shikamaru317 said:
Highly unlikely. They just renamed Microsoft Game Studios as Xbox Game Studios, and have bought multiple new developers now. There are multiple reliable sources saying that Xbox Scarlett with be announced this year and release next year, with plans to have the most powerful console next gen. Those are not the moves of a 3rd party publisher, 3rd party publishers do not release serious new hardware. |
I agree that the Xbox brand isn't going anywhere, and that there's obvious plans to make more hardware, but short of the Nintendo partnership I speculated on earlier where they provide the high end hardware while Nintendo provides the low end, hardware isn't a major focus for them. They definitely seem to be at least trying to transition the Xbox brand to mean more than just consoles. In such a scenario, highly brand loyal Xbox fans will buy the Xbox console, but the brand's identity extends far beyond hardware. In such a world, Microsoft isn't first or third party, it's both, because they make their gaming brand, Xbox, have both a 1st party (Xbox product) and 3rd party (Xbox service) presence across the entire gaming market. This makes them immune to any future where their consoles become unpopular, or home consoles in general become unpopular, or altogether obsolete. It happened to portable consoles, it could happen to home consoles too. If these rumors prove true, I think these moves are Microsoft thinking ahead and future proofing the Xbox brand.
