It’s been a tough few years for the Xbox brand. The early going of its console lacked the big haymaker titles to make its platform shine as bright as its competitors. Despite being an excellent, and cheap, entry point for the current generation, the Xbox Series S has been blamed by gamers and developers for holding back the technical advancement of games. And the slow unraveling of what it means to be an Xbox owner, diluted by Microsoft’s pivot to a subscription-based business mode and multiplatform releases, has burned some extremely online parts of the fanbase.
Amid the declining sales and its seemingly aimless search for an identity among the big three console makers, Xbox brought the heat. And if you can separate the unpopular decisions of its top brass from what it's actually like to be part of the Xbox ecosystem, it's clear that the company is finally hitting its stride. And there was no clearer evidence of that than this week’s Xbox Developer Direct.
