Good Bye XBOX - It was fun
On October 1st Microsoft, after almost two years, finally decided to drive the last nail into XBOX’s coffin.
Will XBOX disappear tomorrow? No. But I have owned and played on every single XBOX since the first one. I have had an active subscription, first to XBOX Live, followed by Gold, then Gamepass Ultimate.
And now, as of October 2025 I have cancelled my Gamepass Ultimate subscription.
The last price hike, from $23 (plus tax) a month to now $33 (plus tax) a month for Gamepass Ultimate has crossed a line for me where the value proposition isn’t there anymore.
Microsoft, for the better part of two years, seems to have been hellbent on destroying XBOX as a brand. A lack of clear commitment to the brand and hardware, the price hikes on consoles, the current generation is almost five years old now, to introduction of a $1000 (US) handheld “gaming PC”, the world Microsoft inhabits vs. the rest of us seem to be disconnected. Microsoft seems to have no clear sense or purpose as to what to do with XBOX, outside of “Make more money”.
How to destroy your brand
So what is going on at Microsoft? Five years ago, if not flying high, then at least they were doing okay. There was a dearth of first party titles when the Series consoles launched. In contrast Sony had a couple of launch titles that people wanted to play and that represented Playstation as a brand.
Halo, as a franchise, has been struggling for years, and the delay of the Halo Infinite by a year wasn’t a good look, but better than releasing what they had. This was supposed to be a “reboot” for Halo and usher in so much more Halo. Since then….. Nothing. I played the campaign, it was okay. But it did not manage to capture the magic of the older Halo games.
The other flagship IP, Forza, also struggled. The main title series, a serious racing simulator, was MIA for a few years and when it finally arrived was received okayish. The more arcade Forza Horizon 5 was fun, but it is long in the tooth and does not provide a whole lot of new excitement. similarly seems to be stuck in a rut. They recently announced the next Horizon game, set in Japan, but my expectations are mixed because I am getting to the point where I just don’t trust Microsoft anymore in actually delivering a good game. Back 10 years ago, EA went all in on loot boxes and trying to nickel and dime you to death with each game. It had me stop buying games from them. Microsoft now seems to be desperate to squeeze every penny out of their customers that they can.
After they were finally able to get their hands on Activision / Blizzard (an already gamer hostile entity that lost its way in its own years ago), the next step was a massive blood letting, including the closing of well regarded studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Why? Who knows. From a gamer perspective this made no sense.
One could argue that Redfall was the reason why Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin, and to be fair, it was a horrible game. But the blame for that lay with Arkane’s parent company, Bethesda Softworks, that wanted that game had started development on it before Microsoft had bought Bethesda. It should be mentioned that Microsoft wasn’t the only one who delivered a “games as a service” dud that year. Sony’s Concord basically arrived DOA after a lot of hype and unlike Redfall, Sony pulled the plug on the game within two weeks and refunded everybody.
The closure of Tango Gameworks on the other hand is… a mystery. They had just delivered the highly successful HiFi Rush and were well regarded with their horror games. Looking at it from the outside this does not make a whole lot of sense. Odds are it was just some “trimming” exercise by someone with too big of an Excel Spreadsheet, considering they sold what was left of the studio, including the HiFi Rush IP, to a third party a few months later.
And then there was Starfield. It was…. A Bethesda game. They promised a lot, they delivered some. But the thing is: I have seen no real reason to return to Starfield. There were supposed to be multiple story expansions coming out and so far we only got one, Shattered Space, and even though I did buy the Premium edition that included the DLCs I have not bothered going back to it after I finished the main quest line.
XBOX Nowhere
XBOX’s new play is that XBOX isn’t just the… well, XBOX, but that you can play them anywhere. Microsoft has been streaming games through the internet for a few years now. It is still far behind what Nvidia is offering with GeForce Now, but as a “free add on” to Gamepass it made sense if you wanted to quickly try out a game without waiting for it to download and install on your XBOX or PC.
But at the core XBOX is still the console. People associate the startup sound, the UI etc. with XBOX. To broaden the brand is risky and Microsoft seems to do so without a clear idea of what the future is supposed to be.
Gamepass, prior to the price hike, was a good bargain. You got new Microsoft published games on day of release, some older EA games and the occasional Ubisoft game plus a ton of indy games, the latest one being Hollow Knight: Silk Song. Overall, there was always something to play there. This is still the case with the updated price but the value proposition now looks a whole lot murkier after a 50% price increase.
The main “value adds” are:
- 1440p game streaming
- Fortnite Battlepass
- “Classic” Ubisoft games
It is comical that Microsoft essentially “throws in” a battle pass for Fortnite with a service that is giving you access to hundreds of games. In order to “fill out” a battlepass you need to play these games a lot. Often to the exclusion of any other game. So why add it to a service that is being sold on the basis that you have hundreds of games to chose from?
What Microsoft seems to be thinking here is that they give you “so much value” that you just can’t say no. But the value of Fortnite to me, and many others, is Zero, likewise with the “Ubisoft Classic” games they have added. Why? Because I already own most of these games and they regularly go on sale anyway. If you want to play an old Ubisoft game, wait a few weeks until the next sale and pick it up for $5.
What Microsoft is doing here is stuffing the gift bag with shredded newspaper to make it look like it is fuller than it is.
So after mulling over this for a few days I have decided I am going to cancel my Gamepass subscription. I am also unlikely going to by the next XBOX, should there be one.
The reality is after almost a quarter century of mostly playing on consoles I heading back to the PC. My Steam library is vast, they have regular sales and the two or three games a year that are published by Microsoft that I want to play, I can just buy on Steam.
Gamepass, as of next month, would cost me CAN$408 a year, plus taxes. That’s three or four games, at full price, or a whole lot more if I wait for a sale.
Why is Microsoft doing this?
There is of course an interesting question here: Why is Microsoft doing this? Let’s be clear, it isn’t just Microsoft that seems to have lost the plot. To say the gaming industry is in a bit of a crisis is not an understatement.
Even beloved Nintendo is irking people with their massive price increases on their games. Sony has been acquiring a lot of studios and burning money hand over fist. Concord was the most painful example on how much Sony is misstepping lately, but there is also Bungie with Destiny 2 and the new Marathon (again, a service game), but unlike Microsoft they don’t seem to intended to completely destroy their Playstation brand.
I think the answer with Microsoft lies outside of XBOX. Where Sony, even though they still make other electronics, is now mostly Playstation, Microsoft’s main business continues to be cloud and other “services”.
And I think there is the answer. Microsoft, Google, Meta et. al. They are all chasing the next big thing: AI. And Microsoft seems to have decided that XBOX needs to bring in more money for them to burn on AI.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the next two years with XBOX and Microsoft. But if I, as someone who has been a loyal customer for more than 20 years, now decide to stop being a customer, that does not bode well for Microsoft.
Of course there is the option that Microsoft just divests itself from all the studios they have bought over the last few years and just gets out of gaming completely. Is this likely? Probably not. But as of October 2025 Microsoft pretty much announced to the world they no longer want to be a serious player in the gaming space.
At this point, it seems to me that Microsoft has handed over the XBOX division to CoPilot and just rolls with it.