Halo: Campaign Evolved marked the official confirmation of something that felt like it would never happen just a short few years ago, with Halo officially coming to PlayStation. Following that announcement, GameStop, the retailer that was initially known for selling physical video games that's now more known for turning into a glorified Pop Funko and merch store called the 'Console Wars' over. Of all entities, the White House, which would normally have more important things to post about, responded with an AI-generated image of President Trump in Spartan armor with the caption "Power to the players." GameStop's original post comes […]
The current generation of Xbox and PlayStation consoles is now more than five years old, making it well past the time we would start hearing about what the next generation of consoles will look like. We've seen several rumours on what the next-generation Xbox hardware will include, and on top of comments from Xbox president Sarah Bond, a picture of Xbox's next console is starting to form. Now, a new report from Windows Central seems to piece it together a bit more clearly, framing the next Microsoft console as a best of both worlds between the PC and console experience. […]
Xbox is still trucking along, with a partner preview event scheduled for November. Microsoft will also have a presence at The Game Awards in December, and a new Developer_Direct in January.
Last week, a ResetEra user discovered that the new Gaming Copilot AI installed by Microsoft on all Windows 11 PCs (integrated directly into the Game Bar) was training itself by screenshotting every game played by the user and then sending everything back to Microsoft. Gaming Copilot is also enabled by default, so if you want to turn it off, you need to go to the Game Bar, and then to Settings and Privacy Settings, where you will find the option for Gaming Copilot to pull "Model training on text" or not. Needless to say, this discovery sparked a big controversy […]
From Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2 hitting Game Pass to Dragon Quest remakes, Virtua Fighter’s return, and a flood of indies, here’s every new Xbox game launching this week.
Obsidian Entertainment's latest role-playing game, The Outer Worlds 2, is here, and there's a lot to do in this new space-faring adventure. The planets you visit have bigger maps to run through, there are more weapons to use and modify, people to meet and talk to, and plenty more. But there are five things that you should absolutely do first, right when you get off your ship, the Incognito, and touch down on the planet Eden and on Paradise Island. They'll make your playthrough run a lot smoother, and start you off on the right foot. The Outer Worlds 2 […]
The Halo: Combat Evolved remake we've all been anticipating today, as part of the Halo WCC, has finally been announced. Halo: Campaign Evolved is a remake that Halo Studios and Xbox describe as "a faithful yet modernized remake of Halo: Combat Evolved’s campaign." It'll arrive on Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PlayStation 5 sometime in 2026. We've officially seen it all now, with all of Microsoft and Xbox's biggest first-party franchises making their way to PlayStation. It was the inevitable endpoint we all saw when Halo Studios (formerly 343 Studios) confirmed that it would be dropping the Slipspace Engine and […]
The Xbox Insider Program isn't robust enough for the absolutely gargantuan effort ahead of Microsoft. Bringing Windows up to par with the Xbox console experience may be the platform team's biggest challenge yet.
Although the perception of Xbox is at an all-time low, the brand is doing better in Japan, a region that is notoriously one of the worst for Microsoft's video gaming division Speaking with Japanese publication Famitsu during the recent Beyond the Strand event celebrating Kojima Productions' 10th anniversary, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer commented on Xbox's performance in Japan. In the past year, the total playtime across the entire ecosystem has increased by around 20%. Although no exact figure has been confirmed, Spencer specified that the playtime growth is balanced between console, PC, and cloud. However, much of this total […]
For the last two years, Microsoft’s video game division has been working to meet financial targets that are well in excess of the typical industry standard, which has led to waves of layoffs, canceled projects, and a general perception that the company is scrambling.
These allegations come from a new report from Bloomberg journalists Jason Schreier and Dina Bass, who reported that Xbox has been told it’s expected to work toward a profit margin of 30% across the board.
As far as can be told from outside Microsoft, this is significantly above Xbox’s profit baseline. A typical quarterly report from Microsoft only discloses revenue, but as noted by TweakTown, Xbox head Phil Spencer testified in court in 2022 that “the Xbox business today runs at a single-digit profit margin.”
It’s worth noting that even the biggest game studios usually maintain a profit margin of roughly 20% under typical circumstances. As an example, Xbox subsidiary Activision Blizzard, which runs some of the most popular games-as-a-service in the world today, “only” had a profit margin of 22-to-25% two years ago before Microsoft’s acquisition completed.
Even Sony, Microsoft’s primary competitor in the console space and the makers of the PlayStation 5, reportedly only runs at a 9.5% profit margin. Through that lens, any video game company that’s honestly eyeing a consistent 30% is living in a dream world.
The new financial target reportedly came directly from Microsoft CFO Amy Hood in the fall of 2023, which marked the start of a series of big decisions and policy reversals at Xbox.
Since then, Microsoft has drawn fire for multiple waves of layoffs; reorganized several subsidiaries such as Halo Studios; raised the base MSRP of the Xbox Series X twice so far this year; made moves to phase out physical media; officially ported many of its hit first- and third-party games to PlayStation and Switch; and canceled multiple highly-anticipated game projects such as Rare’s Everwild, a reboot of Perfect Dark, and ZeniMax’s MMO code-named Project Blackbird.
Earlier this month, Microsoft hiked the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription service, claiming it was part of a significant “upgrade package.” Less relevantly to consumers, it has also allegedly raised the price of Xbox development kits by $500, blaming unspecified “macroeconomic” factors.
Some of that, to be fair, is due to circumstances outside Xbox’s control such as the ongoing chaos over tariffs. This year has been a rough time to be a hardware manufacturer.
Xbox is also apparently locked into at least one more console generation, according to recent interviews with Microsoft’s Sarah Bond. The phrase that keeps coming up is “very premium, very high-end curated experience.” If the recently-released Xbox Ally is any indication, the next-gen Xbox will be something more like an expensive, user-friendly Windows PC than what we’d currently recognize as a game console.
For a while now, though, Xbox has come off like its left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, which made little sense in the wake of reports that the division was both growing and pulling in increased revenue. If it’s being forced to contend with unrealistic expectations from higher up at Microsoft, however, that would explain the overall sense of disorganization.
This is one of the most infamous types of “creative accounting” in the video game industry: issue an inflated revenue forecast, then blame developers/titles when their games fail to reach those numbers. Square Enix notoriously came under fire for this in the 2010s with releases like the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider. It was a solid success (3.4 million copies sold), but its publisher wanted a blockbuster, so it regarded the game as a failure. History repeats.
In theory, Xbox ought to be one of the leading voices in video games as a hobby and medium right now, but it’s being forced to burn much of its time and effort in an attempt to meet a profit goal that no company on Earth could expect to reach.
If you’re inclined to believe the rumor that’s been in circulation in Seattle this year, that Microsoft’s current leadership would like to shut down Xbox entirely so it can use those resources for more AI research, this is more data for your theory.
The Outer Worlds 2 delivers more of the same space western RPG formula that worked the first time, now with better combat, exploration, and a darker tone.
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood is forcing Xbox to deliver an industry margin far beyond what is typical for gaming, which will devastate the business if not rectified soon.
Have you found that games are running slower than advertised on your Xbox Ally? For new users, it does a poor job of explaining its power modes. Here's how they work, and what they do.
Xbox President Sarah Bond has just hinted at what the next-gen Xbox console might be, and it's looking a lot like a PC hybrid that may run Windows to support multiple storefronts. Sarah says a premium, high-end experience is in the works, which suggests a costly price tag often associated only with PCs.
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