This will resolve as YES if either of the following two conditions is met:
A non-portable console widely considered to be a next-gen successor to the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S launches in 2027.
A non-portable PC or PC-console hybrid with Xbox in its name launches in 2027. It must have an SoC, CPU or GPU co-designed by Microsoft.
For either of the two conditions, the machine doesn't have to be manufactured by Microsoft, but its sale must be authorized by it.
I will not bet in this market.
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Xbox's new CEO said they'll talk about their next-gen Xbox next week at the GDC.
They realed the machine will play PC games as well as console games, but this market is open to this possibility.
https://x.com/asha_shar/status/2029645713962156149
@Eliza, I'm not an expert, but here's my understanding:
Current-gen and previous-gen consoles are already really similar to PCs, with the former having CPUs and GPUs based on the Zen 2 x86-64 and RDNA 2 microarchitectures, with some tweaks.
There are a few differences, one of which is their use of an SoC where the CPU and GPU use a shared GDDR memory pool. This is unlike desktop PCs, where the CPU uses DDR for lower latency, and the GPU uses GDDR for higher bandwidth. There are also probably other small differences that I wouldn't know about.
But this doesn't prevent those machines from running Windows in principle. In fact, they even sold some PS5 SoCs with defective cores as PC parts, and Digital Foundry tested one of them, but I can't find their video:
The reason they don't allow running Windows is that the consoles are initially sold at a loss, and later at small margins, on the condition that customers can only buy software from which the console maker takes a big cut.
When the Xbox Series X launched, it was an awesome machine, and I wished they had also sold a version of it that allowed users to install Windows, even if they had to charge twice as much for it. I don't know why that hasn't happened before now, but it's great that they reconsidered.
However, leaker Kepler_L2 says this might bring the price of the next-gen Xbox to $1200:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-15/rampant-ai-demand-for-memory-is-fueling-a-growing-chip-crisis
Sony Group Corp. is now considering pushing back the debut of its next PlayStation console to 2028 or even 2029, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. That would be a major upset to a carefully orchestrated strategy to sustain user engagement between hardware generations. Close rival Nintendo Co., which contributed to the surplus demand in 2025 after its new Switch 2 console drove storage card purchases, is also contemplating raising the price of that device in 2026, people familiar with its plans said. Sony and Nintendo representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.