By Olivia Richman,Paul McNally

Copyright escapistmagazine

Yes, you read that right. Some guy nobody should care about anymore shared a controversial opinion! After Costco “mysteriously” pulled Xbox consoles off its shelves due to the company’s continued price hikes in the past few months, Ex-Blizzard and Microsoft executive Mike Ybarra is pretty sure the brand is dead. There’s long been a console war between Xbox and PlayStation. While PlayStation is the clear winner when it comes to sales, Xbox was often hyped up for its performance, features, controllers, and deals. However, that hasn’t been the case over the past few years. In 2025, Xbox had some of the worst sales it’s ever had. In March, it was reported that the Xbox Series X|S had sold 32.77 million units in 53 months compared to the PS5’s 74.28 million units in the same period. There has been a decline in sales and players every quarter for Xbox the past two years. Microsoft has become desperate, porting its games to the PlayStation 5. Is the console war over? Ybarra believes it is. Ybarra not mincing words with Xbox thoughts On X, Ybarra recently tweeted that the PlayStation 5 was Sony’s most successful console yet, earning $106 billion last year. He wrote: “But hey, the console market isn’t a successful business. It is, if you do it right.” Burn. https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1972020531588460884 Someone replied to Ybarra’s retweet by calling him a “bitter ex” while another wondered what Microsoft did to Ybarra before he left that made him so salty. In response, Ybarra simply stated: “Your console is dead.” While Ybarra could just be salty, he isn’t totally wrong if we go by the numbers and sales. It’s not really looking super great for the Xbox side of the console war. Ybarra left Blizzard in early 2024, soon after the company was acquired by Microsoft. Since then, he has been pretty openly vocal about his feelings about Xbox. He recently called out Microsoft after the Xbox’s prices went up (twice in a month), accusing the company of just wanting more profit margins. He also called the brand “confused” over its “Everything is an Xbox” campaign. On Xbox’s price hike, Ybarra tweeted: ” an excuse to continue raising prices. With no new increase in tariffs, is simply a different problem, and they are going to make consumers continue to pay for those problems.”