Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform
https://gamesbeat.com/what-an-xbox-founder-thinks-of-the-new-xbox-ceo-seamus-blackley-interview/Open linkView original on lemmy.world529
Comments164https://gamesbeat.com/what-an-xbox-founder-thinks-of-the-new-xbox-ceo-seamus-blackley-interview/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Microsoft is quietly sunsetting everything they cant make money on with AI.
So, everything?
It feels that way. Every ongoing product MS has feels decrepit and ready to collapse.
It's been a while since I used any MS product but I've got the same feeling with Google products. Weird bugs are starting to accumulate and at the same time they're cramming every corner with buttons for their new AI integrations, with no explanation of how they're supposed to work. It's a mess, the stuff they add in doesn't even respect the original app design so they're really starting to look like they're put together with toothpicks and duct tape.
They're still scamming the shit out of businesses with their corporate software. Oh and they have Azure which I'm guessing makes money.
Isn't it ironic? The only Microsoft product that makes money consistently is based on Linux.
Meanwhile, their biggest competitor is either Linux or UNIX. That is, if you accept that macOS "is UNIX." It's been UNIX certified for a couple years now, but it's UNIX in name only. While Steve Jobs' NeXTStep was based on UNIX, NeXTStep was also vapourware. Still, it became OS X which became the macOS we know and love (or hate) today. But the truth is, it's UNIX 3 certified, which is a decades-old certification, and it only just barely makes that. So it's a thing Mac users brag about. "A UNIX system! I know this!" Jurassic Park meme. And then of course there's Linux. And of course Windows has the Linux subsystem. Still, non-*nix is going the way of the dodo, just like Win9x did when Microsoft realised WinNT was the future. First with the tranwreck that was WinME, but much more importantly with WinXP. And NT was good, but its time is up (or will be soon).
Azure is by far their biggest money maker if I recall
Which is funny, because they keep shooting it in the foot.
I'm so happy that in the recent years Linux made leaps and bounds in terms of usability so now we have an alternative that actually works well, especially since Microsoft just stopped caring about desktop Windows users.
They can’t even make money with their AI, they only survive off the windows OEM licenses, Office 365 subs that businesses are locked into and their backend server and sql stuff. That’s enough to make them a walking dead for a long time.
And eventually companies will hopefully start cancelling those subscriptions to move to Open Office or Libre Office.
France is already starting that push by having government departments transition first, and are projected to save millions of euros in licensing fees each year. Once you get a critical mass of users on libre software, it'll hopefully spread on its own
So, also AI?
The console wars have ended. The PC is victorious.
Some victory. PC sales have been plummeting in favour of mobile and now component prices. Console space is now done with any semblance of competition - Sony is a monopoly and will soon start behaving as such. And xbox's portfolio of many many IPs will go straight to the bin.
Ah fuck I forgot about mobile and I hate to consider it.
Yeah. That old lady spending £3000 a month on gems for "Royal Candy Blaster Treasure Blitz Origins" is the gaming industry now. :(
There are some proper games for the phones. Most of them are ports like disco elysium, octopath traveller or balatro, but because the dont get a lot of downloads in app store and google play, the platforms tend to push free games over them. And that makes sense for them, because they also profit from every transaction and ad that those games show. Quality single pay games just have one purchase per player and the audience for them is way smaller.
I personally as a consumer see so much wasted potential with mobile games. I remember when i had one hand held machine for tetris and another machine with shmup while my tamagotchi was dying somewhere. When i got gameboy it was crazy how i could take multible games with me when going on a long trip. Now we have almost always in our pocket a machine with multitudes more power than anything back then, but because how apple and google have build their enviroments devs dont have incentive to make quality single purchase products because they wont get the visibility they need.
Sites like itch.io are too small to make a difference. It would need some big player like Steam to add mobile game category in to their app, but apple and google are making it really tedious to install and update anything outside their own controlled enviroments that understandably serve for their biggest audience, who are children.
I broadly agree with what you are saying here, but, I think you are overlooking or perhaps unaware of something.
The Steam Frame.
It has its own internal ARM chip, is capable of running smaller games entirely self contained within itself.
