“Publishers still have little interest in Xbox as a platform”

It appears that Microsoft's days as the Xbox platform holder are numbered. Third-party game developers and publishers have strong doubts about continuing to support Xbox consoles with their software. That's because Xbox sales in Europe are disastrous.

News comes from GI.biz journalist Chris Dring. After visiting the Game Developers Conference last week, the reporter became convinced that “Xbox is in trouble as a hardware manufacturer.” After all, the journalist was told – from a prominent company and a smaller company – that Xbox sales are already at a standstill in Europe.

This has been happening for some time now. Xbox sales continue to decline every month. Last year, the numbers dropped dramatically, but this year it's even worse, according to Dring. What's striking: One of the industry's top publishers questioned why they continued to support the software console at all.

According to Dring, the situation has been frustrating for publishers for some time. After all, the studios are making an effort to develop a version of the game for the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series

Dring points out that Microsoft realizes this, too. For example, the publisher admitted last year that it had lost the console war. In the console space, Microsoft continues to follow in the footsteps of Nintendo and Sony. At the end of last year, it was announced that twice as many PS5 consoles were shipped as Xbox consoles. Furthermore, Microsoft revealed in February that it would be bringing certain Xbox titles to other platforms.

Although supply is still limited for now, Dring believes that “the majority of Xbox titles will transition to other platforms after a certain point.” If the current situation continues, of course. However, Dring admits that he never felt like things would go so smoothly for GDC. During the expo, he reached out to several developers who wondered what the point of an Xbox version of their game would be. Which means he honestly believes Xbox has a problem as a hardware manufacturer.