Sad part is, for once, the internet isn't focused on this because they want someone to fail but instead are worried they'll be closed in spite of doing a good job. Typically customers ignore the inside baseball and just focus on product value and it's telling that MS has botched it's PR so bad that people are betting on WHEN, not even IF, they'll get fired and close shop. I was incredibly lucky and got in on a conversation at a show back in '99 with a couple of MS guys showing off Asheron's Call and they told us about the then plans around the Direct-XBox. I bought one with Halo and joined Live in the beginning, moving to Gold and then GP; I'm as invested in XBox as I can be and things weren't this bleak when Mattrick wrecked the XBONE launch. There's a lot of talk around Asha both ways, but all that's happened for the customer is she capitalized the name, made the logo green and reduced the GP price increase to $4 (not $10 but not zero); it's early on but that's also it in spite of all the hype. Putting your games on PC or not on PS5 doesn't change my life, I have both but if I'm looking for value from my black box that's great new games and GP... both of which she's stripping with the obvious intention of eliminating. Sony's recent behavior is the result of thinking XBOX is abandoning the console market, and with nearly every Helix estimate putting it north of $1500, they are.

@EvenStephen7 - They both get bad rap but Spencer could've blown everyone away and won the Gen with ABK if the governments didn't get involved. Let's be honest, it couldn't make MS a monopoly no matter how much you squint. By all rights it should've been a crazy expensive but simple purchase and instantly MS would've had tge biggest exclusives on the planet to go against Sony's. No one really thought a bunch of politicians that can't find a start button to save their lives would see this as an easy way to score points with young voters. The real argument was always Playstation owners not wanting COD to go MS exclusive and politicians reading scripts from their interns. With those exclusives on Gamepass we might still not see the 100m subscribers they aimed for, but it would get close. Add features like remote play where you cab sample before you even downloaded and now this? Yeah, BUT that all got dashed unless Asha can push it through.

Any other time this would be such boring, standard business stuff it wouldn't even be a footnote but after Capcom revealed that only 10% of Requiem sales were from Xbox and then Take Two said GTA pre-orders were about the same it makes sense MS is pushing this. The last article I read was about Asha pledging that XBOX isn't for sale so I'm sure everything that will reassure the public will be shouted from the rooftops.

The Series X was at least equal if not more powerful than the PS5 so Sony's selling points were their exclusives and gamers existing investment in their ecosystem and I really think Phil had that worked out. Gamepass, backwards compatibility, play anywhere, etc were all aimed towards the value of moving to Xbox and ABK was supposed to give them the biggest exclusives in gaming; but noone expected the government to step in that way. Let's be real, the purchase did NOT make them any sort of monopoly nor did it do anything unfair; Sony and even Nintendo have plenty of acquisitions and exclusivity deals. No, everything spun out of control when Governments around the world saw a chance to grandstand and try to buy the youth vote. It was embarrassing to see them pretend they cared about stuff they obviously didn't understand but they blew the whole thing by forcing MS to drop exclusivity. Seperate from any preferences or bias, from a pure business standpoint having COD and the rest of their catalogs only on Xbox would've started with kicking and screaming from Sony fans and ended with an Xbox holiday sales spike like a new console launch.

Every gen or so the major console companies are on top and then blow it through dumb decisions. After the SNES Nintendo ditched Sony as a partner and rejected disks. After the PS2, in their hubris Sony wildly overpriced the launch PS3. After the 360 MS did everything wrong with the XB1 launch. Now we're in wild territory. MS is expected to launch the Helix between $1200 - $1500 AND is doing things like this to their dwindling fans. Sony isn't far off with a probable PS6 sticker of at least $1000 after wrecking every ounce of good will they enjoy. In the face of all this there's a serious case to be made that Nintendo could take their $500 S2 and become the market leader again.

Collectively the reviews say if you want more Starfox this is great and if you want it to be different you'll be disappointed. Some of that criticism is hilarious coming from the same sites that reward COD and Madden every year.

I understand how licensing works but that doesn't change that it's crap. The Offspring, and basically anyone short of The Beetles, should be thankful games like Crazy Taxi, JSR or even GTA feature their music generations later instead of the other way around. The coolest music might help sell a trailer for the newest game but no one is buying a something from one Gen ago, much less decades ago for the music. What, they think we're going to burn it off the PS1 disk with our dual media drive? Maybe I'll hold my taperecorder up to the speakers like it's 1985, or I'll steal it off Napster.

