I Knew This Would Happen, But Microsoft's Communication On Xbox Hardware And Multiplatform Releases Is Already Terrible

Microsoft Announcing They Are Indeed Making New Hardware On Social Media Rather Than During Their Summer Conference Is Quintessentially Them

Let's throw things back a bit before we get to the bottom of recent news of Xbox's "partnership" with AMD. About a week ago, The Verge's Tom Warren reported that following the Xbox Summer Showcase and the reveal of Microsoft's collaboration with ASUS, Microsoft's next-generation console handheld, long-speculated to be the successor of the Series S SKU, was effectively canceled. Despite Warren including a major disclaimer that read, "I still think we'll see next-gen Xbox hardware from Microsoft, but I also strongly believe we'll see multiple devices from PC makers like Asus that will also be considered next-gen Xbox consoles," multiple publications leaped on his reporting to claim that Microsoft's internal handheld console was effectively "dead" and this signaling Microsoft's move to pull out of hardware entirely. It was pretty frustrating to see GameSpot, IGN, and others run with eye-catching articles announcing the "cancellation" of Xbox's hardware future, completely lacking Warren's final piece of context. Flashforward to this week, Xbox clarified that they are still in the hardware-making arena and have thrown their lot in with AMD to make the processors for their new consoles, which they stated very matter-of-factly would be revealed in 2026, a year that has been especially annoying for the dwindling number of Xbox faithful still out there. Not only did Phil Spencer curiously reveal that multiple tentpole games, not featured at their Summer Showcase, were planned for 2026 reveals or releases, but their plan for the entire hardware future of Xbox would also be withheld until that date as well. Oh, and yes, they will definitely have an SKU that utilizes an APU, and this will be a handheld-like device.

Now, to Microsoft's defense, hedging their bets until 2026 makes perfect sense to anyone following the tech hardware scene. A dockable or portable Series S isn't practical until Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and others can finally achieve their 2nm process die shrink, along with a more cost-effective 3nm process, which would open the floodgates for many of the most prominent players in tech, including Microsoft. Sure, there is the stank of white flag waving with this generation from Xbox, but not taking the bait and making a PS5 Pro competitor makes sense in the grand scheme of things. Microsoft is one die shrink away from being able to produce an Xbox Series S at around 30W; what's the rush if the ceiling is twice as high if you wait another year? That's not to defend the frequency of their studio closures, the increase in hardware prices for the Series X/S, and the pending Game Pass price increase that feels as if it's just around the corner. Microsoft's inability to make hardware the average person is willing to get out of bed to buy for damn well over ten years is going to be one of those gaming storylines that YouTube essayists wax about in two to three-hour video pieces as they have done with Sega, Atari, NEC, and 3DO.

Nonetheless, there is something hilariously appropriate about Xbox clearing the air via social media rather than saying as much during their premier summer streaming conference. Sure, maybe Xbox's partnership with AMD was still being worked out when the final outline for the Summer Showcase was approved, but not even making a peep that you are still in the hardware sphere is downright bizarre, especially considering how often Microsoft and Xbox have faced questions about if they're pulling out or not. You can't tell me that Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond aren't aware that most people think they're outsiders looking in, and failing to address the future of hardware wouldn't trigger alarm bells. Worse, their Summer Showcase was littered with odd marketing and communication choices, like having Silksong appear once and only in passing when sharing a sizzle reel for the Xbox Ally. When it comes to a company having a coherent message about hardware and technology in the gaming industry, Xbox has been a frequent offender, with this being the brand that debuted the 360 on MTV and took multiple lumps with the Xbox One. Then there's the Xbox Anywhere stuff, which continues to be one of the most shockingly incoherent big marketing pushes in gaming I have ever seen. The minute I finished watching the June 2025 Xbox Summer Showcase, I knew things were going to be messy with Microsoft's communication in the coming weeks; I think we all were prepared for that. However, I didn't think the mess would hit us this soon.

