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Microsoft’s gaming chief hints that Xbox could get PC stores like Epic Games one day
Magic Carpet
Gold Member
Sega could in theory make an Xbox and brand it the Dreamcast 2 Skylanders edition?
Bry0
Member
I think MS has a lot of incentive to do it before valve does too. They don’t seem to talk about valve much publicly but MS would be stupid to ignore what the Deck potentially means for windows gaming in the long term. Better to smother it now than have to fight it later.
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BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
The handheld would be a hard sell over Steam Deck unless you are heavily invested in Xbox software.
A console that comes with windows installed that plugs into my TV that I could install Steam on and use for media stuff without using the nerfed console media apps would be appealing to me. I always wanted an HTPC to screw around with but the thermals kind of suck on the ones I looked at.
Griffon
Member
You know what grinds my gears, is that MS could have a much better legacy hardware brand name for video games: the MSX.
It sounds much better and is deeply associated with video game history... and they never thought of using it ever again. Dumb fucks.
Edit: nevermind, even though people believe the MSX name is related to the microsoft extended basic shipped with the machines, it's actually made and owned by ASCII corp.
MS should totally throw some money their way to grab the name.
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Mibu no ookami
Banned
I don't know how many white flag moments Spencer can have as CEO here and for his supporters to keep on supporting him.
It's pretty clear that they're now thinking about a PC for the next Xbox running the Xbox ecosystem as an overlay over PC, but eschewing all software royalties means they'd have to sell the hardware at a serious premium, especially if the hardware was compelling enough spec wise.
It also goes in line with what they said about the biggest leap.
This is a mistake, but that's not knew for Phil "swing for the fences" Spencer. The difference between Nintendo and Microsoft's hail marys have been entirely rooted around enhancing the experience vs a craven attempt at capturing market share.
It's pretty clear that they're now thinking about a PC for the next Xbox running the Xbox ecosystem as an overlay over PC, but eschewing all software royalties means they'd have to sell the hardware at a serious premium, especially if the hardware was compelling enough spec wise.
It also goes in line with what they said about the biggest leap.
This is a mistake, but that's not knew for Phil "swing for the fences" Spencer. The difference between Nintendo and Microsoft's hail marys have been entirely rooted around enhancing the experience vs a craven attempt at capturing market share.
Puscifer
Member
If they did full keyboard and mouse support I could see myself honestly switching. I already build itx PCs for myself but you can't deny what's on offer for here
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
I don’t think Phil is making the decisions anymore. They tried it his way for a decade and are in a worse position than they started in. Somebody reined him in and said this isn’t working, find a way to make some money through videogames and wrap it up with the traditional console market.
chilichote
Member
So why should I buy an Xbox branded device?
Reizo Ryuu
Member
That's not what he's saying, he's talking about the price difference with a discount, it's like buying something in a store and then a few days later they have a special, a lot of stores have policies that will allow you to still get the discount; EGS will automatically refund you the difference if the game goes on sale within like a month.
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Topher
Identifies as young
Ah.....I follow. Yeah, that's not bad. I'd still rather be able to buy the game from multiple storefronts who compete with discounts upfront. I can't remember the last time I paid the full price for a game on Steam.
King Dazzar
Member
You'd think this would be a good thing, moving away from a walled garden and providing more choice. But I predict this will simply lead to a more ad infested, unfocused mess of a ui.
twilo99
Member
I certainly hope so
GHG
Member
Why when PC's are already available right now?
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
What if Steamdeck, but console?
Goalus
Member
I suggest that you take your pills.
clarky
Gold Member
FTFY.
Bry0
Member
IMO the differentiator is the form factor and the interface. If it can behave like a console or a traditional pc experience like the deck, I find that compelling, and it would differentiate itself from the ps5 in capability at least. I think the steam deck was really disruptive in the sense that it has shown you can indeed have a console like experience and a full fledged desktop experience side by side in a way we haven’t quite seen before.
Even the ps4/xbone were basically PCs under the hood, the operating system and interface was always a bigger differentiator than the x86 hardware under the hood for the last few console generations.
SportsFan581
Member
The purpose of a console is great value to performance hardware made possible by software sales. It's hard to see an open platform ever succeeding at that outside of Valve (because they are where you would be spending your money anyway, LOL and some hoops do have to be jumped through to make it happen). I don't see how MS could make a console work built on a Windows OS with open software support. At least not at a great value. The profit on the box itself is the only driver to sell it at that point, which is counter to what consoles offer. Maybe they could negotiate for better prices than the DIY system builder, I guess that would be the angle they would have to work from.
Certainly the traditional model that Sony and Nintendo are running would remain the best option in terms of value for console players.
