Xbox Thread (Like/Hate) - Mainly focusing on the lackluster exclusives, weak points, or strong points of Xbox consoles

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This video is like if humanity thought about reinventing the first handheld system from scratch. Bonus point is that the end result is a thing that a hacker would use in a 1990s action sci-fi movie.
 
Muhammad said:
The OG xbox was legitimately a great console and had the best versions of every third party title( and the xbox s controller didn't suck dick to use unlike the dualshock 2).
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First console to have a dedicated hard drive. All of the Splinter cell games looked spectacular. The console was so ahead of its time that it ran Doom 3 and Halflife 2 for fucks sakes. My modded Xbox is my most prized possession. I basically have the entire game line up on my 2 TB hard drive. Just this year I finished Mechassault 1 and 2, Max Payne 2, and The Punisher. That era of gaming was the best. The PS2, of course, had some bangers as well. I still play Ace Combat Zero from time to time and find it superior to anything Scamco has recently released. We were fucking spoiled back then.
 
The Last Stand said:
I'm guessing somebody just suddenly decided to buy a bunch of Xboxes in bulk.
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Not at the freshly raised tariff-sensitive pricing. I think MS/Xbox is trying to wind down the Xbox Series X/S without causing too much of a panic. There will be all sorts of doublespeak.

If next-gen Xbox pivots the brand towards "full" Windows gaming PCs, or at least third-party compatible, as speculated, then they don't have much need for the current generation. Maybe they could jailbreak the Xbox Series X/S themselves to sell off the remaining units, but the value proposition isn't there anymore outside of the used market.

umseriously said:
If normies try to play the PC games and are met with crashes, bugs, or errors because of the APU not being properly supported, they're just gonna give up.
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ROG Xbox Ally shows they are willing to risk slapping the brand name on what is a bog standard x86 APU gaming PC, even in a handheld form factor that can have additional compatibility/control issues. But they modified Windows 11 to make it work better, not load explorer.exe by default, etc.:
The devices will ship with Windows 11; they will be the first Windows devices to support a new mode that boots the system directly into the Xbox app, without loading the full Windows shell by default. The mode provides a console-like experience with less resource and power consumption, with Microsoft estimating savings of up to 2 GB of memory and a two-thirds reduction of idle power consumption. This mode will be a timed exclusive to Asus ROG devices on launch, and will be made available to other Windows-based gaming handhelds in 2026. The Windows user interface also received additional features designed to improve navigation on game controllers, including additional system settings available from Game Bar, controller support on the lock screen, and a new task switcher design.
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It's like a beta test for a plausible strategy: stop creating consoles that try to compete badly in PlayStation's lane, losing money, and focus on keeping gamers using a version of Windows in all situations. If an $800+ Xbox Magnus comes out but doesn't sell well, wafers allocated to it can be shifted towards AMD dGPUs sharing the same chiplet, and they can again focus on improving Windows and making sure Game Pass doesn't crash and burn.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
ROG Xbox Ally shows they are willing to risk slapping the brand name on what is a bog standard x86 APU gaming PC, even in a handheld form factor that can have additional compatibility/control issues. But they modified Windows 11 to make it work better, not load explorer.exe by default, etc.:
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The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
It's like a beta test for a plausible strategy: stop creating consoles that try to compete badly in PlayStation's lane, losing money, and focus on keeping gamers using a version of Windows in all situations. If an $800+ Xbox Magnus comes out but doesn't sell well, wafers allocated to it can be shifted towards AMD dGPUs sharing the same chiplet, and they can again focus on improving Windows and making sure Game Pass doesn't crash and burn.
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this is straight up setting their sights on the steam deck. In a vacuum you can pretend that people who don't have steam accounts will see a microsoft store version as an equivalent but steam has like 20 years of consumer goodwill and extremely cheap games. that's not getting into the fact that steam's entire ecosystem is just better than the xbox one at everything it attempts to do and has been for years. i legitimately don't see them pulling this off, it's going to be yet another Surface debacle where they pretend decent but second rate product is a premium offering. if that's the ploy then i legitimately don't see anybody but retarded black teenagers and drug dealers buying the xbox handheld unless there's some crazy value proposition happening somewhere else.
 
big pauper said:
this is straight up setting their sights on the steam deck. In a vacuum you can pretend that people who don't have steam accounts will see a microsoft store version as an equivalent but steam has like 20 years of consumer goodwill and extremely cheap games. that's not getting into the fact that steam's entire ecosystem is just better than the xbox one at everything it attempts to do and has been for years. i legitimately don't see them pulling this off, it's going to be yet another Surface debacle where they pretend decent but second rate product is a premium offering. if that's the ploy then i legitimately don't see anybody but retarded black teenagers and drug dealers buying the xbox handheld unless there's some crazy value proposition happening somewhere else.
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Part of the hypothetical strategy is that Steam (along with Epic Games, GOG, etc.) will be allowed on the Xbox "console" (now a semi-custom APU gaming PC). It's the minimum that will have to work if the console is running a locked down version of Windows.

