By Chad W. Shreeves

Early last week, the gaming sphere was lit aflame by reports that multiple Xbox first party titles, as well as Xbox’s flagship subscription and cloud gaming service, Game Pass, would be headed to third party platforms.

This left many to wonder if Microsoft was going to exit the console space altogether. Given that the current generation had been significantly lagging behind the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 5, it did seem like a reasonable assumption they would be updating their business model.

We know that Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, had previously discussed he is going to be speaking about the future of the Xbox brand this week. And we now know that event will occur on the official Xbox podcast this Thursday.

While there are some predicting the fall of Xbox to a third party service, it appears that may not be the case. In a report in GameSpot, Spencer reportedly told employees at Microsoft that they were not exiting the console business.

This also lines up with multiple reports that the next generation Xbox console is already in development and slated for a potential 2028 release.

There’s a lot of speculation here, but if everything is true, it could mean that the next generation will be more of a secondary business objective while Game Pass becomes the primary revenue generator for the Xbox brand.

More details will be revealed in just a couple days.

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