NEStalgia

@WhiteRabbit No joke, Oblivion is the only time I've bought a GPU just to play one game so it runs well lol.

Finally! A way of getting rid of Roblox once and for all!

@Moby At the time that he left, obviously not factoring in the upcoming lineup. Remember, when he left ABK was still up in the air.

@Medic_alert Maybe, although I think Fallout and it's current popularity probably guarantees their future, though TES is the only one I care about really.

I'm not sure what way to think about it. On one hand what Bethesda does is a very specific kind of game that appeals to a very specific kind of gamer, predominantly on PC. On the other hand that market isn't big enough to pay for the games with modern budgets even without UE5 level graphics (and heck, they already have id working on their engine.)

OTOH if they change to a "modern" (flashy, shallow, streamlined, rigid, similar-to-everything-else) popular, marketable genre, their existing fans won't care about them at all anymore, that crowd wants a world simulation and few companies deliver world simulations.

@TheSimulator Bethesda games can already be played third person. It's not the feel the games are most famous for but it's there."change the art style to tap into the younger generation" Do we really need every game to be cartoon plasticine with neon violet base colors because "young people" apparently can appreciate nothing else? Are the "younger generation" going to be 12 forever?

...Maybe best not to answer that.

@Medic_alert I think the problem with that is, you expect Bethesda (Buggy as they are) to be a game with a lot of interaction, object,s physics, whatnot, and that's not compatible with "UE5, shiny shiny gfx gfx" where that LoD would force having defined focused, narrow interactions. I don't think super glossy graphics and detail will ever be compatible with the scope of a bethesda game unless they're willing to take a major loss on making it, and we know even moneybags MS isn't going to do that now. They were already taking losses even with the low detail games.

From a stagnating console to a stagnating engine. So kind of a lateral move?

Good to see him back....Xbox really needed him, not sure how they let him walk like that.

@Chaotic_Goat Yeah probably SLId dual 4090s. It really irritates me how all the new games basically ignore current gen and pretty much ignore common PCs and just build everything around mythical flagship cards virtually nobody has. If you're going to build your game for hardware performance commonly available 6 years from now then why shouldn't everyone wait 6 years to buy it?

Abk just got finalized months ago. They're just going to be releasing what was already scheduled to release for them for a few years. New Xbox projects that started talks at acquisition would only be entering into actual development now if at all so that's years away. Like Series Y launch title later.

@OldGamer999 a yep, exactly! Gaming never left 1999 in game engine design. Just throw more megahertz at it and it'll go faster!

@OldGamer999 To be fair, generations are gone and never coming back, only because we've really reached the peak of where we were trying to get. There's really nothing more we can do with visuals at this point. Physics, AI, etc etc are where advancement will be, but that's not sexy and marketable as generations and all the need is to stop putting lousy laptop CPUs in consoles, but where a great PC CPU is over $300..... There's only so much they can do in the console and hit budgets. And unfortunately they've focused on GPU instead of CPU at the time when devs are maxed on graphics and doing more with compute (starfield as a big example).

Game development though... Is stuck in the PS4 past even on PC, not using already available hardware will. We're up to 16 core processors and gaming is still lucky if it uses 2. I had a Core 2 Quad in a gaming rig in 2006. In 2024 half the biggest games still use 2 or 3 cores. It's sad. Xsx was assigned around modern coding practices being used. PS5 was designed around PS4 design forever and ever. And that was the right bet somehow. It's going to start changing with ue5 though.

@OldGamer999 Yeah I think 2026 depends on if the handheld is stand alone or part of a single docking console design, but I do think 2026 is going to be new hardware because the current Gen blew up on the launchpad.

I think true first party of pushing hard in the engine tech and utilizing the hardware not just because Xbox but also PC is starving to use that 30xx and 40xx and soon 50xx tech and all these 8-16 core CPUs for gaming too. It's all held back because the world never left PS4 and PS4 pro Plus (ver5) yet. Activation and Bethesda will just do what the always do through.

@Alecsnokia Right, the new Xbox are just the "slim", same box, different storage configuration/disc option, not new consoles.

