the moment the latency etc isn’t great and neither is the quality, so we need at least another generation before that and Microsoft aren’t going to quit an arena that makes tens of billions of dollars a quarter.
I also don’t look forward to a streaming only future, not least because I often struggle with games that have poor accessibility so end up playing on my PC so I can use mods to make them playable - but that future is decades away at least as remember you can still buy physical music and video even now, when 99% of people use streaming.
It’s very unlikely this change is to suddenly drop the hybrid generation and move fully to cloud, not least because they’d appoint a cloud person not an AI one, and xCloud isn’t great yet and struggles with capacity - as do the Azure data centres in general, they’re having to add tons of servers every year and most of it is going to corporate customers.
Maybe take a breath - yes this news is sudden, and I can’t deny the world is in a shit state right now, but there will be another Xbox generation and I doubt much will change for us core consumers as we still bring in lots of easy money - instead I imagine this change may be more about productivity / efficiency and maybe yes about getting new people through the door, for all we know the board love the new CEO and are going to throw money at some big plan to try and gain a lot more customers
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They literally just promoted a complete outsider with zero experience in the gaming world whose sole credential is AI. I believe that says enough.
And when I talk of next-gen I clearly meant Xbox. Obviously a PS6 is coming but I add a huge caveat there: cost. It’s going to be expensive if the AI bubble doesn’t burst since AI is hogging all the ram and GPU’s right now. So I really don’t see how anyone can look at the tech world in early 2026 and somehow think everything will be the same for us consumers. No. It’ll be more expensive and not as good as it used to be. That’s the expectation I have and I see nothing to instil optimism right now.
The most thing Xbox will be missing is Phils almost 40 years expertise to navigate Microsofts corporate bullshit. He got them to invest around 90 billion dollars in gaming. The new CEO is a Microsoft greenhorn. A new outside perspective is good but I hope she is ready for Nadella and Hood and wish her the best fighting spirit.
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You know, the amazing thing in all of this is? Having the block option to die out channels that fuel doomposting as the narrative.
It could be good and lead to some innovations, as it did with Play Anywhere, Game Pass, and backward and forward compatibility.
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“recommit to our core Xbox fans and players”
“starting with console which has shaped who we are."
Trying to read between the lines here. The only way to achieve this is to make games exclusive again. At least just Xbox/PC. Game Pass is not enough. You have to make people want to go and buy your console. There’s just no other way to do it.
Just look at the HW sales. Somebody at Xbox thought that they could put their games on PlayStation and people would still go out and buy their console. Would really love to know who’s bright idea that was.
I blame IGN headline for the knee jerk reaction, mainly on Asha’s former position. While true, AI is greatest taboo term in social media, so you can see why no one will think otherwise.
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Great points everyone. I’m excited for Asha to do the grand ol’ tour and visit all the studios and see what her vision of Xbox. I’m curious about her thoughts about 3rd party exclusive games for Xbox and using licensed IP for her studios. I see a lot of Doom and Gloom on X but I will remain hopefully and optimistic. The one thing I can see is Asha is young and hungry. I think the biggest thing she needs to do is find a way to grow Xbox consoles and their PC store. Xbox owns 4 publishers and gets 100% revenue from their own games. Why give Sony, Nintendo and Steam a 30% cut why your consoles “die” and your PC store is ignored by gamers and publishers.
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Fortunately they’re just retired from their position. That said it is complete. No one left. An era that is completely over.
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What I wonder is in what ways will Xbox become AI for next gen? Will it be mostly for the hardware itself, and if so, isn’t that probably a very good thing? If they leave the studios alone and have them keep their creative freedom……
I fully realize that’s 100% a best case scenario.
Why would anybody want the old Blades dash back? This thing had almost no functionality, was full of empty spaces and ads and very slow ingame.
Just pandering to vocal ‘fans’.
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This is what scares me the most. Phil and Sarah put a LOT of work building relationships with publishers and developers for Xbox especially in Asia. Having been in the industry a lot less (literally not at all), it’ll be much harder for the new CEO to do the same.
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Ugh, yeah. I’m going to get tired if this becomes the entire conversation for the year. “What can I say to please the people that felt BETRAYED when games started going exclusive and please everyone that wants to go back to the 360 era.”
Is it about to just be the nostalgia run? I guess realistically we’ll see in 2027 and beyond. This is the anniversary year and I don’t imagine there will be any major strategic deviations or shakeups just yet. And otherwise is indeed the year to pander I guess.
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You know, seeing the new head of Xbox (or whomever is operating that account) start off her tenure by acting chummy with the fans on social media and ‘talking the talk’ is actually almost more concerning than if Don Mattrick returned and said they had a product for those who don’t like AI and it’s called the Xbox One.
I mean seriously come on. The main thing people are concerned with right now is the future and our libraries. That feeling of “is it safe to still invest in the Xbox brand?”. That’s what needs to be addressed here because every they plan they’ve put into motion over the past 10 years has been contradicted soon after and so on.
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She was pretty responsive yesterday, which I wasn’t aware. I do hope there will be a video on the day she officially takes in command.
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That last sentence of yours is just BS.
The interviews from Phil back in 2017 when Xbox became its own division had him mentioning the cloud, that more games could make their way to rival platforms like iPhone and PS4, and how he didn’t see Playstation and Nintendo as competition when Google and Amazon were making their cloud push. He literally said they want to reach 2 billion gamers and there’s no way to do that with a console, hence the cloud.
And we know from the FTC trial for ABK that they tried getting Game Pass on PlayStation and he also said there was no console growth baked into the ABK purchase. When that man was talking exclusives he meant exclusive to their Game Pass / cloud service, which they were trying to get on as many devices as possible.
There is a video of him saying that the ABK purchase accelerates their plans, not changes it. It’s easier to believe the brand is what it is today because he intentionally wanted to make it much larger to get them on the path to billions of gamers. There is absolutely no way to do that with a console-first or console-centric approach. If it were possible, the HD console darling of PlayStation wouldn’t have piqued hardware sales back in the PS2 era.
The biggest games in the world are everywhere. And even Playstation is trying to figure out how to make GaaS work. And they’re still publishing on PC. And unlocking PS Portal for cloud play without needing a PS5. There’s no reality where a growing gaming business could stay stuck on putting an expensive device as the entry fee. It doesn’t scale.
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I mean, doesn’t the Xbox FSE let you use different layouts or at least boot up with totally different interfaces?
while that’s probably not what her tweets mean, it could be nice for them to develop different styles that you can pick from when customizing your FSE experience.
I say bring back the blades! Make it a cross promotion with the release of Blade the video game!
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