If I understand the situation, they’re rebranding an Asus ROG handheld, which I imagine isn’t going to outsell the Steam Deck or whatever the thing Lenovo is shipping with both Windows or SteamOS on, because they’re late to the game and they’ll fuck it up somehow, and I give 50/50 odds that there will be an announcement that they’re cancelling the next home console launch.
That’s not the next Xbox I mean, but it’s a glimpse at it. It’s clear that the direction this is going is that Xbox moving forward is going to be a Steam competitor and a launcher at the same time. The next Xbox console will be a prebuilt PC. A literal prebuilt PC running windows that can play Steam, PC games and Gamepass at current Series X quality or a little bit better priced somewhere between $700 to $900. Maybe a Series S type performance for $400-500.
Build me a PC with similar performance at that price. You can’t because the GPU market is insane. I’m not saying there’s no pitfalls, but if they pull it off they will sell these things like crazy.
It’s funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like “why don’t they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?”
Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.
They were thinking about that back then, various people have said it, but I think they were constrained by costs and technical limitations. Bill Gates certainly wanted Xbox and windows gaming to be a unified platform. I mean look at Valve, they had the Steam Machine ages ago and they flopped, but you can be sure that they will be much popular this time around.
True, I’m definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn’t have entered the console market at all. I’d probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up “Games For Windows! Live” or whatever it was called.
Yep they definitely missed the boat on that one. Which is why I think they are so keen on turning Xbox into a platform. With how PC hardware is going, they have a chance to take back some market from Valve and maybe convert people from Playstation as well. The risk here is that they can’t sell the “consoles” at a loss, so they will be undercut by Sony by a significant amount of money. But their answer to that is probably “it doesn’t matter, everything is an Xbox now, the console is for the enthusiast market”.
I could probably build a gaming PC that matches the Series S for $500 with an AMD APU, some Ryzen thing with integrated graphics, no discrete GPU. The Steam Deck makes it work in a handheld format, I can do it in a PC case. Or, go buy used. There’s gonna be a lot of perfectly game capable machines being sold off because they won’t run Win 11. Slap Linux + Steam on there and you’re gaming.
Ok, so you think the mass market likes buying used stuff? Because as far as I’m aware the average consumer would rather buy a new lower end device than a used higher end device.
But yes the next Xbox has already been teased as running an AMD chip that will be sued across form factors , so you get where they are coming from. They are not about to let Valve and Linux run with the PC market, which continues to grow while the console market continues to shrink.
I bet you money right now that the next Xbox will be the best selling Xbox ever.
If I understand the situation, they’re rebranding an Asus ROG handheld, which I imagine isn’t going to outsell the Steam Deck or whatever the thing Lenovo is shipping with both Windows or SteamOS on, because they’re late to the game and they’ll fuck it up somehow, and I give 50/50 odds that there will be an announcement that they’re cancelling the next home console launch.
That’s not the next Xbox I mean, but it’s a glimpse at it. It’s clear that the direction this is going is that Xbox moving forward is going to be a Steam competitor and a launcher at the same time. The next Xbox console will be a prebuilt PC. A literal prebuilt PC running windows that can play Steam, PC games and Gamepass at current Series X quality or a little bit better priced somewhere between $700 to $900. Maybe a Series S type performance for $400-500. Build me a PC with similar performance at that price. You can’t because the GPU market is insane. I’m not saying there’s no pitfalls, but if they pull it off they will sell these things like crazy.
It’s funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like “why don’t they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?”
Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.
They were thinking about that back then, various people have said it, but I think they were constrained by costs and technical limitations. Bill Gates certainly wanted Xbox and windows gaming to be a unified platform. I mean look at Valve, they had the Steam Machine ages ago and they flopped, but you can be sure that they will be much popular this time around.
True, I’m definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn’t have entered the console market at all. I’d probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up “Games For Windows! Live” or whatever it was called.
Yep they definitely missed the boat on that one. Which is why I think they are so keen on turning Xbox into a platform. With how PC hardware is going, they have a chance to take back some market from Valve and maybe convert people from Playstation as well. The risk here is that they can’t sell the “consoles” at a loss, so they will be undercut by Sony by a significant amount of money. But their answer to that is probably “it doesn’t matter, everything is an Xbox now, the console is for the enthusiast market”.
Bold strategy, we’ll see if they can pull it off.
I could probably build a gaming PC that matches the Series S for $500 with an AMD APU, some Ryzen thing with integrated graphics, no discrete GPU. The Steam Deck makes it work in a handheld format, I can do it in a PC case. Or, go buy used. There’s gonna be a lot of perfectly game capable machines being sold off because they won’t run Win 11. Slap Linux + Steam on there and you’re gaming.
Ok, so you think the mass market likes buying used stuff? Because as far as I’m aware the average consumer would rather buy a new lower end device than a used higher end device.
But yes the next Xbox has already been teased as running an AMD chip that will be sued across form factors , so you get where they are coming from. They are not about to let Valve and Linux run with the PC market, which continues to grow while the console market continues to shrink.
If it’s really a PC, I bet AMD customized Strix Halo (their 40 CU APU) for Microsoft instead of doing a fully custom chip like before.
It’d save them money (as custom chip tapeouts are 9 figures last I heard). I bet Microsoft couldn’t help themselves, heh.