And... as Proton is a translation layer that makes Windows games run on Linux... Valve has been massively either themselves aiding development of, or funding development of a similarish kind of translation layer (FeX) that converts x86 calls to ARM.
Which can also work in tandem with, layered with Proton.
So that means that a Steam Frame is technically capable of running many .APK (Android) games.
So... while things are tumultuous right now with the RAMpocalypse... Valve is laying the groundwork, in technical capacity, for mobile games to be broadly playable on its hardware, so its much less of a stretch to imagine that they could at some point open up an APK section on Steam's storefront.
In what world is Sony a monopoly when Nintendo exists?
The Switch 2 is not a dedicated home console but it is a console
Don't get me wrong, consoles are dying too, memory prices have gone up and Sony is already shifting from making money from consoles to making money from subscriptions
Nintendo is just doing their thing and becoming the Apple of the videogame industry
No, many of them will go to PCs or Sony over giving up
One can only hope
You mean Tencent mobile games
Microsoft owns King. The candy crush franchise creator.
Are those games still making that much money? Compared to gachas?
No
No, the new player in the game, AI killed everything.
My PC will still boot when the people turn on the data centers in the next 6 months. Can AI say the same?
Damn, I can't wait to pillage and plunder the datacenters with the lads in a few months.
AI can say anything you tell it to.
And several you don't.
I'd like to see you try to build a PC right now for less than $1,500. The cornered the market on all of the parts necessary to make a computer that can run games well.
Bro I am playing Webfishing and Space Station 14 on a T460s running linux. Caves of Qud as well. You've been lied to. You can game without any of that shit if you're not trend chasing battlefield.
This is for the best. As someone who is forced to work with a lot of Microsoft infrastructure let me tell you things have never been this broken before. They keep doubling down on AI and it simply doesn't work.
I feel you brother. It's bad. They are pushing AI features at the speed of light but forgetting that other things need attention too. Log a support ticket and it spews out AI shit that I have already tried or doesn't help.
My favorite last week was 2 dead support numbers and a third that let to AI which happily told me it has a solution that will fix the problem. The link it sent brought me to the bing search page.
I was so happy to finally talk to indian support a day later.
I will slog through so many menus and weird support numbers to talk to a real person.
didn't the new exec come from their AI division?
Is this how they put her out to pasture? "Your AI division has been such shit that we'll put you in charge of a division we plan to close..."
Despite the division they're closing making way more money (aka > $0) than the one she was moved from
depends on what you mean with 'AI', like builder.ai
There are already a bunch of documented but umimplemented functions in a few Xbox related API, like GameInput.
It's insane how Microsoft is handling Xbox:
They have everything in place and are still getting slapped around by Valve and Sony and are now talking about shutting down everything?
As a long time IT guy... this is how Microsoft does everything
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀.meme
They thoroughly shit the bed, it's an astonishing display of incompetence.
More than likely they'll just sunset Xbox the platform and rent you the ability to play games on the cloud using your phone, smart TV or computer. And all those franchises will be rentable first, then maybe buyable some day later.
Among other things they have huge data centers that are going to be unused come AI collapse - they just need to figure out how to run games on those GPUs, as they're very very different from gaming GPUs.
Yes. Correct. Because they don't know what they're doing.
Just look at how they've positioned themselves in recent years: One, we always want to have the most powerful console to be the best. Two, we want people to be able to play anywhere with just a controller and no console required. Talk about a kingdom divided.
I love how corporations work.
"Hey, we completely fucked this up. We mishandled it, made decisions our customers hate, and now we're scrapping it because we might lose money.
"Could we fix it? Sure. But that would mean changing the business model that made us money 20 years ago, and that’s terrifying. There’s a risk we might lose money."
"And sure, the board won’t lose a dime personally. But the stockholders, basically meerkats who scatter at the first loud noise might panic. And we can’t have that. We might lose money."
I think they are sunsetting whole company.
That's what their actions felt like for decades yet somehow they've always kept chugging along.
I can only hope.
You mean Microsoft? I hope but I doubt it, they have a lot of companies locked in their products
Wtf I just came up with the same comment without reading yours first.
So yeah, I agree. They must have done the calculation that it's easiest to just not exist and lay everyone off.
