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Tom's Guide
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
5 reasons I still love my Xbox — even if the hardware is 'dead'
Laura Fryer, one of Xbox's founding members, recently declared that "Xbox hardware is dead." As someone who helped create the original Xbox and produced Gears of War, her words carry weight. She argues that Microsoft is slowly exiting the hardware business, pushing everyone toward Game Pass while partnerships like the ROG Ally Xbox edition signal a retreat from traditional consoles. I get it. The writing seems to be on the wall, and Microsoft's strategy does appear focused on services over hardware. But here's the thing — I still love my Xbox, and I'm not ready to declare its hardware dead just yet. While the future might be uncertain, there are compelling reasons why my Xbox remains an essential part of my gaming setup, regardless of what corporate strategies suggest. Yes, Microsoft wants everyone on Game Pass, and Fryer acknowledges the service has "a lot of value." That's an understatement. Game Pass has fundamentally changed how I discover and play games. Instead of agonizing over $70 purchases, I can try dozens of games I'd never have risked buying. I've discovered indie gems, played day-one releases of major titles, and revisited classics all for one monthly fee. The service makes gaming feel more experimental and less precious. When I'm not invested financially in each individual game, I'm more willing to try different genres, give weird indie titles a shot, or jump into multiplayer games with friends. Whether this is Microsoft's master plan or not, the end result is that I'm playing more diverse games than ever before, and that's genuinely valuable regardless of hardware politics. Microsoft's push toward "Xbox Anywhere" might feel like marketing fluff, but the practical benefits are real. I can start a game on my Xbox, continue it on my PC, and even pick it up on my phone through cloud gaming. My saves sync automatically, my achievements carry over, and my friends list spans every device I own. This isn't theoretical convenience, it's something I use regularly. When someone else wants the TV, I can seamlessly switch to my laptop. When I'm traveling, I can continue my progress through cloud gaming. The ecosystem integration that Microsoft has built works so well that going back to platform-locked gaming feels antiquated. Even if the Xbox hardware disappears tomorrow, this foundation makes the platform valuable. Voted the best budget headset in our gaming headsets buying guide, the Arctis 1 Wireless costs less than $100 boasts excellent wireless connectivity, and sound quality is way better than you'd expect at this price. Hardware might be "dead" according to industry insiders, but the Xbox controller represents decades of refinement that's hard to replicate. The build quality, ergonomics, and button layout feel perfect after years of iteration. The triggers have just the right resistance, the analog sticks hit the sweet spot between precision and comfort, and the overall weight distribution feels natural during long gaming sessions. More importantly, Xbox controller compatibility extends far beyond Xbox consoles. It works seamlessly with PC games, cloud gaming services, and even mobile gaming. If Microsoft's future really is hardware-agnostic, then perfecting the controller was smart long-term thinking. A sophisticated yet affordable pad that has rear paddles, hall effect sensors and hair triggers and ll for less than $50. It looks fantastic and has a long cable to accommodate for couchplay. Its lightweight design also feels great. While other platforms focus on remasters and re-releases, Xbox has quietly built the most comprehensive backward compatibility program in gaming. I can play original Xbox games from 2001 on my current console, often with enhanced performance and visual improvements. My digital library stretches back over two decades, and it all works on current hardware. This backward compatibility represents real value that transcends hardware generations. Even if Microsoft moves away from traditional consoles, they've demonstrated a commitment to preserving gaming history that makes me confident my game library will remain accessible. That's not something you can say about every platform, and it makes my Xbox feel less like a disposable device and more like a long-term investment. Despite all the industry drama and strategic pivots, my Xbox still does what I bought it for: it plays games really well. Load times are fast, performance is consistent, and the user interface gets out of the way. I can jump into multiplayer matches quickly, browse my massive Game Pass library efficiently, and switch between games without frustration. Whether Microsoft views Xbox as a hardware business or a services business doesn't change the fact that my current console provides an excellent gaming experience. The games look great, run smoothly, and the overall system feels polished and responsive. Until that changes, I'm not particularly concerned about corporate strategy or industry predictions. Laura Fryer might be right about Xbox hardware's long-term prospects, and Microsoft's shift toward services over consoles seems undeniable. But from where I'm sitting, my Xbox continues to provide exceptional value through Game Pass, seamless ecosystem integration, and a gaming experience that works exactly as advertised. Maybe the future of Xbox doesn't include dedicated hardware. Maybe we're all heading toward a streaming-first, device-agnostic gaming world. But right now, in 2025, my Xbox delivers on its promises. Whether that makes me nostalgic for a dying platform or an early adopter of Microsoft's real vision, I honestly don't care. I'm having too much fun gaming to worry about it.
