Microsoft Probably Should Have Redacted This Stuff

The public now knows more about Microsoft’s rough plans for the Xbox brand over the next half-decade than the company wanted us to, thanks to a massive leak. A treasure trove of documents full of details were posted on the website for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California between late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, as part of the still-ongoing FTC v. Microsoft case. They include communications between company executives, and possibly-preliminary plans for future hardware releases. The documents are full of details that a company would not want the gaming public to see, let alone their competitors. There was undoubtedly plenty of hair-pulling frustration at Microsoft starting on Tuesday morning, perhaps even in a literal sense.

Before too many people blamed the FTC for leaking a bunch of plans to the public, or started embracing conspiracy theories about the government organization and chair Lina Khan helping Sony: The FTC’s Douglas Farrar pointed the blame squarely at Microsoft. (This probably won’t stop some big-brained theorists in particular.) You’d think they would have redacted these, but Microsoft execs were apparently too confident that they wouldn’t find their way out.

There are too many details to highlight here, pages upon pages of plans and information for the Xbox Series’ future, and even the console generation that lies beyond the current one. I’ll just talk about the biggest content here. This will seem like I’m going over the most interesting stuff to me personally, but… well, that’s what it is. The jig is up.

One of the first documents to leak contained plans for Xbox Series hardware revisions and releases. They suggest that the recently-released all-black Xbox Series S 1TB will become the main model, with the price dropping to $299. The 500GB model may drop further, if it’s not being phased out entirely. The much bigger info is the Xbox Series X revision planned, codenamed “Brooklin.” It’s nothing anywhere near as extensive as what the Xbox One X included compared to the original Xbox One, as the power set looks largely identical to the current Series X. It will come with twice the hard drive space, albeit at the remarkable expense of the disc drive. The info sheet promotes it as being “adorably digital-only,” which sure is one way to refer to it.

The system will also have cylindrical design, thus making it not a box. This is false advertising. But this might also be a prototype.

The design, of course, is not the important point. It’s not too much of a surprise that Microsoft might be gearing up to introduce a digital-only system, considering how digital-focused the company already is. But this shows how they’re ready to take this initiative to the next level. It’s not a positive development for anyone who still likes having physical copies, as the decision of one hardware manufacturer can have ripple effects and spread to competitors. Publishers can make more revenue on digital copies when they’re priced similarly to physical options. If this takes off, Sony and Nintendo could follow.

I honestly don’t think it will happen that fast. I wouldn’t be surprised if those rumors about Sony introducing PlayStation platforms with optional disc drive add-ons are true, but they’ll at least have the option around. Rumors suggested that the slim should have been introduced by now, but it might be coming later than expected. It’s definitely still happening, based on the image leaks from August. Nintendo, however, I doubt will go digital anytime soon. This is another way in which the company could stick to their old ways, to a welcome degree for anyone who values physical ownership.

More interesting is the updated controller due for release close to the updated Series X, perhaps before then, codenamed “Sebile.” The controller will come with gyro features this time, an actually-rechargeable battery (they’re finally ready to ditch the AA batteries), improved haptic feedback with speakers, modular sticks, and quieter buttons. It’s adding features fans have requested for years, and it’s an open question as to which games will use them. I’m sure it’s bound to come with a higher price, but it could be worth the cost.

A bunch of upcoming software titles leaked too, especially from Bethesda Softworks. The list includes remasters for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3, and new titles like Doom: Year Zero, Dishonored 3, and Ghostwire: Tokyo 2. But keep in mind that this list is extremely out-of-date one from around 2019, the fabled “Pre-Pandemic Era.” There are already plenty of changes to the dates — they seriously wanted Starfield out in the fiscal year 2021, which sounds hard to believe even before considering the pandemic. Other projects only had tentative names at the times, with “Project Hibiki” being one for Hi-Fi Rush. Some projects here could have also been put on hold, if not cancelled. We’ll see if Ghostwire: Tokyo sold well enough to get a follow up.

There’s also a little thing about Phil Spencer wanting to buy Nintendo and Valve, particularly the former. I doubt he was the only one at Microsoft musing about it; I doubt he was the only company exec overall musing about it. Let’s just say it’s a good thing the Switch was an overwhelmingly successful piece of hardware.

This whole fiasco, if anything, will teach Microsoft to carefully redact these kinds of documents, regardless of whether they believe the public will see them. This tops Sony’s comparatively-irrelevant mess from June, where documents redacted by a sharpie could be seen through when they were scanned for view on computers. Microsoft is bound to be reeling from this for a bit, but there’s a good chance they have more surprises in store.