Xbox Gaming On Amazon's Fire Stick Is Getting Mixed Feedback So Far

“Cloud gaming”

So it includes 0 games?

@VoidPunk The first line of this article: “Last week, Xbox officially brought its cloud streaming service to Amazon Fire Stick devices, allowing anyone with a compatible controller to enjoy hundreds of titles with a Game Pass Ultimate membership.”

No thanks I'll stick to my consoles I have zero interest in any of this

@Dan1283 same. see where ms is headed with this cloud scam. see geforce will run your games you BUY for a yearly fee of $240 with time limits and im guessing waiting ques on busy days.

thats a ripoff cause my $500 series x will last me beyond 5 or 6 years with no time limits or waiting ques.

and im not even getting into the lag and low quality issues that come with streaming.

also i play games in offline mode when my internet was down the other day.

plus i don't want to think about the extra cost of fiber internet if it ever comes to me.

@rustyduck I know no one wants that at all the day Microsoft do that I'll be finished with them I play games on a console not a firestick or any other way no thanks plus the lag and everything else gamers don't want this rubbish

@dskatter

I don’t see any games. All I see is cloud vaporware

FFS, Microsoft. You have a >$1T market cap. Why are you STILL behaving like a Kickstarter company with virtually every consumer product you ever have?

How can you possibly be surpassed by 10 year backward Sony, and fake-it-till-you-make-it Nvidia? F--ing HOW?

Build the product. THEN sell it. It's not difficult. Why are you signing deals with Amazon for mass distribution BEFORE actually building the infrastructure? Did you run out of money? Did your underwater datacenters run out of power before the sharks broke through?

Cloud could be great. Amazon stick could be great. Not perfect but great. But no, they short change the Xbox servers, split the X servers into multiple S sessions, restrict the output to 1080p, then sell it mass market. It's like they try to get it wrong.

@rustyduck The difference with GeForce Now, is for $240 a year you're renting a 4090 that costs $1600-2300 market price, in the cloud. They're letting you play your owned games on their 4090 for $240 a year. That's actually not bad because it would take 6 years of subscribing at that rate to pay for even the cheapest 4090, and by then the 5090 and probably 6090 will be out, the fans on your 4090 would probably go bad, and that doesn't even consider the cost of the rest of the rig to support it.

So bad as it sounds, compared to building a 4090 rig, they're offering a decent deal at $240 a year to rent the hardware, if the stream works well for you. Renting that hardware in the cloud is thus SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than buying it. You're also not using the 500-950W to power it (full rig not just GPU) for 6 years which probably pays for a year of sub in some territories.

Game pass lets you rent a fuzzy streamed Series S.....for the same price.....It used to be better before it was worse. When they launched X servers you got X rendering. Then they doubled capacity by splitting each X server into 2 S's.

GFN actually is significantly valuable for what it offers where it works well.

@MikeOrator Absolutely right. Everyone is tying cloud to the most expensive tier, when it should be the cheapest tier. If you're trying to get casuals with a fire stick for TV to try out some core gaming, locking it behind a $20/mo sub is not the right way to do that. What they need more than anything is to get it BUNDLED with a provider or TV service. Disney Plus, Comcast cable....put it in front of people as part of something else.

I read the DF review and nothing will ever take me away from hardware gaming under the TV.
1080p low bit rates etc etc.
what a load crap cloud streaming is.
I tried it once and each game was waiting over 5 minutes before starting so I gave up, that’s was series x 150mb/sec internet.

The fact DF said in summary, go buy yourself a second hand series s for £100 and enjoy a far superior experience that only hardware can.

I don’t why Xbox and others keep trying force this way of gaming that I definitely don’t want down our throats.
I guess it will be the future one day, but hopefully I will dead by then and never have to suffer this trash way of gaming.

@MikeOrator Exactly!