Phil Spencer Can't Keep Getting Away With Promising The Next Year Will Be 'Xbox's Best Year Yet,' Right?

Let's return to Xbox's 2025 Summer Showcase for a bit. As I have stated before, the event itself and the games Xbox showed were perfectly "fine." You'd be hard-pressed to call the showcase an overall failure, but not a ton of games leaped out at you the way they did last year. However, what was notable and stuck out like a sore thumb were all of the games we saw in previous Xbox streaming events that didn't have so much as a cinematic teaser trailer this year. Those games are Playground Games' Fable, Perfect Dark, the next Forza title, Gears of War: E-Day, whatever 343 is doing with Halo, and Avalanche Studios' Contraband. That's a non-insignificant number of games, many of which have two whole game studios working on them and have been in the can for over three to four years, entirely and wholly absent. It was a terrible look for Microsoft, but in came Phil Spencer, who, in interviews with the press after the event, confirmed that practically all of these games were set for 2026 release dates or bigger reveals in the future. Yes, he said as much during the end of the Summer Showcase that was the case, but if all you have is a promise that these games are coming out in 2026 but for realzies this time, then why bother? We have seen Spencer do his hand waving before to explain game or hardware absences at events and press conferences, likely one too many times at this point. For pity's sake, this time around, you already announced a Fable delay to 2026 back in February! How much confidence have you realistically instilled in people with this half-assed final comment at the end of your showcase?!

So, I return to the premise of this sub-heading: with his reputation already on questionable footing, how many more times is Phil Spencer going to get away with these thin promises that things are going to be different "next year?" Like, for real, I thought that last year's Xbox Summer Showcase was damn near one of the best Xbox has had in years, and that didn't move the needle on hardware. However, it did signal that Xbox's multiplatform strategy was allowing them to become a monolith in the games industry in terms of total games published. Part of what made this year's Summer Showcase somewhat difficult to watch is how painfully it felt like a reflection of Microsoft's disjointed third-party strategy. The pomp and circumstance speak to a premier event where Xbox hardware is still a priority and central concern; that's why it even exists in the first place. However, the slate of games and Xbox's continual framing of everything as part of their "ecosystem" of Game Pass Ultimate, Play Anywhere, and Xbox Cloud Gaming doesn't always align with their conference's format, and things sometimes become muddled. Even during this event, we saw various labels and terms used to describe how to enjoy the games being showcased, with little connection to console hardware and, instead, different streaming initiatives. It's hard not to get confused. So much so I found it HILARIOUS when someone took to r/kindafunny to take umbrage with Greg Miller's suggestion that Xbox's Play Anywhere program was a dizzying mess, and they didn't seem to realize that their core argument was faulty because their rebuttal required OVER SIX PARAGRAPHS to adequately explain how it was different from Game Pass and the Xbox Cloud.

Perhaps the prospect of a handheld Xbox Series S is compelling to you; that's understandable, and I might be there with you. And I'm not going to demean anyone content with the Xbox hardware they own or use. There is, however, a crisis of confidence with everyone in charge with very pressing questions and hurdles facing Xbox. After enduring over a decade of watching him promise some version of "Next year is going to be our year," I cannot imagine a single logical person believing anything Phil Spencer says or promises at this point. Sarah Bond has been getting more screen time. Still, she's never really been given the opportunity to show a personality, and Matt Booty has had to equivocate and sugarcoat so many studio closures, including the brutal ones last year, that he's far from being someone you feel you can trust. The days of "faces" leading the charge of a video game console are long dead. Nevertheless, the truth remains that Microsoft has some weighty and critical decisions to make if it has even a sliver of a chance to stay relevant in the hardware scene. I have zero confidence in that, by the way! They can barely coherently communicate which games coming out of their OWN studios will be available on non-Xbox platforms at launch! And people want me to trust them to figure out the hardware shit? After stepping on rakes, one after another, for almost fifteen years, you want me to trust them NOW?!

