Laura Fryer, one of the original founding members of Xbox, has reflected on her time with the company and lamented its current roadmap, claiming that its hardware ambitions are “dead”.
In the latest video on her YouTube channel titled “The Future of Xbox”, Fryer spoke on her years at the company shipping the original 2001 Xbox console and 2005’s Xbox 360, and reflected on Xbox’s latest hardware collaboration, the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally gaming handheld, questioning the appeal of the device and what this means for the future of the company.
“There is literally no reason to buy this handheld,” she remarked, “Obviously, as one of the founding members of the Xbox team, I’m not pleased with where things are today. I don’t love watching all of the value that I helped create slowly get eroded away. I’m sad because, from my perspective, it looks like Xbox has no desire – or literally can’t – ship hardware anymore.”
“So, this partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely. Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead.”
Fryer then touched upon Xbox’s current focus, its Game Pass subscription service, which provides gamers with an extensive library of titles for a monthly fee. Xbox has seemingly doubled down on this service, with recent big-name releases like Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and even highly anticipated upcoming titles like Ninja Gaiden 4 or Wuchang: Fallen Feathers due out day one on Game Pass.
“Maybe it will work,” Fryer added, questioning what the company’s long-term strategy is, “Xbox has a deep portfolio… they can continue to outsource that work to external companies and make a lot of money releasing their older games – older games from an era when Xbox knew how to build them. But what is the long-term plan? Where are the new hits? What will make people care about the Xbox 25 years from now?”
“Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, and I’m sure that they will have some big announcements and plans for honouring the milestone. Maybe next year is the year. Maybe next year is the year that the fog will clear, and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…”
And wait and see we shall, as the future of Xbox isn’t looking too bright at the moment, with the company slowly losing console game exclusives in favour of moving to a multiplatform format, such as releasing its games on the Nintendo Switch 2, further reducing the appeal of buying an Xbox especially considering recent price hikes for its consoles and games.
True to Fryer’s words, Xbox seems to be focused on hardware collaborations at the moment rather than first-party devices, as apart from the ROG Xbox Ally, the company also recently released the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition VR headset, so it remains to be seen if this will be their strategy moving forward, or if Xbox is just biding time until the next major console announcement.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
