How many people bought a PS3 for Linux?
It will attract a very small niche but will do nothing for the masses.
Not a real argument IMO. Linux was
SUPER niche back in the '00s, and still is today, though less so. And most of its popularity outside of academia is thanks to Valve's work with getting Windows games compatible on Linux.
Windows was arguably at its height during the first half of the '00s, until Vista came and derailed things, and the iPhone made once-PC users switch to smartphones en masse. But it's still by far the most popular non-mobile OS for the average consumer and has about 70% marketshare in the PC space.
To think an Xbox that offers Windows dual-booting would have the same minimal appeal as a PS3 that offered Other OS with Linux is kind of ridiculous. In truth, more full-blown Windows support may be one of the
only things Microsoft can do to offer genuine value to Xbox that differentiates it against PlayStation, but that would necessitate a suite of changes for the business model from the top on down.
Changes I don't think higher-ups at Microsoft have any problem with making, BTW. It's probably been Phil Spencer himself blocking them from doing it sooner.
You want them to take a loss on the hardware so that people can get a cheap Steam PC? What’s the upside for Microsoft again?
It’s up to Valve to give Steam machines another shot if they want to, as they would be the primary beneficiary of a cheap PC box.
Valve don't have the resource or financial capacity, nor the years of experience as a hardware manufacturer in console, that Microsoft does. Microsoft can leverage their console know-how and transfer that to a new business model that positions Xbox more like a PC gaming device supporting Windows.
Besides Valve wants to move gamers off of Windows and to Steam/Linux, so it's actually in Microsoft's better interests to align Xbox and Windows as tightly coupled as possible.
Xbox isnt about selling xboxes or hardware, its about selling games, dual os would be dumb as hell for them.
It's not really about selling games, either. It's about getting revenue and increasing profit margins. Initiatives like Game Pass already show Microsoft don't 100% believe selling games (the B2P model) is the only way to achieve such.
Even if it is, their increasingly multi-console support shows they also feel, they don't need to rely on Xbox consoles as they currently are (which IMO includes acting as a traditional console business model-wise). Games like Minecraft sell much better on Nintendo and PlayStation than they do on Xbox, Microsoft's own console. And if their intent was to just sell games, they would've stuck to releasing stuff like Starfield on PS5 where they figured 10 million copies could be sold (in addition to whatever they've already sold on PC and Xbox).
"Dual OS" in and of itself might be a bit of a stretch, but "Dual UI" might be a better way to look at it. Basically it's one OS in two different configs (Desktop and Console) both using the same underlying kernel, that users can switch between at anytime, enabling or disabling various system services & utilities where appropriate. But the OS in this case would be Windows. Xbox already uses a lot of parts of the Windows kernel and an OS that can be considered a Windows variant; context-switching the UI is already something Windows 10 2-in-1 devices can do.
I know this idea for Xbox isn't popular with some folks but when you actually stop and think it out, it has significantly more upsides than downsides for
Microsoft Gaming as a whole and, at this point, it's
really about Microsoft Gaming. Not just Xbox, that's only a subsect of Microsoft Gaming these days.
They could sell 100m+ units if they really wanted to, all they would have to do is put ms office on there and series s/x would sell 100m+ in a single year (if they could produce that many).
I and likely many others would buy an xbox if it could run office, just excel alone would be enough. But they are in a bussiness of selling games and not consoles.
No. Again, they're in the business of selling gaming content for revenue and profits. They don't really care which way it is, as long as they get the results they want. That's why Game Pass exists. It's why they publish multiple games on competing consoles. It's why they want to open up their own mobile store. It's why they do all of these things, some of which can be considered cannibalizing to Xbox as a console in itself, at the same time.
While I think you're greatly overselling how many Xboxes MS could sell by making it dual-boot into Windows (or more likely, just make it a fully Windows gaming device altogether with different UI environments for console-like gaming and a more typical Windows desktop), partly because I think any such shift would result in
less Xboxes made not more (but at higher prices with real profit margins on the hardware itself), I'd say opening it up to those Windows features would bring a lot of value proposition to the system.
It would require massive restructuring of the business model however, which takes time. That said it's something I'm almost certain Microsoft have been considering doing for a while now, internally. We'll see if they commit to it in the future or not.
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