2025 was the year that Xbox died

Do you want to see a corpse? I present to you the Xbox. After a timid launch at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the Xbox Series quickly lost the fight against the PlayStation 5. Microsoft just couldn’t come up with compelling enough games, despite a few huge acquisitionswhile Sony relied on its goodwill from the PS4 era and a handful of desirable exclusives. As prices rose due to supply chain issues and the Trump administration’s volatile tariff system, there were even fewer reasons to get an Xbox (even the cheapest Series S). When I reviewed the Series X last yearit was clear that he had never lived up to his potential. Any sane person would be better off buying a PlayStation 5.

Xbox didn’t enter 2025 in great shape, and it’s coming out of the year looking for help, like a Arc Raider player desperate for a revival after being eliminated. Microsoft canceled on Perfect dark restart And Always wildtwo of the most interesting games on its weak upcoming slate. The company brought titles like Forza Horizon 5 to the PlayStation 5prompting Engadget deputy editor Nathan Ingraham to say he no longer needed an Xbox.

Things are even worse this year, Microsoft has increased its prices across the boardwith the Xbox Series S starting at $400 and the cheapest Series X at $600. And slow sales prompted Costco to stop selling Xbox consoles entirely. Microsoft didn’t even try to promote the systems during Black Friday: why bother making sales if no one is buying the hardware in the first place?

Even Game Pass, which was once renowned as one of the best deals in gaming, Its price has almost doubled over the past year, reaching up to $30 per month (or $360 per year) for the Ultimate tier. Of course, Microsoft has tried to add more value to its cheaper Game Pass tiers, and finally upgraded its cloud streaming platformbut the lack of must-have and consistent exclusive titles has devalued the service (and Xbox as a whole). Declared And South of midnight were among the rare exclusive highlights, but these will come to PS5 and Switch 2 next year. There is no word on Declared reaching other consoles yet, but given Microsoft’s current trajectory (and the fact that this is a truly great game), I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes available elsewhere.

There was a chance for Microsoft to reinvigorate the Xbox brand with the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally and Ally gaming handhelds, but introductory prices of $600 and $1,000 put them out of reach for most gamers. It also doesn’t help that Windows still isn’t well optimized for handheld devices with touchscreens, nor are these systems compatible with older Xbox titles like consoles. At the very least, Microsoft now has a foot in the handheld. But a future portable Xbox console should be significantly cheaper to compete with consoles like the Steam bridgewhich starts at $400 (and is often on sale for much less).

And speaking of Valve, the company Recently announced Steam Machine also stole a lot of potential thunder from Xbox. The Steam Machine is essentially a small gaming desktop for your TV, running the Steam Deck’s SteamOS. This platform is a Linux distribution optimized to emulate Windows titles. But unlike an Xbox console, it is in no way closed. You are free to install whatever you want on a Steam machine, even Windows!

While we haven’t seen the Steam Machine in action yet, the Steam Deck’s excellent performance and game compatibility makes me think its desktop sibling could be truly compelling for console gamers looking for something new. And it will likely directly compete with the next Xbox, which is expected to arrive in 2027 as a PC in a TV-compatible case (according to Windows Central Jez Corden). Microsoft’s recent partnership agreement with AMD also hints at a more PC-like experience – Xbox president Sarah Bond noted that the Xbox team “works closely with the Windows team to ensure Windows is the number one platform for gaming.”

It’s worth remembering that only one generation of Xbox – the Xbox 360 – was successful enough to truly rival Sony’s PlayStation. The original Xbox would have cost Microsoft $4 billion over a four-year period, leading the company to quickly jump ship and move on to its successor. The Xbox 360 was truly innovative, thanks to Xbox Live and smarter online integration, and it had good third-party support. By comparison, Sony’s PlayStation 3 cost $100-$200 more than the Xbox 360 at launch, its online support was much worse, and developers struggled with programming.

Unfortunately, Microsoft wasted most of its goodwill with the Xbox One. This console was announced for the first time as an “always online” device with restrictive DRM features that limited how you could share and sell games; it came with a Kinect camera that could potentially monitor you; and at $499, it was $100 more than the PlayStation 4. Microsoft quickly canceled many of its DRM-heavy projects for the Xbox One, but at this point the damage was done. Sony ultimately sold more than twice as many PS4 units as the entire Xbox One family (which included the cheaper One S And One X more powerful), according to data from Ampère Research.

Things seem worse this generation: the Xbox Series S and X reportedly only sold around 33 million units in July, according to Statista estimateswhile Sony confirmed that it has sold 84.2 million PS5s from November. If this trend continues (and it doesn’t look like Xbox sales are increasing anytime soon), Sony could end up selling three times as many consoles this generation as Microsoft. Xbox sales have been so slow that the family-focused Nex Playground managed to surpass it in November, according to Circana data.

Given the Xbox’s inability to compete with the PlayStation 5, it’s no wonder Microsoft could change things entirely for his next system. Its partnership with AMD could easily lead to new handhelds, and it also gives Microsoft a head start in producing a compact and powerful Xbox PC. After all, why should the company continue to try to take on Sony’s closed PlayStation platform? Why shouldn’t Microsoft embrace its PC roots and give us a gaming PC under our TVs? The company has already committed to bringing new Xbox games to PC immediately, so the line between the two has already blurred.

It may be a risk, but moving to PC proves that there’s still life in the Xbox brand. And importantly, it’s also something Sony can’t easily replicate.