Did everyone in this comments section forget that Microsoft is in fact done with traditional consoles? "Everything is an Xbox", and they'll still release new hardware, but they are talking about Windows gaming, not a platform where they'll have to do cert for a discrete spec. PlayStation games are coming to other platforms now, too. The old console model and console wars are over.

It's a shame because the Series X is an absolutely superb device. The fast storage, quick resume, performance, noise level etc are all incredible, and the backwards compatibility, console streaming, and appeal of game pass make the Series X a wonderful gaming machine. I couldn't be happier with it.

We all know the reasons why it isn't as successful as the PS5, but the Series X as a price-to-value product has been woefully under-appreciated.

Xbox kills game studios

Consoles wars are stupid, exclusives are stupid.

How much you want to bet that game pass goes up to $30 a month in the next 3 months?

Instead of enticing people to buy, they will milk their current customer base to make a few extra bucks short term.

Every time I read any Xbox news, I immediately remember the email that Phil Spencer sent to Satya Nadella when PS5 was announced. The email gets funnier as the days go by, and as additional context gets added in the form of news like the OP.

Inserting below part of the email thread that I like the most:

Even as I type this I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself.

We've all lived with 7 years of starting off a generation with a price and performance (and messaging)disadvantage to PS4 with Xbox One. I have to admit this morning when I woke up knowing the PS5 reveal was today that the stress level was higher than normal. Now after almost 12 hours of soaking in their unveil, taking apart their specs and looking at the community responses I just wanted to say that I'm proud of our team.

We have a better product than Sony does, not just on hardware but equally important on the software platform and services on top of the hardware. We have the ingredients of a winning plan. I felt the feedback from the BoD discussion on being too confident and maybe this will just reinforce that perception, I get the need to be humbly confident but today was a good day for us.

We haven't won anything. And I know we have hard discussion about pricing, P&L, investments etc. This mail isn’t trying to scoop any of that, those discussions really matter. But we can take confidence in our product truth hereand I do believe any conversation needs to start with believing in that. This was a good day for Xbox.

Thanks for indulging me.

Phil

With the "everything is an Xbox" mantra, there's no reason to have a capable PC and an Xbox anymore. I don't mind waiting for PS games on my PC either, leaving only Nintendo still having some appeal.

Good, don’t buy an Xbox. Microsoft is in bed with Israel.

Important thing to remember about the “console wars.”

Other than the Nintendo Wii (iirc), most consoles sell at a loss at the beginning of the generation. They eventually turn a profit on console sales, but console sales aren’t the point.

Game sales are.

When each console was its own very specific architecture and games needed to be designed specifically for them, console sales matter a lot because that’s how you’d sell games.

But now that architectures are similar (if not the same), cross-compilation has become easier than ever. It’s why you see Sony finally releasing first party titles on PC.

Microsoft knows full well that their console sales aren’t great, but that’s okay for them. Their PC sales are. Many of their titles sell on Steam. And they sell some of their titles on PlayStation.

They’ll continue to make some form of console because without it they lose out on millions of Game Pass subscriptions from people who don’t want to make the initial investment in a gaming PC, or deal with the complexity, but their goal of making that next console more and more like a PC fits perfectly in their model.

It’s a shame the Series X has sold so poorly, it’s a great console, but I doubt Microsoft is too worried about “losing” the console wars to Sony. The game has changed.

They've also sold less than half the number of XBox One units compared to PS4, and like a third compared to the Switch, so they've been lagging behind for a while.

These days they don't really seem to focus on console gaming at all. I'm curious to see if we'll even get a traditional "next gen" console. It might just be a console UI for Windows PCs instead, with some third-party produced "console"-PCs.

I can't understand the nonsensical generational naming scheme on XBox so I just avoid getting one because I don't want to get a previous generation. And my scattered brain keeps forgetting the info I look up because it's inconsequential to actual living in these wild times.

With a used Series S for 100 bucks and Gamepass over VPN from India for 3 per month, i couldnt be happier with my Xbox.

They didn't bring new techno as they did previously with kinetic, pricing was indecent, the hub is such a mess : it looks like Amazon not like a GUI for gaming. It's not surprising if they are loosing customers

Fewer.

The one thing Xbox has had going for it for a while now is actual usage. There were metrics out there that even with the smaller player base, users engaged with and had more playtime than PS. This was true well into the current gen.

I'm still waiting on a reason to upgrade from my Xbox One X.