Certainly the traditional model that Sony and Nintendo are running would remain the best option in terms of value for console players.
MarkMe2525
Banned
Yeah, I hate when companies have to compete for my purchase.
bitbydeath
Member
*An app you install on a PC.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Just make the xbox app fully xbox sdk integrated on pc. Then make the console a PC.
Done.
Done.
All it would take is an OS & Driver update because Xbox Series & PS5 are basically PCs
Coloress_Kafka
Member
I’m all for a world where Microsoft subsidizes the hardware and then I give all my software money to Valve. Makes tons of sense!
bitbydeath
Member
Between this thread and the other one where Phil said he wants his current handheld to play Xbox I think it’s safe to assume they are done with hardware, it’ll just be an app so that way you won’t lose access to your purchases.
MarkMe2525
Banned
What do you make of Phil's assertion that they are working on a new console? Does that not count?
Randall365
Member
They missed the boat on this years ago.
As if anyone is going to use anything other than Steam from now on.
As if anyone is going to use anything other than Steam from now on.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Tbh I don't mind if they bring the Epic Games Store since I have like almost every freebie they've released so far lol. Though I rather have Steam.
Astray
Member
I said this to
HeisenbergFX4
before, but working on something and prototyping etc doesn't really matter until someone at Microsoft actually inks the deal to mass produce these things, however way they go about it.That's the real moment of truth, when Microsoft (or someone else like Asus or whatever) has to commit $100m or so to reserve a production line and start buying components etc.
Until then, this is just news fodder.
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bitbydeath
Member
Maybe just meant the app, Phil has never been straight forward in his communications.
balls of snow
Member
Saying all the shit to see which sticks most with their consumers. Every screen is an xbox. Handheld market we coming for you. You want pc store on xbox, we do too!
Wildebeest
Member
Xbox is heading into its mystical phase. It will do everything, but also it will do nothing. It will take whatever form you dream of but will be formless. Perhaps you can only see it in a vision while meditating on a mountain top.
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
They could if they just offered an upgrade to Windows for the current consoles. Which functionally shouldn't be that difficult.
I don't think this has anything to do with Apple, at least I hope not. I'm trying to assume Phil is being genuine here and not trying to take a dig at Apple or use that whole frankly bogus (IMO) lawsuit as a piggyback to force similar things in the console industry.
Because if that happens, there won't be enough ire in the universe to contain my ether.
That future's at least two decades away if not longer, and nothing will ever legally force consoles to do this because they are proprietary designs with proprietary tech owned by specific companies who use a subsidization model to sell many units cheaply to customers that make up the losses on hardware with software & services under the domain of the platform holder to offset the subsidization which is required for driving mass market adoption that benefits software sales & service growth at many millions.
If the government tries screwing that up, they will kill the entire gaming market and collapse total revenue and profits for all companies. The hardware will get more expensive and that doesn't mean the software necessarily becomes cheaper to counterbalance it. It's not like multiple publishers can't simply happenstance upon a price range where they all are happy with and as long as certain things are avoided, it could never be proven is collusion or an anticompetitive practice like price-fixing. Even regional pricing, which is used with PC storefronts today, could be used to set market prices however publishers want even on an "open" platform like PC, and be perfectly fine legally.
I'm all for a Steambox. Series X class hardware that can play everything for less than 600 bucks? Sign me up.
Xbox super series x next XL. $1599.99
Cheaper than a RTX 5090 but using the exact same chip in that 5090.
I don't think that type of system would be $600, it would probably be a good bit more expensive than $600. After all, not locking the store down to the Xbox or Windows stores means less 3P sales revenue and cuts for Microsoft, and the PC-like nature of the device would mean less control over peripherals also meaning less in money on that for Microsoft. So they'd make up for that with a higher price to get a nice profit margin on hardware upfront.
Maybe tying in a partly-subsidized year's worth of Game Pass to those SKUs would be a way to also justify the higher price. Also the higher the price, the less units they'd likely make but since they've been losing money on Xbox consoles for years they'd probably welcome that tradeoff (and this approach might actually get them to sell at a better rate than the current Xbox Series consoles are doing).
Really don't see how regulators could stop them on this. They already have their own PCs in the form of Surface devices, which can also play games (if you want them to). MS just can't bar other OEMs from making competing gaming-centric PC devices like handhelds or whatever running on Windows, and they should be fine.
Regulatory bodies can go eat fecal matter because what Microsoft does with their consoles has absolutely no bearing on what Sony or Nintendo should do with theirs. Consoles in the traditional sense are not open-platform devices, and are not based on open standards. They also arguably can only provide their offerings at the scale they do by taking a subsidization model where the real money's made on software & services at the control of the platform holder who is putting up all of the financial R&D, and risks in production & promotion/distribution of the devices and OS, services etc.
