The gaming world has been, for so long, trying to hold its breath upon hearing such crazy rumors about the foreseeable future of Xbox. And really: If even half of those things even remotely were to come true, the whole concept of what an Xbox publication was would be very drastically altered. Just recently, something came about in a tweet thread by SneakersSO stating that the gaming strategy of Microsoft was severely disorganized and that the plan was to go fully third party publisher. Yes, you heard that right.
The insiders have said that to Microsoft, Game Pass was probably something it did not really bargain for. It went heavy hoping that there would be a massive subscriber boost with Call of Duty. It did not come through. So, the rumor by now says Game Pass will be changing to become more of a front door to xCloud, with the happy cloud of gaming forming the new home for the “Xbox” brand. Oh, of course, there is yet another price hike coming your way; or maybe it will not bother them that much-what are a couple of dollars really worth?
The whole Call of Duty-game has been the particular headache. Word is Black Ops 7 sales are way down, probably thanks to the 50% Game Pass price increase. You can visually stare at PlayStation Store sales charts to appreciate the trajectory of decline, which is…not so good for Microsoft. At all.
Ah, wait. It gets more crazy. Leaks claim that Xbox’s entire showcase strategy had always been an elaborate PR gimmick. Apparently, they got so obsessed with “winning” conferences over PlayStation that they began green-lighting games just for the sake of announcing them in these conferences. Remember that Xbox E3 2014? Yeah, apparently, most of those games got canceled. They focused on winning news cycles and doing good PR instead of bothering to deliver the actual games. This explains a lot if you turn your head to look at how many announced Xbox exclusives never actually see the light of day.
Here’s the part that is really setting everyone off-the Phil Spencer tea-bomb. According to these rumors, Phil has got people on his payroll playing under his account to raise his gamer score-first for Xbox players to see him as being one of them and further enhancing his image. If true, that’s next-level corporate manipulation. He also reportedly utilized the marketing budget at Microsoft to run PR campaigns for media and influencers.
There’s an absolutely savage story about Phil celebrating when he saw Horizon Forbidden West announced, saying “Halo Infinite blew it out of the water” – and then Halo Infinite delayed for over a year. The irony is…Wow.
For sure, Microsoft’s AI push is another gear in their restructuring and roll-out. They’re training management on how to use AI and Copilot-willing to replace as many jobs as humanly possible with AI agents.
Hardware-wise? This does not sound so good. It’s said that the Xbox Series is being slowly pulled off stores by retailers. The next-gen Xbox did not hit its internal targets, and the development of the console started a lot later than PlayStation. It’s now almost coming out, suggesting that perhaps the next Xbox will not see a release at all. Just because it is in development does not mean it is going to hit store shelves, as the leaker points out.
This pretty much ties in with the previous leaks about PS5 dev kits being shipped out to Microsoft Game Studios. The writing has been on the wall-Microsoft is going wholesale third-party, depending on their tentpole franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Candy Crush, and Forza Horizon. They are slashing so big internally that they do not even consider themselves an Xbox but “Microsoft Gaming.”
The comment section for these leaks is a madhouse. One user @Zuby_Tech calls the leaker an idiot for saying “we’ll buy them out of business” while @realHardEight truthfully states “It’s been obvious Phil and Sarah have been gaslighting their loyal customer base.” The vibe is that things have been awry in Xbox leadership for over a decade.
So, some covetous discussions are also unfolding about what a future Xbox hardware might look like. @natoshis4k4moto is hinting at some sort of console that actually plays PC games with no actual Xbox-developed presence on it, but @Xeccess responds that this very “console” is rumored to be canned already. General consensus in the replies: Whatever hardware Microsoft puts out, they’ll be DOA.
So why invest so much energy into keeping up the charade that it’s “only four games” going multiplatform? According to the leaks, there are between 10 and 20 million die-hard Xbox players who keep subscriptions higher up on Game Pass. They seek to keep that money stream flowing while slowly restructuring Xbox into a leaner entity marketplace.
The entire spectacle feels very much like slow-mo car crash. Xbox players who have invested much into the ecosystem can rightly complain about it, whereas PlayStation and Nintendo players are probably licking their lips at the thought of more games coming to their platform.
What is very clear is that the gaming strategy at Microsoft is undergoing its biggest shift since…well, ever. The Xbox days being the direct competitor to the PlayStation in the console space are numbered. We are moving towards a world where Microsoft Gaming is a third-party publisher that just happens to run a subscription service and some cloud gaming stuff as well. The Xbox brand, as you know it, might very well be on life support.
After all, with all these leaks and the reaction coming from the community right after reading them, one can hardly deny the feeling of witnessing the end of an era happening. Whether that feeling is good or bad is dependent on which platform you play on; one thing for sure though is that we are going to have one hell of a different gaming landscape.