@OldGamer999 Other streaming is better. It's only Xbox streaming that's that bad. Which is just shocking as they've been pushing cloud the hardest but have the worst product to offer. Sony and Nvidia's streaming is leagues better. Stadia was leagues better. It's not the cloud sucks. It's just Xbox streaming that sucks. It was briefly good years ago. But like the console itself, they don't seem to actually care about their streaming anymore, they've cut every possible corner, while their competitors improved. I don't get MS. They operate like they're going bankrupt all the time while their cap keeps rising. It's like Kmart in the 90's. They'd rather invest in other companies than their own and then can't figure out why they're losing.

Xcloud is nowhere near good enough. On a 55 inch TV, the image is grainy and input lag is not good. With the servers that Microsoft could use, it’s mad that even Stadia was better. Amazon Luna runs better.
It’s not acceptable at all and should be fixed.

@VoidPunk Oh, I don’t disagree. I didn’t realize you were going for sarcasm there, thought it was an honest misunderstanding!

Whudda thunk it? Streaming a game thru a minimum of three firewalls (XBL, Amazon and your ISP) and then factor in the absurd variations of wifi coupled with the delay on the controller. You are looking at a bare minimum 200 latency. Even on THEEEEEE best fiber internet. Cloud gaming will never hit the desired levels of latency that on board gaming can. Phil knows this. Hell, even Google knows this. But there is still that growing crowd of (mostly) young ones that don't mind the latency or being tethered to the net.

@OldGamer999 They keep pushing cause it a viable solution when everything works well.

The big issue is that companies are all failing on one or more aspect that could make streaming great.

Stadia = Great hardware, terrible game library. xCloud = Great library, terrible hardware. GeForce = Fantastic hardware, an okay library but too heavily depended on you already owning the games which make it a big ask for people who don't already have a massive steam library.

It also doesn't help that these low-cost streaming devices like Firestick aren't all great for game streaming. Game stream still require decent hardware with a very good NIC/Wifi Card and an SoC cable of good decoding. Most devices don't have this.

@Xbox_Dashboard "Cloud gaming will never hit the desired levels of latency that on board gaming can."

Cloud streaming could never beat the latency offered by a Native PC game with keyboard and mouse, but cloud streaming services like GeForce Now has already come close to and have beaten latency offered by consoles 2 years ago. I don't know the modern number now, but with stuff like Reflex and the new gen of GPU it probably better than anything we have on Xbox Series X and PS5.

They need to fix the friends list having what’s being played random . It use to be in order and show who’s playing the same game first .. smh backwards I tell you

@MjJmediablogger crazy Microsoft puts products out that aren’t finish as a tech giant

@NEStalgia
I’m lost for words what you message me about Xbox is worse than the others. I thought they were sever cloud kings and it was their big generation thing.

Not sure why I’m surprised Microsoft with Xbox is totally confusing and abysmal this generation.
Even to the point I’ve now swapped to PS5 as my full main console a few weeks ago.

For a multi-trillion company that controls a good chunk of the entire internet it’s honestly not great at all, even mostly bad I’d say.

I’ve had the chance to test Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now and Google Stadia (back when it existed) and they all have a much better experience, same thing I heard with the new PS+ streaming tho I haven’t been able to test it myself.

@TheSimulator I thought by now that Xcloud would be so much better than it is. Xbox have never improved it, it’s just not good enough. If this is the way Xbox is going - ie. cloud gaming- they need to up the game considerably or they will lose that battle as well.

I’m bewildered as to what Xbox is doing tbh.

@MikeOrator if they are then remove specific games …. Don’t put games that can be ran properly and used as a selling point because that’s bad marketing

@OldGamer999 LOL nope.... They definitely MARKETED cloud the hardest, they were at the front of marketing of the whole idea...and then they basically abandoned it. Abandoned their own streaming stick. And now sold it to an Amazon partnership while still leaving it in mothballs.

Back in 2022 they were really doing well. The launched the Series X hardware blades, performance was good, wait times were low, usually. Cloud was looking up. They were going to sell their streaming stick. They were hyping pending features for cloud.

