Xbox is dead outside of being a different logo for windows. I think it’s obvious to anybody remotely watching the industry that all they really care about is game pass at this point. Even at the game awards, they were essentially absent outside of a game pass ad, and recently put a finance guy in charge of Zenimax.
I would love to say this won’t end well for them, but they probably crunched the numbers and determined they could continue the same revenue with minimum effort. Enough people will probably stick around on game pass, even after the recent hikes, to keep it as a solid revenue stream.
I sold my Xbox six months ago after it sat collecting dust for a year and a half, glad I did.
The writing has been on the wall for a while. I remember hearing quotes about wanting to turn Xbox into a Steam competitor back in like 2018. I was honestly surprised when they released the Series. I was pretty sure we would get some sort of streaming only console after the One X|S.
I imagine going forward, in addition to the streaming services, we are going to see Xbox leveraged as “certification” for other manufacturer’s hardware where consumers can be assured that this device meets some set spec for this year’s Xbox games.
They couldn’t go full steaming at that point, X Cloud wasn’t fully ready, and gamer sentiment was against it on the whole. The Series S was intended for this use, but the timing was off. So they set about building up infrastructure using massive AI investment money, which also increased the price of hardware, eventually releasing a console costing over $1000 pricing most gamers out of owning the top end hardware, making the Series S type devices much more appealing, and getting them onto the streaming service, raking in fixed income off everyone, and raising prices when the investors want another payout.
Xbox is dead outside of being a different logo for windows. I think it’s obvious to anybody remotely watching the industry that all they really care about is game pass at this point. Even at the game awards, they were essentially absent outside of a game pass ad, and recently put a finance guy in charge of Zenimax.
I would love to say this won’t end well for them, but they probably crunched the numbers and determined they could continue the same revenue with minimum effort. Enough people will probably stick around on game pass, even after the recent hikes, to keep it as a solid revenue stream.
I sold my Xbox six months ago after it sat collecting dust for a year and a half, glad I did.
But what if we cram it full of AI bloat/spyware? Could we entice you then?
Xbox One X Series X CoPilot X
AI made games.
The writing has been on the wall for a while. I remember hearing quotes about wanting to turn Xbox into a Steam competitor back in like 2018. I was honestly surprised when they released the Series. I was pretty sure we would get some sort of streaming only console after the One X|S.
I imagine going forward, in addition to the streaming services, we are going to see Xbox leveraged as “certification” for other manufacturer’s hardware where consumers can be assured that this device meets some set spec for this year’s Xbox games.
They couldn’t go full steaming at that point, X Cloud wasn’t fully ready, and gamer sentiment was against it on the whole. The Series S was intended for this use, but the timing was off. So they set about building up infrastructure using massive AI investment money, which also increased the price of hardware, eventually releasing a console costing over $1000 pricing most gamers out of owning the top end hardware, making the Series S type devices much more appealing, and getting them onto the streaming service, raking in fixed income off everyone, and raising prices when the investors want another payout.
Not me. I’m hanging onto mine for the inevitable retro revival!
(h/j)