I don't mean to sound harsh here, but I genuinely couldn't. Lets just see how the future pans out for PSNOW I'm sure they'll gauge the future of their cloud based offerings from that.

Fair enough, and you werent harsh :)

We will see what happens, either it doesnt really matter as long as i can play my games . 

damn right! I don't care if the pixels are flown into  my TV by airlifting sparrows, if it works fine I'll buy it, the only deal breaker for me ever is the possible loss of physical buttons/controls to a touch UI completely, my phone probably has more power now than the Vita, but I'll die happy playing a generation with "proper" controls.

I think you have it about right.  Microsoft wants developers to keep using DirectX.  So a game they make for PC, will have a fairly powerful console option, and a lower priced console option.  With three to pick from to keep consumer happy.

Plus with the buy once, play anywhere, it gives you an insentive to stay within the same platform (DirectX/Windows) as a consumer.

To counter, I wonder if a console maker will try to work with Steam.

I think thats the real battle MS is about to fight. I believe if this iterative thing is to take hood than as it stands MS would be playong second fiddle to sony for a while. But whats interesting is that they dont need consoles at all if they can cormer the PC market. But to do that they have to get rid of steam tho.... or at least eat into its market

good luck to them getting rid of steam hahaha

steam, gog, origin...

on a side note I think it's good for consumers to get their games on the PC, it does make the Xbox itself pretty much useless if you have a decent PC, and that's ok. it's pretty stupid the idea that a person needs to buy 3 different consoles plus a pc if they want to play any game.

True, I believe like always MS is just droping the ball when it comes to leveraging their assets. Just look at how long it took them to start the aurface line if devices or even how late they got into the mobile OS space.

With scorpio, MS should just make a $500-$600 4k box that runs a full new version of windows 10. Think they are already leaning towards that. Basically, MS should just make a PC console. 

Sony on the other hand should develop their OS APIs and allow for all manner of apps to be built for thir system kepping a lock only on Game applications. It makes zero sense that $100 phones running android is more capabale than a PS4 on the application front. you cant just download a media player from the PSN or even say something like a file manager or torrent client. 

yeah I think I would agree on both fronts.

It would be like the 'steam machine' type of concept, but this time running windows, which could be actually good for people who are still afraid of PC gaming for whatever reason. I think they could diverge in this path somewhat and make some money that way. I definitely think it makes more sense for MS to push this way since their diamond is the OS. I can't understand why this unification didn't happen earlier.

There is a certain openness to the windows that would prevent MS to claim royalties on the games that weren't published by them, basically if a non nerfed version of Windows was running, Steam would be pretty much a factor and they would be back at the same spot they are on PC gaming right now.

It's a complex equation for sure, a lot of cost/benefit analysis has to be made.

On the Sony side, they would probably secure the 'console' market, but having applications just running there is not as easy as on android phones. There's a reason why even Sony phones run android and not their own OS. Would there be some benefit to having some type of Android OS running inside the machine for non gaming apps? Probably yes, but that would be a big change from how things are being done right now. I'm all for Sony opening up to 3rd party applications, but they seem to be pushing their business model to service base over hardware base. PS Vue, PS Now, PS Plus, PS VR, etc. They might end up being the ones realizing MS's vision of a box to own the living room, which would be absolutely amusing to see :)

They have me as long as they can assure their hardware remains top of the line. For that reason I hope they take a look at MS's hand and bring the hammer to boost the Neo specs.

I think everyone (both Xbox and PS fans) will have reasons to feel happy in the end.

Isn't most all gaming doing on a  PC?  Yes, much of the money is likely made on consoles - and they are harder to cheat and copy illegally, but aren't most games made either PC or now mobil?  

The number of games coming out on a console I would think would be quite small by comparision.

Anyone have these numbers?

Not to reopen a discussion that nicely ended, but just my 2 cents.

First, millions of servers sounds like science fiction, but already Google is said to have 2-3 millions servers (WW), and Microsoft announced 1 million. And cloud are massively scaling up. So such a massive scale is not doable right now just for games, but I believe it will become possible in the next few years.

Second, more than scale, it's all about how much it costs per user, and how much you can charge for it, even indirectly (that how you get this million server massive infrastructure from google for "free"). Let's make a very simplified calculation, out of thin air, just to explain how it works. You have 5 hours of peak usage everyday, 30 days a month, that's 150 hours. With time zones, if only half the players get the same peak time at any time in the same region (USA, Europe), you have twice the peak time, 300 hours.  Let's say a player plays 30 hours a month only at peak time, he only uses 10% of this peak time, which costs 10% of the cost of a server. But he's not using 100% of the cpu/gpu at any time, and not everygames are gpu intensive, so it will be even lower. Let's make a super cheap ps4 like server, let's say 200$ a month for maintenance and hardware, and the cost per user is 20$ a month, which is manageable (I'm not telling it's realistic, but why not at some point in the future if prices go down, or if sales goes up).