Then around the time they started the ABK negotiations behind the scenes, they cancelled the streaming stick, they stopped expanding cloud much (remember the hearings saying UK only had cloud capacity for like 100k people?) the wait times increased, they doubled server capacity by splitting the series X blades into running 2-3 Series S instances instead, the stream quality stayed at 1080p forever with what appears to be very low bitrate streams, while even freaking Sony managed to jump to 4k after their early poor showing of PSNow. Xbox may well be the very WORST streaming service out there other than the really small outfits that Nintendo likes to use for things like Control.

Cloud streaming isn't a joke. Game Pass Ultimate Cloud is. It feels like an abandoned product left in alpha from 2 years ago. Why they're now decided to push it through Amazon like it's their best foot forward I have no idea, unless Amazon approached them and said "we reaaaally wanna push gaming on our hardware, can we include you, also, here's a Tomb raider deal for 2026."

So Microsoft is in gaming. They have a console they kind of half support. They have a cloud service they pushed over their console for a year that they less than half support. They have a PC storefront that's missing most of the games sold in the industry.

I honestly don't know what they actually have that's complete? Nothing as far as I can tell. They now have mobile, how much you wanna bet the mobile store is broken and incomplete for years until people forget about it?

Standard MS. Introduce a product. Hype what it will someday be. Then abandon it partway through and move onto something else, leaving the previous product lingering until it dies, or becomes a ubiquitous necessity on its own.

Nadella is a plague. He's abandoned the entire company behind the bet with AI replacing everything. Even Azure is suffering next to AWS.

I haven't tried it in the Fire Stick but I've had a few fire sticks in my life and they have never performed particularly well, even when using Netflix or whatnot. Just a cheap, underpowered device.

@NEStalgia
Yes they have got themselves in a situation at the moment in gaming where they have three things on the go that are sub par and definitely are not the master of any.

They seem to be doing strange things and doing not enough right things, in weird ways.
With the Xbox brand suffering like hell.

@NEStalgia I’d say the last great year for Xbox maybe ever was in 2021, Series X|S was selling almost on par with PS5, Game Pass was growing and most importantly we got great games with Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5 and more or less Halo Infinite.

2022 was when the downfall started as they announced the ABK acquisition and quite literally forgot about everything else, they didn’t release a single game, understandably Game Pass and consoles sales got stale, Cloud gaming got straight-up abandoned and we haven’t seen a single improvement since, 2023 wasn’t much better with Redfall being a disaster and Starfield disappointing (I don’t hate it but I did have higher expectations) and the little tiny ray of hope with Hi-Fi Rush turned out to be such a “break-out hit” (Aaron Greenberg’s words) that awarded them a studio closure lmfao…

@OldGamer999 Yeah and it's not JUST Xbox. I think the corporate strategy right now is that anything that doesn't make as much money as AI and doesn't spur investment like AI simply doesn't matter.

Largely I think they're running scared that someone else's AI will obsolete them as a whole and trying to stay ahead of it while actually causing the real damage themselves.

@IOI Yep exactly that. Though 2022 was when they ignored console to focus only on cloud, downplaying the console and insisting the future is it's cloud. Then when they started abk is when they also abandoned cloud.

They want to be in every industry and as a result end up in none..

Except venture capital.

It makes absolutely no sense to pay $20 for Ultimate just to play cloud games on Amazon TVs. Those who don’t have an xbox or PC will overpay for features and games they can’t use or play. Why doesn’t a cloud only tier even exist?!?!?

@NEStalgia
Oh well, it’s a shame as I’ve been with Xbox since day one every console, but since the beginning of this year I’ve sort of accepted that leaving Xbox is ok.
So they lose my bit of money and support slowly but shortly.
I can’t see anyway in which they are going to grow Xbox as a console, Xbox game pass, Xbox as cloud or any Xbox momentum at all.
They just might as well become Microsoft games and be a publisher now.

@OldGamer999 Yeah I mean the irony is everyone says that the console doesn't matter because it's not the biggest part of Xbox but on reality console is still the only good part. Cloud is the worst in the business, PC store is empty, GP is stagnant. The console is actually pretty good relatively still, but suffering from their lack of focus.

