rickybooby87
Member
"We’ve got more to come. There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday. We’re also invested in the next-generation roadmap. What we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building." - Sarah Bond.
That's a pretty bold statement. Now on to the title, technically, consoles have always been hybrid PCs if your definition is loose enough, albeit laser focused on a singular purpose, to play games. Xbox specifically employs hypervisor based virtualization to run older games under backwards compatibility mode, and for apps, and other stuff probably. What really prompted this thread, was the recent marketing info regarding the Steam UI element that was mistakenly released (Or was it?) and honestly, it makes no sense at all, and, has given rise to what I consider to be pure hopium.
"The next Xbox will have full blown steam, will have windows, etc." is being thrown around by the usual suspects (content creators). Maybe not all of you subscribe to that, but a few do. Why do I need another PC for? If I want to play Xbox on my PC, GamePass, right? If I want to play Steam, I open the launcher, on my PC. Will NextBox require antivirus? What about patch Tuesday? Is Microsoft Excel gonna bug me about it not being activated? Okay, there's some hyperbole in there. We're not getting a hybrid PC console is what I am getting at, these things would be jailbroken day and date, and the end user experience outside of power users would be absolute garbage for the casual. (Steam as it relates to alpha games, betas, bugs, graphical configuration options, etc.) It would be store/content/options over saturation, the kind of stuff usually only tolerated on PC. (Steam, Epic, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft, etc.) Additionally, PC has rampant piracy issues.
Lets pretend we do get a 2027 XSX2, that has the steam storefront/launcher, there are over 50,000 titles on Steam, are we going to have access to adjust graphical settings, resolutions, etc.? Like, if it's a PC, what's the point? Microsoft is not going to subsidize the cost in order to get people into the ecosystem because that would make zero sense financially. Historically, you buy in bulk some custom APUs from AMD, find a MFG for power supplies and other components, etc. keep all the costs down as low as possible, etc. then make up hardware losses over the lifetime from the customer (add on services like GamePass, buying games, MTX, etc.).
My armchair prediction? Traditional console with superb machine learning capability, and some form of SteamLink and MAYBE cross platform entitlement (You can run this on a Raspberry Pi). The bit about it being the largest technical leap in a generation REEKS of the bevy of marketing material (Velocity Architecture, VRS, 12TF, etc.) that was being passed around in the run up to XSX/XSS launching in 2020 (unless they've cracked path tracing to make its performance cost negligible.) If it's a console, $499-$599. If it's a bunch of PC parts slapped together in a cool looking Xbox shell:

And it'll be $900.
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