I mean, more like you all were pushed towards PC, so I wouldn't say that "this is Xbox following the flow of their userbase", I would say this is Microsoft directing their user base to where they want them to be.

Was looking at Kepler's leaks on Xbox's hardware plans, he is an AMD leaker that is pretty reliable. He believes that the reason why Xbox is going ahead with their next-gen console and OEM partner PC-consoles is because Xbox already signed a chipset contract with a minimum order requirement with AMD, that at this point it is cheaper for them to go ahead and release their next-gen hardware than it would be to pay AMD to back out of the contract or to buy the chipsets from AMD and give them to their OEM partners who will be making their own Xbox branded PC's. He said that the Xbox handheld was cancelled early in the R&D phase because AMD wanted a 10m order commitment in the contract, which Xbox was obviously unwilling to go for since no open platform handheld so far has managed to sell 10m units (SteamDeck is the highest with around 5m sales so far in 3 and a half years on the market), which is why Xbox is only going with OEM partners like Asus for Xbox branded handhelds now. But unlike the handheld chipset contract, the console chipset contract was already signed. He said that the next gen Xbox console chipset (codenamed Magnus) is most of the way through development at AMD right now, and is scheduled for tape-out (the final phase of development before mass production) later in Q4 this year.

As for the Magnus SOC that Kepler claims is powering the next-gen Xbox, it's design leaked back in June from 2 different AMD leakers, Kepler himself and MILD (Moore's Law is Dead). The Magnus SOC combines a Zen 6 CPU with an RDNA 5 GPU (Series X is Zen 2 and RDNA 2 by comparison, while PS5 Pro is Zen 2 and RDNA 3). It has three big Zen 6 CPU cores and six smaller but denser Zen 6c CPU cores. The graphics die seems to have 70 CU's, a sizeable increase over the 52 CU Xbox Series X. Leaks differ on memory speed, with leaks ranging from GDDR7 on a 184 bit bus all the way up to GDDR7 on a 384 bit bus, which results in a huge range from 644 GB/s of throughput all the way up to 1500 GB/s.

Would make sense as to why Xbox is looking for emulation engineers to emulate Xbox console games on Windows and why merge Xbox with Windows. With such low console marketshare, it would be risky for silicon manufacturers like AMD to stick to the platform without guarantees. Seemingly Xbox's solution.....third party OEM hardware and taking advantage of how widely used Windows is.

This does not make sense though, if MS could push their usebase onto something they would of course keep them on a propriatery device and close ecosystem that generate more marging, and this is what they did historically, but it simply no longer feasible. Part of it is because Xbox failed to remain relevant enough to make this approach doable but also the reality of the market which require always more 'relevancy' to make it doable, which Xbox don't have, while the market itself have not grown much the last 2 gen.

In short Xbox need more user and Xbox consoles do not have a sufficiently large userbase. So this is MS following where the sufficiently large userbase is. Which is a continuation of the strategy they implemented ever since the Xbox one debacle.

The xbox Ally is almost here so who pre ordered and which version?

Oh, really? So you´re telling me that even if Halo, Forza, Gears, etc, had remained exclusive to consoles, you would have moved to PC anyways, right?

I game on pc since 1998 when I had my first pentium 2 computer, so I did not 'move' to PC. Also MS supporting PC with their titles is not the same as MS pushing anyone to PC. All those titles are also available on samsung tv through cloud gaming, would you say MS is pushing you to play on Samsung tv?

Not Samsung but cloud yes.  MS basically want you to play their games and remove any barrier to that goal.  While I agree that because of MS mistakes, the traditional console is out of reach for them in the short term because it requires Sony and Nintendo making some huge mistakes and MS hitting just about everything perfect to actually make a dent now.  The Xbox one was really a huge mistake by MS especially since they were going into that gen with some level of momentum.  It took way to long and to many missteps getting to now where you can say MS is getting into some type of software grove and even still isn't hitting the same as Sony and Nintendo.  When all else fails, the rule is to fall back on what you do best and where the better part of their talent is at which is the PC space.  Either way, going that route doesn't bleed money as it can with a console if you are not hitting your numbers.

My point was only about : making something available is not the same as forcing anyone to use it.

As for the console market itself. Ms mistake accelerated their transition but this is not the only problem. The market condition itself have shifted to make traditionnal consoles extremly hard to make and generate profit out of.

Even as Sony was trashing MS console sales wise they were actualy the worst when it came to ROI. And so they also drasticly increase their pc support just as MS did 10 years ago. Sony as more leeway to react and keep full prioprietaries devices with close ecosystem a little longer but still expect big increase in price for next gen device and game and they will still increase their PC support.

in Eu atleast: