In a year where PlayStation said to expect a down year, fans have gotten The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Rise of The Ronin, and Stellar Blade all before May. Meanwhile, over at Microsoft, since the release of the wildly popular Palworld, the company only seems interested in destroying any momentum and goodwill it might have built. Just a few weeks from what should be seen as Xbox’s first true first-party exclusive since the company started buying up the industry, Hellblade 2 is causing more surprise than excitement around the gaming community as we all learn it’s so close to release. On top of that, with the recent closures of studios Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) and Arkane Austin (Dishonored), rather than wondering how great Hellblade 2 might be, all speculation has turned to rather developer Ninja Theory will still be around a year from now. 

While I have no interest in predicting which of Xbox’s talented studios will be shut down by their evil corporate overlords, I do think it’s important to recognize that the Xbox that so many people believed in and, in my case, hoped to be proven wrong by, no longer exists. During an interview with Kinda Funny in 2023, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, said, “When a team like Rare wants to do Sea of Thieves, when a team like Obsidian wants to do Grounded, and Tango wants to go do Hi-Fi [Rush] when everyone probably thought they were doing The Evil Within 3. I want to give the teams the creative platform to go an push their ability, push their aspirations.” Now that it has been made more than apparent that pushing your aspirations at Xbox is okay as long as your game puts up the types of numbers that a Call of Duty might put out, I think it’s time to look at what we should expect to see at the Xbox Showcase on June 9. Maybe I’m wrong, but with the company hyping up the reveal of the new Call of Duty at the end of the showcase, I expect the event to tell a sad story. One half being what Xbox promised gamers they would become and the other half of the show being what they always intended to be.

Doom: Year Zero

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Avowed

Ara: History Untold

Towerborne

Replaced

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Age of Mythology Retold

Fable

State of Decay 3

Everwild

Call of Duty

With the recent closure of Tango Gameworks, the question has to be asked: Will Xbox continue housing talented studios like Banner Saga developer Stoic Studio to make more titles like Towerborne, or will Xbox become the type of publisher desperate for that one big hit willing to throw away everything in hopes of finding it? They already own Call of Duty. If that’s not enough for the company’s shareholders, then the future of Xbox being one that’s constantly on the hunt for its own Fortnite sounds bleak. 

Microsoft/Xbox is a company that I’ve been unsure of for a while now, and with everything that’s gone on, my concerns seem to be just. That said, when Starfield was released, I was more than willing to sign up for Game Pass, but once I was done with the game, I unsubscribed and haven’t looked back since. Is that the future of Game Pass and Xbox as a whole? Is it something gamers look into every 6 months and then quickly forget about? At this point, I’d prefer that Xbox start putting more of their games on other platforms so they’ll get the attention they deserve. If a game like State of Decay 3 launches on PlayStation, I won’t have to worry about Microsoft shutting down studio Undead Labs.

No matter what happens next for Xbox, one thing is sure: The image the company once tried to harbor with retro t-shirts and speeches filled with the phrase “for the players” is dead. Whether we see Phil Spencer at the June event or not, there’s nothing he or the company can say or do that will regain gamers’ trust. While the majority of the gaming public may not know about the layoffs or even know that a studio like Tango Gameworks even existed, the people who care about this story were heartbroken by the layoffs and closures. The art created by these developers means so much to so many. The idea that Xbox went on a spending spree only to realize a couple years later that you can’t spend 100 billion dollars without consequence is beyond frustrating. I’ve tried to remain optimistic about the industry I love, but once you realize that the ones with the most power are the biggest buffoons you’ll ever meet, my optimism starts to wane. With all this said, the end of May and early parts of June will bring exciting announcements about some fantastic games, both big and small. The industry needs our support more than ever, so make sure you keep an eye out for everything that’s soon to be announced and shown off.