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- "Xbox is done".
Opinion
Xbox Is Done
On so many levels, I find myself at odds with Xbox/Microsoft—and I make no bones about it.
My first laptop was a Dell Latitude my father handed down to me for my freshman year of college. It crashed during midterms, leaving me stranded in the library, emailing documents to myself just to save progress. That summer, I bought my first MacBook 13″—the white polycarbonate model running Mac OS Tiger—and that laptop lasted me 7 years and I stuck with apple ever since.
I’ve always been team Sony. I skipped the last two Xbox consoles because, frankly, I had no reason to buy them. The games I play—Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, God of War, Armored Core, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Resident Evil, The Last of Us—never needed an Xbox. There were no compelling exclusives, no must-have experiences. Most of my friends who own one do so simply because their other friends play online.
When the Steam Deck came out, I bought it immediately because I knew it would deliver on all the promises Xbox made but never fulfilled. I even wrote an article about how disappointing Xbox Game Pass is—especially its mid-tier library and lack of day-one releases. To me, this reflects Microsoft’s approach: a company that shows up late to the party, wasn’t invited, but still brought a pile of money.
When I look at Sony, Steam, and even Apple, I see hardware companies that create entertainment technology for people. They understand the relationship between art and business. Microsoft, on the other hand, feels like it just threw money at gaming without ever truly getting it.
But over the past year, Xbox has been sending some strange signals.
Here’s what I mean:
The Xbox One lost the last console war.
In 2016, Microsoft stopped reporting Xbox One sales. Seven years later, The Verge confirmed Xbox sold roughly half as many consoles as the PS4.They went all-in on streaming—without the exclusive titles to back it up—while Google and Amazon both bowed out of cloud gaming entirely.
The Steam Deck’s success.
Steam shouldn’t even exist at this point. Microsoft could’ve swallowed them whole years ago, yet here they are, thriving. Steam birthed an entire generation of beautifully designed, ergonomic handhelds—whose only flaw was running Windows. But even that’s changing as more devices adopt SteamOS.The “Everything is an Xbox” commercial.
PlayStation or Nintendo would never do that. That was the moment I suspected Xbox was preparing to bow out of hardware—just like smartphones before them.The layoffs.
Despite Game Pass’s success, Microsoft laid off thousands from its gaming division to chase a 30% profit margin. That led to canceled projects, higher prices, and internal tension. That’s not winning behavior.Xbox originals going multi-platform.
This gave off major Sega vibes. Remember when Sonic had his own house and wasn’t sleeping over at Nintendo’s? Same energy. Xbox went from having few exclusives to having even fewer.The ROG Ally X.
Say that out loud—it’s a mouthful. If this device represents the future of Xbox hardware, then it’s over. It’s a PC-console hybrid that costs too much and confuses its audience. Console gamers want dedicated, affordable systems—not a glorified Windows machine.
I was genuinely sad to see Sega go. The Dreamcast was special. But Xbox? Not so much.
When I look at Microsoft, I still can’t figure out what they’re truly good at beyond their corporate dominance—Windows, Office, Teams. Xbox was one of the few products they made that people genuinely loved. That era is gone.
They brought Anduril in to help fix IVAS. OpenAI is a money pit dressed as a partnership. And while Microsoft’s corporate machine keeps printing cash, its soul—if it ever had one in gaming—is long gone.
We champion this exit because it shows what happens when you get into industries for the wrong reasons. Microsoft’s market cap sits around $4 trillion. Sony’s is about $180 billion, and Nintendo’s around $100 billion. Those numbers may sound close, but the gap is biblical—David vs. Goliath.
The problem with massive corporations is that, eventually, they outgrow the industries they compete in. Microsoft could still compete. It just doesn’t have to—and maybe that’s the point.
2 Responses
I feel you. My sons split the Xbox and PS affinity. My older son always was into Sony systems and started to convince my younger Xbox enthusiast son to join into the latter PS family. I think you’re right about the wave of change.
Thanks for your comment, Michael. Your older son sounds like a natural leader. The landscape is definitely shifting, and it’ll be interesting to see where Xbox lands. Microsoft’s ambitions around AI are massive, and entertainment may not remain their primary focus.