Microsoft’s Xbox PC app adds Steam games and access to other stores

They will allow Valve to make money on their Xbox platform to avoid irrelevance. They can justify it by not selling the devices at a loss, trying to make sales here and there through the Xbox interface, sucking up everyone's data, etc.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
ROG Xbox Ally shows they are willing to risk slapping the brand name on what is a bog standard x86 APU gaming PC, even in a handheld form factor that can have additional compatibility/control issues.
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The Verge: Xbox Ally and Ally X review: this is not an Xbox (archive)
What does “Xbox” mean? Some might say it can only refer to a box-shaped Microsoft game machine. Others will argue it’s a collection of Xbox-native titles like Halo, Gears, Forza, and Fable. I think most would probably agree it’s a game console experience, a way to kick back and easily play the latest games without thinking too much. Press the power button, play, press it again to pause.

The 7-inch Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X gaming handhelds, on sale tomorrow, don’t meet that bar. The cheaper one doesn’t even come close.
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Wccftech: ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X Review – This Is an Xbox? (archive)
The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is a powerful, capable, and comfortable PC handheld device, with a smooth user experience thanks to the new Xbox UI. It's really like taking your computer on the go, with all of your PC games in your hands. For its mix of improved hardware, user experience, and battery efficiency, it's arguably the best PC handheld device to buy on the market. It's not an entirely smooth experience though, with plenty of PC gaming hiccups interrupting the 'console-like' experience the device is supposed to provide, the fact that it actually doesn't let you play all your Xbox games, and what I still believe to be an exorbitant price tag, when cheaper devices can provide comparable experiences.
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Ars Technica: ROG Xbox Ally X: The Ars Technica review (archive)
That coat of paint—what Microsoft is calling the Xbox Full-screen Experience (FSE)—represents the company’s belated attempt to streamline the Windows gaming experience to be a bit more console-like in terms of user interface and overall simplicity. While that’s a worthy vision, the execution in these early days is so spotty and riddled with annoyances that it’s hard to recommend over the SteamOS-based competition.
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Expectations of an iterative upgrade to ASUS's x86 gaming handhelds may have been unrealistic.
 

Cliche answer, but I feel that the Xbox One reveal was the beginning of the end, not just for the Xbox brand, but for the gaming industry as a whole. Say what you want about MS starting the trend to charge for online multiplayer, but MS was proactive enough in following the inevitable trend of Internet usability where they could forgo a subscription model onto its consumers in exchange for quality games and a reliable service.

But, the Xbox One was inexcusable in its writing on the wall of how the gaming industry shifted their priorities towards greed and control. Forced gimmicks (Kinect, TV), shallow brand recognition (Halo, NFL), always online DRM for a weaker console compared to its direct competitor. Too little too late to backtrack (Game Pass, backwards compatibility, slimmer console redesign) since they're still shooting themselves in the foot with wanting to be a platform first, game brand second.
 
The Doom Slayer said:
MS sure are having to issue a lot of denials these days.

Where there's smoke there's fire and I feel like if it's not 100% happening right now, there's probably at least discussions about pulling out of hardware.
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The last bunch of times Microsoft issued statements that they were not killing a product/product line, every single one was axed within 6 months.

In no particular order:
Zune
Kin
Windows Phone
Pocket PC
Windows Media Center
 
The Last Stand said:

Cliche answer, but I feel that the Xbox One reveal was the beginning of the end, not just for the Xbox brand, but for the gaming industry as a whole. Say what you want about MS starting the trend to charge for online multiplayer, but MS was proactive enough in following the inevitable trend of Internet usability where they could forgo a subscription model onto its consumers in exchange for quality games and a reliable service.

But, the Xbox One was inexcusable in its writing on the wall of how the gaming industry shifted their priorities towards greed and control. Forced gimmicks (Kinect, TV), shallow brand recognition (Halo, NFL), always online DRM for a weaker console compared to its direct competitor. Too little too late to backtrack (Game Pass, backwards compatibility, slimmer console redesign) since they're still shooting themselves in the foot with wanting to be a platform first, game brand second.
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I think what happened to the Xbox and what happened to the gaming industry as a whole were two separate issues that eventually intertwined.
The whole Xbox One debacle was a desperate attempt at being the next Wii, they were neglecting their core audience to push the Kinect, this meant the price was going to be higher than their main competitor, and it killed a lot of their core lineup as instead of using resources to develop exclusives for their core audience they were making shitty Kinect games.

What has happened with the gaming industry as a whole is the result of game development filling up with people who're just there for pushing personal politics and taking home a paycheck. It went from game developers being passionate and wanting to make games they thought were cool to game studios filling up with thousands of people who aren't there to program, but to be middle managers, HR employees, consultants, and a whole host of bullshit jobs where they spend all day answering a few emails while they're scarfing down food. Then there's the conga line of third worlders they're using to try and make up for the lack of productivity by having a thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters.
Obviously the latter problem is now just as much a problem for in house studios making games for Microsoft.
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