Nah, shifting heavily toward being B2B.
My feeling on Xbox since Xbox One days has been pretty much "this is an awesome platform, you're sitting on a gold mine Microsoft, what the fuck are you doing?"
The last bit of brilliance they did utilise properly was GamePass, and of course they cocked that up by getting greedy.
Last few years have been extremely rough. The only lucky thing about this is that instead of full Xbox exclusivity Microsoft was pushing Xbox/Windows cross functionality. ...Yeah, I've been pivoting to PC, but Steam/GOG instead.
The Xbone is what made me go PC full time.
Been a Xbox gamer since the original Xbox with Halo CE. LAN parties galore. Halo 2 and the beginning of Xbox Live was amazing. Bought a X360 at launch, got Gears and Crackdown for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Halo 3 was peak.
And then Xbone announced. Always online. Kinect required. "Sports" "Live TV". Yeah, not falling for that. "Can't just flip a switch".
Yeah I cancelled my Xbox Live sub and built a PC. 2500K with a 550ti. Haven't looked back since. All of my friends in our group did the same, but some bought a PS4 as well for the SP games.
Microsoft just doesn't care. They have enough money to not care. But the writing has been on the wall for a long time for Xbox and I'd be genuinely surprised if they release another console and I'd be even more surprised if anyone actually buys it. It's a dead ecosystem.
It’s been a sad thing to watch. I was the biggest Xbox fan in my circles in the 360 & One days. But by the time Series X came out, I was so disappointed in their games that I still don’t own it. Microsoft bought so many companies that I thought would bring games. Yet, most of them aren’t producing anything.
Nintendo isn't doing much better. I was a Nintendo stan for most my youth but now they're the leaders in stagnant games and dark patterns. You just can't trust corporations not to backstab you anymore. Indie and opensource only for me here on.
I think MS has been surprised and confused by the success of Xbox ever since the very first one came out. It kinda stuck, and the upper management probably never really had a good idea what to do with it, as it just never really worked with them being oriented on business offerings. Remember Ballmer going wild during Xbox One reveal? Yeah. I think during this gen and previous more and more of the business people came into Xbox, and thus the meandering of the brand. They have no clue what gamers want, they're penny pinchers and pencil pushers.
Enshittifying
I love how nobody here is getting me actual picture. They're not going to sell Xbox to people anymore. What's going to happen is they're going to turn to a subscriber model where you have to log into a data center that they control and use your browser to play video games. Paying a monthly subscription for the privilege of playing their exclusive games. In fact I will bet money that the first product that will be introduced with this feature is going to be the highly anticipated upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.
Mark my words. Either at the time of release or shortly thereafter they're going to introduce the ability to subscribe to play GTA 6 in your browser on a remote gaming system. And then they're going to phase out physical Xbox systems over the next couple of years.
This has been tried before and never worked well. What makes you think its going to work any better now?
I even have a free controller google gave me when they tried it.
The only thing that makes me think it might work this time is that for some reason Microsoft has this magical ability to take a bad idea, make the shittiest possible iteration of it and have it mysteriously become the most widely-adopted standard against all logic.
It doesn't need to work well.
It needs to sound like it will make more money for MSFT's board.
You're approaching this from the angle of 'is this a sensible and sustsinable long term business strategy.'
Nobody cares!
They care about LINE GO UP BIG FAST NOW!
Microsoft Board: But Google lost so much money on Stadia!
Voice on speaker: but Google didnt have me, Bing.AI!
Microsoft Board: DONE. MAKE US RICH!
Stadia was still a system you buy. What I'm talking about here is having a browser based gaming system where any computer could be used to play games, for subscription price of course.
There are in fact currently places on the web that offer such services for Minecraft.
And I'll bet you anything they'll make the subscription price really low at first. Borrowing from the Netflix model... Then, once consoles and PCs have been outmoded and no one owns anything, they jack the price up.
Stadia worked on chrome browsers. I think you needed their controller though, but I got mine for free with a Chromecast purchase. For TVs you needed a Chromecast or a Android TV
Attitudes like that are not how we got a trillion dollars in spare data center infrastructure to find a use for!
Those consumers will be happy owning nothing THIS time!!
