[_chu1]

I think a relatively substantial issue with swapping ISA is the software library, which is what's kept Intel in business all these years. Older/retro games is a large part of gaming, and being able to play 15+ year old PC games easily with a single download and no kajoogling is a major 1-up for the Steam Deck, especially when some games have better compatibility under Wine than Windows 11.

The Xbox Series consoles are capable of playing a select portion OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games almost natively, while presumably playing Xbox 360 games via an emulator, but they stopped adding new games to their backwards compatibility program for some god unknown reason despite the fact they were some of the best selling on the platform, but to me it seems like Microsoft wants to shift literally everything to the cloud, starting from Xbox and eventually getting to Windows somewhere down the line, which scares me honestly. Sun said the network is the computer, but I'm sure they meant a network you controlled, not goddamn Microsoft.

[SpecialistK]

I believe the issue with backwards compatibility was licensing, especially for games like JSRF that Phil Spencer explicitly wanted to add.

The 360 games I've played BC on a Bone have downloaded the whole game onto disk, even with the original DVD in the drive so I'm not sure how much they're changing behind the scenes.

Regardless, I share the sentiment that running everything on Microsoft's infrastructure is a troubling trend. I like xCloud for managing JRPG inventory on the bus, or demoing a game before I commit to the full download, but it's no replacement for local gaming and it shouldn't be pushed as such.