There are many doubts, which is why they keep saying "we're committed".

The reality is they have positioned themselves to make major changes. If Xbox is actually a major part or not, is only known by Microsoft at this point. Even if they were going to make radical changes like stop making consoles, they would never tell you until it was time to pull the trigger.

Time will tell if they are actually committed to Xbox or not, no amount of PR can change that.

""We're still fully committed to the console and the Xbox is the core of our business," explained Jason Ronald, Head of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group speaking at GDC 2016. "It gives us credibility in the gaming space."

Whoa... all I hear when I read that is we're transitioning away from the .....console. Strange days.. strange days.

This whole argument started when MS started putting its games on WIN10. Arm chair analyst left and right on here and other places suddenly spelling out doom and ignore, again, IGNORE the fact this MS plan ALL along to unify the two platforms make more profit and further expand their buissness as well as more games in development hitting both plats simultaneously. Even WIN10 PC features are coming to X1. I mean why do so many many ppl have reading comprehension?

Like I mentioned below, the reason why they keep reassuring commitment is due to the countless stupid articles saying other wise again arm chair analyst BS who don't know crap and many ppl here and others aren't helping.

Watch its gonna 2080 MS drops Xbox and many here all old and in wheelchairs will say see "I knew it! Told all of you all!" Now RIP...

Goal post afer goal post hoping it happens one day.

Weird reply to my comment or was your comment supposed to be a joke bro?so far all I see is MS supporting their console (games, software update and healthy 3rd party support) and the number of AAA console exclusives titles coming this year proves that so again I don't know is your comment was supposed to be a joke.

Huh? That's not treating them as equal, that would be favoring the Xbox One twice as much. Treating them equal would be putting all of their games on both platforms.

The Xbox One only needs exclusives in the console space to differentiate it from its direct competitors. The PC is not a direct competitor. Those games are not found on rival consoles, so they serve just fine as exclusives in that context.

I think in the future the model will require PC gamers to pay for the network. Or XBL online gaming will become free.

There is processing, storage, and network infrastructure behind online networks. People seem to think this stuff is all free, but in reality it is just being paid for in different forms. Whether it be in transactions in games, game monthly subscriptions, price of games, royalties to network holders, etc. No matter how we look at it, gamers pay for the network. The question is whether this is a direct charge like both XBL and PSN, or it is more indirect like Steam.

Saying the network is free is completely false.

@donthate

Look people who want to see Xbox (or ps4) crush and burn are stupid to the core. Its the very people whom the importance and meaning of the term 'healthy competition' escapes.

Unfortunately we also have people who will swallow anything their favorite brand/product maker tells them without a hint of skepticism.

As you can see there's a lot of wrong out there and its our duty, we who are still sane and are able to question certain aspects of life, to try and help them wake up, protect them if you will.

So the moral of the story here is that we should take everything MS says these days with a grain of salt until we see their true strategy materialize for one simple reason, there were too many recent 180s for a company that was traditionally draconian at everything. If that doesn't warrant a pinch of skepticism, I don't know what will.

Edit @Badboy

"I think the Xbox One and future Xbox consoles will still sell well enough to the point that the console will be successful and Microsoft will continue making Xbox hardware."

I hope you are right but honestly things don't look up when it comes to xbox one sales going forward.

UltraNova:

The problem is that the people that "think they are protecting" others aren't. They turn into naysayers, and armchair experts about everything.

The very notion that they think they are protecting someone speaks volumes of their opinion of themselves. How can anyone trust such a person to speak for them?

Regarding MS and draconian, I hope you apply the same logic across the board, not just cherry pick companies.

@dotnhate

You don't have to be considered the pillar of ethics in society or an authority on modern culture in order to voice your objection/opinion and if you do it certainly doesn't make you an arm chair analyst.

As I already mentioned, deep stupidity is easily spotted and should be countered before it infects others.

"Regarding MS and draconian, I hope you apply the same logic across the board, not just cherry pick companies."

Hope not my friend because I was,I am and I will always be critical of anything and anyone that aims straight for my hard earned cash and offensive when they think they can take me for a fool.

"Rockstar Games’ co-founder and former VP of Development Jamie King said he envisions GTA 6 as a game that’s “maybe not quite as edgy or quite as funny” as its satirical predecessors."

oh yeah, totally internet grifters spreading rumors...

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".