Oh man, those stadia controllers. Not the stupidest $99 I've ever spent, but still pretty dumb.
Why the LLM-driven scarcity in computing parts of course, and a little bit of cartel behavior when Nintendo and Sony inevitably announce the same thing next year.
I saw a thread the other day, something like "What low-level conspiracies do you genuinely believe"; to which someone replied that they believe that OpenAI is being speedrun to bankruptcy in order for Microsoft to buy their data centres for pennies on the dollar.
And yeah, it all kinda seems that could be a credible outcome, at which point MS will have a huge amount of equipment all ready to serve game streaming to people who can no longer afford to buy a home computer to do the same.
Is it going to happen? shrug
Could it? Absolutely.
Doesn't remote gaming require everyone to have an unmetered and fast internet connection? There's still a lot of places where not everyone is that lucky.
That's not Microsoft's problem.
(I agree with you)
It won’t be GTA6. It will be an exclusive title like a rebooted Halo or Gears of War. They can’t risk losing the money on GTA when people just go to PS5 and buy the game outright there.
The Elder Scrolls 6, only available on Xbox® Game Pass© Ultimate Plus™ Cloud Gaming™®©
I said GTA 6 will be the introduction. Not the closer.
As any drug dealer can tell you, you have to give them a taste in order to get them addicted then you can start to really charge them for the good stuff.
Drug dealers don't do that. You don't need to create a market for drugs, if you've got decent stuff to sell people will buy it.
The PS5 version of GTA6 is going to sell pretty well then
To play games coded by a shitty AI, full of bugs and as many microtransactions as possible ...
Is the game buggy? Worry not! Microsoft™ Copilot 365™ powered by Azure™ will analyze your gameplay in realtime, detect when a bug occurs, and redirect you to an AI generated troubleshooting page.
I love my AI future.
Fuck.
Unironically the AI is trained using episodes of The IT Crowd.
Just waiting for them to bring back Clippy as an AI agent...
The old "we don't want to put any effort into creating anything good, we just want to milk this for cash until we can't anymore."
And how well do you think that's going to work? Sounds like a shitty service maybe five people will subscribe to, and then it dies a year later.
We've had subscription services like this already. I don't hear much of them anymore... Or at all... So I presume they're all dead.
This sounds... plausible actually. They have this big stake in GPU datacenters for AI, that are (and will be) burning incredible amounts of money and are not turning a profit anytime soon. That same crazy level of investement on AI is making hardware costs go up, especially gaming hardware.
But Microsoft, being the benefactors who have inherited the company from philantropist and kids-lover Bill Gates, have thought of us! They will share a bit of their shiny GPU datacenters' plwer for gaming and all they will be asking for is a lot of your money. I can see that.
My cloud computing teacher says the future of personal computing is just monitors connected to the cloud. Why couldn't I have been born in the 70s?
When computers were just a teletype attached to a mainframe?
Well, I would've been a baby at that point, I'd grow up just in time for the exciting home computing scene.
Sure, but realize that the current level of personal computing is a smartphone, we're not that far off from your home "PC" just being a display, KB, mouse, and maybe an interface for some external storage and peripherals. I wouldn't be shocked if that happenes some time in the next 10 years.
That being said, I think there will still be a significant group of people who will own their own hardware.
Lol is this an actual ”feature”? Can’t tell anymore.
I remember news about a console giant that wants to introduce a "feature" that plays for you when you're stuck in a game. In my childhood you had to look at the game manual for clues, ask your friends for help or sleep over it and try again days later. Nowadays you just look up a guide online. Soon you'll press a button and the game will play itself.
xbone was the beginning of the end. when the enshittification kicked in before we had a word for it.
Enshitification has been a thing since the 1940s. I remember in the 80s my grandma saying she used to get pretzels from the corner store. Big soft gooey chewey pretzels.
Now, in the 80s, I could only get a factory made crunchy pretzel rod.
And today? Unless you're buying a whole bag, you can't get pretzels at all.
Gone are the mom and pop bakeries too. :(
When I was 5 years old, I used to go to a bakery. And it was locally owned.
