21–30 of 68 posts
I don't really want this future, but is there any reason why Sony hasn't just embedded Playstation into their TVs? It seems obvious to me that they could persuade people to buy their TV over others this way.
They did try it once before.
The controller design/feel and the more seamless/intuitive online play & party handling kept me on the Xbox side of the fence for a looooooong time. That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are…
This is an opinion piece embodying a meme that willed itself into existence this year, mostly through social media and Youtube influencers. It was interesting to observe (and tedious as a friend watched dozens of hours of these videos and breathlessly repeated their contents to me.) At some point an Xbox executive had to respond to it to assure that they are working on the next Xbox console, which should've been obvi…
In the current market for electronics I can't imagine a quantum leap in consoles at a sub-$1000 price point, it is not like NVIDIA or AMD gives a damn about gaming in this environment where it is all about selling as many GPU for AI as they can while they can.
Steam Deck is long in the tooth. I think PS and XBOX portables could muscle into that space, XBOX is already licensing their name, but balancing size-cost-performance-power does not look easy but the PS Vita was my favorite dedicated game system I ever owned. I like my Deck but it is too big and I have to think long and hard if I want to pack it in my t̴a̴i̴l̴ backpack on any given day or pack something else.
A realistic plan is shut down most of Activision and sell the rest to Tencent, take an $80 billion goodwill loss so they won't pay tax for half a decade, Wall St won't care so long as they keep making noises about AI, do right by Azure, Windows, Office and the enterprise stuff. Keep Windows great for gaming and keep the brand alive as part of that and if they want to sell XBOX branded body wash or something, bully for them. Set free from Activision those developers will be able to make good games again.
With this year's price hikes though that's not the case anymore, you are better off just buying a good $20 game every month or buying a good $50 game every other month.
But I agree. I (foolishly) spent money on an Xbox last year only to find bugs that would make the Windows operating system weep. My kids have to ask me CONSTANTLY to update things, re-install game, or even just troubleshoot a damn controller not working.
Compare that to Steam, where I can just add them to my family and give them access to a huge number of split-screen compatible games across my entire catalog. It just doesn’t make financial sense to keep supporting Microsoft’s enshittification of everything.
There seems to be a point in every large tech company's lifecycle where they decide they can replace innovation with businesses deals. Someone with no real technological vision takes the helm, and they end up listening to MBAs instead of techies, visionaries or even customers. They spend their efforts focusing solely on maximizing profits, and then trying to take a shortcut on invention through acquisitions or by cha…
(To be fair, game consoles outgrew kids by the Xbox 360 generation if not earlier, they'd have to ruin mobile games to change childhood)
This is anecdata point of one, but I bought the xbox hoping to play split screen with my kids and to play some more of the ghost recon franchise which I last played on the original xbox. My kid got into the latest ghost recon on the xbox, but I don't like sandboxes so I never played it. The split screen on xbox never materialized for us, I just couldn't find any good titles. I ended up getting a steam deck which is j…
The controller design/feel and the more seamless/intuitive online play & party handling kept me on the Xbox side of the fence for a looooooong time. That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are…
You can turn off crossplay in the Xbox privacy settings. I do this for BF6, as I’m old and can’t keep up with MnK players. ;-)
However, in writing this I’ve realized that this is really only a problem for me when playing Destiny and only when I’m playing PvP. As the player population continues to die and I move on to other games or mostly PvE content in Destiny, then I’m not going to care anymore and I can switch entirely over to PC.
On the one hand, that’s going to be pretty convenient. On the other, it’s kind of a sad realization as it marks the end of a very long era of console gaming for me stretching all the way back to the NES.
My son has a Switch, but other than that my kids have only ever known using a PC as a “console”. Their play room has a relatively compact PC (13th Gen. Intel CPU & ARC A770 dGPU) connected to a TV that just runs Steam and Batocera with 4x USB 8BitDo controllers attached.
By all appearances, until about the last year or so, I would look like an ideal customer demographic for Microsoft. I’ve purchased every single gaming platform they’ve ever produced, but I’m thiiiiiiiiis close to having migrated entirely away, and it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of happened a little bit at a time. :-/