Nautilus said:
Moon Studios just confirmed that it is 1080p 60 fps in docked mode and 720p 60 fps in undocked mode. Man, I dont mean to be controversial by sying this, but MS is really walking the path to become a third party developer. |
As someone who uses Xbox as the main platform, I totally dislike Microsoft's current direction. But IMO porting the 4-5 years old game to Switch is not really a big deal to be honest. Microsoft gained everything they could from this games in terms of pushing Xbox consoles, so getting some more money by selling it on Switch would only benefit them at this point. It also can give some more brand awareness among Switch users prior to next-gen launch that can be used in Microsoft's favor.
Actually, bringing Halo MCC and Gears 5 to Steam is way way worse thing for Xbox than porting Ori to Switch considering it's the biggest flagship franchises which will now exist completely outside of Xbox ecosystem for the most part I guess. As it is quite possible that Steam sales would be over 50% of total sales.
I believe that the reason why they do that is that they are really going all-in with xCloud. Doesn't matter what they say in interviews about how they see it just being an option and other stuff. They really are banking on streaming being the future of gaming and replacing consoles at some point. Most likely that they see next-gen as the last before streaming taking over.
In terms of Xbox hardware, I've seen an argument for quite some time that Microsoft wants to make a transition of Xbox hardware to something similar to their Surface products line - just being an option to get Microsoft services and games on this box but not making it a mandatory device to access these services and games. And that it would work well for Microsoft. But there is one big issue with this and why this won't work. Surface is just another Windows laptop like HP, Acer, ASUS etc. are making. Microsoft can afford to sell Surface and Surface doesn't have any problem as long as it uses Windows - OS with 800m+ users. No matter how bad Surface sales are, these laptops won't have issues with software support, because they have this huge userbase in order to guarantee developer support. This strategy won't work with Xbox as it is on its own. Xbox sales which Microsoft states that don't matter for them is the only thing that will determine developer's support in the future. If Scarlett sells poorly, it would be a big issue when it comes to gettting games on the platform.
