I think it's the smartest thing MS has done for MS. if it pans out, it won't mean anything for the XB1 in the long run as the l become nothing more than a store and network service. Pretty much steam.

I am not a fan of where it's going, but I believe it's something Windows in general needs.

What I find interesting, is that it's almost as if MS just woke up one day and realized; "what's wrong with us? we have 100s of millions of people out there every year running our windows OS. We have tons of companies feeding off the OS we have made. Yet we are investing billions fighting a losing battle to the Playstation???? Fuck us we must be stupid. Let's get everyone that uses Windows buying games from our store instead. Fuck consoles. let's just focus on selling the games."

I swear this is exactly what MS is thinking.

^What he said.

It has likely been Microsofts plan all the way, even though the shape of it has changed during the years thanks to the growth of smartphones and tablets. I would even claim that the 360 is the big failure within MS, since it differentiated itself way to much from the PC space compared to Original Xbox and X1.

It´s almost as if they have tried the Waters for these last 15 years in order to figure out how to best take over the computer and living room space in gaming... :)

Anyways, great plans and a bit of light in the tunnel despite their horrible descision to scrap several development teams.

I kind of agree but I am pretty sure they will not leave the home console business. What home consoles and hardware does, is to build brand awareness. And even though Windows and XBox are small business segments compared to servers and industry solutions, they are very important to establishing the Microsoft brand, especially home consoles.

Pretty much. It's basically a white flag. My issue with it though is, like everything they make or do these days, will it work when there's something that everyone already loves and adores that's better? Windows phone couldn't beat iPhone on a good day. Surface could't beat iPad sales. Their Zune got wasted by iPod. Xbox never won a generation. The only thing Microsoft has a grip on is Windows. 

I honestly see whatever they're up to as going the way of that. They can't beat Steam. It's not going to happen. 

I might be wrong about this, but I read it mentioned somewhere that converting a game to function as a Universal Windows Program can be a bit of a process in and of itself; it's not just a matter of taking whatever files you'd have given to GoG or Steam and adding some Microsoft storefront files here or there, in other words, it functions as a separate format when compared to conventional programs, so the UWP version of Rise of the Tomb Raider would be structured quite differently to the Steam version.

So even if implementing UWP allows for super easy PC-to-console-and-vice-versa porting, it sounds like that might only be the case because the bulk of the porting work is getting it in the UWP format in the first place, if you originally put together your game using the far more widely used Win32 format. o.o Which means its success in bringing in extra content to the Xbox crowd from PC is going to hinge on developers wanting to go to that hassle in the first place, or alternatively developers deciding to ditch any storefronts that DON'T sell UWP programs. Which itself is probably going to hinge on how much marketshare- and income for developers- the platforms they do sell on can get them. Which ITSELF will hinge on how sodding quickly Windows fixes the issues the Microsoft Store and the UWP format itself has! >.

My hope is that MS will release a low-price, XBox streaming-only device in a couple of years so that developers can focus on PC development and then streaming its content to the XBox. Otherwise there will most likely always be a hurdle for developers to develop games for both platforms, escpeially if one of them starts to lag in performance to the other.

Pretty much. 

It's like a chess player playing checkers instead ... it's just stupid. They're trying to chase a market of maybe 100 million console users, when they have hundreds of millions of people using some OS called Windows that already runs pretty much every third party game. 

Streaming? Smashing idea.