Resetting Xbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Resetting Xbox

#471

Post by opan » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #305

nkrisc wrote: post #214

Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates. I never played it very frequently so I disabled the sleep mode so it wouldn’t just stay on in my media cabinet heating my house. But of course that meant any time I spontaneously felt like using it there were 10 minutes of updates to download, so I would get annoyed and just do something else. Oh it can also play movies? Sorry movi…

> Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates. My experience with Steam is very similar (I don't have it run on startup because I like my PC to do other things from playing games). Online updates really have ruined gaming for a lot of people. Just like vinyl, humans seem to prefer a physical "thing" they pick up - put in the machine - and instantly have access to the "thing".…

I check for game and system updates on my Deck before and after a session and it just takes a few minutes at most. I get excited to read changelogs if a game has a big update. These updates are not automatic/forced if you don't want them to be, and for singleplayer stuff at least you can just go play the old version if you're in a hurry or have little to no Internet.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#472

Post by protimewaster » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #460

protimewaster wrote: post #42

Xbox has an interesting opportunity going forward, that I expect they'll fumble. Interest in physical media has actually been on the upswing, and, with Sony announcing their plans to abandon physical media, it feels like MS has a chance be the "good guys" like what Sony did to MS when MS threatened to ruin physical media prior to the Xbox One release. However, I'm expecting Microsoft to simply follow Sony's path, bec…

> Interest in physical media has actually been on the upswing Sure it has. Just like how demand SD card slots and 3.5mm jacks on phones is on the upswing. If you only read tech forums.

If you want to see it outside the context of tech forums, you can look up the industry reports and see the numbers yourself. There are some media types that are dropping, obviously, but there are multiple types of physical media that have seen notable growth recently.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#473

Post by ColdStream » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

msftgreed wrote: post #332

hbn wrote: post #16

It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO. Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the interv…

> Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. That's the thing -- for a while they had figured out gaming. The xbox and 360 were solid consoles with lots of great internal and external games. Halo was incredible. Then the company did the thing that Amazon did, Blizzard is doing, and all the big tech companies do -- they thought their big war chest meant they should make bigger games. Budgets ballooned, game timeli…

It was once the Wii with anemic hardware and waggle ended up outselling the 360 that MS changed. They went from pushing forwards to chasing trends.

I agree, they need to be focusing on smaller projects that take risks. Maximum 24 month dev times but with modern tooling could do some special things. Maybe if after 6-12 months they see something that is gold, they can give it more resources but that would be on a case by case basis.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#474

Post by mvdtnz » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #269

What's fascinating to me are the Valve comparables here. 17B ARR vs 20B ARR At the end of the day there are two strong differences here. Valve has always been lead by people who were game devs, and have always conveyed a message that the gaming experience matters most. Xbox was led by Phil Spencer, who at least was known as being an avid gamer, but in his tenure pushed for things like xbox game pass to drive continua…

Valve doesn't make games. (within the margin of error).

Re: Resetting Xbox

#475

Post by ColdStream » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #205

hbn wrote: post #16

It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO. Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the interv…

> Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the intervention from marketing and HR in their products. Gaming is like cuisine. Can it be art? Sure. But most people will never visit a Michelin starred restaurant in their whole lives. They go to McDonald's and their local equivalent. Mainstream games have been like McDonald's for a l…

Thus the yearly Call of duty titles.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#476

Post by Telaneo » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:28 AM UTC

TheBigSalad wrote: post #466

Telaneo wrote: post #206

Can't say I'm surprised. I can't see a reasonable path for Xbox to do anything but just stay alive other than as MS's overarching gaming brand. Xbox is on the losing side of the consoles, with no distinguishing features to speak of. You buy a console to play games and for it to be convenient. Xbox is no more or less convenient than a Playstation, and what few exclusives there are left are on Sony's side of the fence.…

I like the idea of the next console supporting PC games. Xbox with steam and emulators right on my tv would be a dream.

I can't see this happening without either Windows getting in the way, negating much of the advantage of a console (have a look at the Windows handhelds and how they're not selling and how they're not a great experience), or Microsoft swallowing a massive part of their pride. Valve started directing work towards Linux literally because of Microsoft trying to close down the Windows ecosystem,[1] and Valve wanted an escape route if Microsoft decided to actually do that.

MS crawling on their knees to Valve to get them to cooporate on something (and Valve saying yes!), or MS figuratively doing the same by undoing all the problems MS have made for themselves with Windows and making a decent 10-foot UI so you'd actually want to use Steam on your Xbox, both seem incredibly unlikely.

Not to mention that this is more or less just admitting defeat for MS, leaving every single penny of profit in PC and Xbox gaming to Valve, other than what's directly tied to the hardware, which isn't where any of the profit actually lies.

[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-c...

Re: Resetting Xbox

#477

Post by snackbroken » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:29 AM UTC

ebbi wrote: post #291

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compulsively chasing only the highest margins has been toxic for the country as a whole.

What else do you expect from publicly listed companies? Mix that with the increasingly higher concentration of wealth, and things are just going to get worse.

50 years ago, publicly listed companies understood that chasing short-term growth targets undermined long-term sustainability. The current failure mode is not an inherent property of being a publicly listed company, it's a consequence of incompetent leadership and bad regulatory policy.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#478

Post by chamomeal » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #246

This is great news for gaming. Xbox, which has ruined Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and countless other IPs, needs to be burnt to the ground.

The whole redfall thing was tragic. It was crazy watching Arkane become a laughing stock. Some of the most talented game devs ever. Prey, dishonored

Re: Resetting Xbox

#479

Post by axus » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:31 AM UTC

ColdStream wrote: post #473

msftgreed wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. That's the thing -- for a while they had figured out gaming. The xbox and 360 were solid consoles with lots of great internal and external games. Halo was incredible. Then the company did the thing that Amazon did, Blizzard is doing, and all the big tech companies do -- they thought their big war chest meant they should make bigger games. Budgets ballooned, game timeli…

It was once the Wii with anemic hardware and waggle ended up outselling the 360 that MS changed. They went from pushing forwards to chasing trends. I agree, they need to be focusing on smaller projects that take risks. Maximum 24 month dev times but with modern tooling could do some special things. Maybe if after 6-12 months they see something that is gold, they can give it more resources but that would be on a case…

I felt like the Kinect was pushing forward, and not chasing the Wii. Never owned one, but the tech sounded cool

Re: Resetting Xbox

#480

Post by Telaneo » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

fodkodrasz wrote: post #350

PaulHoule wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I care about the features, what I do care about is the games and a lean-back experience which is not sweaty. I play games to escape the drudgery of software development and the last thing I want to do is mess with an .INI file. I love the Steam Deck because it feels like a consumer electronics device: it has the reliability of Linux but not the sweat. The Steam Deck is the only device I've seen that w…

> Steam Big Picture turns my big Windows machine at home into a game console and does the same for my Mac Mini. Well it turned mine into a 2000s linux/wine debugfest flashback when I wanted to play GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony... Also don't get me started on having to keep the poweroff button pushed on the xbox controller for mouse emulation for games not having controller support in the menus. It is far from the polis…

GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony is listed as silver on protondb, meaning 'works with tweaks', so that sounds about right. Things obviously aren't perfect. That last 10% of games is a massive pain, since every game is different (all the ones that are well behaved are in the first 90% that already work).