@Alecsnokia PS5 is technically less powerful but has an advantage for older single threaded game design like UE4. With newer engines line ue5 the advantage of xsx are more utilized. The bigger problem is with PS5 outselling Xbox by a large share, devs generally put less effort into the game which is why PS5 versions tend to run better.

@OldGamer999 Yeah, but that's the thing, mid gen sucks. The console most people have feels obsolete, yet It's a modest gpu upgrade, generally the same cruddy CPU, RAM. At that point the whole console feels creaky and then the mid gen just drags out the Gen. PC is a whole other world for sure but ms has a good plan there. You have a console that does what you need. If you want turbo power you can do it for real if you've got the cash. No half measures. If they did a pro it would be awkward. A crummy semi upgrade GPU sitting between the mainstream console and the real enthusiast gear on PC. I think that's kind of the unique part of the Xbox ecosystem is it's shared lineage with PC both in terms of their console stuff being totally relative for PC and PC stuff making it to console (free patches for new hardware etc.)

@OldGamer999 The thing is, the way Xbox has set up the platform, they don't ever have to do a "pro" model, because they've already positioned PC as their pro model while the consoles target a value, and midprice budget nicely. While PS has to worry about making a more expensive GPU-upgraded model and all the awkwardness of that, XB just has to make the consoles cater to the casual/mass market, and for the enthusiasts that want it all, just point to PC. Sure, a powerful PC will cost a lot more than a PS5 Pro, but it'll also run circles around it for the enthusiast. Heck a maxed out PC today probably gets you a PS6 basically, with 2 years Early Access.

On one hand, I really don't want to play a roguelike. On the other hand, I desperately want to play an assassin coffee bean.

Shocked that this didn't do GP, I thought with the Atlus trend and the GP semi leak on their site it would have been a Showcase announcement. Strangely Atlus didn't make any showing at the Showcase at all this year despite 2 big games (this and Metaphor) inbound. All the Japanese games vanished this year. Great showcase, but the Japanese presence they'd built previously drying up is a depressing.

Either way, once it hits a sale, this is a must (re)buy for me as my first purchase was a combined Atlus+Switch-Tax for a 20fps slideshow game.

@Dan1283 @REAVERZINE Technically the 2TB version of the X is a slight price cut, because a launch 1TB version + 1TB expansion cost more than that, so for anyone that was going to get a 1TB expansion this comes out a bit cheaper.

I bought the 1TB expansion on launch day, that was painful. But I think these modern consoles are unpleasant to use with just 1TB stock.

@Banjo- Exactly! I think they're kind of teasing the back story in a stort of subversive ongoing campaign of reveals. We won't know the real deal until nearer launch, we seem like we're being taken on a serious of interviews of dubious individuals telling it their own way. It's really clever.

@Banjo- I really can't imagine they're really setting up "defined hero girl" as a behind the shoulder walking simulator narrative player character for a Fable game. And these trailers seem too deliberate in tone to be "what you see is what you get."

The bigger guy with the glasses was, like in the new trailer set up as someone with some kind of history regarding her, though, so the theme is consistent. Doesn't mean she's truly the hero protag though. Could even just be an allied character or party member, but something just seems really too leash-leading about how they're setting her up and what her character is. She's something in the game, but I don't believe she's the player, and I feel like there's definitely a twist coming somewhere about that. They've spent too much time setting up a vague "hero" that doesn't seem setup to be the Player.

@Banjo- Just because that's "gameplay footage" doesn't mean that's not gameplay footage made just for the trailer footage to show the mechanics (and further mislead on the false narrative being told from the PoV of the maybe ill purposed characters), but isn't true to the story/character you'll play. Kind of like how ACIII opened with you playing Haytham but that's obviously not how things turned out.

@FarmDog08 Yeah, and it's interesting how they're doing it as this running series, every showcase we get this new trailer of some new retired hero somehow connected with the "hero" girl, and everything seems deceptive about it all. And their stories can't all be true. Really clever marketing "for the fans" I think. It's maybe a bit too subversive and people seem to miss the brilliance of it.

