Why are you assuming the silicon is custom? And why are you assuming native backcompat?
If they are still hiring then we really are miles away from release.
Currently PS5 Pro is the best console to play a number of Xbox games on.
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.
HeisenbergFX4
That may very well be their first move is update the PC app which it badly needs
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
Username checks out big time.
This x a million.
3. Will that ever happen with Steam right there on the UI if all the games are on Steam?
I think that's the eventual end goal for everyone now but Sony and Nintendo. If over the next 10 years consoles keep losing a grip on their ability to enforce a closed ecosystem, then every one of the top mega publishers would be encentivized to have their own store. Why keep giving 30% to Steam, Epic, Sony or anyone? Smaller publishers and indies would because its easier. Everyone else could just run their own tab in the multi-store. Turns out MS is now the biggest 3rd party publisher so they'd take that. Epic can take their 1 game. Sony only puts out maybe 2 or 3 games a year so they don't really have the scale to match that but they will have their own store too. Huge brand loyalty and tons of people with libraries already built. All the stores will just be apps on a TV, and integrated into multi-stores on streamlined PCs with multiple tabs like the mockup. Multiple stores can compete on price instead of locking everyone else out.
Whatever they end up doing, version 1.0 will not release as the best version of it, but it will at least be a start.
I don’t see the selling point then. Needing specialized versions would imply that regular Steam versions won’t run well. Then what’s the point? Only a tiny fraction of games would get that treatment. It needs to be a normal Windows device, but in a console case.
no
The reason nvidia is expensive is because no one comes close to top end performance for gaming sadly. Also it’s not all about brute strength as others could do that, but it’s the tools, drivers, and support for platforms and partnerships. No AAA studio is building games api’s etc around Intel gpus.
you can't look at the future without looking at the past. this is the main reason why Xbox people suck at "predicting" the future.
MS only gets .70$ on these dollars gamers spend on the other platforms.
There is a war because running a succesful platform (be it a games console, a phone OS, etc.) with an online store where you get roughly 30% of every transactions made on it is very good business — but you need scale if you want to absorb a company like Activision, or you have to expect their output to sell SH!T TON OF CONSOLES so you offset the purchase with sales of their software on your platform, and other software that gets sold because the user base grows. MS as a whole obviously does not believe this, because they would have made the Activision stuff exclusive, at least for a year or tow.
