Substantial industry rumors (like Hi-Fi Rush and potentially other Xbox titles coming to PS5/Switch revealed via datamining) and a recent Xbox tweet point toward the potential pivot of Microsoft's Xbox brand away from producing consoles and toward third party development. The post from the Xbox account details a podcast in two days with "updates on the Xbox business," which doesn't sound very promising.
While the future of Xbox consoles may seem up in the air, Microsoft seems determined to sell games from all the publishers they've bought up at any cost. As observed in an article from The Verge, Microsoft hasn't seen nearly the projected growth in Game Pass subscriptions across platforms (when it still reported the number). The latest official number given is 25 million Game Pass subscribers in 2022— achieving a 28% growth rate instead of a targeted 73% growth rate.
