Meanwhile the Steam Deck is selling like gangbusters.
I didn’t see that coming, and it’s a welcome development. If it warps the general PC hardware market enough that devs start optimizing for a standard platform, it’ll result in less buggy products at launch. And maybe orienting development towards a relatively underpowered platform will make it easier for those of us
dumb enough tothat like to spend more on a desktop to hit those 60 FPS targets.I think it’s more important that it gives Valve a method of avoiding being shoehorned into a “Windows only world”. The Steam Deck is largely why Linux has pushed past 2% market share on the Steam Hardware Survey consistently now. Holo, which is the codename for SteamOS on the Deck, makes up over half of Steam on Linux.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not dillusional. Windows is still far and away the majority platform and will be for some time. However, there is a real, functional choice now that didn’t exist a few years ago.
Too bad Valve is not incentivizing native Linux ports.
Chicken and Egg. Linux is barely above 2%. When it breaks 10-20% market share, I expect companies will start making native ports more common.
The fact that proton/dxvk/vulkan/wine let’s things just work with little to no changes is already pretty incredible.
Chicken egg problem is exactly why incentivizing (which is not the same as mandating) would make sense.
The benefit of Steam is backwards compatibility. The moment you force native porting you lose your greatest benefit. Since you anyway have to build backwards compatibility with Windows you gain nothing by incentivizing native Linux and the developers gain nothing from being incentivized to build native because their games will work through Proton.
There’s no reason for Valve to incentivize native builds. It’s the devs that need to have an incentive to develop natively for Linux. And with the market share being what it is there’s no incentive for the devs either.
I see you don’t know about Steam Linux Runtimes which are backwards and forwards compatible. 1.0 (“scout”) is based on Ubuntu 12.04, so already 12 years of binary compatibility.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about OS backwards compatibility, it’s user library backwards compatibility. Imagine if proton didn’t exist and you have 15 years of Steam library that has expanded on a yearly basis. You now buy the Steam Deck to play your library. What games can you play? I guarantee you couldn’t play 99% of your library because less than 1% of all games on Steam have been made natively for Linux. If you can’t play 99% of your library what’s the point of owning the deck? This is why Valve is pouring money into Proton, because Proton is the tool that gives users backwards compatibility for their library. Without proton the Steam Deck would be an utter failure.
It’s also why they don’t need to incentivize native builds, because they already solved that problem on their own with Proton. Why put effort into having developers develop native builds when you could just put that effort into Proton and essentially get the same result (and extra benefits) without hoping the developers do something they didn’t want to do in the first place?
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about OS backwards compatibility, it’s user library backwards compatibility.
I never proposed to ax Proton, so I’m not the one here missing any points.
It’s also why they don’t need to incentivize native builds, because they already solved that problem on their own with Proton. Why put effort into having developers develop native builds when you could just put that effort into Proton and essentially get the same result (and extra benefits) without hoping the developers do something they didn’t want to do in the first place?
I explained several times already that game updates breaking Proton compatibility is a real thing that would not have happened with native games.
Game developers develop for dedicated platforms other than Windows all the time. They’re called game consoles. Native games don’t just mysteriously break on updates or suddenly ban players because the game developer out of the blue decided that Proton is cheating. First launch of games doesn’t annoy with those stupid Microsoft runtime installer scripts, etc. Proper native games could be optimized the way console games are instead of relying on multiple levels of Windows compatibility layers (the newest BS Proton has to deal with is gamepad compatibility for launchers via a special input wrapper) – they are just a smoother experience all around.
Proton is so good that devs have actually gotten better performance by dropping their native Linux build and just running a proton-emulated version in Linux 😀
And then they release an update for their game and it breaks on Proton. Happens every now and then. A proper native build would not have that problem.
It doesn’t really matter though, because Wine is mature enough that it’s not a hacky diy fix, it’s a viable solution. None of the games I play run any worse on Linux than they did on Windows, and some run better. The vast majority of people don’t care whether it’s native or not, they just want it to work.
I am not a marketing expert, but when headlines pile up implicating that Microsoft doesn’t fully stand behind XBox anymore, no wonder the number for new customers tank. I wouldn’t “invest” in something that seems to be on the way out either.
Judging by how Sony is doing even though they clearly “won” with the PS5, it looks like consoles as we know them are not long for this world, and that seems to be the idea Microsoft is pivoting around.
And it is very bad for the consumers, as the console market highly needs the competition. It’s a shame how MS is dropping the ball with Xbox
I still believe their naming conventions has destroyed the brand.
Grandma that wants to buy a toy for their kids can go to the store and buy the next PlayStation. Xbox… which one do they buy? They don’t, they buy the easy option.
This is exactly what happened with my mom trying to buy a Christmas gift for my nephew. She knew he had an Xbox but had no clue which version it was so she didn’t know which version of a game to get. I told her to just buy an Xbox store gift card and call it a day, much easier than trying to figure out which version of the console he had. Didn’t want her to buy him a disc if he had the Series S.
This happened to me! I thought I was buying the newest gen. But then…games I was trying to buy were “not optimized for your console.”
I’m still not sure which one I have. I think I have the ONE S. But the games I’m looking to buy are “optimized for X|S series,” but…don’t work on my console. I’m moving to PlayStation soon.
