Pick up almost any device with a screen, and Xbox will tell you it's an Xbox. With the platform owner looking to invest more in cloud gaming and devices streaming games from a Game Pass library, you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on a console anymore. At least, that's the gist of the company's recent marketing campaigns.
Someone who isn't a fan is ex-Blizzard president Mike Ybarra. Over on Twitter/X, Ybarra thinks Microsoft should ditch the campaign as a whole, as it doesn't put games at the front and centre of the strategy. "Wrong idea, wrong time. Xbox is about games - games always rule the world," he wrote. "If they don't have parity between the console and any other 'device,' then it's just not an Xbox. Confusing - whoever came up with this clearly doesn't play games."
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Xbox consoles, PCs, Meta Quest headsets, handhelds, smart TVs, mobile phones, the recently releases ASUS Xbox ROG Ally. They all let you dive into your Game Pass library, but that hasn't helped critics feel more at ease about the future of Xbox. As exclusives seem a thing of the past and Game Pass remains very much in the future of Xbox's thinking, some fans struggle to believe Sarah Bond's words about hardware being in the plans ahead.