@FarmDog08 Yeah, I think these trailers we've been getting are a super elaborate trolling job setting up a false world building twist by launch. It's all very clever, and so very Fable! Everything we're hearing is the truth according to some clearly very self-serving narrators...whatever we're being told by them is all lies for sure, and we have no idea who the girl that's the "hero" really is! Really a unique hype approach, only Hideo Kojima has successfully done such elaborate trolling, setting up a fake company with fake trailers just to troll for MSGV.

@Aniscape I didn't even notice that...interesting!

I'm sure it'll have a character creator. The "Miivatar" is the entire backbone of the Fable franchise, right down to the "Second Life Sim" aspects. If it's not that, it's not fable, and the whole project will have been a sham. Whatever they're setting up the trailer "hero" for can't be a narrative player character, assuming the team has played a Fable game and gets its whole Molyneaux-ist design.

@FarmDog08 This. In the trailer they even said something about the "hero" and she "made all the wrong choices" or something...made me think maybe she's actually the former hero turned villain.

@K1LLEGAL "how good the "xbox" store on PC actually is"

It's somewhere between a steaming pile of cow pies, and a festering swamp. Anything on Game Pass is on the Windows Store. And most of it is cross-play ("Play Anywhere".) Anything not on Game Pass. 50/50. And the dice are weighted. They REALLY need to work on that.

Yeah I was one of those launch XIII people that absolutely hated it. Made it as far as Gran Pulse, and just noped out. But in the years later I started to think fondly of it and wanted to go back and give it another go and finally play the sequels. Got them on Steam since the XB version is the console-only version and no handheld streaming...

@gollumb82 Haha, yeah, I'd go all out on the docked accessorized single piece box, though I may just "accessorize" with a normal tower power rig to replace the Xbox console (and MAYBE the PS??) and have the two machines as the "dock" I mean, a power rig is just an Xbox Series X Pro X right?

I'm surprised it's getting a positive reaction. This looks like Dragon Age: XVI. Let's take an RPG and turn it into an over the shoulder character action game in hallways! It's what the kids (in 2004) want! I'm assuming everyone loving it didn't want an RPG and just wanted flashy action games with Marvel dialogue and animation? Why must everything have Marvel dialogue and animation?

@K1LLEGAL Yeah to add on to what you and @gollumb82 were talking about the Ally/Legion/Claw is literally a gaming laptop condensed into a little handheld. It's just a full on Windows PC. You can run the PC versions of Xbox games from GP or purchases, and of course Steam, EGS, GoG, Origin, uPlay, God of War.... Excel, Powerpoint, iTunes...whatever, it's just a very tiny laptop with a laptop-like price.

I'm enjoying trying to get through the FFXIII series finally on handheld, which was never before possible, and the X360 BC games can't remote play.

The only caveat is that the majority of games on the Xbox store do not exist on the Windows store, so your achievements/saves/purchases are going to depend on what IS available on Windows Store. That's the Achilles heel of Play Anywhere right now. Obviously all those games are available from other stores, and Steam, GoG, EGS all have their own achievement systems.

I do wonder what the Xbox handheld will do differently because the current windows handhelds are pretty tough acts for a closed console to beat other than price point and battery life. I'm kind of hooked and can't go back, it's a full on gaming rig more powerful than the last supertower I built years ago, in a giant Game Boy.

@WhiteRabbit They already had Microsoft Game Studios back in the day before Xbox existed, so it's not a new name, it's an old name. Then at some point they renamed Microsoft Game Studios to Xbox Game Studios. Would be kind of funny if they just reverted back and added some consonants.

I'm a big fan of Layden's, but I can only imagine the kinds of things at his level that he saw from Xbox during the 360 era, and no doubt sees "slimy platform" flashbacks from Xbox quickly. Plus, got to wonder if he's just reacting against Phil's words but also a bit of self ridicule. He hasn't been a social media fan of Jim, either. And Jim dredged back some of the darkest Kutaragi era PS policies best left in the 90's that had disappeared in Hirai/Laden's era. I assume he's reacting to both here.

