It's not pretty clear and it's definitely not soon and I don't agree with Machiavellian's assessment either about them dropping out, Lol. One more generation is basically a guarantee, otherwise, they wouldn't still be employing a hardware team or literally in the middle of making more hardware

With how people treat Steam CCU lately, you'd have thought Atomfall and South of Midnight would have been utter fucking bombs, Lol.

Guillaume Provost (Studio Head Compulsion Games): "I can absolutely guarantee [that generative AI usage] is not mandated [at Xbox]. In the DNA of the studio that we have, we're very craft oriented. We're very art oriented."

www.gamedeveloper.com/production/c...

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— Klobrille (@klobrille.bsky.social) 2 May 2025 at 21:20

Don't say that shit out loud! Satya will see it! He'll be like "WTF PHILLIP. I WANT AI IN EVERYTHING NOW!!!"

But for real fuck AI slop.

Can't help to think it's a half assed last attempt before they finally ditch it for good. Would love to be proven wrong tho

Console wars are irrelevant (not sure why people bring this up), if the console isn't going to sell well to justify it's existence MS isn't going to waste money on it. They don't need to place well against sony/nintendo to be successful.

Thing is they are actively making their platform look pretty useless IMO and I'm sorry to speak negativity but everything seems to point the way of them eventually pulling out of the console biz. So I actually agree with him there, I just don't like it and will continue to bitch about it.

Like I said, no company is eating those tariffs, Microsoft is already losing $100-$200 per console sold, now it will be $200-$300 without a price increase and potentially even more, Microsoft had demanded a focus on profit margins, the console already isn't selling that well beyond its current 30mish line so keeping the previous price wasn't going to do anything except cause their profit margins to dip hard.

The era of "selling consoles at losses and make up for it in software sales" is over and even for PlayStation as well.

If Microsoft truly wanted their consoles dead then they would drop them now, they also would have simply applied the full amount of the tariffs onto America alone but instead they spread the costs across other regions because America is still their strongest market, now, this isn't me saying Xbox console sales won't crater because they will, but whatever they still manage to sell won't be sold at massive losses and they'll just profit from their already established fanbase + 3rd Party.

What would be more likely to make Microsoft give the boot to consoles is if they ignored the tariffs and consoles are now selling at a massive loss, Satya straight up told Phil that Microsoft refuses to subsidise Xbox hardware anymore. They don't need to place well against Sony/Nintendo to be successful. You are correct. Which is why they will be fine with a 30mish install-base as long as it's profitable.

Which it likely is, that's still billions of revenue brought in every year from Game Pass alone, not to mention 3rd party and a decent amount of that will be profits. I don't think Microsoft will care if Xbox Series sales crater now as long as they can maintain a decent enough fanbase still in the ecosystem. The next Xbox won't be competing with PlayStation, it will be closer competition to Alienware than anything else, Lol.

And bringing the next Xbox in line with PC further aligns it with Microsoft's overall goals. Microsoft will be fine with making hardware, Imo, as long as it still has a decent enough sized fanbase and pushes their core ecosystem - Which is Windows. Plus I seriously doubt Xbox hardware gets a bullet put into it before Surface, Lol.

Microsoft has always wanted "Windows" in the living room and the next Xbox sounds very much closer to that than current Xbox and people will doom and say "Wow. Why is Microsoft making consoles when it has only sold 20m!" or W/E. But I really do think Microsoft will be fine with those numbers, as long as it's still a gateway to expanding their ecosystem and bringing in billions from the established fanbase that won't switch due to various reasons.

But who knows, I have a prediction and you have a prediction but ultimately we don't know how things will shake out 6+ years from now, all I'm certain on is another Xbox device is coming and I'll likely get it still, after that? Who knows, I don't think anyone can accurately predict how things will go that far in the future, Lol.

And Tbh I'll be in my 30s and likely care even less, Lmao. I'd probably just end up swapping to PC fairly easily, especially if they double down on Play Anywhere, if they can really hammer down Play Anywhere/xCloud then quite frankly I probably wouldn't give a shit if Xbox consoles eventually stopped cause I'd just move to PC with all my library.

Towerborne will receive achievements in a future update. These will work retroactively.

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— Klobrille (@klobrille.bsky.social) 2 May 2025 at 17:44

Retroactive achievements? Maybe I'll start playing it in early access now 💀

Forza Horizon 5 player count has risen to 46.1M players as of today.

The game had surpassed 45M players on April 15.

Forza Horizon 5 was released on PlayStation 5 on April 29 (Early Access on April 25).

This could indicate around ~1M units sold on PS5 in ~1 week.

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— mauronl.bsky.social (@mauronl.bsky.social) 2 May 2025 at 21:03

There is/was a decent sale running on Steam + Xbox numbers, but I'd make a random guesstimate that the absolute minimum is 600k sold on PS5. But probably closer to 800k. It would have been smart to track what it was actually doing on a weekly basis so we can see how much it was increasing weekly on Xbox still and then maybe look at what it increased in a week during a previous Steam sale, Lol.

But either way, I'm going to guess 600k-800k sold on PS5.

Find it interesting that Sweeney is wanting EGS on console platforms. Dude really trying to take over the gaming world lol. I’m sure the win over Apple gave him a huge ego boost.

The fact that he had to clarify that he doesn’t plan on suing platform holders to get EGS on each platform should be cause for concern though lol.

This does give some credence to the rumor of next gen Xbox being more of an open platform. Basically PC in nature, where there’s already a multitude of different storefronts that Microsoft can’t take money from.

But consumers tend to want it, Sony has been called out a few times to open their store or the availability to buy their games from other 'places'.

Indeed, I would have loved for the Xbox series to be more PC like. If that's the aim for the next console, I am so ready to get into that.