The ROG Xbox Ally X Is Previewing Well, But That Doesn't Change The Fact The Communication On Them Is Bad

Let's give credit where credit is deserved; from the sounds of it, the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X appear to be solid hardware. Yes, I know tech previews are usually smoke and mirror acts. Still, virtually every press source has come away positive after playing around with the thing, with the only recurring complaint being that it is on the heavier side at 670g with the basic SKU and 715g with the Ally X. Leaks suggest that the basic model will retail for around $499 to $550, and the Ally X for around $799 to $900. Those are high prices, no doubt about it, but with Valve punting on revising the Steam Deck and everyone else in the portable PC industry raising prices, it's par for the course right now. Key to the Xbox Ally's success is the modified version of Windows it runs, which finally "solves" the issue of Windows 11 normally running like trash on handheld or portable PCs. Starting with the Xbox Ally devices, Windows will automatically place background applications in stasis when a video game is being played, thereby allowing more of the Xbox Ally's processing power to be freed up. Even better, Stephen Totilo recently received a statement from Microsoft stating that their approach to making Windows more efficient on devices like the Asus Xbox Ally will be shared with all companies that have handheld devices running on Windows.

Nevertheless, here's the "real" problem. At the end of the day, these ROG devices are portable PCs that can run Game Pass and Windows out of the box without requiring extensive fiddling by the end user. That alone is enough to make them compelling products, and I also don't want to discount the amount of help Microsoft provided to create a version of Windows that knows how to turn off background applications when playing games on these types of devices. However, these are still portable PCs rather than handheld Xboxes, and just because Microsoft has allowed ASUS to slap a green Xbox sticker on it doesn't mean it's a proper handheld Xbox. That's the real issue and can of worms Microsoft has opened with this partnership. People still don't seem to have grappled with the fact that the ROG Xbox Ally devices AREN'T ACTUALLY Xboxes. What's the issue? While most of what Microsoft is releasing today is immediately on Game Pass, the same cannot be said for third-party titles and backward-compatible software. You could have a library of titles on your Series X/S right now spanning multiple console generations and containing over seven hundred titles, and after dropping over $800 on an Xbox Ally X, only have about ten to twenty percent of that catalog pop up as being available to play. That's an extreme case, but my point is that it is possible in the first place. I can only imagine there will be people who buy one of these, thinking they will see their entire Series X/S library on it and feel like they have been hoodwinked.

And that lack of clarity has bled into the press, with even the BBC referring to the Ally devices as "Xbox handheld(s)." They aren't; these are Microsoft's latest attempts to put a band-aid over the fact that millions of people are growing accustomed to gaming on Linux, thanks to the growing proliferation of handheld devices. What has come up time and time again with previous handheld PCs is that Windows runs like crap on them. Even with these Ally devices, unless Microsoft has significantly pared down the suite of programs and applications their OS runs by default, many of which they have invested billions in developing (i.e., Copilot and Teams), it is hard to imagine them finding a way to compete against a lean and specifically designed Linux Distribution like SteamOS. Microsoft sat on their hands for AGES, while kids and hobbyists alike got exposed to reliable hardware that gets enough of the job done to play games at a decent framerate thanks to Linux, and now Microsoft is in panic mode. Admittedly, it all started when Chromebooks gained prominence in education despite their initial issues with build quality and durability. Younger generations have already been exposed to Linux, and they know you can totally play games on Linux devices. And as the company as a whole starts to force its October 14, 2025, security update due date down Windows 10 users' throats, fewer people are willing to be yanked around at Microsoft's OS whims. Sure, Windows will continue to be the dominant OS in the PC gaming field for a long time, and maybe forever. At the same time, Steam isn't exactly struggling to share its Linux distro with interested parties, and a whole line of PC gaming hardware running better on it than on Windows is a clear sign ground is being lost.

