Xbox 2026: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
2026 has been a strange year for Xbox. As things stand, they’re probably THE most consumer-friendly console on the market, compared to Switch and PlayStation, which are ruled with an iron fist by their respective companies. New leadership, real pro-consumer moves, genuine wins. And they still keep finding ways to shoot themselves in the foot.
The thing is, I don’t think those two halves are separate. I think they’re the same problem.
At a glance:
- Xbox is genuinely the most consumer-friendly console right now. New leadership, a cheaper Game Pass, digital ownership on physical discs. Credit where it’s due, and Sony isn’t close.
- And the games still aren’t landing. Campaign Evolved got outplayed by a 2019 collection, Halo Studios got gutted, and Bethesda has produced nothing of note in a decade. E-Day and FH6 are the exceptions, not the rule.
- The two halves might be the same problem. When everything goes straight into a cheap subscription, nobody has to make something worth $70 anymore. The ads patent and the 15-hour cloud gaming cap are what that bill looks like.
Ironic timing, I know, since Gears of War: E-Day reviews just dropped, and everyone seems to love it. But you know what? I’m glad. Xbox deserves this win. I did an article like this for PlayStation a few weeks back, so it’s only right I return the favor. And what better place to start than the top.
Asha Sharma
Earlier this year, Asha Sharma was appointed as the head of Xbox, replacing Phil Spencer. And she immediately made decisions that won people over. Brought back the classic green “X” logo, got rid of the “everything is a Xbox” campaign, and dropped the price of Game Pass back to 22$/Month after it climbed to 30$/month. And then she committed to getting rid of layers upon layers of middle management plaguing many studios to allow for faster work. She even lit a fire under Bethesda because, God, it has been a while since Bethesda gave us anything good.
All very good things, but the key issue is that this is all pointless if Xbox is still unable to put out good games even after doing all this.
Microsoft Patents a system to serve ads during “downtime” in games
I am almost certain this is for the free tier of cloud gaming. But this is an extremely dangerous slippery slope. The only thing protecting us from full-on ads in-game is STEAM. Steam has a rule that prevents devs from putting blatant pop-up ads into their games. And of course, losing out on Steam means losing out on a good chunk of PC players. Sure, they’ll say it is only for Cloud Gaming, but how long will that last? How long till they start injecting ads into paid games? Microtransactions started the same way until they became an industry-wide plague. Which haunts us to this day, by the way.
Physical copies of Xbox games automatically give you Digital Ownership
In a market as “anti-consumer rights” as gaming, this is a surprising move towards actual ownership. You can share the physical copy around, and the digital ownership will just get transferred to the new console. And you get all the benefits of digital ownership, like Play Anywhere. So you don’t have to buy something from the Xbox Store. You could buy a discounted physical disk or borrow one from your friend. And they added this feature at a time when Sony has completely abandoned physical media. And Xbox deserves praise for this.
Halo Campaign Evolved
No one asked for this. No one needed a $50 (or $70 if you pre-ordered/want the premium edition) remake of only half of Halo CE when the MCC exists. And guess what? Campaign Evolved never surpassed the player count of MCC. Why would you get Campaign Evolved when the MCC comes with more games, has multiplayer, and goes on sale for as low as $10 very often? And all that is without mentioning how Campaign Evolved also has fewer animations (no transition animations for switching between driving seat and turret in the Warthog) compared to the OG CE/MCC and, of course, all the unnecessary story changes.
Halo Studios or 343 has been in a death spiral for years. I am not even surprised that Microsoft finally gutted them and gave Halo to Activision. Halo Studios is now only a support studio. Though I do wish that they fired Pierre Hintze in their layoffs as well. Because this man took a franchise that used to be a household name and reduced it to nothing. Mind you, they had absolutely zero plans for Halo post Campaign Evolved. I am not saying Activision is the best, but surely they can’t be worse than 343. It is physically impossible to be worse at this point.
Gears of War: E-Day and Forza Horizon 6
Two genuine bright spots in 2026 for Xbox. E-Day reviews dropped just a few hours ago, and everyone I’ve seen talk about the game has been very positive about it. I want to wait till more of my trusted people review it, but it’s off to an incredible start. And it’s the same with FH6; it is very rare for a racing game to blow up as much as FH6 did. And it made me really happy; I hope this makes people realize that it is not difficult to make a good racing game. Even people who usually don’t play car games were drawn to FH6.
Cloud Gaming Limitations
And then they do stuff like this. Starting next month, cloud gaming time will be limited to just 15 hours a MONTH if you pay for Game Pass Ultimate. I understand they obviously wouldn’t be able to maintain unlimited cloud gaming forever. But 15 hours a MONTH is ridiculous. An average gamer with a job plays 1-2 hours a day. 15 hours a MONTH is literally nothing. I feel like they should’ve at least kept it to 50-60 hours a month instead of unlimited. Obviously, this isn’t as big an L as Halo or ads, but I still don’t understand why they draw all this negative PR when you’ve been doing relatively well compared to Sony, who currently has nothing redeemable?
Bethesda
The whole article has so far been a back-and-forth between good and bad, but I really don’t know where Bethesda fits. It has been almost a decade since our last mainline Fallout game and almost 15 years since our last TES game. And Bethesda has accomplished nothing of note in that time period. Starfield had good initial sales, but it quickly fell off when people realized that the game just wasn’t what they wanted. Starfield is still sitting at a Mixed 57%, and its DLC, Shattered Space sitting at Mostly Negative 29% on Steam.
And I think if Asha Sharma hadn’t pressured Bethesda, we wouldn’t have even heard that little morsel about TES 6. It has been 8 years since TES 6 was announced, by the way. I am not one to support layoffs; they SUCK, but Bethesda and Halo Studios had them coming. They’ve genuinely had nothing to show for the past decade, if not more. I am a lifelong TES fan; I’ve been playing since Morrowind. I WISH TES 6 is good, but seeing Bethesda’s recent output, or games published by them like Avowed, does NOT inspire much confidence.
Xbox 2026: Final Thoughts
So those are my two cents on Xbox in 2026.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. Game Pass, Play Anywhere, digital ownership on physical discs- these are all genuinely great for us. But when your games go straight into a subscription, a studio doesn’t have to make something worth $70 anymore. It only has to make something worth a month’s sub. And a subscription that cheap doesn’t pay for itself, which is how you end up patenting ad systems and capping cloud hours at 15 a month.
I hope I’m wrong. E-Day and FH6 suggest Xbox can still do this when a studio is given room to work, and Asha Sharma gutting the middle management layers is exactly the kind of fix that could matter in two years. I’d love to look back on 2026 as the year it turned around.
I’m not an Xbox hater, for the record. Not a Sony hater either. I loathe their current actions, yeah, but this is coming from someone who grew up playing both. Let me know what you guys think in the comments. I’ll take my leave here. See ya.
