During last week's rumored Xbox town hall meeting, Xbox President Sarah Bond reportedly told employees that every screen is an Xbox.
26.01.2024 - 15:43 / eurogamer.net / Phil Spencer / Daniel Ahmad / Tom Phillips / Jez Corden / Will Pokémon
Microsoft's decision to cut 1900 staff members has reportedly seen the company's games retail teams reduced, prompting fresh questions over Xbox's future in the physical games business.
Writing on X, Windows Central's Jez Corden said Microsoft had «shut down departments dedicated to bringing Xbox games to physical retail».
Is this the end for boxed Xbox games? Perhaps not yet, Corden continued. Microsoft can outsource physical game production and may be consolidating teams across departments. But the news it has cut staff working on physical game releases comes after Microsoft accidentally revealed it had planned for a digital-only console future as early as this year. And only last week, Microsoft said that one of its key games for this year — Hellblade 2 — would be a digital-only launch.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings Newscast: Will Pokémon take Palworld down?Watch on YouTube«There are certain AAA games with 80 percent plus digital shares on Xbox these days so it's not too surprising,» video games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad wrote in response. «Indicative of how next gen will be for sure.»
Eurogamer has contacted Microsoft for comment on its physical game release plans.
Microsoft's plans to replace the current Xbox Series X with a digital-only refresh were included in the enormous cache of files it accidentally uploaded to an FTC server last September.
Those plans, which dated from April 2022, described an «adorably all-digital» machine to launch this year, that drew less power, allowed for faster Wi-Fi and featured 2TB of internal storage.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer later acknowledged the leak but said it featured «old emails and documents», and said that «so much has changed» — though whether the company still had a digital-only Xbox Series X in mind, he did not say.
«It's a good thing Microsoft now says its 'adorably all digital' future plans are outdated,» I wrote at the time. «They suggested a potentially different path to Sony, and poorer game preservation as a result.»
During last week's rumored Xbox town hall meeting, Xbox President Sarah Bond reportedly told employees that every screen is an Xbox.
Microsoft reportedly told employees that it views “every screen [as] an Xbox” ahead of a much-anticipated business update.
Rumors of Xbox going multi-platform have dominated discussion of gaming consoles recently, and as the time draws close for Microsoft to make an official announcement on the subject, there's already enough information out there to make a reasonably reliable prediction about what games Sony fans can expect to make the PlayStation 5 transition. Initial rumors of Xbox's transition away from exclusivity came as something of a surprise, especially considering Microsoft's recent focus on acquiring studios to push strong exclusives. At this point, however, it's hard to deny that there's a shift happening, whether Xbox fans like it or not.
Xbox head Phil Spencer is set to make an announcement regarding the future of platform exclusives tomorrow, and a new Xbox Game Pass perk handily offers three months of Calm Premium.
As odd as it might seem, we’ll learn about the future of Xbox through a podcast on Thursday evening. That’s how these things are done now.
Microsoft will share an update on the Xbox business later this week, the company confirmed Monday after weeks of reports and rumours of its first-party games coming to rival consoles. The Xbox parent will reveal its plans for the platform in a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast on February 15 at 12pm PT (February 16, 1.30am IST in India), where Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Xbox president Sarah Bond and Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty will share details about the future Xbox roadmap. The confirmation comes after Spencer had promised last Tuesday that Microsoft would share its vision for the “future of Xbox” next week.
New details about Xbox’s plans to bring more first-party games to rival console platforms have seemingly emerged.
Microsoft has announced a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast for February 15th, noon PT. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, president Sarah Bond and Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty will be present and provide “updates on the Xbox business.” Last week, Spencer said this would be a business update event to discuss the company’s “vision for Xbox’s future.”
Microsoft's gaming top brass are expected to lay out their plans to publish some Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms via a business update released this week as a podcast.
Microsoft has confirmed plans to deliver its eagerly awaited Xbox business update on February 15.
The Official Xbox Podcast episode dropping later this week is going to be a big one. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, President of Game Content and Studios Matt Booty, and Xbox President Sarah Bond will finally address rumors that have been tearing the Xbox community apart for the past week. After leaks and rumors indicating that titles like Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Starfield, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would come to Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5 began to circulate, people got very confused about what this all means for Xbox as a platform going forward.