I'd go in, and I'd buy a brownie. And I'd do my moms shopping. Just lite stuff. Gallon of milk. Carton of cigerettes. Loaf of bread. Sometimes pancake mix. Then I'd buy a brownie from the bakery.
Every Saturday morning.
This went on for years. Until one day, I came in, clearly something wrong. I bought all my moms groceries. I'm 15 by this point. But I didn't get my brownie. And so when Abeer (shop owners name) put my brownie on the counter, I said no. She could already tell something was wrong before the brownie rejection. But now she had to ask. I said "I don't want a brownie today".
She said "I'll give you one. It's ok if you don't pay this week."
I said "No. It's not about money. I don't want a brownie."
She asked "Whats wrong?"
I said "Papa died..." and I burst into tears. Papa was my grandfather. He had died the night before. I just wanted to get in, and get out. Without talking really. But when she heard Papa died, she rushed around the counter and hugged me.
Here's a woman who I'd grown up with. Every weekend talking for 30-60 minutes. She was the shopkeep, yes, but she was also a close family friend.
I was in this trance/haze of doing what I need to do, because I need to, but my mind was elsewhere. I was just trying to do my moms shopping, and get home in 5 minutes so I could curl back up in bed. Not to sleep, but just to try not to remember that I exist.
So when she ran around the counter to hug me, I didn't even know what was happening. I thought she was still behind the counter, and now suddenly she's hugging me.
I'm 42 now, but I cannot imagine kids today being able to understand the core concept of old school communities. They've been ripped out and replaced by walmart and other heartless souless corporations.
Can you imagine a 6 year old leaving his house, walking 10 minutes, entering walmart, and spending 30 minutes talking to the workers, telling them about the week at school? Showing her your TMNT toys you got for your birthday? Telling them various things about your life?
I cannot imagine that, but that was how the whole neighborhood was growing up. Every store a small community shop. Every adult knew every kid. Every kid knew every kid.
One time I was walking home and it started raining. So I just went onto the doorstep of the first house I saw that I knew a kid lived at. I'm just standing on the porch, waiting for it to stop raining. Suddenly Andys mom opens the door. She says "Andys not here right now. He's over at James house."
I said "Oh, ok. I'm just using the porch as shelter until it clears."
And thats when Andys mom drove me home. Thats just how it was. A whole community looking out for the whole community.
Now anytime I go back to my old neighborhood, I don't recognize it. C-Town pizza is gone. Obviously the video rental stores are gone. One time I even went and knocked on the houses of the kids I knew. Wondering if anyone I used to know inherited their parents old houses. Nope. I had a woman yell at me for disturbing her time. Wasn't anyone I used to know.
But just looking around, I could tell the street layout may be the same, but this wasn't a community. This was an isolated set of houses.
And now I'm sad. Because I miss those days. I miss the idea of everyone caring about everyone. I miss the wholesome nature of a new family moving in, and everyone just bombarding them with welcoming arms. I miss the idea of just going to my friends house, and walking in, Kramer style (minus the racism).
Now life is just cold and isolated.
That was a powerful story. Man, you said it all. Thank you for sharing that. :)
Fuck. This is the beauty and compassion we have lost.
This was beautiful to read, and I feel the same as you. Thank you so much for sharing such a heart warming story. :')
If you are ever on a road trip and go by a Wawa gas station, stop and get their soft pretzels. buy as many as you can and freeze whatever you don’t eat for later.
The german grocery store Lidl also has decent soft pretzels.
Agreed. I'm still convinced that the always online/DRM shit they pulled with the Xbox One at launch was a catastrophe they never recovered from. Even though they quickly reversed that decision after backlash, I think the damage was done.
yeah at the very least it signaled their intentions.
When you set an impossible goal (30% yoy profit margin for the gaming division), you know that you are killing off that division, just, slowly.
Satya just really wants an AI girlfriend that is also in everyone's homes simultaneously, that he can use to spy on everyone for the NSA.
Not that it directly matters, but I did literally work for MSFT during the 360 3RR / Windows 8 era.
I kinda know at least a little about the uh, corporate culture.
They’re sunsetting the platform alright, but nothing about it is quiet
I was thinking the same thing. We've known about it for years.
