I agree it’s why they’re playing their cards close to their chests - they don’t want to reveal to their competition (which is still Sony at the moment, regardless of what they say) their plans.
It’s just that hinting at the future isn’t the same as being clear, which was my point to the OP who doesn’t respond to me anyway as I call out his name-calling.
To be honest if the 2026 generation is more of an iteration, in many ways I’d support both Xbox and PlayStation moving to a more iterative approach - I’d happily buy incremental versions (some could even just be plug-in upgrades to the existing console) as I’m a bit sick of the PC world where the eventual GPU upgrade costs you over a grand then you have to look next at the CPU/motherboard/RAM combo (usually another grand) it’s such an expensive hobby where you constantly have to look at specs, reviews, compatibility issues etc. and then often find games (particularly Sony and Square’s recent PC ports) run like dogs anyway.
Some developers will moan about optimising for different SKUs like they already do with the Series S, but they optimise for PC anyway which has millions of different configurations.
Longer term, yes consoles will probably be replaced by streaming, but until the latency and bandwidth reach a point where you can’t tell the difference between a 4K60 local picture and a streaming one, we’ll still want our little boxes so I am intrigued what the future holds…
Whatever you feel about Timdog, can we not pretend that the Xbox execs weren’t openly appealing to people like Tim Dog in a grassroots effort to get back into fans good graces after fumbling the messaging with XB1?
They’ve been signal boosting these people for years. Execs appearing on their podcasts and in chat sections ( I was there watching podcasts like BGST at the time) talking to them on Twitter, having dinners with them at cons etc. Now they want to put that genie back in the bottle all of a sudden. It doesn’t work that way I’m afraid.
Also If people don’t want to be on board with what Xbox is doing that is their fucking prerogative. If anything my pet peev is when someone claims to be “done” with Xbox but still wont STFU about them on Twitter like some sort of spurned ex lover or something.
But if someone decides that Xbox is not going in a direction that they like, I am all for them voting with their wallets. I’ve also been with Xbox since the OG and again I am a fan of Xbox in spite of Microsoft not because of it.
People have a right to be skeptical of what they’re doing because frankly there have been those in the company that would’ve liked to see the Xbox brand dead or sold off by Phil’s own admission. Now it seems that they want to run Xbox like it’s a surface or something and it remains to be seen whether or not they’re just shooting themselves in the foot yet again.
Either way ( I feel like I’ve said this before) you guys are NEVER going to convince anyone not on board with this , especially when taking any sort of condescending or aggressive tone about it, if anything you’ll make them dig their heels in more. Best to just agree to disagree on this one.
Thing is we don’t have to convince anyone of anything,
The reality is the days of console wars and looking at monthly hardware sales to determine “winners and losers” is over, the days of gloating over exclusives and pixel counting and garbage made up wars involving pieces of plastic are over.
The previous gaming business model failed and every platform holder is looking at different ways to grow where consoles sales are stagnating or falling. If that business actually worked their would not be so many layoffs in gaming and bad margins and so many companies trying different things.
But I do agree if people do not like the direction Xbox has taken buy another console, find another platform to game on or just find a new damn hobby. The constant whining like babies is not going to change anything and just shows how some people are so stuck in the past they simply refuse to see what is going on in the future.
It will suck for them since they cannot come to grips with a changing gaming landscape.
People can flip their shit and kick and scream about it but it literally will not change a damn thing. Some of us though just want to play some damn games on our Xbox’s and MAYBE talk to other gamers about it without always wading through doom and gloom crap cause they can’t rag other fanboys about console sales or exclusives. Fuck that crap that should have never been part of gaming in the first place.
Yep - the condescension is bad enough, and got really bad at times in the giant thread (to be fair a bit from all sides) but the insults are another level.
Calling people nutty, nutcases and knuckle dragging luddites is just trolling in my eyes, and I’ve noticed the trolls often bitch about having to put up with negative opinions on this forum then creates a thread specifically to call them out.
It’s childish, as is the argument Sony is completely irrelevant and consoles almost are too - it’s demonstrably false as 99% of us are playing on Xbox consoles not streaming, and at the moment they’re the competitor who may pay publishers to keep games off our box so that currently affects us
You guys live on “slippery slopes” and doom and gloom and move to the next disaster when the current one has run its course, sorry but it gets old and really brings down the whole community. I just can’t follow gaming anymore and be hit over the head with this crap day in and day out and think it’s ok. This gloom chasing is exhausting and in no way will change anything.
At some point if you really hate the direction Xbox is going in you need to find something else to occupy your time. How long do we have to listen to the bitching when it’s obvious MS is not going to cater exactly to what you want?
Things are changing and their is literally nothing you can do about it except change your own behavior and expectations, Seriously move on with your life instead of trying to drag the community down and pitch fits because the exclusive gaming landscape is changing. We get it, we hear the moaning but it’s not going to go back to the way it was.
Gaming is going to become less about single hardware platforms and more about actual games/services and eco systems. I think this is a good thing and how it should be in gaming and Xbox is WAY WAY ahead in these things over other platform holders which makes the silly gloomers even weirder to understand. You guys want to go back to a gaming model that Xbox got trounced in for over 20 years like they can just keep doing that forever while Xbox is actually setup better then anyone for the future and alot of you are just ignoring that.
Do you not see the irony in what you’ve said though? All the doom and gloomers are bringing you down, yet you start a new thread (twice) to goad them for more arguments rather than just leaving it in the giant thread and ignoring it.
Yes some people react more viscerally than others to change, most will be somewhere in the middle “wait and see, but have faith” and some will be fully signed up immediately.
Rubbishing everyone who has a different opinion to you as knuckle-dragging luddites that are trying to drag everyone down is really not a good way to enable those conversations focused on games that you’re eager to have.
I’m in the middle of the pack, and if you look at my conversations on other threads while I might be frustrated we’re not getting more Halo games, or might get a Pro at some point (I always go Xbox first despite most of my friends being on PS), I’m actually pretty OK with giving Xbox the benefit of the doubt and I’ll be buying any major console upgrades and I’ll definitely be trying the new controller.
Yet you attack me in the same way as if I’d just gone on a massive rant about how Xbox was dying, Phil doesn’t know what he’s doing, first party games suck and I wish I’d never bought my XSX - but I haven’t, instead I’ve just pointed out most of the time points can be made without resorting to insults or name-calling.
So maybe rather than telling everyone else to stop gloom chasing and move on, maybe avoid the giant thread and you’ll generally find the chat in other threads is mostly positive.
And for what it’s worth, I actually agree - I’ve not bought a physical game in years, longer term consoles will likely not be required as streaming becomes as good, and I do think Sony will go PC day 1 pretty soon and who knows might even stop the third-party moneyhatting and play nice…