While Microsoft has been seemingly making quite a few moves when it comes to expanding what the Xbox brand means, one of the founding members of the Xbox team believes that the company is essentially killing off its gaming hardware business. In a recent video, former Microsoft Game Studios employee Laura Fryer has spoken about what she believes Microsoft’s recent moves mean for Xbox.
In her video, Fryer spoke quite a bit about how Microsoft has been pushing the “Xbox Anywhere” branding, referring to various services like Game Pass and Xbox Cloud that allows a subscriber to play games on almost any device they own (aside from PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, of course). As Fryer points out, Microsoft has been going all out with tying up with other hardware makers to make Xbox-branded gaming systems.
“They are betting the entire business on Game Pass and leaving the hardware innovation to their partners at Asus,” noted Fryer, referring to the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handheld gaming systems. “This wasn’t surprising. Hardware is expensive to make. It’s much easier to slap an Xbox sticker on an existing piece of hardware and call it a day. It requires very little effort in comparison. And if you don’t care about console sales or exclusive games any more, why bother innovating in hardware?”
Later in the video, Fryer spoke about how disappointed she felt in Microsoft for going with this strategy for the Xbox brand. She said that, from her perspective, Microsoft is seemingly throwing in the towel when it comes to making its own hardware.
“Obviously, as one of the founding members of the Xbox team, I’m not pleased with where things are today,” she said. “I don’t love watching all of the value that I helped create slowly get eroded away. I’m sad because from my perspective, it looks like Xbox has no desire or literally can’t ship hardware anymore. So this [ROG Ally] partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely.”
Ultimately, Fryer believes that, when it comes to gaming hardware, Xbox is dead. Rather, Microsoft is more keen on convincing its players that Game Pass is the way forward, especially when upcoming titles like The Outer Worlds 2 will be priced at $80.
“Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead,” said Fryer. “The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass. And let’s be clear, it has a lot of value. I’m thinking that might be why they decided to charge $80 for The Outer Worlds 2… And here’s the thing, maybe it will work.”
“Xbox has a deep portfolio. The remake of Oblivion was obviously a huge success, and they can continue to outsource that work to external companies and make a lot of money releasing their older games. Older games from an era when Xbox knew how to build them.”
“But what is the long-term plan? Where are the new hits? What will make people care about the Xbox 25 years from now? I was excited to see Clockwork Revolution in the showcase, but will something like that be enough? Do they have more?”
Fryer also spoke about how, with the upcoming 25th anniversary of Xbox – the first console was released back in 2001 – Microsoft likely has some big plans in store. However, she didn’t seem hopeful that the company would honour the classic console with new hardware.
“Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, and I’m sure that they will have some big announcements and plans for honouring the milestone,” said Fryer. “Maybe next year is the year. Maybe next year is the year that the fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
For examples of Microsoft’s new direction for Xbox, check out our coverage of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, as well as the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition. The company also announced a partnership with chip maker AMD.
