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It’s possible you’re right, but strategically, I think the Xbox brand is a lost cause on its own. PlayStation is just beating it up and stealing its lunch money at this point. On the PC side, Steam rules the roost and makes money hand over fist running other people’s games on other people’s operating systems. So it looks to me like the only valid move is to see if the combined PC/Xbox ecosystem can compete with either of them or, optimistically, both.
The catch will be that they need to position it properly and we all know how awesome they are at that coughxboxonecough. If they sell it as “buy an Xbox like you always have and it’ll play tens of thousands of PC games too OR buy a Windows PC and it can play Xbox games natively or with backwards compatibility now” then I think they have a shot.
I mean, imagine being able to play every Steam Deck-compatible game on your Xbox console OR your Xbox handheld by default, even if you bought it from Steam. That’s a goddamn value proposition if I ever saw one. Then they just need to try and win market share from Steam through distribution and ecosystem, which would be their next big battle.
Of course, I say all this as though they aren’t going to epically deuce the futon like they always do.
I don’t think they’ll scuttle the brand, I think they’ll make Xbox a standard for compatibility backed up by custom hardware targets. Like the generation after next might be System X and System S, but you could have a custom PC build that certifies as “exceeds System S” and thus any app can reliably run at that level of quality as a guaranteed minimum. You could still buy an Xbox, but it would be more like a Steam Machine. And a handheld would simply be “any System S certified handheld, including the Xbox first party device”.
I used to sing Sub Terrania’s praises long before it was cool. That game is a gem. The development team was a bunch of demoscene madmen who were able to wring miracles out of the Genesis and eventually created IO Interactive, which went on to make Hitman and the upcoming 007 game.
Their later game, Red Zone, is a technological flex like nothing else.
The actual hardware is irrelevant to their success unless they can pull off a Surface Pro type of innovative market lead (which we all know they can’t do anymore).
The only thing that matters is the ecosystem. Make every Windows machine an Xbox. Make the OS lean and portable. Run the same OS and games on PCs, laptops, handhelds, and set-top boxes. That’s it. Then console generations are obsolete and Sony is playing catch up.
If you like Horrified, you should try and track down the Ravensburger Wonder Woman game. Similar style but has an awesome mechanic to prevent coop quarterbacking.
Players strategize using a set of face up cards, but receive some face down cards afterward and have to program 3 actions using the whole set without communicating, adapting plans based on the newly revealed cards. Then each action plays out simultaneously for all players. It makes sense in action and is really quite elegant. I’m a big fan.
Binding of Isaac is some OG classic stuff if you haven’t played that one, and Neon Abyss is a fun side-scrolling game on a similar vibe. Rogue Legacy 1 (very OG) and 2 and Dead Cells are also side scrolling , with a dash of Metroidvania.
If you like Slay the Spire, Astrea is the same thing but with dice, and Monster Train also scratches the same itch.
I remember Immortals: Fenyx Rising looking like a shameless, soulless ripoff of Breath of the Wild. Turned out to be an amazingly fun game that didn’t take itself as seriously as Zelda but had a tremendously satisfying gameplay loop and some really solid humor.
This isn’t that though. This is gonna be some creatively bankrupt trash.
I agree that there’s a ton of good stuff coming from the indie scene and also some amazing modding of existing games out there (check the Flat2VR discord - they just modded full VR support with motion controls into Silent Hill 2 Remake), but despite all the complaints about the PSVR2 library, there is more than enough gold in there to keep a lot of people entertained for a very long time, and some of it is truly AAA stuff. The headset itself is extremely well designed and easy to pick up and play, and the amount of tech you get is pretty nuts.
I’ve heard it’s pretty minimally supported on the PC because they’re kind of trying to get away with building half of a bridge (spoiler: it won’t work) but even without features like haptics and eye tracking, it’s a reasonable baseline headset. There may be some Bluetooth inconsistencies for some though, if I remember correctly.
I will echo some of the other sentiments.
Meta sells a lot of their tech at a loss. You are not buying a VR headset with just your dollars. You are taking a huge kit of cameras and sensors hooked up to the world’s most advanced internet-connected telemetry and strapping it to your face. The data it gleans is how you’re covering a large portion, if not the majority, of the cost.
In my opinion, a PS5 and PSVR2 is the best way into VR for most people right now. I have that and a Valve Index and while the Index is awesome, it’s pretty dated and fiddly and while my computer runs it pretty well, catching up to more modern tech will cost me $2000 in upgrades and the fuss associated with building/upgrading/buying/migrating a PC.
I’m hoping Valve releases their rumored standalone headset sometime before the end of the world.
That emulation engine just runs Windows games, not Xbox games.
I think you’re right in that they highly prioritize cloud data and subscriptions, but that’s where the Game Pass road leads. Native apps on a subscription service now, bets all hedged for a possible all-cloud semi-distant future.