@NEStalgia I just want to point out that Series X hardware blades launched it 2021, with the upgrade being completed by Oct of that year.

This is also when they were splitting up the Series X blades into running 2-3 Series S instances instead... This was around the time of Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite launch as everyone (myself included) was complaining that games weren't the Series X version. So that had nothing to do with the ABK purchase and was something they was doing years before.

@NEStalgia
The series x console as a unit and features is the best console to me.
But it’s not getting those exclusive games that use of its power to create brand recognition.
I mean go outside the USA and even Xbox consoles a very poor relation to the other two with little momentum.
But I’m not sure I just don’t think Microsoft care about it really.

@NEStalgia They also aren't just pushing Cloud gaming through Amazon. They've been pushing it through Samsung, and Meta with the Quest 3 getting support last year in December.

The issue is that MS themselves can't directly support their own game stream service. The EU and Uk regulators won't let them. So, Microsoft are stuck having to find ways around that... MS technically don't even own the right to stream their own games. Ubisoft own the cloud streaming right to CoD.

I couldn’t think of anything worse.

I have game pass on pc. And the xbox app on there is just terrible. Won't even let me play cloud games because I don't have a supported controller. But on the website it says it's supported for the fire stick, why not for the PC?

As with everything now-a-days, the first version is barely a beta worth using to play. They will fix it about two more revisions of firestick and the service down the line.

@rustyduck geforce now is free, that's why you get queues and see ads and possibly a time limit. But if you pay, there's no queues and I don't think it has a time limit, not sure tho.

The queues were very long for free users before they added ads, but after they've added the ads, queues were really short, like you'd be 4th place , if you watch a couple ads.

First, I’ve used the new Fire TV app a few times using a Fire TV 4K Max and it worked really well. I’m traveling and I brought it with me to a hotel with spotty wifi running at 37.39 mbps and ping 66 ms. I had a zoom meeting that kept breaking up, but not a single issue playing Xbox cloud gaming on the Fire stick. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked. I played Persona 5 Tactica and had a close to console experience with virtually no lag at all. Perhaps I just got lucky, but this has been my experience most of the time using cloud gaming. I imagine that within a few years it will run even better.

Second, I get that a lot of people here love gaming on a console (I do too!), but I don’t quite get why so many people are ideologically against being able to game anywhere using cloud gaming, especially given how well it works when I’ve used it. Most of my life I’ve been a PlayStation person who used to hate Xbox, but it was Game Pass and cloud gaming that turned me into an Xbox person two years ago. Shouldn’t Xbox fans want more people to experience what it has to offer? Being able to play a game on console at home and then continue on my phone or laptop using cloud gaming is simply amazing. I personally wish Microsoft would actually market how amazing cloud gaming is to the masses, but still continue making powerful consoles. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. If you disagree with me I understand, I just wish more people would accept that cloud gaming really works well on most games and continues to get better. Can Microsoft be a better company to its loyal gamers? Of course, but I appreciate them making the gaming experience available away from my console.

@OldGamer999 there is a short loading, but not 5 minutes. It's like 10-20 seconds or so for me and I use mobile internet. I've played a few games on the cloud. Never had to wait 5 minutes. If it does takes more than a minute, then there's probably a connection issue. But when my internet is working fine, then the game loads quick.

I have a hard time believing all 113 people (and counting) that voted in the poll have actually tried it out, especially since it's only been out for a week and most visitors here have an Xbox console...

@101Force I didn't vote but I imagine most voters are voting on experience with the streaming service itself, which should be the same on fire stick (hopefully it's not WORSE than on PC and console!) I'm sure most of us subscribe to ultimate and have experience with cloud.

@CutchuSlow The Xbox app is hilarious. Some days the remote play button for console just disappears entirely. It freezes often when streaming too forcing a reboot at least on my legion too. And then there's the windows store 10 allowed devices that's different from the ms account 10 devices but hidden and if you log in to a pc the first time when it's full, is almost impossible to get to to recognize your licenses ever. It's horridly broken and always will be.

