| > Microsoft are significantly changing their strategy, something they probably wouldn't have done if they were market leader. You have cause and effect the wrong way around there. Microsoft have been pushing this strategy from the start. There’s a reason they partnered with Sega to put Windows CE on the Dreamcast. And their failed attempt at XNA on the Xbox 360. It was always about owning the software layer rather than them being a dominant hardware manufacturer. If they cared about hardware then you’d see Microsoft PCs. Instead we have decades of IBM-compatible clones, some half hearted attempts at Windows Phones, which they again didn’t manufacture the hardware for, and a few Surface Pros which are basically just templates to inspire HP et al into action. The Xbox was always about software dominance but at the time MS knew they had to get their software onto the consoles first. Whereas Sony was originally a hardware company. They didn’t even own any studios when the first Playststion was released (hence why they released an SDK for the Playststion while Sega still expected 3rd party developers to write assembly like their in house teams were) So the difference in hardware sales isn’t at all surprising when you factor that in. If you look at Xbox Live subscriptions you’ll see just how hard Microsoft are pushing this strategy. And to get where they are with it, it cannot have been just a reactionary approach due to coming 3rd in hardware sales. The fact that Microsoft Windows has been pushing Xbox Live for literally years too is further proof of that. Also when you look at some of the controversial decisions regarding the Xbox One, which MS backtracked on, those unpopular design choices make much more sense when you think of the console as a fat terminal for subscription-based games. I’m honestly a little worried for the future of the Playststion because if things pan out the way they’re going presently, Sony might just end up an OEM for Xbox Live compatible devices. > They should have been working on adding a solid console UI to Windows a generation ago. A lot has been said in the past about Microsoft’s design team and not just for the Xbox One. They’re the only billion dollar company that consistently gets UI more wrong than Amazon. 30 years ago I honestly think they were best in class for designing UIs. But somewhere around XP they lost their way and they’ve been getting worse at it with each coming year. |
There are risks to giving it up too. Make the Xbox open and Steam could potentially gobble up what's left of a la carte game distribution on PC. Xbox Live is inevitably going to die, why pay for online services when every other store offers them for free? All that's left is Game Pass, but the long term viability of subscription models for games is shaky, they're getting more subscribers but they aren't hitting their target numbers and they need to scale for it to be able to turn a profit.
There's the cloud and they're in a great position to compete there, but I remain unconvinced that it's good enough. It's less a primary way to play games and more a value-add, most people, even casuals, seem to treat it as such. And what about them owning the software layer? They don't even have a monopoly on running Windows software anymore, at least in the domain of games. I suspect this might be a problem for them down the track.
The way I buy their games is as Microsoft only as publisher, since I buy them on Steam. I play them on my Linux PC. In a way, they're already Sega post-Dreamcast.