A founding member of Team Xbox caused a stir on social media over the weekend after posting a video on YouTube criticising the state of the brand in 2025, and particularly the strategy over the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally handheld.
Laura Fryer, who worked as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group back in the 2000s (as well as being an executive producer on the likes of Gears of War and Too Human), spent much of the 12-minute video questioning why the ROG Xbox Ally exists when it doesn't play any exclusive games or offer anything particularly major to set it apart from Xbox consoles, PCs and even other existing PC handheld devices like the Steam Deck and standard ROG Ally.
As part of this, she claimed the "Xbox Anywhere" message will make the ROG Xbox Ally a hard sell:
"The Xbox Anywhere message sounds great on the surface, but in reality it's just marketing. It's style with no substance. Unfortunately, I don't think marketing is going to be enough. There is literally no reason to buy this handheld."
Fryer went on to explain that she's not happy with the way things are going at Xbox in 2025, particularly when it comes to hardware - and she even suggests Xbox's first-party hardware might be "dead".
Here's a bit more of her closing statement:
"Obviously, as one of the founding members of the Xbox team, I'm not pleased with how things are today. I don't love watching all the value that I helped create, slowly get eroded away. I'm sad, because from my perspective it looks like Xbox has no desire or literally can't ship hardware anymore, so this partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely. Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead."
Not everything she says here is negative, but it's admittedly pretty brutal for the most part! Her more positive outlook centres around Xbox Game Pass, pointing out that it has great value, while also acknowledging that Xbox can make a lot of money from their "deep portfolio" - using remasters of titles like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as an example.
And, with the 25th anniversary of Xbox coming up, she questions whether 2026 could "maybe" be the year that the "fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements". Again here's a bit of what she says about this:
"Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, and I'm sure they will have some big announcements and plans for honouring the milestone. Maybe next year is the year? Maybe next year is the year that the fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements. I guess we'll just have to wait and see."
So, there you go. The full video is at the bottom of the article if you want to hear Fryer's thoughts in full, and it's definitely an interesting watch. We're certainly more optimistic than she is right now, so here's hoping 2026 changes her mindset!
Personally, I can't agree that there's "no reason" to buy the ROG Xbox Ally handheld — it's going to be an ideal entry point for Xbox fans interested in PC handhelds, and potentially the best Windows handheld on the market in terms of performance and battery life — but I also understand her point about it lacking exclusive content.
In terms of other hardware, Xbox unveiled a next-gen console strategy just a couple of weeks ago, but it remains to be seen how much of this will be first-party rather than partnership-based devices like the ROG Xbox Ally.
Anyway, what about you? What do you make of these thoughts? Let us know down in the