@AverageGamer "wait, you're wrong, Xbox fecked it all up way sooner than you said!" 😂

That's just depressing. I really can't comprehend how they make decisions. Everything they do is about maximizing that days revenue and never about actually building brands and products.

The quest support is hilarious. Who buys a vr headset to stream low quality pancake games on a blurry giant screen. I really don't understand why it exists. Meanwhile Meta has their own sub for 30% of the price for their actual vr catalogue.... Or just use virtual desktop/airlink and stream from a better provider that actually uses the quests resolution.... 🤣

This is on the most expensive tier!?!
Isn't this supposed to be an introductory option into the world of gaming and Gamepass?

If anything this should be the cheap option supported by ads.

I would have been really into this during my broke college days. Buying consoles and games then was like squeezing blood from a turnip. I wish MS well with this.

@CutchuSlow up to 8 hours for the highest paying customers. 6 hours for the 2nd highest paying customers. streaming sucks.

rn 8 hours would be fine for me but when im into a game like ark or WoW i would just be getting warmed up at 8 hours. i'll always buy hardware over streaming. if it all goes streaming, gaming would be like living in china, always gotta check if you are close to the limit. f that.

As far as modern ads go it's fine. In terms of audience response I mean it makes sense but I don't know. I don't care and see the business side to it but I also do care as a console user and not a fan of some of MS services other than Windows Defender working good but everything else about Windows or Xbox annoys me other than the Xbox having the quiet feature on Xbox One that PS5 now has.

The Day One changes & other stuff to higher tier is ridiculous. Desperation. Balance out benefits per tiers? They want too much & it's confusing. Who is it for? Win 11 'everyone' & it's still confusing to us hardcore/aware types going why?

I went alright not bad but I still think it needs work, the QR/phone app or syncing, or other checks or things, I assume on first go that's the case but even still was a bit fiddly. It's so forgettable to me that's how great the experience was. It plays well enough if got the connection/cabled or wireless and whatever region, etc. But even still it was so forgettable. In a way yes it's like a more like a rental and just forgettable, in the digital service way or FlexPlay kills the DVD itself way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs&pp=ygUIZmxleHBsYXk%3D FlexPlay video

Hardcore audiences want the consoles, Xbox has more storage upgrade consoles revealed already yet why bother if the Microsoft company side says and wants otherwise of cloud to utilise their technologies and wants other things. Both sides seem to have the 'we have to follow what we are told but also offer these other options for the hardcore just like the controllers to gauge interest in those willing and everyone else goes to the app/other solution to get people into it.

How many actually USE cloud besides their marketing I barely see. I do wonder how much users actually use it or move on and don't stay or even know how to use it at all/are interested in gaming enough regardless of phone, regardless of entry points they haven't covered yet?

Even besides whatever was or wasn't happening with other factors of money why these console upgrades do they think THAT many people will buy them (besides the niche audience) or they going well we aren't making a Series Y or Z so we might as well just make storage upgrade consoles and those that want them will buy those that are dedicated, make a sizeable portion and the rest is other services to push.

Like I mean customers/collectors want enough as replacements when they break, a company couldn't care less about that. Unless repairs or something.

The Amazon Fire Stick is something (then Keystone or their own stick to offer and if not Apple TV Amazon Fire products makes sense I guess) then making a deal with LG, Sony, TLC (Google TV sure) or other TV makers besides Samsung, that and Amazon has Luna but they also had the Android Amazon option for Windows 11 then that went away so I assume maybe something along those lines or another they to offer?

that I didn't think about till now then when I saw the ad days ago when it came out and voiced I thought it was ok but still console focused even though I haven't cared really for much if at all from them this gen, same with PS5, Switch or retro for me currently and the Xbox One X/PS4 still work fine enough for Youtube and other internet app services unlike the Wii U but the PS3 I tested (not logged in of course and that has even lower specs so specs or just processing I do wonder there for app support on there, not tried on 360).

