Last year, when I ran the rule over Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, there were a lot of reasons to be hopeful for Team Xbox.
The company finished 2024 with a flourish, with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, finally sealing the seemingly never-ending Activision Blizzard acquisition, and there was hope that its big games in 2025 would show that it’s still got much to offer.
This year, it’s been tough to see the positives. Doom: The Dark Ages was great, Avowed was another solid RPG from the ever-dependable team at Obsidian, and South of Midnight told a story that was unique, even if its gameplay offered little real freshness.
Sadly, though, it feels like this was the year Xbox stepped on more rakes than Sideshow Bob, leaving customers with proverbial black eyes. And for those that do own an Xbox and haven’t moved to another system, probably some degree of buyer’s remorse.
In the green
I don’t want to spend this entire appraisal on Microsoft‘s 2025 kicking them, because there were genuinely good things that arrived this year.
The aforementioned Doom prequel was a double-barrel of laughs and offered intense sci-fi/medieval combat that many of us couldn’t get enough of, while Avowed was a smaller first-person RPG that packed in some excellently flexible character building.
When the company held its Xbox Games Showcase, Clockwork Revolution looked fantastic, while the promise of more Final Fantasy titles arriving on Xbox, as well as a commitment to more big third-party releases, shows the brand isn’t going anywhere just yet.
This was also the year we saw Microsoft remove any notions of roadblocks around multiplatform titles. The company traded Helldivers 2 with Sony for Forza Horizon 5, put Gears of War Reloaded onto PS5, and even committed to putting Halo: Campaign Evolved onto its once-rival’s system in 2026.
Shall not pass
The trouble is, Microsoft has long relied on Xbox Game Pass to be the glue that holds together its first-party offerings and third-party titles.
Being able to jump into Black Ops 6 last year, rather than paying the full price on PS5, was welcome, but reports suggest that came at a huge cost of lost sales for Microsoft (who could’ve seen that coming?).
Its solution was simple: take what was once the easiest-to-recommend deal in gaming and dial up the price. And, like boiling frogs, we suspect this won’t be the first time Microsoft turns up the heat to see how many of us are left in the pan.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate saw the sharpest rise, reaching an eye-watering $29.99 / £22.99 / AU$35.95 per month. Given that it’s half the price of a AAA title or more than some of this year’s biggest games (Hollow Knight: Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 come to mind), it’s perhaps no surprise that the subscription management page on Xbox’s website reportedly crashed as players strived to cut the ties that bind.
While the company has also tried to raise game prices before being talked down, it’s stuck to its Xbox Game Pass changes.
No, you don’t need an Xbox
While Xbox Game Pass went from being the deal of the century to something you’d have to think more cautiously about, Xbox consoles stood no chance.
In last year’s review of Microsoft, I – like every other journalist, writer, and probably consumer – wondered why anyone would want an Xbox when the console’s biggest games are hitting other platforms.
Microsoft seemingly tried to make that decision easier for buyers. First, it raised the prices of Xbox hardware in May, and then repeated the trick in October. The company cited “changes in the macroeconomic environment” as its reasoning, and while Sony had rolled out a PS5 price hike, the Xbox Series X is now just $50 cheaper than the PS5 Pro – a console derided for its price at launch, but which offers much more in terms of performance than its 2020 rival.
It felt a little like Xbox throwing its hands up and surrendering a fanbase and a brand to Microsoft’s demands for a 30% profit margin.
That makes a Series S and Series X much harder to recommend this year, but while Xbox doesn’t offer its own Pro-level console just yet (and seemingly never will), we did get new hardware… sort of.
After years of rumors, we finally saw two versions of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, which, despite its terrible naming convention, is a pretty solid Steam Deck competitor if you’ve got the cash for one.
While we had felt fairly sure Microsoft might be running down the clock to make an exit from the console space, Xbox has started to talk a lot about the next generation.
Speaking to Variety in October, Xbox president Sarah Bond said: “We are 100 percent looking at making things in the future. We have our next-gen hardware in development. We’ve been looking at prototyping, designing. We have a partnership we’ve announced with AMD around it, so that is coming.”
“What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and to bring gamers another choice, in addition to our next-gen hardware. We are always listening to what players and creators want. When there is demand for innovation, we’re going to build it.”
With suggestions that the new console will be more open to additional storefronts and could be PC-like, it’ll be fascinating to see if it comes to fruition.
Grim reading
“Anyway, here’s hoping it can show it can be a more responsible custodian of the huge number of studios now under its banner,” were words I ended last year’s year in review for Xbox with.
Not only did the company drop the ball at a human level, but it also showed just how out of touch it is. As Microsoft, as a company, rakes in trillions of dollars and pushes for more AI investment, Xbox laid off 9,000 staff members earlier this year.
I could dwell on the loss of Perfect Dark, or Everwild, or a new sci-fi property from the Elder Scrolls Online developers, but instead, I’ll point to that number again – nine thousand.
Cuts happened across several Microsoft studios, including Rare, Turn 10, Halo Studios, and more, as well as Bethesda and Activision Blizzard teams.
If ever there is one damning indictment of Xbox’s management, however, it’s The Initiative. A team formed to make ‘AAAA games’, which pulled talent from all over the industry to reboot Perfect Dark; it was also working with Crystal Dynamics.
After five years and a gameplay trailer that may or may not have shown a realistic expectation for the title, the game was canceled, and the entire studio was shut down. The team tasked with taking Xbox’s first-party into a bold new era released nothing.
If there were trophies for abysmal handling of studios, then the silver medal would go to the way Zenimax Online was hit by cuts, canceling a game that Phil Spencer reportedly wouldn’t stop playing in a meeting.
Is this all the runoff from the Activision Blizzard deal? Why did nobody stop to consider just how much acquiring the likes of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft would cost Xbox its soul? I even feel silly suggesting it, but if you watch the Xbox On documentary that Microsoft released, there’s a spirit in the early Xbox and the 360 that’s been diluted down to layoff emails written with Copilot and entire studios of talented people being laid off by a company chasing an AI pipedream.
Games to come?
Hardware is more expensive, studios are closing, projects are being canceled, and the best Xbox games are going just about everywhere else.
So, where does that put 2026? It’s tough to say. Halo: Campaign Evolved brings the series to PlayStation, but after a very solid anniversary edition, do Xbox fans need to play it again?
2026 marks Xbox’s 25th anniversary, but depending on how the games hit, we may not see a 30th. Clockwork Revolution looks great, while Forza Horizon 6 feels like a surefire hit when it arrives.
Gears of War: E-Day will mark a prequel to the mainline games, but things have been quiet in that regard. Does the fate of Xbox rest on Fable? Hard to say, given how little we’ve seen of the long-delayed RPG.
It was one of the games most anticipated for this year before slipping, and has seemingly been in development since before its reveal in 2020, before the current console generation had begun.
It’s hard not to look at Xbox and feel as though it’s doing all it can to sink its own ship in recent months. It’s not just a case of hoping 2026 is better than 2025 – it’s mandatory, because if not, it feels like Xbox will move into publishing full-time.
The best Xbox controllers
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