{"id":1392,"date":"2025-03-22T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T01:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nichesitetool.com\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2025-03-27T12:35:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T12:35:05","slug":"xbox-is-betraying-the-entire-concept-of-video-game-consoles-readers-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nichesitetool.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/22\/xbox-is-betraying-the-entire-concept-of-video-game-consoles-readers-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox is betraying the entire concept of video game consoles \u2013 Reader\u2019s Feature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The next Xbox probably won’t be a traditional console (Microsoft)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A reader reacts angrily to suggestions that the next gen Xbox<\/a> is a \u2018PC in a box\u2019 and argues Xbox is trying to destroy the whole concept of video game consoles.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of people lately lamenting the current state of Xbox, and for obvious reasons given how bad console sales are getting<\/a>. What annoys me though is the way they talk about Microsoft<\/a>, as if they\u2019re some kind of loveable loser who you should pity. Microsoft\u2019s attempts at dominating the games industry are pitiable but their actions are hardly that of a helpless underdog.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re the biggest company in the history of mankind and while they\u2019ve been entirely incompetent in the way they\u2019ve used their colossal $3 trillion bank balance they\u2019ve also been extremely destructive. At some point in the Xbox One generation they must\u2019ve decided that if they can\u2019t beat Sony<\/a> fairly then they\u2019ll just tip the table over and ruin the game(s industry) for everyone.<\/p>\n

Almost $100 billion later and they now own Activision Blizzard<\/a>, Bethesda, and a bunch of others and they\u2019ve\u2026 completely failed to put their stamp on them. Nothing has changed about how these companies are run, or what games they make, but suddenly Phil Spencer and his cronies have started talking about what \u2018we\u2019 are going to do, when discussing them. As if he or anyone else has had any impact on their success and\/or failures.<\/p>\n

We know from the court cases that the original plan<\/a> was to make all Bethesda games exclusives, just like Starfield, but clearly someone higher up, probably Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, told them that wasn\u2019t going to work. They\u2019ve spent all this money and there\u2019s no way they\u2019re going to get any of it back by only selling games as Xbox exclusives.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve not tried that with any Activision games, because the message had already sank in by then, and instead they pivoted to their multiformat plan (which they\u2019ve lied about and tried to underplay the entire time, even with petty things like not releasing the games physically).<\/p>\n

And now we learn that their big plan for the next gen is a PC in a box<\/a>, a PC handheld<\/a>, and AI<\/a>. So they not only no longer make consoles they\u2019re trying to make the entire concept of consoles go away, so that they can pretend that actually they\u2019re irrelevant now and it doesn\u2019t matter that nobody bought theirs.<\/p>\n

What gets me though is that the first two things have already been proven not to work. Valve\u2019s Steam Machines concept flopped horribly and the entire concept is fundamentally doomed to be the worst of both worlds. Not only that but the latest rumour<\/a> suggests it won’t even be properly backwards compatible – only through emulation!<\/p>\n

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