Last year, my colleague Jade King asked a simple, but damning question:“Could Xbox soon become the next Dreamcast?”At the time, it had just laid off 2,000 workers, its acquisitions hadn’t yet borne fruit, and its only worthwhile exclusives had been ported to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Ultimately, though, Jade concluded that it was “too soon to tell” and that maybe—just maybe—Xbox could bounce back.
As of this week,Xbox laid off thousands more employees, shuttered The Initiativebefore it could finish its first game, cancelled Everwild, Perfect Dark, and a new Zenimax MMO,which was getting rave reviews behind closed doors, halved the workforce of Turn 10, and pushed industry veterans like Banjo-Kazooie director Gregg Mayles and Zenimax Online Studios head Matt Firor to step down.
To answer Jade’s question, not only could Xbox become the next Dreamcast, but we’re watching it happen as we speak.
The Writing Is On The Wall For Next-Gen
RPG Site founder and VG247 reporter Alex Donaldsonclaimedamid the layoffs that the atmosphere at Xbox is one of “we give up”. With so many projects cancelled, and every developer taking hits—even those trapped in the infamousCall of Dutymines where studios go to die—the console giant’s future has never been so bleak. It already has few games, and fewer good ones, but with even unannounced projects being fed into the meat grinder, what’s left?
Fable, which has regularly been reported to havea troubled development;The Elder Scrolls 6, with faith at an all-time low afterStarfield; unending Call of Duty sequels; and Blade, being worked on under the shadow of a studio that was unceremoniously cut in half. It’s not a pretty picture.
The PS6 won’t launch until at least 2027,as per a recent Sony document, so we know that the next generation is right around the corner. But after everything that happened this week, and with most of Xbox’s announced games due to launch in 2025 and 2026, it’s hard to imagine the company having many launch titles ready to go. That was a damning problem for the Xbox One, which arguably saw the first domino fall that led us here. It could be the killing blow for whatever comes next.
A PC-Console Hybrid Won’t Save Xbox
Reports suggest that Xbox is working on a PC-console hybrid, tapping into the enormous backlog of existing storefronts like Steam and EGS. I recently suggested that if the rumours were true, it markedXbox “finally bowing out of the console race” to become something utterly unrecognisable and, most importantly, fresh. It wouldn’t be a competitor anymore, but a new way to game that better fits Microsoft—an intuitive, accessible gaming PC that leverages decades of veteran talent from across both companies to marry the two worlds. Just a couple of months later, I think that was a pretty naive view of things.
The next Xbox merging console and PC isn’t Microsoft pioneering a bold new platform that will reinvent what the medium can be, like Nintendo did with the Switch. It’s a last-ditch effort to hold onto relevancy. But with studios on edge that they could be trimmed to size at any moment, and with every project potentially their last as Xbox prefers to throw billions of dollars at acquisitions that don’t pay off, it’s like applying a band-aid to cracked concrete while the company takes to its own foundations with a sledgehammer: a new console is just another swing at the pillars.
So, what’s the point in buying one? Xbox doesn’t have many games under its belt, and with its fourth round of layoffs in just 18 months, it’ll have even fewer in the years to come—and the ones that do launch will likely be available on PS5 and PC anyway. There’s nothing left of Xbox, and the only love you could possibly have for it is the last gasps of nostalgia, longing for the good ol’ days as you watch the red ring of death seize hold under a decade of mismanagement. Xbox is on its way out, flailing its legs as Microsoft drags it through the door: it’s hard to be excited for a future so deflating.
