I don't expect these PC hybrid handhelds and "consoles" to succeed and after that I do wonder if they'll just start to wind down their gaming operations as they did with the likes of Windows Phone.
What we saw this week was the complete opposite of trying to grow or maintain the size of their current Xbox business.
The handheld will for sure fail overall. Obviously they're not subsidizing it, so it'll still turn a profit. But not enough for a trillion dollar company
And as much as PlayStation rules the console space… Steam rules the PC space even more. So they had a dog in the fight in the console space if they abandoned Gamepass, abandoned the Series S and pushed their exclusives. But they legit are going to be slaughtered by Steam
Even when people talk about their strategy, they push excitement about accessing Steam storefronts. That doesn't benefit Xbox outside of the hardware sale
But still…if someone is in the market for a PC handheld - Steam Deck is the handheld equivalent to PlayStation console
So what happens??? Exactly what I've been saying for awhile. In the way that Steam or Epic has games exclusive to their launchers, Xbox is going to do the exact same thing.
You wanna play their IPs? Use their storefront. Despite people wanting to believe that exclusivity is done, it's not. Not even a little bit
Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, PlayStation, Steam, Epic, Battlenet, Disney+,etc… ALL have exclusive content. Just not in hardware
So as excited as you get about Steam being on their hardware, they will not let you buy their Xbox games from there. Especially since they want you to have to pay for gamepass
Short sighted consumers thinking any big corp is going to be altruistic