Xbox |OT|

[Zippy6]

G2ThaUNiT said:

Zippy6 said:

I can't say this random discord screenshot posted on neogaf is legit or not. Dude supposedly knew info about Indiana Jones before the direct such as VA, Harrison Ford model etc.

But I'm not really interested in discussing if what they said is true or not I'm more interested in just the hypothetical idea they put forward when they said "in talks with some manufacturers to make their own version of xbox consoles."

I guess this would be kind of similar to what Valve wanted to do way back when they introduced Steam Machines. So different manufactures could all make their own "Xbox". I'm wondering how a strategy like that could turn out and if it would be a viable option for Xbox's next generation. I guess really it would turn out to be more like a set of prebuilt pc's with a windows based OS using a frontend optimised for gamepad.

Not the worst idea in the world. Valve really shot themselves in the foot by announcing Steam Machines at least 2 years too early imo. 

But at the same time, I can't help but wonder what would the point be? Steam Machines purpose was at least to provide affordable PC gaming that could potentially replace your console, but Xbox already has an affordable option and more a powerful one. Maybe to take off the pressures of manufacturing?

They have said they want to be more flexible with their next generation so this would be one way to do that. This approach could reduce the investment they need to make, while at the same time offering a greater number of hardware products at a variety of price points. It would basically be what steam machines should have been. Of course there's a lot of downsides also. Having many products of different specs can be confusing, games would likely be less optimised for the hardware as it'd basically just be like PC but hopefully with a console style OS frontend.

I don't think it will happen but I would be very interested in how it all works out if they did go that route.

However this could also be a backdoor into expanding their PC store presence by merging their storefronts for these new consoles and PC. It would mean every developer that wanted to release a game on Xbox consoles had to release it on the PC app too. So a lot more games would release on Xbox PC store and they could even enforce cross-buy for all titles so people will build a big library of PC games on their store. So this hardware strategy could in a way help in them gaining a better audience on their PC Store.

Last edited by Zippy6 - on 19 January 2024