...still in a holding pattern til I hear from Microsoft...

It's this but they're all saying "I'm Insider!"

...I would buy a Xbox handheld though.

Every big merger will cost some employees their jobs so that parts of the lay-offs obviously happen because of it now as well. If you have a team responsible for a specific task you don't automatically need two of them just because both companies had one team for it before the merger, Sucks to see people losing their jobs but many positions are simply not needed anymore after a merger.

That still would be better than the industry standard for a AAA game.  You know one team or dev is responsible for continued updates for the MP and BR part of the game while the main studios get more time to flesh out what they want to do for their run.

Probably because whatever was causing ABK to have to cut jobs did not change because they merged with MS.  If anything, the merger made it so that those changes had to be implemented because we just do not know internally the issues ABK was or is having just like the majority of the industry.

Might wait for a sale on this one, but definitely will try it at some point. 

It matches with what other insiders have been saying. Back in September we had a reliable AMD hardware insider report that Xbox had cancelled plans for mid-gen refresh consoles this gen and was planning a launch 2 years earlier than they had originally planned, a release in 2026.Then in December both Jeff Grubb and semi-reliable hardware insider/youtuber RedGamingTech reported that Xbox was planning a next-gen launch in 2026 powered by Zen 5 CPU's and RDNA 5 GPU's. Then more recently I saw this same 2026, docking handheld + home console leak from a different source. And we have also heard about plans to let 3rd party partners make Xbox PC-based consoles from yet another source, the guy who recently leaked accurate Indiana Jones details ahead of it's gameplay reveal. So I'm guessing all of these Xbox systems will be PC-based personally, running a stripped down version of Windows built to maximize gaming performance by cutting down on background tasks that eat up CPU and Memory resources.

I really hope they do go with the PC idea but I wonder if we're just trying to will it into existence, Lmao. For me, it would be the most interesting hardware that Xbox has ever released (aside from maybe the handheld). Xbox form factor, a good amount of power, Xbox UI, stripped back Windows, a merged Xbox store, access to Steam. Even if Xbox went fully multiplatform I'd buy it, Lol.