Supposedly Phil Spencer specifically has had aspirations of this for a while. So may not be MS going over his head so much.

Can't really blame people for blaming Phil though, afterall it was Phil himself who said this not all that long ago:

Now a decision has been made that is directly in opposition to his above statement. Even if the decision came from over his head, Satya and crew, the fact is shit rolls downhill, and Phil is directly below them, so of course the blame will fall on him even if he isn't to blame (no idea if he truly opposed this decision or not personally). 

Was more talking about the Sarah Bond one, Lol.

I'm really curious what their hardware plans are for the future.

Those will determine if I switch to PC sooner than I had planned.

They are by all accounts going to continue making hardware so they must have some sort of plan to make it attractive. I guess one option could just be the Sku's they offer. If Sony only offer one PS6 model then MS can easily offer people more options at both lower and higher price points if they want cheaper hardware or more powerful hardware.

They'd have to sell it purely on the hardware itself. This could line-up with the OEM rumours meaning they could offer several different SKU's to cater for all price points and tastes.

Of course I don't think they'll be selling 50m+ consoles with that strategy but I don't think that's their plan anymore. It also means I do think it's going to be a digital only future for Xbox Hardware.

If someone really doesnt care about exclusive PlayStation titles and the PS6 isn't the right power and/or price for them Xbox hardware can still have a place, all-be-it a smaller one.

They will officially kill the Xbox Console with this news and hand Sony/PlayStation full control of the AAA game market, say hello to a very expensive PS6 and 80$ games. Sony will have zero reason to be competitive and all the reason to launch a Console at an expensive price point where they don't lose money on hardware day one.

What decision? 

You guys are talking and freaking about rumors and made up things from "insiders" (newsflash: 99% of them are not... insiders...) :) One of those "leaker" saw something else that another "leaker" made up and they are just countering each others with new random shit to take credit in any case any of this is real even for one single game...

Until anything is official, those are not decisions or anything real... You guys need to stop reacting like every rumors is true, the people starting those BS must be laughing hard right now :D I can tell you that.

The only part that is probably true and did not require an "insider" to figure out is the MP part. We can already see that.
I can also see it for AA or A games (like HiF. Rush). It would be a good thing for the Xbox business in general if they could put some of those games everywhere (Like Minecraft). Still, for the rest, it is pure speculation at best (mostly made-up BS) from some people trying to score some "insider credibility" if anything becomes real at some point (even only 10% of it...).

Look at this "Sea of Thieves" announced for Play Station 5 during the state of play... Never happened... And people freaked out before the show about it like it was a sure thing. 

Just chill out :)

Which has already been talked about as happening for Xbox.

Well, the first leaker who talked about Xbox putting their games on other platform was the Indiana Jones leaker, and he also said they were going to start letting 3rd party manufacturers make Xbox consoles. So if he was indeed legit, it's safe to say we will be getting Steam Machine like PC based Xbox consoles from 3rd parties.

As for Xbox themselves, was recently reported that they have multiple hardware projects in development. Considering Phil liked Jez's Xbox handheld article tweet, I guess one will be a handheld device. Then we had the AMD leaker several months back saying that Xbox was planning to start next gen 2 years earlier, in 2026, with the console using a generation older CPU and GPU than originally planned.

So it is safe to say Xbox hardware isn't dead. But will it have enough exclusives to even justify it's existence, now that it is looking like Activision and Zenimax games won't be exclusive? Can XGS exclusives alone justify the purchase of $500+ hardware?

Personally, it's not enough for me, I'm looking at PC + Switch 2 next gen, I just don't have the budget to get a console I don't need to own, and that goes for both NextBox and PS6, since both release just about all of their games on PC.

The worst part is that they are giving up just as XGS is going into full swing and starting to release marquee titles, we literally waited for this moment since 2018 when they bought all those studios and they will give up the literal year where they will finally reach their 4 AAA per year 1st party goal.

Ugh, I need to go to bed. Just so many rumours flying around now. See you guys tomorrow.