@themightyant "Please migrate to Xbox" is the one and only thing we can put in writing Xbox never actually says

Yeah I mean in theory the cross by is a great thing, not so much the cross-buy actually, it's the cross-SAVE that goes with it that might matter most. The problems with that as a USP are simply that easing the ability to leave console and go PC isn't helping the console overall, and the use case of going from PC to console isn't going to be a common one, and it'll take more than the offer of "someday you could leave your PC and go to consoles!" to convince PC players to buy on Windows Store instead of Steam (where "someday you could leave Windows and go to Linux!" Is an equal or stronger selling point in the market.)

And second, most importantly, their cross buy is absolute trash of the highest order, where very few games offer it, few publishers want anything to do with it, and even where there's no permitted cross-buy, few games even exist on the Windows store. Of my 300+ Xbox games less than 25 are cross-buy atm, and most of the others I spot check aren't even available to buy separately on PC. (I always use Elden Ring as my example for some reason, but just because it's so high profile - you simply can't buy the game from MS on PC at all.) They need some SERIOUS work to be done, including strong-arming publishers, if it's going to be a useful feature beyond marketing talk. Even freaking Skyrim isn't cross-buy yet, and they own it themselves. It's up there with "8k!" marketing as a theoretical feature as-is. Sega seems to support it heavily (but only for newish games), they're one of the only ones. Square has a few games, someone noted the Enix games tend to and the Square games don't.

Yeah the handheld has been a given for some time but it was fun to see Phil basically directly-indirectly say it. Still can't tell like you said if it's a PC or console (he threw in the comparison to Ally and Legion again, so still looking PC-like maybe.) I'm still assuming their hardware trajectory will be to merge console and PC, I thought so back with 1X and was kind of surprised Series became what it is instead, I just don't know if it starts with the handheld or the next gen (or if it's the same thing and is an eGPU hybrid system. Phil keeps talking "Form factors", he talked about form factors last time he commented on handheld. And again this time but while talking about non-handheld. Could be going for an all in one dockable.)

As a now HUGE Legion/Ally fan I don't need the Xbox handheld anymore, but I'm curious what they do on price if it's a PC. It can't be $600+ ($800 Ally X wtflol), but something will have to give to get prices that much lower. Adata now has a Windows handheld coming up for $500 with a tilt-out screen. They're multiplying! I'm near-certain the Xbox handheld will be snapdragon with great battery, WoA is the corporate synergy fotm and it fits here. But what they do with price (or what they have to cut down) will be interesting. Either way it'll be a better value than the $200 local-device-specific-streaming-only Portal. Will also be interesting to see how it stands out from the more easily marketable Switch 2 if the Switch 2 is as powerful docked as rumors say.

Perfect Dark is really my stand-out surprise of the show. I don't have any attachment to the series and would have been happy enough with a sort of throwback 00's NOLF-like type setup. I got giddy when I saw the Deus Ex shine through. It may not be a pure "Arcane game" but it's a more Arcane game than poor Austin's swan song is....

@FatalBubbles Yeah, especially the past year has been brutal for new content. Idk what their critical mass is for it hitting expected profitability or how far they are from it. A assume they're going to have to move a lot of consoles for that so be within reach. Getting new cod kiddies into the ecosystem will probably be critical

I'm still surprised they're wasn't an smtv announcement for gp at the show. I thought for sure it would be.

@Banjo- Depends how complete the PS5 games strategy becomes. I think those that are more comfortable on console are going to favor PS5 because it's "THE" console experience. Xbox is trying to sit really deep in the "Lite PC" territory. Which isn't a bad thing if the price is right, but IDK if it'll capture many console gamers, unless they're withholding some of these big games forever on PC/XB. Maybe they will but it still sounds like "anything" may happen. IMO I think rather than straddling a middle ground of a "console" that's just a cheap mirror Windows, if it really tried to push the idea openly of being a real PC for cheap. Grab the people that like the idea of PC gaming but are intimidated by PC gaming (or are Mac people. )

@demian Eh, I don't think so, long term. I think at some point their PC strategy will focus on having other stores that are Steam competitors (Epic, etc) but not Steam itself, and may not put their own games on Steam if they go to push Windows Store as a steam alternative. For now Windows store is a horrid joke though ,so there's kind of no choice.

