Last year, I suggested that Xbox could have a big year ahead in 2025, but that it would once again come at a cost, including layoffs, price increases, and other nasty bits of news. And that is more or less what happened this year. We got a lot of games, but that was about the only good news for Xbox in 2025.

That steady drip of big new games that were mostly good, sometimes even great, wasn’t enough to overcome a year in which Xbox expanded desperately in many directions while squeezing wallets tighter and tighter in an effort to be everywhere and increase profits substantially to satisfy Microsoft leadership. All the while, it was dealing with an ongoing and growing consumer boycott due to the tech giant’s continued involvement in Israel’s horrible war crimes against Palestine.