I hate that Xbox is a joke now and that it's going to die out. I hate that there is going to be less competition in the console space. I hate that Microsoft have no idea what the fuck they're doing.
Playstation is next; Nintendo has the securist market with its portable console.
I would think hand helds like the steam deck would be slowly strangling it but the switch 2 sold like hotcakes.
The only reason I got a Switch 2 is because a company selling them here in Denmark made a HUGE pricing error. So I got a Switch 2 and Mario Kart World together for just 99 DKK, or 15 USD.
Haha, there's not much I wouldn't buy at a 95% discount.
Nearly all my music gear was bought used, at about that level of discount. People buy interesting gear, and never get around to tackling the learning curve, and eventually sell it off super cheap.
If you can be patient, and watch for the exact right gear at the exact right price, and you are focused on performance more than gourmet brand names, you can build a nice home recording studio for super cheap. It took me about two years, but all my gear, and all my instruments, probably didn't cost more than about $1500-2000 total, and most of it is brand new, or nearly so.
What online sites are good for this?
Facebook marketplace, eBay, pawn shops. You just have to be patient, and wait for the right deal. It won't take long, musicians are notorious for buying gear that they never, or barely, use. They are also notorious for needing money, and dumping their old gear.
BTW, pawn shops used to be great for buying guitars and other musical instruments, but that's passed. Now they put the good stuff on eBay, and the stuff in the stores is the junk that nobody would bite on. OTOH, you can still find good deals on other gear like recorders, interfaces, microphones, etc. I got a nice Focusrite Scarlett interface at a pawn shop for about $20, and it looked brand-new. I've used it every day, and never had a problem.
I just got a Boss BR-600 digital recorder, which has a built in drum machine, and a LOT of guitar pedal and amp effects, including a bass simulator that makes my guitar sound like a bass. It even has a pair of condenser mics built in. So I can literally record as if I'm an entire band. It's also really thin, and smaller than a laptop, so it will fit in the pocket of my gig bag. It looked brand-new, and it only cost me $56, with the case, and the original price was $399. It's so ridiculously cool, and it's become my new favorite piece of gear, other than my guitars.
Now I can lay down a drum track, play a rhythm guitar part along to it, add a bass line, mix it all down to single stereo track, put it on a loop, and play some screaming lead guitar over it for as long as I want. What a blast!
I once got a 2k camera + gear + extra (Sigma!) lenses for three fiddy. No Loch Ness monsters involved tho.
80% of the xbox crowd is probably gonna buy a playstation. Maybe a few will go for a PC and the rest for a switch.
Couch goblins that look into the future when considering the cost of a console might find the steam machine worthy when it releases.
Need more private companies like Valve, and some community open source options built up too
We seriously need to get open source PC console community-made offerings up and running. To share the load of building that up. Community built up competitors and Valve will be enough.
Still I also would like to see some new players come in too.
Are there any companies that would do well in gaming? What if AMD made their own console?
hmmmm the Steam Deck is eating away at that cake... I know my son was an avid Nintendo fan and didn't even look at the Switch 2 because his 3 year old Steam Deck is doing everything he wants
Cause they actually try to make a console that's not just "Discount PC With Coupon For Streaming Service".
Even then, it's mostly an under-powered PC that makes up the difference with a few gimmicks. Which is fine. But you're still left asking "Why would I buy a PS6 / X-Box One+One+360^Infinity^ when I could just get this shit on PC in another six months?" Other than tinkering with controllers, neither have done anything interesting since the Kinect flopped.
I guess they're going to go all-in on AI despite only 3.3% of MS365 subscribers paying for Copilot. Stonks?
The sunk cost fallacy is a bitch
Didnt stop them from killing windows phone
When xbox first hit the scene it was a breath of fresh air. Now its just a stale fart, its time for it to die.
Ain't that quiet.
That was a really interesting interview. I liked that he did have some advice for the new Xbox boss at the end, basically "go talk to other people who have held similar positions in other games companies, like Reggie Fils-Aime. Tho he does seem pretty convinced that the new boss' job will really be to kill off Xbox in order to make more room for AI
Old Xbox actually did have a good number of people who just wanted to make cool video games.
... You gotta get rid of people with some semblance of duty and desire to achieve some kind of good in the world though.
