It’s confirmed: the next xbox will be a Windows PC box. It sounds very interesting that this will also be backwards compatible with Xbox games, including 360/One/Series games. I wonder if it’s just emulation, and how well that will work
It’s starting to get annoying waiting for Valve to announce a Steam Machine and having to listen to Microsoft’s future Xbox-as-a-PC plans instead.
All signs are that we are getting the new VR headset first.
And it is probably in Valve’s best interest to let other people drive the HTPC consoles. They are not going to be cheap since “1024 at 40 FPS” doesn’t scale all that well to a 50 inch 4k display. So let other integrators deal with that. Just release the steam controller 2 already.
And I’ll say that you can get a really nice AMD NUC HTPC for under 500 bucks that can handle “steam deck games” on a TV. And I THINK I have a way to get Display Port -> HDMI 2.1 that I need to sit down and test.
All signs are that we are getting the new VR headset first.
Yeah :(
And it is probably in Valve’s best interest to let other people drive the HTPC consoles. They are not going to be cheap since “1024 at 40 FPS” doesn’t scale all that well to a 50 inch 4k display. So let other integrators deal with that. Just release the steam controller 2 already.
I’m not sure this is a good idea, personally. The original Steam Machines and the ROG Xbox Ally are pretty good indicators that it’s not very smart to rely on OEMs to drive major change in the PC market.
The current gen consoles are basically already just standard AMD x86-64 PCs that just happen to be running locked down proprietary OSes. So it really seems like low hanging fruit to me for Valve to just put out a price-competitive Steam Machine “console” akin to the Steam Deck that boots into SteamOS and otherwise is a normal PC that with a normal UEFI bootloader. That seems both technically easier and cheaper to do than putting out yet another prohibitively expensive VR/AR device.
As a fan of Linux and FOSS, my main concern is that Valve misses a big window of opportunity by failing to capitalize on the current weakness of Xbox and Windows during this awkward transition period from traditional consoles to PCs.
When Valve put out the original Steam Machines, people didn’t understand why they would want a computer in their living room that didn’t run Windows. But now the Steam Deck has shown people that Valve can deliver a console-like PC gaming experience that gives people the best of both worlds. SteamOS has a compatibility disadvantage, but a huge UX advantage. They’ve finally sold people on the concept that Windows is not the alpha and omega of PC gaming. But I think Microsoft understands that too, and the only reason that they’re doing what they’re doing today is because they clearly see SteamOS as a huge threat in the living room.
But as the saying goes, you gotta “strike while the iron is hot”.
So if Valve sits back and allows Windows to continue to catch up to SteamOS in terms of gaming UX, then I think it’s very possible that Microsoft could sell a lot of Windows-Xboxes, killing a lot of the interest in Steam Machines.
And I’ll say that you can get a really nice AMD NUC HTPC for under 500 bucks that can handle “steam deck games” on a TV. And I THINK I have a way to get Display Port -> HDMI 2.1 that I need to sit down and test.
True, I can build my own Steam Machine by just throwing Bazzite on just about anything that’s reasonably capable. I’ve been tempted, I’m just waiting to see what Valve has up their sleeve.
But it’s not me that I’m worried about. Mass appeal comes from a company like Valve or Microsoft putting out a dedicated gaming box for a decent price that comes preinstalled with a gaming OS. I just hope it’s Valve and Linux, and not Microsoft and Windows…
Just get a Steam Deck, and add a hub and wireless controller.
Oh, but it won’t run full-detail AAA releases at 4K? Nothing cheap will. That is exclusively the domain of consoles, earned through direct-contact optimization with developers. That’s still enough horsepower for the thousands of great indie games on Steam, many of which are simple enough to run fine on a midsize TV on the small Deck CPU.
Basically, if someone is adamant about running high-detail games on their TV using Steam, they’re already a niche enough market that it really doesn’t make sense to build up a single SKU for them and hope for bulk manufacturing savings the same way you could for consoles.
It’s probably better off for developers to keep targeting the Deck as a general metric point anyway. The especially good news there is, once devs do that, Linux desktop gamers benefit anyway.
If this releases with full support for existing Xbox libraries as suggested, this would be the absolute perfect device for my household, where we’ve accrued literally hundreds of Xbox games since 2001, and would love to open up to PC games from a device in the living room. For me, it’s the best of both. That said, it’s still dependent on avoiding exorbitant pricing.
Full bore windows? I’m out.
Needs Xbox Bazzite Edition
That’s funny. It’s basically Valve’s Steam Machine strategy
no multiplayer paywall
Until Microsoft changes the deal Or you have to scan your retinas to verify watching an ad before you queue for a round of Halo CE Re-Campaign remake HD remaster Master Chief Cortana Limited Edition
Nope. They’ve just implemented verification cans instead.
Please drink the verification can
Wow, 5 years ago that would have totally sold me
Yeah, if the Xbox Series S/X could have played my Steam library at that price, I’d have bought one in a heartbeat just to use as a gaming box.
But they’ve already hinted that the next one will be a lot more expensive, and at that point you might as well just buy a PC…
I’m done buying Microsoft products they can fucking rotten hell fuck them. I’ll emulate games till I die, fuck these greedy cunts.
The catch is, you will need Copilot and to sync everything via OneDrive.
And when you quicksave in games, you’ll need to wait 5 minutes for OneDrive to connect to Windows servers to sync up the save before you can continue playing
I’ve used a 360 emulator and I think there’s a xbone emulator but definitely not series. Perhaps they have their own in-house one. I think they’ve basically been using PC hardware forever though, and the Xbox OS is basically stripped down windows so this doesn’t seem like a huge jump. As I recall PlayStation OS is basically BSD, too, which is both sweet and not for various reasons. Exclusives are dead anyway and consoles often get sold at a loss to move games, I’d argue that all consoles should just be PCs.
