Xbox's downfall is most certainly my fault

In January of 2023, after years of considering myself a "PlayStation guy", I decided I needed a change. It was a transitional period in my life for a number of reasons, and one of the big shakeups I made was giving the Xbox ecosystem an honest shot.

Truthfully, I'd always appreciated the hardware design of the recent consoles, the One S and Series X in particular, while despising the direction Sony took post-PS2. The controllers had been superior to Sony's since the PS4. The Xbox UI had come a long way and felt more intuitive than Sony's XMB. Game Pass seemed like a pretty enticing option at $12 per month. So I dove in and bought a Series S before going even further and upgrading to a Series X.

I won't bother running the numbers, but my purchase history sits somewhere in the thousands of dollars spent on new games, DLC, and Game Pass subscriptions. Needless to say, I was in it and, crazier still, I liked it.

Fast forward a bit as the extent of Microsoft's involvement in Gaza came to light, the company began investing heavily in firing their employees , and the price of Game Pass doubled, I had to get out. Xbox sucked.

Aside from some in-app money for Zenless, the last game I bought and completed on Xbox was Metal Eden back in October of 2025, which was great by the way and is in no way a reflection of why Xbox sucks. At this point, I've basically packed up my toys and started playing elsewhere.

The big Xbox news from this past week shouldn't be a surprise to many people who've been paying attention. The company has seemed somewhat directionless for the past year or so, with exclusives popping up on other consoles, the push around cloud, and the seemingly endless layoffs. If there's any silver lining to my Xbox endeavours, it was convenient to have been an "Xbox guy" during this time to have a front row seat to just how hard the shit had hit the fan.

Maybe I should have stuck with Sony .