Microsoft has made the monumental act of buying one of the largest companies in the gaming industry. What will they do next?
The three most beautiful sights in this world are: 1) your spouse on your wedding day 2) the birth of your first child 3) a walkthrough for Ecco the Dolphin in some long forgotten scrawl.
"Nintendo Switch 2 is a safe and solid follow-up in many respects but it has its issues, including the Virtual Game Card system and an aging UI."
- Stuart Cullen, TechStomper
Not sure what games you're playing to average 5 to 6 hours battery. Mariokart World and Zelda gets 2 and a half hours max.
Yea don’t think id get 6 hours in sleep mode!
I think there’s a lot of internal software issues with the battery management.
Sleep mode kills the battery almost as quick as playing games does. Playing switch 1 games seems to kill the battery faster than playing switch 2 games for the most part. Even playing a very, very basic switch 1 game seems to drain the battery much faster than I would expect it to.
Windows Central writes: "CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, had previously been vocally opposed to the idea of a native Xbox headset, stating in 2019 that 'nobody's asking for VR' on Xbox. However, Microsoft's marketing strategy for the Xbox Series X|S generation has shifted with the rise of Xbox Cloud Gaming and the 'This is an Xbox' marketing."
Ah, a contributing factor to Meta dropping PSVR2 support for Beat sabre! Microsoft’s always stuck with the modus operandi of “if you want an original idea steal someone else’s” and try to destroy markets they cannot win in. They are doing to to console gaming and now trying VR!
It's like a rich kid who pays the smart kid to do his homework for him.
*Yea, such a shame about Beat Saber dropping Playstation support btw. :\
Why would this deal with Xbox cause meta to end beat Saber support for the psvr2 when the game isn't even available on Xbox?
It is more likely that psvr2 is under performing and they feel it is time to end support. The psvr2 headset only sells whenever there is a sale to make it competitive with the meta headset.
The XBox way. Hardware, even game development companies.... let them do the hard work of building things, throw them some money, then slap an XBox logo on it!
This is probably nothing more than a branding attempt to show Xbox really is on all platforms. The Quest already has the Xbox Cloud app that supposedly works great. Would be cool if Microsoft actually entered the VR space in a larger capacity but if they was doing that, I imagine they'd have showcased it at their summer showcase.
Yeah, it's basically the same idea as the ROG Ally Xbox. Just a regular device that gives you access to the Xbox library and carries the brand, but nothing really special or groundbreaking beyond that. It’s not some custom Xbox hardware, just a repackage of existing tech with a logo and some software perks.
Now, when it comes to VR, Microsoft actually made a pretty serious attempt with something called Windows Mixed Reality. It wasn’t just a headset, they were aiming for an open ecosystem. They had APIs for developers, support baked into Windows, and even tools to convert regular desktop content into VR environments. On paper, it was a solid play. But it never caught on, third part support was half-baked and basically only Samsung headsets were worth anything. After about five years of trying to push it, they gave up and shelved the whole thing.
The bigger issue here is that VR just isn't ready for the mainstream. People love to hype it up, but at the end of the day, it’s a hard sell unless it’s cheap enough to feel like an impulse buy and even when you can do that, you need to support it with software. Making it a extremelly expensive segment for any company, just look at Meta, bleeding literal billions every years trying to get this stuff off the ground, and they are the market leaders.
I don’t understand how people don’t understand that this is a huge consumer benefit. When I buy all these hardware component’s I can take my games with me. How many of us have not ended up buying the same game for handheld, vr and console not to mention pc. Stop the clear console war dogs and recognise this is good for consumers.
What it means is that they will need to recoup more money than they made in 4 generations of being in the industry.
you can know play call of duty for free
It means that my GP sub has even more value and that’s a fact.
Go 3rd party they need to recoup all that money and game pass is not the way when they can't even outsell the switch
Absolutely jack. Despite the widely publicized buyout (they actually put up billboards and highway advertising for this) their sales have nosedived even further. Heck even with the massive discount this past month and retailers discounts throughout the year they are sitting on store shelves.
If anything the acquisition is their preparation for a third party publisher role. Windows Central has an article highlighting that they investigating bring 1st party games to other consoles. So wheres theres smoke theres fire especially if its coming from pro MS outlets