It’s easy to say that the Xbox brand is dead given everything recently, then just print that and collect ad money from clickbait before people go back to their uncut slop feeds. I’m just wondering to what extent this is unsalvageable. For one thing, if we draw Sega into the comparison of previous exits from console manufacturing, I think Microsoft has already done far worse than they ever did, even if there’s similar missteps like having one console tank and then not being able to make up the difference with the next. At least we can look back on systems like the Saturn and Dreamcast and see cool things and potential and reason to keep messing with those systems, not to mention how well Sega’s been doing lately with breakout series and even Sonic mainly being back to decent at minimum. If we’re looking at the Xbone and Sexbox, I don’t see too much setting those apart from everyone else, aside from some limited backward compatibility with anything before them. Even the original Xbox and 360 had more going for them.
If we just look at the games, Sega had a lot more ideas going on under their roof in their console era, and even today I’d rather go for a number of their games. Meanwhile Microsoft’s modern approach is to just buy whoever might be making something interesting and then somehow turn the end product into something much more bland before killing off all the jobs under it. Or in the case of acquiring Activision and whatever they’d gotten beforehand, just spend a fuckload of money for the hell of it because they already figured out cranking out similar games and job cuts. And on top of that, they’re just wanting to turn games into Netflix, especially the part about jacking up the rates constantly. And Sega even beat them to that downloading game service idea back when it was more innovative rather than just trying to achieve value. I didn’t want to pay full price for Game Pass back when it was $15 USD monthly around when I finally let my long discounted prepaid period expire, double that is just somehow outpacing inflation even with my usual hyperbole.
Then there’s the hardware, which will only get more expensive, and not just because of fascist taxes. Essentially the only way the constant price hikes would make sense is if they wanted to turn Xbox into some kind of forced-scarcity and overpriced luxury brand, and I don’t think they even know how to do that beyond just making most retailers not want to carry it. Nintendo’s already compared to as the Apple of gaming, maybe they’re aiming for Prada or whatever other designer brands I’m not entirely aware of. Otherwise they’re apparently just purposely trying to kill off something they’re also wanting to keep around for whatever conflicting reason, and then come out with handheld PCs even more expensive than the console and also other handheld PCs of likely near-equivalent performance.
The brand might be effectively dead at this point, but I’m not saying to just trade in and get a PS5 or a Steam Deck either, even though I have both of those and I think the Steam Deck is a neat computer, and I also still have no desire to get a Sexbox as long as my Xbone works, and even in the case of that no longer working I might just rather go for a slight upgrade instead, depending on cost and as long as it has a working disc slot. I’m also the type to get any recent consoles secondhand and have been for the last couple generations. As long as the system works and runs all the games, it still has use, just like the Wii U. I’m just wondering if we’ll end up needing a proper hack for the system in case they decide to break some kind of remote authentication thing later on. It took this long to mostly figure out a softmod for the 360, no idea what that on any system past the 360 would need unless the developer mode’s a good start there. At the very least, figuring out an adblocker might be a start for this or any future Western-developed consoles which seem to think they need to throw ads in the menus and such, like with the Gizmondo.