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[memoryman3]

Fwiw, in a leak/rumor several months back, Sneakers indicated that the PC hybrid version would be priced at $1000 or more, intended only for an "elite" niche willing to pay that premium, and expected to sell very modest amounts during its lifetime.

I heard his rumors. A $1000 Xbox console with pulled back third party support would not even break 5 million lifetime. Even 1 million would be optimistic. As we know for certain that the silicon is custom, this would mean millions in lost R&D and a store of backwards compatible games that could actually cost Microsoft millions to run instead of turning a profit. I would disregard his rumors entirely as fan-fiction.

 

[Astray]

I heard his rumors. A $1000 Xbox console with pulled back third party support would not even break 5 million lifetime. Even 1 million would be optimistic. As we know for certain that the silicon is custom, this would mean millions in lost R&D and a store of backwards compatible games that could actually cost Microsoft millions to run instead of turning a profit. I would disregard his rumors entirely as fan-fiction.

Why are you assuming the silicon is custom? And why are you assuming native backcompat?

All assumptions about what this box is to offer need to be thrown out the window because this is a pivot happening in real-time and even the execs don't necessarily know where they will eventually end up.

 

[memoryman3]

Why are you assuming the silicon is custom?

Microsoft were hiring for silicon engineers to work on the next-gen Xbox platform as recently as last month.

 

[Gamezone]

Unless Steam games have Xbox achievements and shared libraries, Xbox cloud streaming and other features, it's basically the same as GOG Galaxy 2.0 for Steam.

 

[Spukc]

I’m at the point i just hope microsoft will release a steambox and undercuts nvidia with their fucking bullshit.. so they can’t flip their overpriced cards anymore

 

[Astray]

Microsoft were hiring for silicon engineers to work on the next-gen Xbox platform as recently as last month.

If they are still hiring then we really are miles away from release.

I don't think making custom silicon will turn out to be worth their while, not when they're downsizing their distribution like this.

Doing small runs with custom SKUs is a recipe for sky high component prices. This device will %100 be expensive.

 

[RafterXL]

Either this is fully integrated Steam, which just makes this a cheap PC, or it's not integrated, which makes this window dressing and mostly useless. And even if it is integrated, it completely ignores the multitude of things that PC gaming is about more than just having games available, stuff like variable graphics and performance settings, modding, etc. I'm trying really hard, as someone who owns every Xbox console, to see what a Steamified Xbox offers either Xbox players, or PC gamers.

 

[djjinx2]

But it's no longer a "console" in the traditional sense. These are going to be primarily PC devices, just heavily customized in the frontend & integration for console-like gaming.

Basically, they're gonna be Windows PCs with frontend/UIs heavily borrowed from Xbox OS's UI, console-like form factors and (MS would like to achieve) ease-of-use.

Isn't current gen just PC like hardware with a heavily customised frontend slapped on?

We just get marketed "consoles" as a means to a walled garden right??

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Isn't current gen just PC like hardware with a heavily customised frontend slapped on?

We just get marketed "consoles" as a means to a walled garden right??

Yes, the main difference is software.

PC has an open model, you can get games from any digital store, but as the manufacturer doesn’t get that £30 cut of software sales they have to sell hardware at a profit

Consoles are a closed model, you can only get digital games via Sony or Nintendo, they take a £30 cut so can sell the hardware at a loss.

 

[jwaxeman]

This post sums it up good:


It would be MS effectively throwing in the towel. What to watch for: will MS support their games better on other platforms vs Xbox platforms. This happened with Windows Phone/Mobile. Skype support was better on Android and iPhone after the acquisition.

Currently PS5 Pro is the best console to play a number of Xbox games on.

 

[noob smokes]

If steam is on the next xbox the windows store is deader than

 

[Humdinger]

I heard his rumors. A $1000 Xbox console with pulled back third party support would not even break 5 million lifetime. Even 1 million would be optimistic. As we know for certain that the silicon is custom, this would mean millions in lost R&D and a store of backwards compatible games that could actually cost Microsoft millions to run instead of turning a profit. I would disregard his rumors entirely as fan-fiction.

Sneakers has a good reputation and track record, so I give his reports some credibility. It's worth more than the armchair experts who speak with certitude. Usually that's just Dunning-Kruger.

He suggested MS expected lifetime sales of the upper-end unit to be maybe 10 m.. That seems realistic to me, although perhaps a bit of a stretch. There will be many millions of hardcore Xbox fans who will want a next-gen machine but will be unsatisfied with the compromises entailed in a handheld. They will want a full-fledged machine with strong tech. Assuming there is Steam integration, you will also have console gamers from the PS or Nintendo camps who are interested in that feature.

Any of this could change, though. The hybrid PC thing is years away, and MS is nothing if not unreliable. They are continually contradicting themselves. What was true 6 months ago may be false a year later.

 

[Lillie]

Will be annoying to have multiples for each platform show up with different achievements and save progress

 

[BlackTron]

Steam on Xbox hardware is a nightmare scenario for some it seems.

If you could actually play both Xbox and Steam games on the same hardware that would be pretty great, but I have a strong suspicion that anything that can run PC games will be limited to PC versions of console games as a sort of pseudo-Xbox without BC (so uh, just another PC, but this time with a redesigned Xbox launcher).

 

[onnextflix5]

That don’t make sense how are they gonna get our steam library on Xbox series consoles , someone messed up

 

[Killer8]

This post sums it up good:


It would be MS effectively throwing in the towel. What to watch for: will MS support their games better on other platforms vs Xbox platforms. This happened with Windows Phone/Mobile. Skype support was better on Android and iPhone after the acquisition.

It's throwing in the towel as far as console warring goes but i'd be willing to bet that in 10 years time Microsoft will be making more money than ever from gaming.

Selling to PS5/6, Switch 2/3 and PC, with a combined userbase in the hundreds of millions, is simply better business than selling to 30 million or so Xbox only holdouts. Forza Horizon 5 is one the highest charting games on PSN right now and it's a 3 year old game. Just think how the situation will look when future games like Halo or Gears drop day-and-date as true multiplatform titles (yes, it's going to happen). A dollar from a PS user and a dollar from an Xbox or Switch user are all still a dollar to MS.

There's some concern that it's the Xbox console keeping Game Pass afloat, and so if Xbox goes belly up then MS also lose Game Pass too, but I don't think that necessarily needs to happen. MS are probably doing the wise thing by releasing another generation of hybrid hardware to try to transition more users over to the Ultimate sub for PC, which supposedly grew by 30% in Q2 FY2025.

They can also attempt to get some cut down form of Game Pass onto PlayStation, much like Ubisoft+ or EA Play. At the end of the day though, Microsoft will likely need to face reality that Game Pass is going to make up a smaller chunk of the pie than they envisioned. They already massively missed their subscriber expectations for 2025 by about 23 million:

The financial bright side for Microsoft is that by selling premium hardware, they should no longer have any hardware losses to offset. They lost $200 on each $299 Series S and $100 on each Series X this gen, and unfortunately for them it was the S that outsold the X.

There is also the elephant in the room: they bought Activision. People still stupidly say this was a bad tactical move as it didn't end up benefitting Xbox in the console war. "Put COD on Game Pass exclusively", people said. Microsoft bought a money printer though - why stop the presses? Activision is a company that takes in a couple of billion dollars of revenue in a quarter. MS basically secured their long-term existence in gaming by buying them.

Microsoft do not want to be the last Japanese soldier still fighting WW2 in the jungles, they want to be living in the Japanese economic miracle once the war is over.

 

[memoryman3]

He suggested MS expected lifetime sales of the upper-end unit to be maybe 10 m

10 million would be seriously optimistic for a device that has no use for productivity and unaffordable for families and low-income gamers. I don't even think the PS5 Pro will reach that figure, lifetime, at $700

 

[Humdinger]

10 million would be seriously optimistic for a device that has no use for productivity and unaffordable for families and low-income gamers. I don't even think the PS5 Pro will reach that figure, lifetime, at $700

Yeah, it's optimistic. To clarify, the 10 m. figure was MS's thinking, as reported by Sneakers; it wasn't Sneaker's own estimate. And MS does have a habit of over-estimating potential sales, as they did with Xbox One, GP, and Xbox Series consoles.

I can see them hitting 10 m. lifetime, if the hardware was truly souped up and had good Steam integration. As I said, there are millions of hardcore Xbox fans who will want powerful next-gen hardware, and the handheld option will not satisfy them. Good Steam integration could be a selling point, too. Also, "lifetime" might be a very long time, in this case. This might be MS's last console-ish hardware.

Anyhow, it's impossible to realistically estimate sales for a product when we don't know what the product is. We'll have to wait to see what is actually on offer first.

 

[Ritsumei2020]

It's throwing in the towel as far as console warring goes but i'd be willing to bet that in 10 years time Microsoft will be making more money than ever from gaming.

Selling to PS5/6, Switch 2/3 and PC, with a combined userbase in the hundreds of millions, is simply better business than selling to 30 million or so Xbox only holdouts. Forza Horizon 5 is one the highest charting games on PSN right now and it's a 3 year old game. Just think how the situation will look when future games like Halo or Gears drop day-and-date as true multiplatform titles (yes, it's going to happen). A dollar from a PS user and a dollar from an Xbox or Switch user are all still a dollar to MS.

There's some concern that it's the Xbox console keeping Game Pass afloat, and so if Xbox goes belly up then MS also lose Game Pass too, but I don't think that necessarily needs to happen. MS are probably doing the wise thing by releasing another generation of hybrid hardware to try to transition more users over to the Ultimate sub for PC, which supposedly grew by 30% in Q2 FY2025.

They can also attempt to get some cut down form of Game Pass onto PlayStation, much like Ubisoft+ or EA Play. At the end of the day though, Microsoft will likely need to face reality that Game Pass is going to make up a smaller chunk of the pie than they envisioned. They already massively missed their subscriber expectations for 2025 by about 23 million:

The financial bright side for Microsoft is that by selling premium hardware, they should no longer have any hardware losses to offset. They lost $200 on each $299 Series S and $100 on each Series X this gen, and unfortunately for them it was the S that outsold the X.

There is also the elephant in the room: they bought Activision. People still stupidly say this was a bad tactical move as it didn't end up benefitting Xbox in the console war. "Put COD on Game Pass exclusively", people said. Microsoft bought a money printer though - why stop the presses? Activision is a company that takes in a couple of billion dollars of revenue in a quarter. MS basically secured their long-term existence in gaming by buying them.

Microsoft do not want to be the last Japanese soldier still fighting WW2 in the jungles, they want to be living in the Japanese economic miracle once the war is over.

Is it true that MS is losing $200 for S and $100 for X?

It seems odd that they are losing more money on the less powerful console?

 

[Topher]

HeisenbergFX4

Not sure if this was posted in the thread. Pretty much tells you what this is.

"While the image appears to be a mockup, with owned games listed twice as well as action-adventure titles, I don’t think the Steam label here is necessarily a mistake. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me that the company is currently working on an Xbox app update that will show every game you have installed on your PC. That includes games from Steam and the Epic Games Store, and I understand Microsoft will label these games accordingly."

Here’s the Steam on Xbox evidence Microsoft didn’t want you to see

Microsoft posted and removed a new Xbox UI image with Steam games listed.

www.theverge.com

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

HeisenbergFX4

Not sure if this was posted in the thread. Pretty much tells you what this is.

"While the image appears to be a mockup, with owned games listed twice as well as action-adventure titles, I don’t think the Steam label here is necessarily a mistake. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me that the company is currently working on an Xbox app update that will show every game you have installed on your PC. That includes games from Steam and the Epic Games Store, and I understand Microsoft will label these games accordingly."

Here’s the Steam on Xbox evidence Microsoft didn’t want you to see

Microsoft posted and removed a new Xbox UI image with Steam games listed.

www.theverge.com

That may very well be their first move is update the PC app which it badly needs

Was trying to figure a way to word things but I will just say my position has not changed especially now

 

[Humdinger]

I found this somewhat helpful.