@BHPM X1X has a stronger GPU than Series S. Series S has the stronger CPU and newer GPU features though. I think it woudl be 1S vs Series S. 1X and SX GPUs are just too beefy for a handheld.

@Bobobiwan @Banjo- But then we're back the ponies yelling about how Xbox has no games other than Halo/Forza/Gears, while they happily play their Xbox games on their PS.

@FatalBubbles Yeah, and I think that's the strategy they were going for. Economically it's hard to argue against cheap console + GP. It just doesn't seem like that strategy has been very successful in the broad market, where it seems like the modern gamer doesn't actually want to play a lot of new games, they just want to play CoD or Minecraft, or SoT in a vacuum.

I kind of don't understand how the value model didn't work as planned, it seems like a slam dunk strategy. The gaming consumer is a weird breed. Or a bunch of kids that don't understand value of money because it grows on the parental tree. Probably that one.

@themightyant Oh I think Xbox the publisher is just fine. It was a great show, fantastic games all around! I still don't know what to make of Xbox the hardware though. I know they'll be making hardware for at least another gen, I just don't know if it will A) Be successful B) will come with a catch, C) Will just be a PC for a bit cheaper and more convenient but starting to price close enough to PC that it just makes sense to go PC. Phil's answer about hardware that the reason to play on Xbox is Game Pass Day 1 and PC cross-buy aren't very inspirational considering you get the former on PC and the latter doesn't matter if you're on PC. I think it'll all come down to price. If the next hardware offers a ton of bang for the buck, it should be fine. If it's totally merged with PC stores, it should be fine. If the USP is selling PC crossbuy, it sounds like a pretty way of saying "Please migrate to Windows 11." But they have the fix the empty Windows Store for that to work otherwise they're just saying "Please pay the Gabe toll on your way out" Price will be everything.

IDK, I definitely got very strong Deus Ex vibes from the Perfect Dark gameplay. Could be wrong, maybe it's scripted, but it looked pretty open ended to me. Maybe it'll look more linear nearer release, but so far it seems wonderfully open.

@FraserG Whoops, thanks, I somehow misread Tempopo as GP, but still glad Star Trucker is on there! As a fan of space flight games, that looks remarkably zen, kind of brings back memories of Freelancer if we go back to MS games predating Xbox.

@OldGamer999 They may have a target date but it's not a committed date yet. Or it could be related to marketing deals, competitive reasons, etc. Until it's "gone gold", no date is a lock.

@gollumb82 "Let’s hope we will be Awowed."

Ooooofffff....

Nice, Star Trucker and Tempopo were my most interesting games from this show and had no idea they were on GP.

@PapaGlitch The way I see the trajectory of Xbox what I see is them shifting to becoming a Steam competitor instead of being a Sony competitor. So I don't see that happening. Sony now seems to be a partner. Steam is the enemy now.

Only problem with the model is the windows store is missing 90% of games on steam. The windows store is missing 70% of the games on the Xbox store ....

@Fenbops Nah, just because he was able to show up to one interview and give his supplied talking point answers doesn't mean he's in control. His entire disposition and level of engagement is entirely different than prior to all this. I still see him as the former Xbox leader now given a ceremonial title while his role changed to middle manager. Yes the Xbox "creative fellow" now. I do think he's still genuine about the games and the hardware, but swallowing his corporate pride with the organization. Still wonder if he'll be there long. Probably depends if they keep forcing him into awkward positions.

Perfect Dark almost looks like an immersive sim. That was unexpected but awesome. Disappointed the blue dragon rumor was false though.

@jesse_dylan "Why waste time on Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed "

Marketing deal/brand partnership. It associates the games with Xbox even if they're multiplat.ea is a close partner and assassin's creed supposedly sells best on Xbox, so it's a bit of mutual back scratching.

@Nintendo4Sonic If they can lock people into the subscription for their gaming, they end up making a lot more money than game purchases. I think the end game for gp is grow it too critical mass and reduce churn with schemes to keep people locked perpetually paying. It's a gamble, like making a GaaS game, but a pot of gold if it works, like a GaaS game.