Geek Culture
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
Founding Xbox Member Says Company's Hardware Ambitions Are "Dead"
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. game pass ROG Xbox Ally Xbox
Gizmodo
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Xbox Needs to Get Weirder or Die Trying
Xbox is in a weird place right now, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. In fact, people with more important opinions on the subject than myself seem to agree: if Microsoft doesn't get its shit together on hardware, the box as we know it is cooked. Laura Fryer, the former director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group for the original Xbox project back in May 2000 and former executive producer for Microsoft Games Studios up until the Xbox 360 days, put it bluntly in a recent video. '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,' Fryer said in a video on YouTube. '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.' The partnership that Fryer is referring to is, of course, the Xbox and Asus team-up that will see the release of the ROG Xbox Ally handheld that was announced at Computex earlier this month. The criticism from within the games industry and fans is that Microsoft didn't design the handheld device, instead outsourcing the work to Asus, which modified its existing ROG Ally X handheld PCs, and then slapped Xbox software onto it. Was it laziness on Microsoft and Xbox's part? Or is it afraid to commit to Xbox hardware? Ouch. As rough as those words may be, it's hard not to agree. Out of the gate, Xbox's current generation of consoles, the Series S and X, were all but trounced by Sony and the PS5, the latter of which snatched a commanding 70 percent of the market share in the first five years of both consoles' lives. There are a lot of reasons for that, and arguably the biggest is that PlayStation had the exclusive titles that made people actually want to buy a console. But pinning it on game exclusives doesn't paint the full picture. Part of the problem is that Xbox, for all its past Gamer with a capital 'G' glory, got boring. So yes, Xbox is in a weird place right now, but people still want consoles, which means it's time for them to get even weirder—yes, I'm talking hardware, too. First, let's start with the boring box that Xbox houses all of that X in. It sucks. It's a snooze that makes year-over-year smartphone design feel innovative. Sure, it's sterile and can mesh with your new-build city-dwelling decor, but it's also—on the downside—half-assed. If you're selling people hardware that plays games, they ought to know that it's a console and not a VCR you forgot to sell in 1997. Say what you will about the PS5 (it's ugly; that's the only correct opinion), but Sony took a swing with it. It made sure that everyone who bought one felt like they were buying a console, and like it or not, you eat with your eyes. If you want to give people a reason to buy your console, maybe try giving them a reason. Nintendo did that with the Switch in 2017, and as far as I can tell, that's going (checks watch) really f*cking well. Speaking of the Switch, Xbox should probably find a way to differentiate its hardware functionality-wise. As dominant as the PS5 has been in the console business, it's still fundamentally the same machine as the Xbox. That's a shame, considering Xbox had ample opportunities to bring hardware in exciting new directions over the years. Not to be the Kinect guy, but damn did Microsoft bungle XR big time—and then again, it bungled XR with the HoloLens. In the multiverse, there's a timeline where Xbox used its experiments with XR via the Kinect and HoloLens to snatch value from the trembling hands of Sony and Meta's Quest headsets. That is not this timeline, as we all know, but if it really wants to give Xbox a future worth financing, maybe there's still room to take those more daring expeditions into gaming and refresh them for today's age. The last thing Xbox needs to do to get weird is a little more nebulous—it needs a new identity. Sure, Game Pass has been a ray of light in an otherwise dim outlook for Xbox, but turning the consoles into subscription machines doesn't exactly scream, 'We see you gamers, and we hear you.' Xbox can still continue to sell Game Pass subscriptions, don't get me wrong—I love Game Pass, and being able to stream games on devices like the Quest 3 feels like a revelation to me. But the emphasis on Xbox being the thing that gets you to the thing makes hardware feel like an afterthought. Gaming on a console that you've spent $500 on should feel native; it should feel complete; it should feel like an Xbox, not a PC. That goes back to game