Rumor: Microsoft Held Internal Meeting Over Xbox Console Future

Highlights

• Microsoft reportedly reassured employees that it will continue to make Xbox consoles.
• The pledge is said to have been offered by Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at an internal townhall meeting with employees.
• Spencer previously promised a gaming strategy “business update” on the week of February 12. Microsoft will plausibly want to repeat the purported hardware assurances publicly at the upcoming event.

Microsoft has reportedly held an internal townhall meeting with employees that saw the company pledge it will keep making Xbox consoles. The purported event is said to have been held mere days after the emergence of reports that the company is planning to sacrifice some Xbox console exclusives in order to embrace multi-platform publishing.

The widely reported news of the Xbox multi-platform push elicited predominantly surprised reactions from both the company’s fandom and non-Xbox gamers. Some fans went as far as to speculate that Microsoft is planning to “pull a Sega,” referring to the historic occasion on which the Japanese gaming giant exited the console business in 2001 after its then-two-year-old Dreamcast was deemed a commercial failure. According to such opinions, a scenario in which the Xbox catalog went multi-platform would severely undermine the value of owning an Xbox system, making it a likely indicator of Microsoft exiting the console business altogether.

Microsoft Reportedly Told Employees Xbox Won’t Pull a Sega

Microsoft appears to disagree with that sentiment even though it has so far done little to dispel the multi-platform publishing rumors. That’s suggested by a recent report from journalist Shannon Liao, which states that the company held an internal townhall meeting that saw Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer personally assure employees the tech giant will keep making Xbox hardware. The executive specifically said that Xbox consoles will continue to play part in Microsoft’s multi-device gaming strategy, as per the same source.

The townhall meeting is said to have taken place on Tuesday, February 6, just 24 hours after Spencer publicly responded to the Xbox multi-platform drama. That move saw the executive announce an event meant to offer a “business update” on Microsoft’s gaming strategy. While the exact date of the happening is still up in the air, Spencer said the event is to take place on the week of February 12, so presumably no later than the end of the work week on February 16. Assuming the executive indeed made the aforementioned console assurances to employees, it is plausible Microsoft will want to repeat them publicly at the upcoming event.

New Xbox Console Is Already Rumored To Be in Development

The newly emerged report is consistent with the recent insider claims about Microsoft’s gaming hardware plans. The latest such account surfaced earlier this week with one prominent leaker offering an update on the next-gen Xbox console, claiming that the system is very much in the pipeline but lagging behind the development of its PlayStation rival. The source alleged that this state of affairs stems from a hold-up in Microsoft’s negotiations with AMD over the upcoming console’s custom CPU.

The notion of Xbox games going multi-platform hence doesn’t appear to have any implications for the immediate future of Microsoft’s gaming hardware ambitions. It might not even cause a radical shift on the software side of things, as underlined by Ubisoft’s recent insistence that a multi-platform Xbox library wouldn’t be a big deal.