That's how you maximize next quarter investor returns.
This isn't new. I heard them say years ago "yeah Sony won the console war but that doesn't matter" implying cloud gaming
That makes sense. Microsoft didn't enter the console market for gamers or gaming- they entered it to beat sony. The PS2 had a linux distro you could load on it to try to sell it as a computer to circumvent luxury import taxes. If it WAS a computer, it would compete with Microsoft Windows. They were worried that a console could just sell software instead of games and be a competitor, so they threw a ton of money trying to run Sony out of business.
Microsoft never really wanted to win gaming. The war was against an enemy that wasn't really a threat. So not killing off a console wasn't really a "loss".
Is this the real reason everybody is trying to sue valve these days?
There are legitimate reasons to dislike the monopoly behaviors that Valve employs.
While true, you don't see anyone else at all even trying to be better than Steam, unfortunately. :/
It's been for a few years now.
That's a 360
Look some people may say Xbox has confusing naming scheme, but it's very simple, number just goes up:
First one is Xbox one. Noone in Microsoft is dumb enough to call "one" console that isn't first of the series. Then Xbox X (because X is Roman 10) then the Xbox 360.
Very easy
Announcing the Xbox One 2 SL XLS SE Pro, which is the basic version, and the Pro version, the Xbox Two 1 SE SL XS SLB Enterprise, both of which are vibe-coded Windows apps that stream Gamepass games without installing anything but take up 100GB of hard drive and still run your GPU at 100% somehow. The latter costs twice as much and you get a different Minecraft cape with it. They update on a completely separate schedule to the rest of Windows, but if you run either one and the updates aren't in sync it deletes your Documents folder.
You forgot about z Copilot version where AI has unrestricted ring 0 access to every single device, including your peacemaker - but in return it spies on you 24h!
Xbox S One S Xbox:
Sexbox.
....Did I get it right?
It's not good for the consumer to have less competition on the market. But is there any legit reason to own an Xbox?
Only if you want to have the black and green version of Toy instead of the white and blue version, at this rate. Barring a handful of exclusives everything gets released on PS5 and Xbox now and maybe also a watered down port on the Switch/2. The current Xbox and Playstation are so architecturally similar to each other that they may as well be the same machine with the only difference being which asshole is at the helm, and for either of them you may as well have a PC.
Some backward compatible games run better than emulators
Its got to be deliberate. They've had so many chances and fucked it, and they've had so many successes that they've just cancelled or discontinued for seemingly no reason.
Tax write-offs like Batgirl?
I'm honestly not surprised because Microsoft can't manifest a win (even though most users know what could be done), they are immune to thinking out of the box...They are so high on fumes of burning insane amounts of money on AI. That will fail, and will be egg on those fuckers face!
Xbox as a 3rd party publisher can succeed. As a console vendor, it's too late to stop the multiplatform strategy this gen. They're not Nintendo. At least on the Wii U, Nintendo was still releasing great games and the 3DS sold like 80 million units and Nintendo were also releasing great games there and all those studios would converge on the Switch. They can't be serious launching a console without a great launch year lineup of exclusives marketed well to convince people that they won't cut tail and run if a new console doesn't take off.
The advice for the new Xbox CEO that I believe in is to rip the bandage off and embrace 3rd party publishing. Timings for a new console seem awful. Fable is supposed to release this year. Forza Horizon Japan this year. Obsidian has already released their two big games last year. Perfect Dark cancelled. Forza Motorsport studio seemingly on life support rather than working on a new entry. New Gears of War should release soon. Elder Scrolls VII I'm not betting on that before the 2030s. Also these unreleased announced games are marketed as multiplatform already. Is it going to be another attempt at a Halo as the launch title after a string of crowd goes mild Halo releases. The hasty media work being done now with the new CEO is going to be thrown back in her face within a few years as some sort of hypocrite critique rather than someone speaking before they built up their Xbox strategy and was pretty much kind of winging it on short notice
Sorry to burst your bubble but the new head of Xbox has literally 0 experience with video games.
The woman that everyone was sure was Phil's second in command, being set up to be his replacement?
Yeah she just got told she was being overtopped, and she then seemingly just retired, she just 'resigned', not even a new position in MSFT or at another high falutin' gaming company or anything.
