Only thing concerns me is worldwide availability.
I get a feeling there might not be a way to even buy this easily, even if you might be ok with premium pricing.
Volume of production is going to be interesting to watch. They could probably at least try matching what Series S & X currently do (~ 3-4 million for 2024); whether that's solely on MS or help from OEMs making their versions I don't know.
Also, range of devices hitting different pricing brackets will probably play a big role in this. Nothing's specifically stopping them from having devices in the $300 bracket for example, outside of how much performance they want to scale back to hit the price.
It certainly sounds cool. My faith in Xbox being able to pull it off when they don't even have a proper functioning store is next to 0.
I think if they were doing this but where the foundation were Xbox OS as-is, and just extending more Windows functionality to Xbox devices as we currently know them (doesn't guarantee Series S & X would get that treatment tho) would've been easier, and give them more time to do the inverse of that as the long-term shift for the gen after 10th.
But MS are probably increasingly worried about growth of Steam and what proliferation Steam OS can have for PC gamers, while the top brass want to both secure Windows market share as-is in the consumer space while also having a potential new growth sector, even if that's at the expense of what Xbox traditionally already claimed. So they seem to be doing that now vs. 10 years from now.
Next Xbox is going to be a Game Pass and xCloud Machine.
The days of exclusives are over and Sony is probably going the same route eventually.
If Sony are smart, they won't. PlayStation consoles have huge market share but that market share could be bigger; actual exclusives would be a benefit towards that. Also as a platform holder, probably better to not be as dependent on other platform holders when you're already dependent in some capacity to 3P publishers.
A platform holder that's a big dependent on other platform holders, makes them a weaker platform holder to the 3P dependent on them.
Its a PC.
If its a cheap and suitably high mid-range (if you get what I mean) then sign me up.
Still don't get how this benefits MS though. Everyone will just buy games from steam and get free shit on Epic. They'll bypass the windows store (or whatever the fuck its called this year) 2/3 of the time. How does that help them make money because the hardware will likely be sold at break-even or at a loss?
That's just it tho: I don't think these will be sold at break-even or a loss. They'll probably go for some profit margin up front, and price them so OEMs have headroom for larger profit margins with whatever customizations they do with their systems.
MS still make money from B2P sales on PlayStation, Nintendo & Steam, and (less) money from Game Pass. Dell, Asus etc. don't have those revenue streams, so they're 100% on the hardware side for getting their money. They'll need the higher margins.
I'm more curious if there is going to be some standardization of the spec as a reference design, however. In another thread
K
KeplerL2
was saying it'll have AMD, Nvidia, Intel etc. components/chips since "everything is an Xbox", but I don't know how that leads to a standardization of a spec, which IMO is pretty important if they want to make things intuitive at a more console-like level. The way each of those companies handle updates and driver support is quite different, so how do you standardize that?
I still think it'll be a mistake on some level if there is no specific hardware blueprint reference established (in terms of the silicon, not necessarily I/O options or video output support). Maybe it's an AMD CPU with an Nvidia GPU and Intel NPU, or something along those lines. Or Intel CPU cores for game logic and AMD CPU cores for OS, Nvidia for GPU etc. There are still very intricate things at the silicon level that should be enforced through a standardized design, which I still don't think drivers can 100% account for, at least if they want a truly console-like ease-of-use experience.
Or they could design a reference spec blueprint based on the three, like one for AMD CPU & GPU, one for Intel CPU & GPU, and one for Nvidia CPU (ARM-based I guess) & GPU. OEMs then able to take their pick, make clock adjustments, add more storage & I/O options, and customize the shell UI to their liking (within reason).