exclusives, partly. Sony has had no issues getting weird with its exclusives—Death Stranding, for example, is one of the weirdest games you can play, and now Death Stranding 2 is a PS5 exclusive, which is apparently devastating some gamers. Sucks for them, but it's kind of a huge win for PlayStation. It's also more proof that Xbox doesn't need to be the Netflix of gaming; it needs weird, magnetic titles that make its console feel experiential. As you may have gathered, this would all be kind of a huge shift for Xbox, and it's debatable whether Microsoft even has the will to make any of it work. I know the last few years have been lackluster for Xbox, but people still want consoles, and the recent success of the Switch 2 all but proves that. Nintendo, for its part, didn't earn that success the easy way. It took a gamble with the Switch by redefining its hardware, pivoting inward towards games, and ended up releasing the defining console of our generation. That's all to say, the ball is in your court, Microsoft. Are you going to go out with a bland, forgettable box? Or get weird and, at the very least, go down swinging?
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Pick Your Lane': Former Xbox Execs Question Its Current Strategy
Xbox The industry is bracing for a number of reported, upcoming Xbox layoffs, coming in the wake of enormous transformations for the brand, many of which may not be panning out as anticipated. All these changes and the current state of Xbox have caused a few former executives to chime in about the situation. The first is Laura Fryer, who posted a 13-minute video titled 'The Future of Xbox' talking about the issues. Fryer is a former Xbox executive and part of the team that made the original Xbox console. Here's what she said about hardware specifically: 'It's one year from the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, and it looks like they're abandoning pretty much everything that made the Xbox brand great in the first place,' said Fryer. 'Let's start with the handheld announcement. I've seen mixed reactions and that has me really puzzled because I don't see any reason why anyone would buy this piece of hardware. Just like the original Xbox, it's built on Windows, a slimmed-down version of Windows, but it's still Windows. So, this isn't something new.' 'There is literally no reason to buy this handheld. 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. The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass.' FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Within a day, the former corporate VP of Xbox and ex-Activision Blizzard head Mike Ybarra also chimed in on Twitter: "Tough to see Xbox confused about who it is and what it should be. Some great people there still. They have to figure out what needs to change …. and fast. I'm a big fan and will always bleed green. Cheering the team on from the sidelines. Pick your lane and stick to it." Then, responding to a fan about the 'everything is an Xbox' strategy: 'You're drinking the Kool-Aid. You ask anyone on the street what Xbox is and 99% of the time they say a video game console. That is the identity. Period.' Even current Xbox executives like Phil Spencer have said that Xbox has lost the console war, which is why they're pursuing these new avenues of cross-platform game distribution, cloud streaming and a fundamental push of Xbox Game Pass. But from the outside, it's easy to see all the holes in this, including the ones mentioned by Fryer and Ybarra. Microsoft has started branding non-Xbox hardware as Xbox-adjacent, like the handheld, and now a recent, temporary VR partnership. They rely on pushing the cloud streaming concept to other devices. They have jacked up prices of Xboxes so high in the wake of tariffs that it's almost like they don't want to move hardware. They maintain they will still make another console generation after this one and have already been teasing it, but other aspects of this strategy, giving most or all first-party games to PlayStation and pushing Game Pass eternally which is clearly running into a subscription ceiling, resulting in major problems that are easy to spot. But it's even more pointed if this is something if even former executives are calling this out. Hopefully these imminent layoffs are not going to be as bad as predicted, and it's clear something needs to change. Again. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Metro
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Xbox hardware ‘is dead' says former Microsoft exec in scathing YouTube video
