Indeed. All I think on watching this is “well, this is a big ‘uo yours’ to everyone who supported their hardware.”
They have totally lost my loyalty as a customer. I love my Series X, but the company behind it can go take the raw prawn. I’m hoping that after this generation the X becomes some sort of underground emulation beast like has happened to the Wii and DS.
Switch 2 will get Xbox games, too
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says he’s “really looking forward to supporting” Nintendo with the company’s Xbox games, a strong indication that more previously exclusive titles from Xbox Game Studios are bound for Nintendo Switch 2.
Spencer’s comments, from a recent episode of the Gamertag Radio podcast, appear to lend further credence to reports that games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are bound for Nintendo’s next-gen console.
And Phil keeps going on how hardware is “important” to Xbox. How? Unless they make it an open system like (at least) Steam Deck or (at most) the various android-based emulator systems, I don’t see how X-Box hardware could be a legitimate option.
Sony and Nintendo aren’t going to suddenly start putting their stuff on X-Box because X-Box is platform agnostic, so X-Box is going to be able to play less than anything else. Even if they do make it some kind of PC hybrid and you can install stuff from Steam etc, there’s still not going to be any Nintendo on it, but Switch 2 will have X-Box games.
I don’t understand how Microsoft plans to stay in the hardware business after this decision, but I guess we’ll see.
Microsoft’s AI business is booming — Xbox, not so much
The company’s gaming revenues didn’t fare so well. Gaming revenue declined 7 percent, and Xbox hardware revenue declined 29 percent. Microsoft has been moving away from a focus on its own hardware with messaging like its “This is an Xbox” ad campaign and bringing Xbox Game Studios games to other platforms, and those changes could be contributing to the decline.
That means the focus is instead on games and services, and that’s where the business is seeing some improvements. Xbox content and services revenue were up 2 percent, “driven by growth in Xbox Game Pass,” Microsoft says. (Last quarter, Microsoft’s software gaming revenues were way up even as Xbox hardware revenue declined.)
To add to the above, the ZX Spectrum Outsold The PS5 Pro And Xbox Series X|S In Spain.
Only 3,500 Xbox Series consoles were sold in the Mediterranean nation in November 2024 which meant it was comfortably outsold by the ZX Spectrum.
Microsoft teases ultrapowerful next-gen Xbox — and maybe a handheld
In an official Xbox podcast today, Xbox president Sarah Bond teased that Microsoft will deliver “the largest technical leap” with the next-generation Xbox:
We’ve got more to come. There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday. We’re also invested in the next-generation roadmap. What we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building.
Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer went a step further, teasing that the Xbox hardware teams are thinking about building different kinds of hardware. “I’m very proud of the work that the hardware team is doing, not only for this year, but also into the future,” says Spencer. “[We’re] really thinking about creating hardware that sells to gamers because of the unique aspects of the hardware. It’s kind of an unleashing of the creative capability of our hardware team that I’m really excited about.”
Xbox CEO Confirms What We Knew: The Console Wars Are Over
Over the weekend, Spencer sat down for a lengthy interview with XboxEra in which he discussed his favorite games, talked about what various Xbox studios are working on, and dished on the industry at large. And he was also honest about Xbox no longer being part of any console war, as it shifts to selling Xbox games on other consoles, like PlayStation.
“I would love to make all of the money for all of the games that we ship, right? Like, obviously we make more on our own platform,” said Spencer. “It’s one of the reasons that investing in our own platform is important. But there are people, whether it’s their libraries on a PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s they like the controller better, they just like the games that are there.”
“I’m not trying to move them all over to Xbox anymore,” added Spencer.
That last quote, about not trying to bring everyone over to Xbox anymore, is a very telling one. And for sure, Xbox hasn’t really been competing with Sony or Nintendo for a few years now—that kinda stops when you start selling your games on their platforms—but this is confirmation from Spencer that Xbox was once fighting in the console wars and that it no longer is part of that battle, as the entire point of the console wars was to sell more boxes and steal away other players with exclusives.
At least they are finally honest about it now. I still (probably irrationally) feel a bit miffed about supporting Xbox for this to happen, but it’s good X-Box will still be around in some form, much like SEGA.
I do love my Series X as a machine. Hopefully in years to come people will figure out how to get rid of all the crap MS fills the desktop with and turn it onto an emulation machine.
You can emulate on the Series X now, if you want. You just need to pay a one time developer fee, and then to boot your Series X into dev mode. Once there you can install other software, like RetroArch, for emulation.
Yeah, I am aware of that but at the moment I’m happy with just my Retroid. Also, I’d rather wait until the X is much cheaper before I risk blowing it up.
If it helps reassure you, is an officially supported mode and not jailbreaking. But I understand. I also haven’t done it.
Yeah, know that too. I just don’t feel the need, at least at the moment. I’m sure I’ll try it if and when, but there are so many Dreamcast and earlier games I wanna try I’m ok for now. 
Both the Nintendo eShop and Xbox store have the longest approval pipeline. They are known to delay game updates/patches for much longer than the equivalent updates on PC and PS. This has resulted in a number of occasions where the Nintendo or Xbox version of a game doesn’t have patches to fix game breaking bugs while the game has already been patched on PC or PS. On two occasions, I had to abandon Game Pass version of games for this very reason and switch to another platform because the game I was playing on Xbox was broken, but fixed everywhere else. I then played and completed the game elsewhere before the patch was approved for release on Xbox. It’s pretty bad and it means Xbox and Nintendo players regularly have to put up with broken versions of games longer than other platform users do.
2025 is sooner than I expected:
An update on the Xbox handheld, it looks like the initial hardware partner is Asus:
Probably something like an Asus ROG Ally with custom Xbox design touches such an Xbox button and other flourishes. I’m dying to see what the Cbox software on a third party device is like and I wonder if it’s one more step closer to an XBox-like Windows variant for consoles.
Apparently you can stream Steam to Series X. Has anyone tried this? Could be fun for controller-spercific games, but I worry about latency as my internet isn’t always the best. Guess there’s no way to tell without trying it.
Hmm, I didn’t know the Series X could be a Steam Link device.
I think Steam Link uses your home network when you’re streaming at home so as long as you have a decent local area network (ideally wired) you’d be good without massive latency. Latency would be more noticeable on a wireless network, especially since the Series X doesn’t support WiFi 6 or higher.
Yeah, I read it really needs wired. Wouldn’t be able to do that without basically moving the telly so not gonna bother.