Part 2:

I myself don't care I have an idea how cloud is, I think the setup process was REALLY bad when setting it up to another TV so it's got a ways to go with how fiddly it is.

If they REALLY think people can take the simplicity sure, if they want to play some Indies or other things for a price if people get used to the idea of gaming without a console or care about gaming as a medium enough then just mobile/board games/card games or tv/movies as a 'thing to pass the time' and not dedicated enough like the rest of us that read articles or some making their voices heard because they bought a console, value consoles and don't want the expansion or are vocal to voice their console purpose.

I think consoles will stay if a dedicated audience wants them, but over time if small enough sales they will get rid of them

(whatever range of million they would make as a cut of, or if like Windows even if high enough millions they won't care and force it, I liked Windows 8/8.1 but at the same time they did say hey we will focus on Tablets and this all platforms design as if PCs were dying just like consoles even though there is a sizeable audience that has shown we like PCs and Consoles for different things we aren't all tech illiterate to some things (even though schools have had computers, but Chromebooks are a thing now then Netbooks were of Windows even if on eh hardware) like some people can be who can't use a controller but will a touch screen or can't use a local file explorer and can a cloud storage service (or even that if they don't even know what a file manager is let alone how to zip up a folder for University, not everyone has to be an IT person to do some things that simple ever since a kid) or other things too hard and yeah Windows 8's push wasn't a good idea even if I thought it was fair in some areas for universal simplicity (also not as bad flat design as today and worse navigation) to a degree and like some of the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile to a dock/otherwise casting option, I cast my Android phone when I feel like it (not as the ONLY option) when the app wants to play nice, I can take 'some dramatic changes' with OS or games but it varies).

I myself prefer a local experience not internet focused down my throat all the time as the only option no matter how close to seamless to offline. I use my Switch or older handhelds when thunder happens (besides reading books) because I don't have to worry unlike consoles hooked up to the TV.

Not just because of internet use cases if the modem needs a reset or other reasons.

It's an experience. Some games work better than others. Hellblade 2 which I played in full, didn't run all that well! It was playable, but not something that would compel you to drop your console. That said, Microsoft has to build on the technology and match competitors to be taken seriously, and I think a lot of the steps they're taking will see that happen in the near future going into the next generation.

Many of the things they pointed out here I suffered. But some games run better than others. Starfield, Forza for example. Not to much of an issue, but yeah. The main issue was input lag years ago. That's not an issue, at least not anymore, as much as I've experienced it. Digital Foundry deserves a lot of praise for the work they do because they've highlighted the current issues perfectly.

@rustyduck fwiw it's not a limit of 8 hours per day, it's a limit of an 8 hours continuous session. You can reconnect for another 8 hours if you get kicked out as much as you want, you just have to wait for any queue time again. I think it's meant to make sure "no lifers" don't prevent the queue from moving.

However it's actually 4080 rigs not 4090. Last time I looked it was 3090s so I assumed they upgraded to 4090, but apparently only 4080. Tbf though 4080 is still a decent upgrade from 3090 so it's still more value for the same money than it was. It's also only 200 a year if you buy 6mo increments. And 4080 is still a $1k card and at 200 that's still 6 years to pay for just the gpu that would be 2 generations obsolete in 6 years so still actually surprisingly great value of only because modern gpus are such poor value. Sad a deal at it appears it's actually bargain rental at the ridiculous prices of their cards, and that's still excluding the rest of the PC. A similar PC would be $400/year in 6 year installments. And you'd probably upgrade by then so goodbye wallet. (I personally still prefer hardware if course but....)

I've not tried it on the Fire stick, but I did have a good session of Sea of Thieves on my iPad last weekend when I was travelling. There were a few drops in image quality, but was still very playable and fun.

it's not as good or reliable as a dedicated console, but I like being able to play my games away from home without downloads, etc.