One of the original Xbox team members has criticised the current state of Microsoft and how it seems to be abandoning the console market. When Microsoft announced it would start bringing Xbox exclusives to PlayStation and Nintendo platforms, including older games like Gears Of War, many wondered if this meant the company would exit the hardware business entirely. Since then, sales of the Xbox Series X/S have only worsened and, in 2023, Microsoft admitted it had lost the console war to PlayStation. However, despite this, Microsoft remains committed to new hardware and is promising multiple Xbox consoles for the next generation. There's also the new handheld Microsoft has partnered with Asus on – the ROG Xbox Ally – but former Xbox executive, Laura Fryer believes this handheld's existence is the precursor to a 'slow exit' from the hardware business and proof that Xbox hardware 'is dead.' Fryer was one of the first members of Microsoft Gaming Studios and the team that worked on the original Xbox, having joined the company in 2000. She would eventually become an executive producer during the Xbox 360 era, before leaving to join Warner Bros. in 2009 and later Epic Games in 2012. She appears to have retired from the games industry since then but she currently runs a YouTube channel to discuss gaming and provide her own insight. In her latest video about the future of the Xbox brand, Fryer doesn't pull her punches. She criticises many of Microsoft's business decisions in recent years, such as the closure of Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks and the decision to start charging $80 for certain games in the US. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Regarding Microsoft's current Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, which is built around the idea of being able to access Xbox games on any platform, Fryer believes this is a sign that the company is putting all its focus on driving more customers to the Xbox Game Pass service and letting Asus handle the hardware side of things. 'This wasn't surprising. Hardware is expensive to make. It's much easier to slap an Xbox sticker on an existing piece of hardware and call it a day,' says Fryer, referencing how the ROG Xbox Ally is really no different to the current ROG Ally already on the market. She doesn't mention the rumour of Microsoft abandoning plans for its own custom handheld device, to focus on its 'software platform.' If true, this would back up her argument, although Microsoft's most recent next gen announcement already seems to counter that rumour, insisting its 'portfolio of devices' will include handhelds. 'If you don't care about console sales of exclusive games anymore, why bother innovating in hardware?' Fryer continues, adding that the whole Xbox Play Anywhere push is pure marketing with 'no substance' and Microsoft's history of pivoting means it could very well change its mind in the future. Fryer also believes there's no good reason to invest in the ROG Xbox Ally since it has no exclusive games to call its own, it forces customers into using Windows 11 (which she admits she's biased against), and despite Microsoft's slogan of being able to play all your games anywhere, the device only runs native PC games. Fryer is clearly very upset at how Microsoft has changed over the years and how 'it looks like they're abandoning pretty much everything that made the Xbox brand great in the first place.' Fryer continues, '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. More Trending 'I'm sad because from my perspective, it looks like Xbox has no desire or literally can't ship hardware anymore. So this [Asus] partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely. Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead.' Again, Microsoft has confirmed plans for more Xbox consoles, though little has been shared about them aside from promises of 'deeper visual quality, immersive gameplay, and AI-powered experiences.' The new consoles will also be backwards compatible with existing Xbox libraries and there could be hints of them supporting third party storefronts like Steam and the Epic Games Store (something it's already bringing to the Xbox PC app later this year). However, these all sound like conveniences for established Xbox customers. Sony's PlayStation 6, while similarly nebulous, will likely be just as powerful and presumably continue to receive ports of Xbox games, so the question remains: why would anyone who's not already bought into the Xbox ecosystem jump ship? Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Xbox layoffs could put 2,000 video game developers out of work, says insider MORE: Xbox VR headset officially announced and it's much more expensive than normal MORE: The 20-year-old Xbox 360 just got an update and it was actually kind of worth it