Since 2013, both Sony and Microsoft have been using custom variants of AMD’s consumer chips for CPU and GPU. These consoles are basically just laptop boards with some custom architecture, but at this stage most of the “Console” design is some software level features and a consistent baseline hardware spec to shoot for.
Sony still does seem to put mor effort into the hardware portion, but Xbox hardware has been little more than an SFF PC for a couple generations now
So Steam but for Microsoft games only…
And ran by a way less reputable company.
Hopefully, they throw in some more incentives because an identical service to Steam is still going to be inferior because it’s controlled by Microsoft instead of Valve
And if they do it like the windows store currently does there’s no way to modify local files so also bye bye mods
The ability to miss games has been there for years, you could go to the game in the Xbox app and open the modifiable app data folder. The problem with this is that, developers can choose not to expose that capability on a per game basis.
Still there’s ways aroused it at least but it certainly not as straightforward.
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It’s not that. As far as the stock market is concerned Microsoft has succeeded and plateaued. There is no where else for them to grow in the first world.
So they are not giving up on consoles. No, this marketing campaign wasn’t for us, not by a long shot. They’re going to Africa, to South America, Asia, they’re trying to lower the bar for entry so they are the first ones in everyone’s minds over there.
Don’t have an Xbox? Here’s a handheld. Can’t afford that? Game streaming from the cloud. This is infinite growth capitalism and there simply aren’t enough people to sustain that, so they need more people.
Boasting about not putting multiplayer behind a paywall, like they weren’t the ones to introduce that idea in the first place.
Back when Xbox Live first hit the scene, that ~$4/month definitely got you a better experience than you got for free. Now that’s not the case.
Yeah. People very much forget how horrible most online multiplayer infrastructure was back in the early 2000s. Voice chat was a case where you used teamspeak/ventrillo for atrocious quality audio that optimally depended on using an actual phone line in conjunction or it just never worked. Messaging was basically xfire or AIM. And servers were generally listen servers that someone in your clan left running in the background when they forgot about it.
Live provided a messaging system people would actually use and tapped into MS infrastructure for voice chat that actually worked… which was great for playing with your friends and learning all new slurs when you had it on in a pub. Game servers themselves were still generally all listen servers but that changed over time.
These days? Discord has a LOT of problems but it actually works and is a much more universal platform. Server hosting infrastructure is such that there isn’t really a point in paying the platform for it. And EVERYTHING needs to be social media for people to not whinge so having a messaging system loses its value.
But also… have any of the consoles really pushed the online infrastructure as why you pay for premium? Okay, Nintendo have but they REALLY shouldn’t considering what they are offering. It is all about the IGC and has been since Sony got involved as part of the PSN hack.
teamspeak/ventrillo
Roger Wilco!
Well, it got you a better experience than whatever it was Sony were doing at the time, which was a weird ethernet adapter, and seemingly every game reinventing the idea of how online should work.
I don’t think it ever needed to be charged for, it just needed to be designed.
I only ever paid for it once they started giving away games with it. Multiplayer alone wasn’t worth it to me.
Hosting servers isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it. It’s easy to forget that that someone used to be advertisers via GameSpy for so many games. Now, on PC, you’re paying for it via digital purchases on the same store that hosts the servers.
Hosting servers isn’t free.
And it’s game devs that pay for the multiplayer server upkeep, not the storefronts.
And I highly doubt that any money spent on XBox Live or PSN subscriptions was ever sent their way.
This is just a flimsy defense for greed
It wasn’t always worth it back then, hence why it was supported with ads or a subscription. Did you ever patch your game back then? Even that was subsidized by ads; the devs didn’t host the patch files themselves in most cases. Live services, which are unfortunately all too often synonymous with online games, host their own servers, and you’re paying for them with microtransactions. If a game uses the platform’s matchmaking for peer to peer multiplayer, which was just about all of them on Xbox Live in its early days, then you’re using the servers your subscription was paying for. Even today, many still use these features. But you’re correct that the ones not using these features are still locked behind that subscription on consoles unless they’re free to play.
I think game patches were even charged to the developers, which is why a lot of them were loath to patch minor bugs.
I hope it inspires Sony to follow suit. In the 2020s paying for multiplayer access is absurd.
These days? I dont mind it. With the offering of the 3 games a month, it’s been fine. As someone who’s gotten old and barely plays anything, it’s nice only spending the yearly subscription and getting up to 36 games a year. Sure, not all are great, but there have been plenty of big games offered that let me play the big stuff I missed and probably still wouldn’t pay $20-$30 for.
A good example would be Alan Wake 2 this month. Really wanted to play it but couldn’t really bring myself to buy it.
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I used to do humble years ago, then I remember something changed and the selections were never that good. It’s been a while since I found one worth buying. I also fo Epic every week. I have been for about 3 or 4 years now.
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I canned Humble when it became apparent that I was just buying next months free Epic games.
It would be a good deal if you kept the games forever, but since they’re linked to your subscription, it ain’t worth it to me😇
Really, I think multiplayer should be free (it’s not like multiplayer games don’t nickel and dime you on top of that anyway) and the game subscription peeled out of it. I’m only interested in the “free” games anyway.
ambitious
no multiplayer paywall
lol, fuck off. Better late than never, but this shit turned me away from consoles a long, long time ago.
No multiplayer paywall, but they’ll probably try to charge you some sort of subscription anyway that’ll end up costing more in the long run.
I.e. Gamepass
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It’s old enough to buy alcohol.
I hope that once my account turns 18 they will stop asking my for by DOB to look at mature content.
Mine is over that. They won’t.
EDIT: Meaning they won’t stop asking.
I’d rather have a console that doesn’t run windows.