So I will make you my example just to give you a change of perspective.
I have an Xbox series x in Thailand because MS doesn't have cloud or any kind of market there, there I use my series x+ game pass ultimate. Once a month I come back to work in Norway and I use my old Xbox one x to keep playing the games I was playing in Thailand on my living room tv in streaming. In the last year I have never experienced any lag or stuttering, nor queues, with a humble 40 MB fiber .
I am now wondering to buy a Samsung tv / tv+fire stick to put in the living room on the second floor and use the Samsung Xbox app to play in case someone wants to watch a movie on the big Tv downstairs.
I think this is where the potential of cloud streaming is really shining, you can play on multiple tvs( as long as you have the right hardware) , resume from you were playing yesterday and not worry too much about anything else. It is by no means a solution for hardcore gamers focused on fps and RT, but if you have a couple of hours to spare it works pretty well . ☺️☺️

Where does Xbox’s focus and pride in their consoles fit in? Series X was once marketed as a dream maker and the most powerful console in the world? I’m in the UK and feel it’s dying I’m thinking of either selling up or more likely maining my PS5 and keep XSX for exclusives. Such a fantastic console but MS doesn’t care about it at all. Why should I buy anymore 3rd party digital games on it? Is there a future.

@x3King84 I use my X for any cross-platform games because of achievements (if the game isn't on PC as well, which is rare). I also keep it going for the backwards compatibility. It's the only way to play Fable 2 and Too Human anymore outside of an actual 360.

Plus, I hate the PS5 controller. It hurts my hands after an hour.

@NEStalgia i guess i'll deal with this if it all goes streaming and im still alive. until then it looks like im going ps6.

@rustyduck Yeah. Xbox may or may end up being ok long term if it goes the branded PC route, might even be good, but it's going to be an unpleasant roller coaster until we find out either way. Only options are sink or swim with the ship, jumping PS6 and hoping Sony doesn't ram the knife into your back if MS washes ashore. Or the streaming/rentals. Or just pony up for the real 40xx rig.

For me I think I'm kind of stuck having to go with the full rig, it's the "real" Xbox at this point, and for me, VR matters, and Sony's screwed up as bad as Xbox has on that front, so there's pretty much only one path.

I also like playing with kerosene and matches near large piles of money.

@NEStalgia mate, I love your posts, so funny.
What is so depressing being an XSX owner is that it’s constant bad news at best and lies at worst. It’s clear MS can’t even keep their loyal players/fans who have paid decent money for a console. It’s an F you and let’s sell a fire stick app to a random. I’m pretty much done at this point.

@rustyduck i didn't know there was a limit, but I've never played a game longer than 8 hours straight. I'd at least take short breaks before getting back to it. Is the 8 hours the daily limit or just when you get kicked off and able to rejoin again?

i would think 8 hours for the day. @CutchuSlow

@x3King84 Following Xbox is like being a cat and chasing the laser. You just frantically jump from place to place to wherever the red dot moved, and every time you do, it's not there and it jumped somewhere else, and you end up looking pretty unintelligent in the process.

Though I still can't imagine on what planet they actually think selling a $20 subscription to stream 1080p games with high compression to the kind of people why buy Fire Sticks is actually going to be the move that takes them to new heights of market leadership in gaming. Bundling it with Prime Video at a discount? That would grow numbers. $20/mo to the kind of person that never thought to buy a console before? No.

I think next E3/SGF, Devolver Digital should just stick a camera in the Xbox boardroom. I'll be just as zany and satirical as all their other shows and cost them absolutely nothing.

@rustyduck @CutchuSlow It's just 8 hours for a single session, not 8 hours per day total. You can reconnect as many times a day as you want. Seems to be less about limiting play time and more about keeping people from hogging the servers idling and keeping other people from connecting. Like in MMOs and the very "social hangout" games like Fortnite that are more social media platform than video game where people will just hang out on the server all day. Can't imagine anybody actually PLAYING more than 8 hours non-stop with zero breaks other than the kids they find dead in internet cafes in Korea that are addicted to DOTA when their kidneys explode.

@NEStalgia oh right, yeah that makes sense. Thanks.