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Xbox is being smarter than you realize

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


00:00-02:30: Reaction to Phil retiring
2:30-07:01: Sarah Bond and Asha Sharma
07:01-09:35: Xbox/Microsoft's Financial Situation
09:37-10:11: Why I'm sad
10:11-13:44: Predictions/What Happens Next
13:44-15:12: The Upside
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  • [00:00–00:41] The creator reacts emotionally to major leadership changes at Xbox, framing it not just as corporate news but as a symbolic moment signaling the potential "death" of the traditional console games industry.
  • [00:41–01:24] Phil Spencer officially retires as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, and Sarah Bond resigns as Xbox president. Spencer emphasizes stability, studio strength, and leadership continuity, promoting Matt Booty to EVP and Chief Content Officer.
  • [01:24–02:13] The creator defends Spencer's legacy, crediting him for recovering from the disastrous Xbox One reveal era and championing backward compatibility. They argue Spencer genuinely cared about gaming, even if constrained by Microsoft's broader priorities.
  • [02:31–03:19] Bond highlights growth in PC and cloud gaming and confirms the "next console is well underway." However, the creator interprets her departure and advisory role as a sign she may not align with Xbox's deeper transition into an AI-first future.
  • [05:12–06:18] Asha Sharma becomes the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Coming from Microsoft's Core AI division (with prior roles at Meta and Instacart), her appointment signals a strategic pivot toward AI integration rather than traditional console leadership.
  • [06:18–07:40] Sharma emphasizes gaming beyond hardware limits—across PC, mobile, and cloud—and references monetization and AI shaping the future. Despite stating they won't flood the ecosystem with "AI slop," the creator sees clear alignment with Microsoft's AI-first corporate direction.
  • [08:03–09:30] Microsoft's financials show Xbox revenue (~$23B) at an all-time high, but dwarfed by Azure's ~$75B AI-driven revenue. The creator argues Xbox leadership changes are not due to failure—but because AI has become vastly more lucrative and strategically dominant under Satya Nadella.
  • [10:31–11:39] The video predicts deeper integration of AI and cloud gaming into Xbox's identity, especially amid global chip shortages and massive data center expansion by tech giants. With chips more profitable in AI data centers than consoles, traditional hardware production faces mounting pressure.
  • [12:03–12:36] The creator speculates that consoles like the PlayStation 6 could be delayed, canceled, or become extremely expensive. Nintendo is also reportedly considering raising Nintendo Switch prices. Cloud gaming (e.g., Xbox Cloud, GeForce Now) is positioned as the likely corporate solution.
  • [14:07–15:00] Despite fears of layoffs, AAA contraction, and subscription-based cloud dominance, the creator ends optimistically: fewer AAA releases could create space for indie developers—similar to the post-2008 boom that produced titles like Braid, Super Meat Boy, Undertale, and Minecraft—potentially sparking a creative renaissance beneath the industry upheaval.
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my queen GIF
 
I agree with her, people who wants local HW buy NOW! I don't believe in next gen GPU from both Nvidia and AMD and PS6 will be $799 or $999.
Cloud and rent will be mandatory for most costumers for gaming, want local capable HW? Buy now!
Even Zen6 I don`t think will release for customer if releases will be really expensive. $500-1000 for CPU
 
Hear you

Series x was actually solid, it's a younger console than Sony or Nintendo.

It just needs a game if the year candidate, a generic Nathan Drake open world.

It's coming off the horrible Xbox one.

Master chief will be available and Gears E Day.
 
EverydayBeast said:
Hear you

Series x was actually solid, it's a younger console than Sony or Nintendo.

It just needs a game if the year candidate, a generic Nathan Drake open world.

It's coming off the horrible Xbox one.

Master chief will be available and Gears E Day.
Click to expand...
Series X really is in that odd spot where it's powerful and well‑designed, but still feels like it's only now getting its real start after the Xbox One hangover. It just needs that one big, broad‑appeal Game of the Year moment to anchor the generation—something pulpy, adventurous, and mainstream, the kind of thing a Nathan‑Drake‑style open world would deliver instantly.

And you're right: with Master Chief returning properly and Gears E‑Day lining up, Xbox finally has two heavy hitters that could reset the narrative fast.

Do you think Xbox should lean on those legacy franchises first, or push a brand‑new blockbuster IP to fill that gap?
 
Now i understand MS keeps the facade... because there are idiots who believe it! What a stupid take is this ?! Since WHEN MS gives space to 'indie developers' (or even indie ideas, to be honest) ?! And again this story of 'one console maker is suffering, so the whole marketing is suffering'?! Get the fu*k out of here!
 
