Xbox Says It’s Still Committed To Releasing New Consoles In The Future

Xbox has confirmed its commitment to developing future consoles, quashing rumours that the gaming company would transition to third-party and cloud gaming services in the future.

It’s no secret that Xbox has had a confusing and turbulent few years. Despite that, the gaming company has revealed that it still intends to develop new consoles in the future.

According to a report from Windows Central, Microsoft has responded to rumours that the company was planning to move its gaming focus to Xbox Cloud Gaming and third-party publishing.

In response to rumours about this shift in strategy, Microsoft would respond by saying, “We are actively investing in our future first-party consoles and devices designed, engineered and built by Xbox. For more details, the community can revisit our agreement announcement with AMD.”

Speculation for the direction of Xbox as a company ramped up last year, as it started its ad campaign declaring “everything is an Xbox”. The campaign sought to inform gamers that anyone could play Xbox games across a variety of devices and screens.

This would later come into play earlier this year, when Xbox announced its new handheld console, the Xbox ROG Ally X. Made in partnership with hardware brand ROG, the latest handheld boasts some impressive specs that should make it a solid competitor to the recently released Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam Deck. 

The key difference, of course, is Game Pass and access to Windows 11, which allows gamers to access their Steam library on the console and enjoy its extensive library of games available on Game Pass.

However, the ROG branding caused some confusion. Instead of the console being directly listed as an “Xbox” handheld, the collab branding led some to believe these third-party collabs would be the future for the brand.

Following the controversial increase in Xbox Game Pass prices across its several tiers, fans were speculating on whether these new increases were a result of a shifting strategy for the company.

In June, Xbox announced a partnership with chip maker AMD, sharing that they would be co-engineering their next-generation Xbox consoles.

The following month, Microsoft would lay off an estimated 9000 employees. This would be the second round of layoffs the company would face this year, and the largest round of layoffs hitting the company in more than two years.

Rumours have been circulating that a new next-generation Xbox is set to release sometime in 2027, and will be a first-party release. So, we should hopefully see those AMD-looking seeds planted by the company bear fruit sometime that year.