@DennisReynolds at this point if we exclude third party paid for and new acquisition studios from ps and Xbox we can comfortably say neither of them make many games anymore.

I gave it an a. This was the only true e3 level presentation the whole weekend and not loaded with mostly 8bit wannabe indie games. Some seriously great games shown. Yeah maybe I'm
It'll all be multiplayt maybe it won't, but the showcase was genuinely excellent. This is the kind of thing we missed from e3. Yes including some future games. Makes up for the time wasted on that awful Sony show and tolerating Geoff.

@gollumb82 Armory Create and/or Steam Big Picture should be console enough though I find i just disable that save use the desktop normally. Idk why, but desktop icons are still more functional than the Switch and PS5 UIs.

Didn't the game pass as the USP argument already fail? And if the other USP is PC Cross buy they A: need aloot of work with publishers supporting it because right now virtually none do and most games aren't Even on the Windows store. B: If you care about the PC version you probably have a PC in which case why would you care about the Xbox version? And C: you then get game pass day 1 on PC......... So.... Why buy the console?

@HonestHick I think I'm lucky, I can strap into vr all day and never have an issue. Maybe that's from just getting used to it though. It could be my only platform and I'd love for every game to be VR. Cool that you get to try it at all though. So many judge or without knowing what it's actually like.

Lol on Sony and the 4% margin success. Yeah. They have a monopoly and make no money. Granted they generate a lot of revenue and Jim just spent it all on lottery tickets and Scotch, but they're in a tougher place than people think in the new market.

PlayStation isn't the market leader because they've done anything right, but only because they've done less wrong than the competition. Then they assumed that means they did everything right and lean into the worst ideas. I still think their real problem is their brand identity wasn't built around their own products is was built around being the only one with a CD drive so certain games only came to them. They've kind of struggled since then to find their place. TLOU hit at the right timing to cash in on the Walking Dead phenomenon and kind of build their direction for a while with the "movie games" but now they're up against a cost wall they need to climb down from. Early PS was competing against the SNES a generation ahead of the SNES. Their roots come from a really different place than where they are now.

Scary how fragile all of gaming really is. Nintendo's only still in the game because they got lucky and it on the whole dockable handheld thing as it happened. But now that's becoming common....will that keep building success for them? IDK. Sony's winning mostly because Xbox is losing. And they have momentum that carries their brand appeal. Will that carry them forever? Xbox...they DGAF they bought Candy Crush.

@HonestHick Sigh tell me about it. The final slap in the face was Astrobot, a mascot designed for PSVR, getting his new game....without VR, after selling us a $550 HMD. Yeah, it's clear they had no intention of supporting it. Some of us were talking on Push on VR threads about this a few days ago, but I think PSVR2 has hurt the whole VR industry. PSVR1 became one of the most popular HMDs despite being a terrible mess, and really helped spread VR growth with strong support and availability where $1k roomscale things like Valve and HTCs kits can't do. Yeah, peak VR in the industry came and went during that time as the industry realigned on GaaS obsession, but I think Sony signaling they couldn't care less put a freeze effect on VR in general. Here was one of the leaders basically declaring it's not worth the time. That's yet another casualty of Jimbo: The collapse of an entire emerging industry. He was the one signaling just before it launched that they wanted to be there when "someone" (else) made it hit big. They didn't want to put the effort in to grow it, they wanted to vote "present" while some other company takes the risk, so they don't miss out if it hit big without them.

That's one reason why I'm looking hard into PC. Between the uncertainties around Xbox, and Sony giving the gold shoulder to their VR setup, if VR matters to me, I have to be on PC. Unless Phil decides to support Quest 3 on Xbox (seriously, Phil, you said you'd wait until it's wireless. It's wireless now. You have an actual XBOX BRANDED Quest model with Meta.....but you can't play VR games on Xbox and just advertise playing pancake GP games on a VR HMD?!?)

