The real bombshell though? That mythical “next-gen Xbox” (the hybrid handheld-console thing that was supposed to compete with Switch 2) isn’t just delayed — it’s effectively off the roadmap. The engineering leads who were supposed to have greenlit the silicon finalized back in August quietly got reassigned to Surface R&D and some “cloud endpoint” projects. Hardware vendor commitments have lapsed. In short: they missed their chance to build another physical Xbox.

The irony is, this isn’t even being viewed internally as a failure — leadership is pitching it as a “pivot to agility.” Expect Xbox to be rolled into a “Gaming & Creator Experiences” vertical sometime next summer, with the entire brand existing as a layer atop xCloud. Everything — CoD, Forza, Minecraft, even Halo — gets tiered pricing and a rotating “premium slot” in Game Pass Core. There’s talk that the next Forza Horizon will be “subscription-gated,” meaning not even purchasable outright, just part of GP Premium.

Retail-wise, Costco and Sam’s Club were canaries in the coal mine. Word is that Target is “evaluating shelf space,” and Walmart’s next planogram refresh doesn’t include Xbox-branded endcaps. You’ll still see controllers, sure, but the console presence will quietly evaporate.

One last thing that should scare you: the term “OEM continuity program” has been floated, which in Microsoft-speak means they’re open to licensing out the Xbox name to third parties to manufacture small streaming boxes. Think Roku-style sticks running xCloud; and that’s if anyone wants the name at that point.

TL;DR — the Xbox you know is already gone. What’s left is a service layer, a content funnel, and a legacy brand nobody wants to carry.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5784159&forum_id=2,#49332967)