Also, I have a feeling all that news a few months ago about how they’re gonna stop support for Xbox and may not continue to make games for it or will shut down the console division or whatever cannot have helped sales. I don’t remember the articles exactly. But the impression I was left with was Xbox was on its way out. Why would I buy another if they’re unsure of its future?
What you didn’t like the meme name Xbox Series X? Xbox SeX?
The only thing I will concede is that being able to shorten Xbox One X to XbOX was clever. Naming it the Xbox One in the first place was mind numbingly stupid, though.
I used to have a black XBox sitting beneath the TV gathering dust. I think it is a One by the shape. As for the new ones I have no idea off the top of my head which is the best. I’ve seen some on sale in places, but the impulse buy isn’t there because I have no idea what I would be getting. I don’t own a PlayStation, but if I wanted one I know that 5 is the newest, and you can get the small slim one or the big Pro one.
Wow a 30% drop in revenue is quite something.
It’s pretty late in its life, could be that anyone who would be a potential sale got one at this point? I remember that being, at the time, the reason for the sharp decline in Ocarina of Time sales in Japan, they effectively sold one to everyone who has an N64 so they “maxed out”.
Any new purchasers (I am one) are also probably waiting for the mid-generation update coming later this year.
I’m biased but I really think Nintendo might be the last one standing in the system market in 2/3 gens
I think PlayStation will still be around for the more high end games since Nintendo consoles are usually underpowered. And exclusive games
Goes to show what a few good IPs and an all-star legal team can do for you lol
When Xcloud eventually (promises, promises, Phil) gets purchased games access, there’ll be no need for the console anymore. Hell, PC gamers could (in theory, anyway) play GTA VI by buying the Xbox version and playing it on Xcloud (again, if purchased games comes to it, it’s been promised for years).
I have no interest in my gaming experience being at the mercy of network latency. It’s bad enough for online games, but there’s no getting around that other than physically going to the same location as everyone else you are playing with. Big no for single player games. If cloud gaming does replace locally computed gaming, it will be another case of enshitification.
I have a buddy with a catering gig who works on film sets all over, an RV trailer with kitchen and a tv and Xbox in the back that we’d fire up in between meal times. No wifi when you’re filming a snowboarding video in the mountains …if they force that into every game then him and people like him will just stop buying new games altogether.
Or buy a steam deck
So… stadia?
Someone at Microsoft thinks they can sell the expensive razor blades without selling razors. Probably why they purchased Activision.
It’s a shame because Microsoft made some interesting hardware for a while.
deleted by creator
They’ve made a lot of good peripherals like keyboards, mice, joysticks. Xbox one used to support Kinect and TV tuners which was nice.
The surface line has been interesting, and I’d be tempted to buy one if they didn’t come with Windows 11 (I need to look up if you can install Win 10 on the newer ones).
They came out with some wild stuff during the Sidekick phone days like Microsoft Kin and Zune. But honestly current management doesn’t seem to be interested in anything but boring but profitable software services (like Xbox game pass) that they can charge a subscription for.
Edit: I wish Zelifcam hadn’t deleted his comments. They were good questions/conversation.
As someone who has dealt with a couple dozen Surface devices in a corporate setting, I cannot recommend them. They’re fine when they work. When they have issues though, they are practically impossible to repair. Keyboard port issues, dock connection issues, bricked devices, and even expanding batteries are all issues I’ve run into. When you have an issue, Microsoft will just swap it out for a different one rather than fix the device.
At an old company I joined they had rolled them out to all employees. Six months before me getting onboard they had already given up, but we still had to support the ones out in the field. Fun fact about Surfaces, despite it being MS hardware running an MS operating system, the Windows 10 and 11 base system does not have drivers for the keyboard or mouse. You have to use a special image for the Surface devices. That meant maintaining two custom WIM images for deployment and keeping them in sync. We scrapped the remaining Surfaces and gave people the choice of Macs or ThinkPads instead. You can guess which was more popular among the office folk.
deleted by creator
Why did they delete their comments?
I used the 360 as my main console back in the day because it was getting all the good games and multiplats usually ran better on it. I got a PS3 in late 2009 when the price dropped and it started getting worthwhile exclusives. When Microsoft tried to pull that always online crap with the One, they lost me forever. Since all of their games are on PC day one, there’s even less reason for me to get one.
Well if they dropped the price of it a bit maybe more people would buy them.
and make better games.
I’m really curious when Microsoft will start seeing the fruits of all their purchases. They’ve bought up a lot of game devs. Seems modern games cook for 3-4 years before publishing, so some might be turning up soon.
Never - they are a reverse midas. Everything they touch turns into shit.
Maybe that fact that nearly all first party games mid at best, you still have to pay a monthly fee for multiplayer games, the terrible UI and the fact that 1TB of extra harddrive space costs 200€ have something to do with it?
deleted by creator
I still have never seen whatever the newest version of xbox is called in the stores. I’ve seen PS5’s now and then, but still never even seen an xbox to buy.
I’m a cloud gamer because I do not have much expendable income. I definitely am not interested in consoles. If my situation improves, I will go back to PC.