The new head of.Xbox is mainly a data scientist and project manager, managed instacart and other online etailer type apps.
Her speciality is using data to precisely squeeze as much money as possible out of a given service.
Which is what she will be doing.
Quick FYI: it's Elder Scrolls VI, you added an extra 'I' by accident
After letting go of Tango disregarding their massive success, that part is pretty obvious.
He’s aged so much he looks like a prospector who has been struggling to find any gold at all …
Quietly?
XBOX COFOUNDER SAYS MICROSOFT IS QUIETLY SUNSETTING THE PLATFORM
More seriously, the distance between the X-Box OS and the Windows OS was always measured in inches. Maybe they finally decided to give up the ghost and just admit they were selling people mid-range PCs with a console skinned GUI.
I fucking hate all the prompts for the XBOX Game Bar in freaking Windows Server OS
I think there's a setting that'll turn that off.
But also... Linux Mint is a pretty easy lift and shift.
Oh I am all Linux where I can... I do not get to admin those servers so I am stuck with microslop
I went to walmart to look for a new xbox controller for my xbox one x and they had maybe 12 games for the Xbox series X and NONE of them were anything i would ever want to purchase. Also the series X is a trash piece of equipment that has constant overheating issues, you cannot replace the hard drive if it dies, and it looks absolutely horrible design wise. They also had zero consoles in stock, while Best buy had about 12 open box Series X that people had returned for one reason or another at the outlet store.
So looks like even retailers are giving up on it.
The xbox one x was the last good console xbox made and even it has a ton of heat related issues with the HDMI circuit.
Xbox just cannot make a high quality gaming system, they just can't. It's been 2 decades and they still can't get 90% of their consoles to last more than a year or 2.
I had to go back and read your post twice because I was getting Xbox One X and Xbox Series X confused with eachother. I even know there is a difference, but holy god are those names bad. It's still confusing even when you know to look for it. I have no clue who decided that was a good idea. Then again, I look at their recent naming schemes and I guess I should just be happy they didn't fuck up the Xbox branding even harder.
Some products from just this one article. (Note: Microsoft 365 Copilot App, and probably others, aren't even in the article.) Can you tell me the difference?
Don't forget how there are like at least 4 simultaneous versions of Teams, at any given point in time.
I explained the different xbox versions to my coworker and he almost had an aneurysm.
Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Slim, Xbox 360 Slim E, Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X.
Dumbest names ever and 70% of the listings for these consoles, the owners don't even know what they are selling. They call a series X a xbox One, and vise versa. Just too damn confusing for people.
Was it good? The Xbox 360 outsold it (by a lot), but even that was mostly luck because Sony notoriously fucked up the PS3 launch (and in the end, PS3 sold more anyways lmao). It also had the red ring of death issue.
The Xbox One was when they started the hardcore ramp up of enshittification which never ended even after continually losing in every way to the competition.
The OG Xbox worked well, and at least managed to outsell the GameCube (though not by a lot).
Yeah, it's the first 4k console that xbox produced and has a slim profile, looks good, has a great selection of games and backwards compatible games. I own 5 xbox 360's, it's my favorite xbox console, but not the LAST good console they made. It was their best console in my opinion. The original xbox had its own hard drive problems and the original controller that came with it is absolutely terrible, so they had to remake the S version that we actually could fit in our hands.
What can I say but... at least their hardware was on average a little more functional than Sony's.
Not surprising aren't they sundowning their whole company?
May as well. Not like anyone still uses it. They've done a bang on job of running everyone off
good
Indeed. Death to consoles. A piece of hardware/software creating a gated community where you're charged twice to use the entrance and then gaslit into thinking that it's a necessary fee.
You have a point with that, but as long as consoles are easy to use they have their audience. I have both pc and ps5. I do mostly prefer my pc, but i honestly cant deny that ps has its merits. The time i have owned the one console i have needed to upgrade my pc twice.
As long as there is no convinient way for less computer savy people to play casually, consoles will be a thing.
And before you start to crusifix me, remember most people playing games do it casually and like it or not, those people are the majority and the audience that bring biggest part of the money in to the industry.