This kind of goes against their current marketing though of "This is an Xbox" MS has made it pretty clear they're not interested in trying to bring over PlayStation, or even Nintendo, customers to Xbox anymore outside of the core Xbox fanbase.
In order to coincide with their current marketing, they need to have at least more than 1 device offering. Everything is pointing to a handheld console from leaks, "likes" that executives have made on user posts about the potential of an Xbox handheld, but Xbox is most likely going to take it a step further.
Taking a page out of Valve's playbook, sell their own niche first-party hardware, but also license out the OS with a "Powered by SteamOS" type moniker, and have Xbox be on third-party OEM devices as well as their own first-party hardware. On top of having a premium console. This goes more in line with the "This is an Xbox" marketing. It's also not a new thing in the world of tech hardware. When you buy a laptop, it'll most likely be a Windows laptop, but you buy it for the cost or hardware capabilities of the laptop. Or when us PC users pick a graphics card, Nvidia and AMD sell their own first party cards, but I usually like to choose third-party cards from the likes of Asus or Gigabyte. Phil has said as much that they want to win on their unique hardware capabilities (something that has honestly been lost in the console space. Both PS5 and Series X are practically identical) rather than by software capabilities.
The biggest thing will be not selling their consoles at a loss. Therefore, they can afford to sell only like 10 million units, or whatever it may be, to the diehard Xbox fanbase because they're not losing any money on their now niche consoles.
EDIT: On a side note, that's not true at all about Capcom. The only games that were being skipped were the older remasters/collections that were made on Capcom's now outdated MT Framework engine that wasn't compatible with modern Xbox hardware that has since been rectified. That's why the Marvel vs Capcom collection was able to release, and now the upcoming Capcom Fighting Collection 2 and Onimusha 2 remaster will be releasing on Xbox at launch day. You'll notice it was only the PS4/PC/Switch platform releases that were skipping Xbox. Even now, they're releasing on Xbox One rather than Series consoles. It's an engine limitation. They can only be played via backwards compatibility.
Last edited by G2ThaUNiT - on 21 February 2025
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