They should have the right to operate in a walled garden business model and this even goes for companies like Apple as well; if the PC-compatible were a software & hardware proprietary design owned by Microsoft they could have done the same with that market, but it wasn't, yet they tried to anyway. That's where they messed up with all the 'Wintel' stuff in the late '80s and through the '90s that got them sued for antitrust back then.
Now theoretically, Microsoft could do that going forward if they developed a fork of Windows that was somehow compatible with the Windows kernel but otherwise its own proprietary OS and paired that with gaming-centric PC devices that took off and sold like crazy, but I don't think that's either legally or technically possible. That hypothetical OS would have to share zero code with Windows and yet somehow be 100% compatible with Windows applications (likely through emulation, like WINE on Linux), and any closed control MS exerted could only apply to that hypothetical OS, not Windows, of which they have decades-spanning contracts with various OEMs and other companies in licensing for, etc.
And even so, it would only be worth it if tied to a device line that was widely successful, and it would also kind of defeat the purpose of Windows and growing its presence in the gaming market. Like, they're still supporting a legacy OS that they own but both licenses out to tons of companies and has tons of people creating apps for on free licenses, but also want to push a different OS that's somehow 100% compatible with Windows apps while sharing zero code with Windows, simply to push their own hardware in the market to have grounds of similar closed ecosystem control that Apple does with iPhone/iOS, or Sony does with PlayStation or Nintendo does with Switch? At this point that just wouldn't make a lot of sense IMO.
So yeah, Microsoft opening up Xbox devices to basically become PCs should have little to no bearing on what Sony or Nintendo "should" do WRT similar for their consoles, because MS are basically shifting Xbox hardware to a wholly different business model to do so. And that might work for them, but regulators have to understand that different companies will do what they need that's specific to their own products. You can't force industries to upend their entire business models altogether just because one company in that industry is changing their business model to salvage & revamp their presence in that industry.
LordCBH
Member
If someone gets a way to drop Linux on the series consoles, I might instal steamos lol
MarkMe2525
Banned
He hasn't gone into any details, as nothing is ready for announcement, but he has been straight forward about their intention for new hardware.
February 2024
"We’ve got more to come. There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday. We’re also invested in the next-generation roadmap. What we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building."
Now Phil didn't say "we are releasing a new Xbox", but his statements directly imply that is currently the plan. So if we are going off of his statements, I don't think it would be accurate to conclude "it's safe to assume they are done with hardware".
Snake29
Banned
They are getting desperate. Is Phil trying to convince the board that the brand is still relevant? It feels like the shareholders and the board just want to kill the Xbox brand and just release all their games on other platforms.
Maybe because of eWaste that he wants the hardware to be some sort of relevant, but i don't see it working same as a dedicated Xbox handheld when you can get the Steamdeck which can play alle platforms.
They are now just throwing the whole brand at the wall, so they can look how long it will stick till it's officially death.
Maybe because of eWaste that he wants the hardware to be some sort of relevant, but i don't see it working same as a dedicated Xbox handheld when you can get the Steamdeck which can play alle platforms.
They are now just throwing the whole brand at the wall, so they can look how long it will stick till it's officially death.
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baphomet
Member
So basically you're going to get the other publishers stores on there where they can keep their game prices as high as they want.
You'll get EA store, and Ubisoft store, and Take Two store, and so on. You're not going to see Steam or Epic on there as they don't sell games compatible with Xbox.
You'll get EA store, and Ubisoft store, and Take Two store, and so on. You're not going to see Steam or Epic on there as they don't sell games compatible with Xbox.
bitbydeath
Member
The “exciting stuff coming out in hardware” could equally mean an Xbox app being prepared for existing hardware.
“Largest technical leap” because it can go on anything.
Edit: It makes more sense than releasing a $1000 high-end console that very few people would buy.
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Bernkastel
Ask me about my fanboy energy!
But they did. Bill Gates wanted the original Xbox to have full Windows, until the devs told him it's not possible. Consoles are not supposed to take 10 minutes to boot. It used a stepped version of Windows. Also, DirextX on Xbox always gave devs access to low level API, a feature that Windows got with DirectX 12. We only now have the tech to replace Xbox OS with Windows.
ShirAhava
Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
XBOX is about five years ahead of the way the entire industry is going to end up going
Nintendo used to make trad home consoles now is a tablet, Xbox is a store, PS6 might just be a breakout box for PSVR3 with everything built into the headset
Nintendo used to make trad home consoles now is a tablet, Xbox is a store, PS6 might just be a breakout box for PSVR3 with everything built into the headset
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BlackTron
Member
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
This is why we don't need a company like MSFT in the console business.
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