VR has a problem in that it's a very very VEEERY tiny market. It's not growing much because cost barrier, lack of "essential" content (to the masses), and lack of install base to make companies publish any. Someone has to take a loss to push the tech into the mainstream, and nobody's willing to. Imagine if consoles never subsidized hardware and people had to pay full price on hardware since the 80s? Gaming would have never gone past adoption by the D&D nerds.

Meanwhile I'm looking at an EXPENSIVE PC + another HMD (Quest) just to mostly play old games from during the VR boom that aren't on PSVR2. Sadly, most of the best VR games are from MS. (Skyrim, Fallout 4, Doom VR, Flight Sim(!)) plus Hitman, Borderlands and a few other "big" games mostly from the heyday of VR last gen. Of course with Skyrim and Fallout, there may not be time for other games anyway Otherwise it's all indies, all the time.

@old-dad Ahh, yeah 2020 parts in 2024...yeah I could see that! Though that seems more like XSX equivalent build, or slightly ahead, though. Which makes sense, that probably cost a fortune back in 2020! I remember 3060's going for insane prices during the crypto gold rush and all the RTX cards being always out of stock lol.

AMD and Intel these days aren't as big a price separation as they used to be. Intel builds can even come out ahead in price/performance at times. But the nice thing with AMD is the long term socket support so one board/ram setup can last through some CPU upgrades vs intel's semi-annual socket replacement.

@HonestHick psvr1 owners used Move controllers as main controllers. We're fiercely daring.

@HonestHick Well lair was goty material next to the goat that is Haze 😂

@old-dad What are you running at 1k that bests X? I assume not an AM5 platform for sure 😂

@GuyinPA75 Nadella, oh yeah. I mean he's getting it from all sides. It's not just "Latituding' xbox into the toilet, but Win 11 has an under 30% adoption rate due to the TPM requirement (and other things) nobody uses Copilot (but the whole company is now about copilot after a few years ago it was all about Azure), the buddy buddy partnership with Altman that pushed the whole AI agenda new came back in his face and they now went buddy buddy with Apple, and now the pending Recall security disaster, after he lost them mobile. He's a disaster.

BUT, he said all the right things when he started. And as he himself admitted that since 2018 Gates has been heavily advising him from the sidelines I'm wondering if the real problem is that just as Phil was usurped by Nadella, I wonder if Nadella was really usurped by Gates and we're back to 90's bad microsoft after all.

@GeorgeKal Yeah, that makes more sense. I do expect the next console will be WAY more expensive than people expect for a console (Phil kind of said so.) But I think it'll be way cheaper than equivalent PC.

What I can't figure out is the catch. They can't hand you discount hardware and then let you go buy from Steam, and I don't think a GP sub will be enough to cover it being viable business....but I can't figure out what the catch will be. I assume locking out Steam as the primary competitor would be part of the catch so you either get Xbox with cheap hardware and everyone but Steam, or buy pricy hardware and get Steam. IDK. I think we both agree, but we're missing the monkeys paw it will require.

@HonestHick LOL the SixAxis. Not just the Dual Shock 3 but the dreaded SixAxis that missed a key feature because they wanted to use consumers as bait for their Immersion lawsuit and then charge customers full price for the real product when the bait paid off and they won their lawsuit.

But hey, that controller brought us Lair. Right? Riiiight?

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Ergonomically I find the Xbox (and Nintendo) controllers to be vastly superior to the PS controller. Dual Sense is the lest uncomfrotable PS controller ever, but it's still just notches down from the Xbox and Nintendo (which just copied Xbox) controllers. The tapers are all wrong and it changes the wrist angle....but I don't find the build quality to be particularly different on either of them. Owning both an Elitev2 and a PS Edge, both the stock controllers feel like empty pieces of cheap plastic with rough edges to me.

@GeorgeKal $1k? 1k will get you somewhere between a series S and X. Maybe. $1400 or so to get a "similar to or slightly better than Series X."

But Phil talked about not subsidizing hardware anymore either (or sort of round about did)...so...IDK. If they sell at cost, no profit....maybe $750-800 for a console?

"But even a failed live service game still makes more money than a modest selling single player".......