Furious Xbox fans are selling their consoles in response to third-party controversy

Long-time Xbox fans are reportedly threatening to sell their consoles following a major leak which suggested that Microsoft was planning to turn Xbox into a multi-platform publisher.

You can hardly step foot on social media without hearing about this latest debacle. It’s believed that Xbox will soon be adopting a brand new - and very controversial - strategy. Following declining hardware sales, it’s believed that the company could step away from a hardware paired with first-party exclusives model, instead switching to becoming a multi-platform publisher. This would reportedly see games like Starfield launch on consoles like the PlayStation 5. In the last few hours, it’s also been teased that Gears of War could land on other platforms.

Take a look at our review of Starfield below.

The strategy was reportedly leaked by a disgruntled Microsoft employee and while I’d advise you to take all of this with a pinch of salt until Microsoft or Xbox issues an official update, we do know that one is on the way. Phil Spencer took to Twitter to say, “We're listening and we hear you. We've been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.”

You can understand why a new plan is needed when, in terms of sales, Xbox is struggling to match its competitors. At the same time though, this new plan risks rendering Xbox consoles completely obsolete and that’s something surely no one wants to see happen. The response to the news has been both diverse and messy, but one subset of Xbox fans is threatening to sell their consoles.

As reported by Dexerto, some have even done the deed already. “It’s done, bye bye Series X,” tweeted yungkiryu. “They don’t accept the storage device at GameStop sadly so I have a literal paperweight now [...] So long Xbox, it was a good run.” Another wrote, “Gotta sell it before it’s not worth a pair of socks.” I think we should all wait to see what next week’s business update has in store.