Let me preface this entire article by saying that considering all we know of Xbox’s current plans and how Phil Spencer and co are speaking publicly,that I give this a 0% chance of actually happening. Having said that, it’s what I would do.

Xbox as a company in 2024 has all the ingredients to be a major player in every way. A vast portfolio of IPs and studios. A solid understanding of hardware, a subscription service that is enticing for consumers, and the backing of the richest company in the world. But yet this generation they have still significantly lagged behind PlayStation in essentially every way.

Their solution seems to be to go in an entirely different direction. They are already fully on PC and are moving further and further away from exclusives as they have already announced 4 games going to PlayStation. Depending on who you choose to believe, somewhere between nothing else and everything else is sure to follow. They want their games everywhere while still having their hardware. They want any platform store (i.e. Steam and Epic) on their hardware as well as their own. It’s ambitious for sure, and definitely changes the mold of what to expect from a console platform, but is it the right one?

Those that believe it is will point to PlayStation’s profit margins dwindling and their move to putting more games on PC as proof that it is needed. Those that believe it isn’t will point to Xbox’s own numbers that are stagnant and losing more and more ground on the competition by the day. And while I personally would be happy to see more and more players enjoy games as them being exclusive to Xbox does nothing for my life, exclusivity drives competition in all forms of entertainment. Xbox can try to change that,but I’m not sure they can.

So I personally think for the sake of business they need to go back to the 360 days and launch next gen ahead of schedule. PlayStation is supposedly releasing a mid-gen refresh later this year. Fans are pointing out that doing this right around the Grand Theft Auto VI launch would give PlayStation a massive boost,and it likely will.

But what if Xbox jumped the gun and launched a next gen console in 2025,right alongside GTA VI? Partner that with a giant marketing plan around Call Of Duty which they now own. Suddenly Xbox has a head start on next gen with the best console on the market with arguably the 2 biggest console sellers in the world alongside one or 2 major first party exclusives. If you are Xbox does that not set you up for success immediately and begin to change your fortunes? Maybe line up a new major update to something like Minecraft as well? And with how many studios they now have, surely it could be sustained success.

I know some will come here and say that this is the old way of thinking and the industry is changing and Xbox is just adapting first. And all of that is/may likely be true. But it could also blow up in their faces. Despite what fanboys want to say, more competition is good for the industry and no one should want Xbox to fail,just like no one should be rooting for PlayStation or Nintendo to.

I doubt we ever actually go back to the 360 days of Xbox being neck and neck with PlayStation and Nintendo, but with everything they now have at their disposal, I wish they would at least try.