Far from being "smart", I'll be surprised to see if they claw back ANY momentum next-gen, the Series X itself is good and deserved better, more so in its final years, but now we are in times where even the best of its "exclusives" are found elsewhere too..
 
I'm not sure how AI integration into Xbox's pipeline is ever going to magnify its revenue 2x or 3x to compete with Azure. In terms of game development, AI can do one of two things: speed up or offset. Neither of those solve any of the fundamental problems that exist in the console space right now. In fact, to my mind, it actually exacerbates one key problem: low quality products produced at scale. Ubisoft, EA, and ABK are all suffering as a result of this, and it's triggering players to invest into a smaller number of key titles. Low quality at scale decimates consumer confidence, speeding the eventual video game crash when consumers walk away from anything but known quantities.

Cloud gaming is not a viable solution to the console space's issues, either. It cannot scale sufficiently to replace current hardware install bases. Period. Peak player counts would cost Microsoft more money on hardware and utilities to power it than they could make back without raising prices so high as to kill the market. As we say in the business: "there's so such thing as the cloud, there's just someone else's computer." Add in the fact it basically doesn't work for the majority of planet Earth, and it's a losing bet.

Xbox has run into a problem: it cannot compete. Its attempt at a Nintendo-style "blue ocean" strategy with it's Game Pass approach failed to scale, stalling at around 30m users. It can't compete with Sony on sheer platform install. It can't compete with Nintendo on game sales. It can't compete on price. It can't compete on quality. It can't compete on innovation. Xbox isn't being "smart". Xbox is being just another Microsoft brand: expensive products with a generally low quality that limp on because Microsoft is big enough to allow it.

When they get back to making games people actually want to play, they'll see some turn around. Until then, the story won't change, no matter how many times people re-write the same article.

"Next year is the year!"
 
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It really is exhausting how the conversation around Xbox is constantly recycled around them just being on the cusp of the next big thing in gaming when nothing actually changes.

They're always "one step ahead" while continuing to lose relevance every day.
 
Jesus she just makes up some wild number of the PS6 costing $3000 to make her point. She basically did no research before making this video and just went with with the most doomer video she could come up with.
 
So many dumb assessments in there, oh well..

Death of home consoles.... no man, death of Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo are doing fine, great even.

Spencer doing OK.... Oh my god, sales took a nosedive exactly when he took control, day one games on PC, GP alienating his users from buying games, bad design choices as the twin SKU model, One X arriving so late, not handling correctly their own studios, guy didn't do a thing right except paying Square and Sega Atlus so yltheir games came to Xbox/PC and maybe the retro stuff.

MS Gaming income can't be at an all time high when it has dropped 9% year on year, at best it best year was 2024. Let alone Tha fact that they now count all of ABK, all Zenimax, Mohjang etc as MS Gaming. Xbox itself is declining like 30% each year, but hey if you want to make people believe that selling games on PC and Playstation and soon Nintendo is great for Xbox the console. That's why MS Gaming will continue, but Xbox the console as a separate ecosystem won't.
 
While I don't disagree with her takes WRT Bond (and likely Spencer) getting das boot because they weren't as down with the AI shoveling into gaming as Asha will be, she's clearly wrong about PS6 being cancelled (what world would that even happen?). Also seems she's stuck in the Cult of Spencer in some form; none of these people realize that Xbox's 1P software decline (that'd eventually help tank the hardware platform itself) began around the time Phil Spencer took over as CEO.

Think about it; he got appointed in 2017. Same year, Scalebound got cancelled, Phantom Dust got cancelled, and Game Pass was conceived. It's under Spencer's watch that Crackdown 3 was released because he thought it was a "great game", or why ReCore released in the state it did. Phil wasn't responsible for making Cuphead happen (or Ori, for that matter); those were things done under Don Mattrick. Same with TitanFall, Ryse, and the Tomb Raider timed exclusivity deal (the last "big" 3P exclusivity deal Xbox ever got).

Yet supposedly somehow Mattrick telling people on a naval submarine to play a 360 if they couldn't get internet service, did more damage to Xbox than even all the things I just mentioned happened under Spencer since he took over the division fully, let alone all the other things I failed to mention. Is it any wonder why Xbox is in the state it's in today when so many diehard fans and media types enabled them to keep failing, due to false affirmations (or what we'd now call "toxic positivity")?
 
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