Microsoft Being Forced To Play Linux And Valve's Ball Game Is Funny As All Shit

I don't care if it comes across as me being shitty, but Microsoft's inability to make compelling hardware in light of them having a now vastly superior game catalog compared to their competition is funny. Despite having what feels like a massive advantage over Sony, they continue to fall flat on their faces, and whether that is by design or due to continual upper-management incompetence is a story we are unlikely to know for a while. Microsoft is on track to become one of the largest distributors of gaming content in the history of video games, and yet they still feel like a two-bit player when it comes to making hardware; it's an almost magical situation. And here we are, observing Xbox hardware practically saving its future by striking fear into CEO Nadella and his cadre of supporters that if they don't enter the portable PC market, they will lose a generation to Linux. It's unreal. You honestly can't make this shit up.

One of the most significant recurring issues with Microsoft's communication is that because they have split up how one can play their games across a cornucopia of streaming platforms, there are way too many goddamn apps and services to sift through on the Windows or Xbox Store. If I had Spencer or Bond's time for even a few minutes, what I would press them on is this. If I were to buy an ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, which service would have the most games that I want to play or would have the most of my library present? It's most certainly Game Pass Ultimate, but how many titles am I losing if I only have Game Pass PC? What happens when I opt for your Play Anywhere program or the Xbox Cloud Gaming app? How many backward-compatible games am I losing out to when I click the "wrong" streaming app? And then, you have to consider the number of overlapping digital storefronts that Microsoft has. They have the "Microsoft Store," Xbox Store, and Game Pass! Which one is the best store to link games to the ROG Xbox Ally, and which one is the best to use moving forward? Also, can we PLEASE do something about your godawful search system when trying to figure out which games are on Game Pass Ultimate versus PC Game Pass, OR how about making the Xbox Store run less like shit when using it on a desktop? Pretty please with sugar on top!

Steam and Epic aren't perfect, and they are guilty of less-than-optimal search engines and tagging systems as well. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, when I want to buy a game and play it on Steam, I don't have to perform any mental gymnastics about which storefront to use. All I need to do is find the game's page on Steam, pay for it, download it, and then I get to play it. Astonishingly, Microsoft has been at this for as long as they have while having some of the most bottomless coffers in the gaming industry, but they still haven't figured out this part of the puzzle! People barely tolerate consoles not immediately booting up their games when they turn their shit on, and now you want me to mull over a spreadsheet on the sometimes non-overlapping applications I use to stream video games? I feel like we have collectively been begging Microsoft to consolidate their streaming apps into a single Xbox application, and those pleas have been brushed aside. Instead, we get Copilot embedded into Game Pass and AI chatbots that help you with a game you suck at playing.

To a degree, you have to give it to Xbox and Microsoft; they are going to have at least one more go at making hardware. What remains unresolved is whether their confidence in a handheld future will work out in their favor. We have heard for years that the next generation of Xbox hardware will see the Series S, their best-selling SKU this generation, being a dockable or handheld device. The first issue with that "dream" is the simple fact that the Series S has sold better than the Series X due to its far lower price point. Yes, Microsoft's price increases have eroded that advantage, with the Series S now priced about the same as the Digital Only PS5. Nonetheless, for years, it was outselling the Series X because it was the cheapest next-generation console on the market. Portable and dockable hardware doesn't come cheap, so unless this is the best hardware on that front we have ever seen, how is this a recipe for success? Second, as exciting as the Steam Deck, Legion Go, and pre-Xbox ROG Ally are, they haven't had as much market penetration as you'd think. As Stephen Totilo has mused, the Steam Deck is the best-selling of these, and it has likely yet to cross the 5 million units sold mark; handheld PC gaming devices, across all brands, have never sold more than three million units in a fiscal year. The Series X/S, for all its faults, has sold far better than that, and those numbers are hardly enough to sustain a console ecosystem.

Any yet, they trudge on. Considering Xbox's video game investments are now netting Microsoft billions, it's impossible to lament the fall of a titan as some did with Sega. Likewise, someway, somehow, you will see that green logo wherever you do your gaming.