The sooner the better imo. Make the whole library BC as well and add everything into the Xbox store on PC, basically consolidating PC and consoles. I keep saying it, but if they could pull it off they’d have a winner. With integration from other stores as well in some capacity would make it something the competition cannot match!
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Agreed I only hope this is so. Xbox normally keeps their ears open to the community so I hope they know we want this and are working towards it. One OS to rule them all
Think the entire point is to bring the console-like experience/usability to PC. So yeah it’s the same as a SFF PC, just with different software. Might have some particular minor hardware requirements to allow things wake up from controller in order to have official branding.
I’m all for it, the more options the better
Yeah it makes sense to me to self publish a $500 version and then say “hey if you want to go crazy, heres a $1000 version we licensed out, have fun”
Or even…a phone that runs the Xbox OS.
My thinking was always going to be that Microsoft goes in on more robust emulation, but this time instead of Xbox and 360. It would tell the XboxOS it’s paired back full version of Windows and that it’s running a certain store at the time in some sort of big picture mode.
But I guess we will just see how they do things, and if this sort of emulation would work for all devices of the minimum spec(Xbox Series S).
some good stuff in here
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I’m not into PC gaming so I hope the less messing around of the Console is there on launch.
That would be one of the key points. To take the strengths of Consoles and PCs and merge them. Consoles have great 10ft. UI/UX’s, they control well with a controller, they generally guarantee a minimum level of playability/performance for games that release on them. Those parts would all be baked into this.
Meanwhile what PCs are great at is near full backwards-compatibility, infinite forward-compatibility, default scalability (no need to wait for devs to patch their game if you buy better hardware like PS5 Pro, your game just scales to your hardware by default), multiple control schemes (M&KB, Controller), multiple stores/launchers, customizability, etc. All those would be possible here too.
Yeah, most likely best to wait for Microsoft to announce it. I think key on UI level they need to make sure these OEM boxes have a console-like experience. I think it’s pointless if there’s not a console-like experience on these devices. They key for everything will be cost because if things aren’t competitively price, then I don’t see a market for these devices.
I get that this might be viewed as a weird transition for console traditionalists but it makes complete sense if you look at the way the industry has been evolving these last two generations. People have been voting with their wallet by migrating or onboarding to PC en masse for the last 10 years. For as many people that wanted Xbox to become Playstation there are far more that want Xbox to become PC.
We know this because of the publicly viewable meteoric rise in Steam Users. We know this because of the rise in users and viewers of Video Game streaming sites which overwhelmingly stream PC games. We know this from Sony themselves, who committed to releasing ‘Pro’ versions of their consoles specifically to stem users from bleeding from consoles to PC.
PCs have distinct advantages that consoles do not have; default scalability (no waiting on devs to patch their games to take advantage of your newer hardware when you upgrade), near full backwards compatibility, infinite forward compatibility (no ‘generations’ that arbitrarily break your software compatibility on PCs), exclusives that consoles couldn’t even dream of running due to either performance requirements (Star Citizen, WoW, etc.) or complex control schemes which don’t and shouldn’t translate to a controller-dominated ecosystem (Tarkov comes to mind), multitasking that puts consoles to shame, competing storefronts and launchers, flexibility in hardware configurations, flexibility of cost, and lets not forget “console exclusives” from both Xbox and Playstation.
In whole I think orders of magnitude more people have ‘voted with their wallet’ by moving to PC because of the advantages of PC than have ‘voted with their wallet’ by moving to other consoles just to get the same experience (or worse, in terms of value).
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Let’s say we hypothetically get a $2,000 super-powered “Xbox” manufactured by some third party. I can easily see how the extra power would benefit games running on Steam or Epic or the PC version of GamePass. But how would the “proper” Xbox console games benefit from the extra power without specifically being designed for it?
I know games with dynamic resolution and unlocked frame rates would benefit, but many games don’t have those.
I’m not even talking about back compat games - but wouldn’t new games somehow have to be designed with higher power Xbox variants in mind?
Sorry if this is a dumb question. I’m just trying to wrap my mind around this.
The only way I could see Microsoft doing well for next generation is if they create a console that not only has the Xbox OS (retaining the back compat of previous xbox games) but the ability of using Windows 11 or potentially Steam OS to allow users to play more games. A hybrid console between an Xbox and PC could be a great option especially for someone like me who has been slowly moving to PC gaming but still has a lot of xbox games.
They’ll never be a full PC OS experience but having the stores and ability to play PC games feels like the most common solution for them moving forward.
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I think they want to keep it closed down to some degree as they probably don’t want people hacking the thing. It needs to open up enough to run everything it can, but closed down so that it can work with a controller and not be easily cracked to run software illegally on it, just like current consoles.
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My assumption (and the ideal end goal IMO) is that there is a single build of a game on the Xbox Store. That single build is both a console game, a PC game, a cloud game, etc.
Like a PC game, it will likely ship with some pre-defined setting but also allow addition configuration for the power users (or users with lower or higher spec hardware) to meet whatever their personal targets are. There are probably also smart things they can do to determine settings based on your hardware.
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I have a feeling that people will bring up the 3DO which also allowed different manufacturers to build units but this sounds pretty different.
I don’t doubt this news because it sounds like the direction they are going but for developers it’s akin to creating another PC version that wouldn’t be optimized for a particular hardware target. There’s likely a base minimum spec?
I also wonder how the mass market would react to this. Is the mass market even a thing at this point? Have consoles become an enthusiast only product?
Ar a certain point Microsoft considered Google and Apple competition. With this no longer being the case, this makes me wonder if they see Steam OS as a threat? Because I can see this as something Valve would be going for with a console-like device.
Whatever the case, the Windows handheld units are likely setting off lightbulbs at MS.
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It’s apples to bowling balls.
If you look up the history of the 3DO there were a lot of issues with it. On top of it all it was incredibly expensive, with the first one launching at $699 in 1994. That was the equivalent of nearly $1,500 today. The first 3D0 by Panasonic launched with one game because devs had issues optimizing for it, which caused a lot of delays. The whole thing was a mess.
Xbox has tens of millions of customers now on console who might want somewhere to go that isn’t a full blown PC. And the Xbox team has proven to us a couple of times now that they can make BC magic a reality. I’m curious to see how they make this new open Xbox marketplace work. If they pull it off then the next Xbox console will be second to PC in terms of games available, with things that Playstation might never get or they will be delayed because PC gets a lot of things first these days.
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I don’t know yet how to feel about this. Personally I’ve given up on PC gaming a long time ago, I just wasn’t the kind of person to tinker with hardware and settings, I’m the plug and play dude.
It’s fine I guess if it will be more like PC, as long as the ease of use is still there of console. Options of course are always nice for new components for those interested and if MS can pull it off, let’s go.
We’ll have to see how they handle this, but they’ve been hinting this is the direction they are going. It kind of makes sense to have other manufacturers building Xboxes. I think the focus here is to have local manufacturers take over in countries that have strict tariffs on imports or countries when MS doesn’t have good distribution channels. So this may not be about other Xboxes in the USA, but something more like a Samsung Xbox in Korea, Hisense Xbox in China, or Sega Xbox in Japan… stuff like that.