@Decimateh - Dust! Loved that, my Wife and kids all grouped together. If I remember correctly, that was a one man project.

I'm an invested Xbox fan, but it's clear this is their way to abandon the console space without abandoning their huge investment in gaming all while saving face. The price of memory will dictate the specifics but the big strokes are easy to predict. Nintendo will continue on their very successful path. Sony will bank on what will certainly be a massive price discrepancy between the Helix and PS6, which will be a traditional console at a traditional price and appear to be a value through comparison (and probably outsell the PS5, at least at first). MS's aim will be to win the now larger than console PC market, but that will have pitfalls. On paper this sounds great, where Switch excelled by capturing handheld and console customers, Xbox can do the same with TV and PC, except they carry few of the advantages Nintendo did. The Switch wasn't way more expensive than the DS and most users already bought into both Nin machines so the combo actually saved them money. Helix will lose the console only customer, but their perceived cost advantage to dominate the gaming PC space may not matter if they can't offer the #1 advantage of PC's, upgradability. Will this limitations do to PC development what the Series S did to console and hold it back? PC gaming is far more scalable, but it isn't out of the question, especially as the software developed today is for machines years down the road.
Thus could work for MS, but just as likely most customers may reject it. Console only players aren't going to pay 1.5 to 2x as much as the PS6 when they wouldn't for a SX that was cheaper than a PS5. At the same time why would a PC gamer buy a machine they can't upgrade? For the Xbox overlay?

You don't need to be a gamer to run the business, but don't fake it. I guess it's not impossible but we're supposed to believe she did all this, 9 games, in one month while taking on a new role as the head of the Microsoft Gaming Division? I put that right next to my inheritance from my long lost cousin in Nigeria.

Most people don't follow game development or release dates, they discover a game at the store (Steam, Gamepass, digital, physical, whatever). The impact of a short delay is miniscule vs the impact of a poor or even middling launch.

Please please please tell me Liquor Store Simulator leans into the obvious humor in the concept!

@themightyant - except do you really think eliminating the feature is going to make even a decimal point performance difference? No, online social interaction builds communities and that isn't XBox anymore, MS wants to change your perception of them away from "Team XBox" where you wear green t-shirts to the midnight release of Halo into MS Office where you start your Xbox spreadsheet at work and check up on it through your phone at home. It's a different mindset that they think will be profitable, except as CoPilot has proven it only works if people in a like-minded community like your product more. Forums show business after business are pushing CoPilot and their employees are pulling out their phones to use ChatGPT because that's what everyone they know uses - community support.

At the time Fable was more famous for what it wasn't than what it was. Peter Molyneux waaaay overpromised, selling everyone on a premise he couldn't deliver. You were supposed to start as a kid in a huge open world but constantly grow older and evolve over generations. In the final you start as a kid and then time skip to adulthood, but you were supposed to continously age, change, physically evolve based on your actions and develop a reputation and following over a lifetime in the game including growing old and continuing to play as successive generations. NPCs and the world itself would age too with towns expanding and technology advancing, all while the legends of your exploits would be talked about and celebrated in game until they became Fables told to your children's children, in the game. This wasn't an "early concept", it WAS the concept; as core to the premise as shooting in Doom or exploring in Tomb Raider. What we got was a good, basic on-rails action game, but it was like finally firing up GTA6 to find out it wasn't open world or ES6 is suddenly a 2D and turn-based.

MS gaming division has long used their money to do both "throw it against the wall" and "do everything at the same time" as their strategy and it has a fault, conflict. Everyone knows sales plummeted for years as Sony pushed out exclusives and MS gave us a sprinkling of subpar stuff. They bought success with all these studio purchases and while that took time to bear fruit it's finally here... exceptcat the same time another strategy was to move away from exclusive hardware and make Xbox a platform; but it turns out those things are more counter than complimentary. Is Xbox a console, a competitor to PS and Switch? Is Xbox an inexpensive, plug and play PC? Is Xbox a game subscription service, the soon to be dissolved entry vehicle to establish GamePass in the greater gaming market? Any of these are viable and maybe even any 2, but all 3 together without clarity and commitment diminishes consumer confidence. I have a S1, PS5 and Series X, but while I have a PC, I gave up on the expense and headache of PC gaming years and years ago. Make my SX a go to with great exclusives, make it where I can play new PC stuff on my TV, make GamePass my go to for everything gaming... but if I wasn't already bought in I wouldn't based on the state of things right now.