Remember when nintendo asked sony to develop playstation, but scrapped it? Then sony was entering the console market and everybody was shitting that it doesnt have a mascot hero like sega/nintendo and sony and it would be doom for them?
It is my speculation that MS is working towards gaming where it is not limited by local hardware but tapping into computational power of AI through the CLOUD. Remember cloud gaming? Both AI and cloud is the future where developers can tap into almost unlimited computational power. A traditional console box form factor is going to be dead, just 2-3 generations more at best. Xbox branding-marketing is dead, but gaming isnt. We will see realism at a much-accelerated pace with MS.
ARM is also the future for mobile gaming with 5G connection and soon 6G.
OEMS can also contribute by releasing their own proprietary technology that can offer unique game experiences such as: controllers, VR headsets, Augmented Reality, etc.
The possibilities are all there, and being locked into comparing to Sony or even Nintendo is just constraining yourself. Things have changed and evolved drastically.
I think the future looks bright. Something must die in order to give birth to something new, otherwise it's going to drag and drown you.
Like
D
DeltaPolarBear
was saying, server maintenance costs are going to negate any of the cost savings in making native hardware to sell to customers directly. For starters, MS would need an instance of hardware targeting native computation in their server for each buyer of a client device who is streaming it. Then they would need the networking backend to facilitate the stream in addition to the processing...for every single client device.
So yes maybe hypothetically some future where the hardware is cheap enough to only be streaming sticks gets them 100+ million clients, but then they're going to need 100+ million Series X+ levels of native hardware installed in their servers to ensure those clients can get the best possible stream quality they are paying a subscription to access. And that is on top of the maintenance costs not just to run the servers, but to repair whenever things break down due to wear & tear.
The only possible way it works out financially for a company like MS is if the customer subscription costs more than cover what they'd have to spend in server equipment, maintenance, and facilitation of streaming the content. But that would mean additional changes to the current Game Pass setup, such as going with fixed locked-in annual/2-year contracts to prevent drop in/out churn (which would negatively impact dependable revenue rates). It'd also assume those clients have some really good internet in their area, and high-quality stable, low-latency internet isn't too common in places like America.
And I don't necessarily mean high bandwidth; i.e a 50 Mbps down internet service would do just fine for 4K cloud streaming if the the network has excellent reliability in packet transmission and low latency, and the game streaming service has great compression at low latency with little to no artifacting or image quality loss. But how many people do you
really think have that type of internet and how often or good do you
really think something like xCloud is at delivering that type of streaming?
I think the future Xbox consoles would work better to showcase the latest DirectX features, like incorporating DirectStorage as standard to help grow an install base and increase adoption of technologies on the Windows side.
I mean, isn't this what Xbox consoles have been doing since the get-go? They were gonna be called Direct X-box for a reason :/
Valve will also release a "home console", like the did a portable with Steamdeck.
Then 3rd party will make SteamOS consoles lile they are gonna make these windows machines for xbox
Oh yeah, that's 100% happening. Won't be surprised if Valve re-introduce Steam Machines a couple years after the Steam Deck 2 launches. They seem to have learned their lessons from last time so the product should be a lot more successful next go-around.
That could really pose a challenge for this future Xbox hardware Microsoft want to do. Good news for Microsoft is they can theoretically release probably a couple years early. Bad news is, I don't think they can integrate Xbox OS features, usability, UI and stability (let alone emulator support for OG Xbox, 360, and XBO games) into Windows by 2026. I think they would need longer.
And the longer they'd take, the less time they'd have to get ahead of Valve likely re-launching Steam Machines to complement the Steam Deck. An easier option for MS, IMO, would be to "bring Windows to Xbox", but that'd require doing things I don't know are actually being considered right now. For example, designing a custom SoC & embedded spec, still manufacturing some of the hardware themselves, and adding some Windows functions to Xbox OS (like an Extended Mode) to natively run whitelisted Windows apps on Xbox OS.
Also that type of approach would entail something closer business model-wise to the current consoles, at least more so than what it sounds like they would be planning otherwise. For example, access to alt storefronts would need to be tied to a subscription (likely Game Pass), and maybe the hardware is priced for profit margins of 10% instead of 30% or 40%. They could still keep production of volume low, just not AS low as if they were making literal gaming-focused PC NUCs or other devices priced at much higher MSRPs.
Is the Xbox brand popular enough for the “Xbox experience” to be successful, or will it just get ignored?
That's the big question and it's gonna depend on how exactly MS go about this.
It sounds like they're going for a very decentralized approach. Maybe not even making the hardware themselves, but defining some spec (not even through a custom console SoC with purpose-made ASICs etc.) that OEMs build around. And that's in addition to possibly ditching Xbox OS as the primary OS and using some version of Windows instead with Xbox features integrated to it. In that scenario, I don't necessarily know what OEMs would be paying for outside of the Windows license (which they already pay for to include on their other devices) and an Xbox branded sticker.
Which I guess would satisfy things on the lowest possible end, though IMO might not be the most optimal way. And by "optimal" I mean encompassing everything. While I did think the idea of "bringing Xbox to Windows" would be the way MS went going forward, is it possibly too far away to realize that in a way that'd feel 1:1 to a current console experience, in time for the next 2-4 years?
So I'm really a bit at odds to which direction they go with hardware moving forward.