Xbox can’t wait to get out of 2025 and start talking about the next generation
Last year, when I led Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, there was plenty of reason for hope for the Xbox team.
The company ended 2024 in style, with Indiana Jones and the Great Circlefinally sealing Activision Blizzard’s seemingly never-ending acquisition, and it was hoped that its big games in 2025 would show that it still has plenty to offer.
This year it has been difficult to see the positives. Doom: Dark Ages it was great, Declared was another solid RPG from the always reliable team at Obsidian, and South of midnight told a unique story, even if its gameplay offered little real freshness.
Unfortunately, it looks like this is the year that Xbox pulled more rakes than Sideshow Bob, leaving customers with proverbial black eyes. And for those who own an Xbox and haven’t upgraded to another system, there’s probably some degree of buyer’s remorse.
Into the green
I don’t want to devote this entire review to Microsoft for 2025, because some genuinely good things happened this year.
The above Loss the prequel was a double barrel of laughs and featured intense sci-fi and medieval combat that many of us couldn’t get enough of, while Declared was a smaller first-person RPG that contained extremely flexible character building.
When the company held its Xbox Games Showcase, Mechanical revolution looked fantastic, while the promise of more Fantasy Finale Titles coming to Xbox, along with a commitment to larger third-party releases, show that the brand isn’t going anywhere just yet.
It was also the year that Microsoft removed any notion of barriers around cross-platform titles. The company negotiated Helldiverse 2 with Sony for Forza Horizon 5put Gears of War Reloaded on PS5, and even committed to putting Halo: Campaign Evolved on the system of its former rival in 2026.
Will not pass
The problem is that Microsoft has long relied on Xbox Game Pass to be the glue that holds its first-party offerings and third-party titles together.
Being able to get started Black Ops 6 Last year, rather than paying full price on PS5, this was welcome, but reports suggest it came at a huge cost in terms of lost sales for Microsoft (who could have seen that coming?).
His solution was simple: take what was once the easiest-to-recommend offering in gaming and raise the price. And, like boiling frogs, we suspect this won’t be the first time Microsoft turns up the heat to see how many of us are left in the pot.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate saw the biggest rise, hitting an eye-watering $29.99 / £22.99 / AU$35.95 per month. Considering it’s half the price of a AAA title, more than some of this year’s biggest games (Hollow Knight: Song of Silk And Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33 comes to mind), perhaps it’s no surprise that the subscription management page on Xbox’s website crashed as players worked to cut the ties between them.
Although the company also tried to raise game prices before being criticized, it is sticking to its Xbox Game Pass changes.
No, you don’t need an Xbox
While Xbox Game Pass went from the deal of the century to something to think about more carefully, Xbox consoles didn’t stand a chance.
In last year’s Microsoft review, I wondered — like every other journalist, writer, and probably consumer — why anyone would want an Xbox when the console’s biggest games are coming to other platforms.
Microsoft has apparently tried to make this decision easier for buyers. First, it raised Xbox hardware prices in May, then repeated the trick in October. The company cited “changes in the macroeconomic environment” as its reasoning, and while Sony had carried out a price hike on the PS5, the Xbox Series
It was a bit like Xbox throwing up its hand and abandoning a fan base and a brand to Microsoft’s demands for a 30% profit margin.
This makes the Series S and
After years of rumors, we finally saw two versions of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, which, despite its terrible naming convention, is a pretty solid competitor to the Steam Deck if you have the money.
While we were pretty sure that Microsoft might waste time getting out of the console space, Xbox started talking a lot about the next generation.
Speaking to Variety in October, Xbox president Sarah Bond said: “We’re 100 percent looking to build things in the future. We have our next-gen hardware in development. We’ve looked at prototyping, design. We have a partnership that we announced with AMD around that, so it’s happening.”
“What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and give gamers another choice, on top of our next-gen hardware. We’re always listening to what gamers and creators want. When there’s a demand for innovation, we’ll build it.”
With suggestions that the new console will be more open to additional storefronts and could resemble a PC, it will be fascinating to see if it comes to fruition.
Grim reading
“Regardless, we hope he can show that he can be a more responsible steward of the large number of studios now under his banner,” are the words with which I ended last year’s review for Xbox.
Not only did the company drop the ball on a human level, but it also showed how out of touch it was. While Microsoft as a company is raking in billions of dollars and pushing to invest more in AI, Xbox laid off 9,000 staff members earlier this year.
I could dwell on the loss of Perfect darkOr Always wildor a new sci-fi property from the Elder Scrolls Online developers, but instead I will emphasize this number again – nine thousand.
Removals have taken place across several Microsoft studios, including Rare, Turn 10, Halo Studios, and more, as well as the Bethesda and Activision Blizzard teams.
If ever there was a damning indictment against Xbox management, it’s The Initiative. A team formed to create “AAAA games”, which attracted talent from across the industry to reboot Perfect dark; he also worked with Crystal Dynamics.
After five years and a gameplay trailer that may or may not have shown realistic expectations for the title, the game was canceled and the entire studio was shut down. The team responsible for bringing the first Xbox group into a bold new era hasn’t released anything.
If there were trophies for terrible studio management, then the silver medal would go to how Zenimax Online was hit by cuts, canceling a game that Phil Spencer allegedly wouldn’t stop playing during a meeting.
Is this all the result of the deal with Activision Blizzard? Why has no one taken the time to think about the extent of the acquisition of people like Call of Duty And World of Warcraft Would this cost Xbox its soul? I feel silly even suggesting it, but if you watch the Xbox On documentary released by Microsoft, there’s a spirit in the early days of the Xbox and 360 that was diluted in termination emails written with Copilot and entire studios of talented people laid off by a company chasing an AI dream.
Upcoming games?
Hardware is more expensive, studios are closing, projects are canceled, and the best Xbox games are being released almost everywhere else.
So where does this put 2026? It’s hard to say. Halo: Campaign Evolved brings the series to PlayStation, but after a very solid anniversary edition, do Xbox fans need to play it again?
2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, but depending on the success of the games, we may not see a 30th. Mechanical revolution it looks awesome, while Forza Horizon 6 it feels like a surefire hit when it happens.
Gears of War: E-Day will mark a prequel to the main games, but things have been quiet in that regard. Does the fate of the Xbox rest on Fable? Hard to say, given how little we’ve seen of the long-delayed RPG.
It was one of the most anticipated games this year before dropping, and it appears to have been in development since before its reveal in 2020, before the current generation of consoles began.
It’s hard not to look at Xbox and feel like it’s been doing everything it can to sink its own ship these past few months. It’s not just a matter of hoping that 2026 is better than 2025 – it has to be, because otherwise it looks like Xbox will go into publishing full-time.
The best Xbox controllers
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