I know Driver was pretty big on the original PlayStation. Don't think it had much love on later releases lol.

I haven't a good experience with Xenia though. I'm still waiting on them still getting into a good position. Xbox emulation in general is well behind in the field lol

Talk about a 180 in tone!

Matthew Ball also revealed that Xbox lost millions of Gamepass subs when they increased the price in October 2025. Becoming more and more clear why Phil retired and Sarah was replaced.

Not only was Sarah replaced, but she didn't even get much of a farewell.

I hope we get a Jason Schreier article one day going over the full change in mentality after the Activision purchase. It's insane the course trajectory that Xbox has gone through the past couple of years.

Now we're back to where we were prior to the Activision purchase.....letting contractual obligations finish off to go back to exclusives lol let's see if it sticks this time around.

This is crazy to read. Series consoles had an insanely strong start the first few years, even with limited exclusives through that time. Once the business model started to shift, you started seeing less and less consoles being sent to retailers, even entire regions.

Now, back to playing catchup. In a time when components are so hard to come by that there's been crazy price increases across all platform holders.

Like I said yesterday, this is why there weren't more exclusives announced. This and they also didn't want to pull PS5 ports that were already announced last year like Halo and FH6. They just don't have consoles for exclusives to move, when the sales slumped after Phil's multiplatform move for their first party, Phil lessened the volume of their S and X production orders, and their hardware production partners took other manufacturing deals to fill the space, mainly lucrative AI server parts deals. Now Xbox is left with the prospect of paying more money to produce Series S and X units than they sell for. 

Hopefully they delay Project Helix to 2028 or 2029 and quickly design a Project Helix S console so that they have a mass market product for exclusives to sell next gen, because exclusives aren't going to be able to move very many of the rumored $1000+ main Xbox Helix console if that is their only console.

For the boomer shooters lover, Fashion Police squad is on sale =p

Yes, they absolutely need a lower end option if they hope to have a substantial hardware presence again. Series S got a ton of hate, but in the UK at least I thought it was a very good value. (USA price wasn't as much of a discount over the X). It would also have to be a locked system so they can guarantee subscription and software revenue so they can subsidise the hardware with less risk. Then they'll be able to offer a compelling price.

Console gaming has always been about simplicity and affordability for the mass market.

My worry for next-gen is that it will be nearly impossible to offer a machine that is a decent upgrade while being a reasonable price. I can't imagine a new $599 console being more than a small improvement over the current PS5/SX right now.

I think the smart play is a device with 24gb of Ram and a mid-range GPU, with good AI upscaling hardware. But even that I don't know what they'd be able to offer it at. Hardware really is screwed for the foreseeable future.