Microsoft already garnered headlines last week when it announced a 50% increase in the pricing of Xbox Game Pass. According to a new rumor, though, the company’s strategy may be shifting to an even greater degree than people imagined.
The rumor comes from leaker SneakersSO, who previously leaked Xbox’s initial plans to start porting its games to other consoles. In a post on the NeoGAF board, the leaker wrote that the plans to actually produce the next Xbox hardware went from being ‘really concrete’ to ‘up in the air’, which was confusing to say the least, because the time to pull the trigger on the manufacturing for the new console isn’t that far. The goal was to begin in 2026 (likely for a 2027 launch), but the leaker makes it sound like Microsoft is not so sure about going through with that any longer.
The reason is that ‘the future of Xbox is software publishing, with a significantly honed-in focus on profitable IPs (CoD, WoW, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Forza Horizon), Cloud gaming being the home of the ‘Xbox platform’, transitioning GamePass into basically becoming the point of entry subscription for xCloud access (which will continue to drive its price tag higher by the way, they aren’t done there just yet either), and releasing their software on any device that has a marketplace and users willing to buy their titles.’
Essentially, Microsoft would be pulling a SEGA, exiting the console market for good. While that makes sense in a number of ways (Xbox hardware sales have been declining for years now), Microsoft has absolutely promised its fans a new console generation and a powerful one at that, with Xbox president claiming it would bring the biggest technical leap ever seen from generation to generation.
Moreover, less than four months ago, Microsoft signed a multi-year partnership with AMD to make next-generation devices, including consoles, handhelds, and cloud. Now, they could probably renegotiate the agreement with AMD if need be and exclude the console part, but Xbox fans would not take it well to suddenly hear that there will be no more consoles produced by their favorite brand, especially as it could also mean them losing access to all the games in their libraries, spanning entire generations through backward compatibility.
Now, this rumor is still to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, The Verge’s Tom Warren was just featured on the Xbox Era podcast claiming that SneakersSO actually does know about Microsoft’s gaming plans:
I will say he knows a lot of what goes on internally, I don’t think he’s a bad source. I think he knows a lot.
How would you take it if this turned out to be true? Vote in the poll below and voice your opinion in the comments.
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