Since the first living creature emerged from the sea and began living on dry land there have been PR firms backed by major corporations trying to sell them something. Anything really, a little of this, a little of that mainly; but none are more feared and therefore successful (figure that one out) than two or three, or hell even nine products all wrapped around one main theme and sprinkled with a hearty dosage of hate.
Of course it helps when said theme is a multi million dollar video game franchise and fan boys everywhere are salivating for anything with a logo slapped on it, but I digress…
Reason #4
You, yes you, will buy anything.
The Responsible Party(s)
Microsoft
Bungie
Mountain Dew
How They’re Getting Rich out of Hating the Shit out of You
Enter, Halo. Does it feel like your beloved Master Chief has been doing a lot less world saving and a hell of a lot more money grubbing lately? Well that’s because he has. 2007 brought us one of the most hateful ad campaigns the world has ever seen. You can still taste that gamer fuel can’t you? You can still remember that armor-clad warrior staring back at you from the bottle seemingly nodding slowly and sternly in approval of your fine choice of soda can’t you?
Hmm… good times I suppose…
Until that teeny tiny little thought appeared in the back of your head similar to “this tastes like shit”. But wait! What are you thinking?! This fine soda with it’s dehydrated urine and orange peels hue surely can’t be bad. After all it’s being marketed by Microsoft, and Bungie! They love you, they want you to be happy, they want to come to your house and sprinkle puffed cheetos all over you as you wade in a tub of their delicious new creation, the bubbles tickling you as you smile heartily at the Recon armor you just knew you would get! You’ve given hours, days even of your life to their wondrous creations and they made this as a genuine way of saying thank you, right? RIGHT!?!
Why does This Mean They Hate Me?
This may be a special scenario but in this case they don’t just hate you. Nope, they hate you, your wife/girlfriend, your kids, your parents, your grand-parents, pretty much everyone you associate with. By getting inside your head and forcing (lawsuit ho!) you to spend your hard earned money on crappy soda, a tacky helmet you can’t wear or third rate novels they are in-fact destroying you and your family.
Hungry? Better check that bank account. What? You spent all of your grocery money on the new Halo figurines they just released. Well, little Timmy is looking sick! You better take him to a doctor. What’s that, you have no money for the co-payment? But you have plenty of gamer fuel? That stuff must be just as good, hell if not better than medicine, give some to the tot, and make it snappy! Oh no, what’s that? You’ve being arrested for child abuse? Sent to a county prison? You are actually getting ass raped? RIGHT NOW?!
I rest my case…
Tune in next week for Reason #3 why the games industry hates and how it’s making them filthy rich.
Oh, and Don’t Panic.
Shaz from Pixel Swish: "The ROG Xbox Ally is another step towards Team Xbox’s 'Play Anywhere' strategy, and perfectly embodies the company’s future and how we’re all going to be playing an 'Xbox' in the future."
The funny thing about Xbox going more PC-like is that I’ve been saying this for over a decade and finally seeing it come to fruition. People use to hate the idea, but now are embracing it, and all I want is to be put on the payroll lol.
On a serious note, I think this is the best route going forward for MS. They don’t have to get out of the hardware game altogether. They can make their home console $300 entry & $600 premium home consoles and from there partner with other hardware makers for anything beyond that. Focus on being a publisher and creating a strong OS / Cloud option for other devices like desktop, handheld PCs, streaming devices, etc…
I honestly think they should also look into NVIDIA as well, with NVIDIA starting to make their own CPUs. Their CPU is already on par with AMDs best laptop CPUs of the previous/current generation which is more than enough, and a RTX 5000 / 6000 laptop GPU hybrid (DLSS 4 / DLSS5) could do wonders for them, and bring some much needed diversity back to console hardware.
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I don't know why you'd expect them to still develop new consoles at this point. Ditching all exclusives and putting the Xbox logo on a ROG Windows device is a pretty clear message.
This isn't a good thing for Xbox. It's a long winded goodbye.
For the same reason they still have a laptop hardware lineup even though they have Windows.
Having some kind of retail presence for visibility and marketing won’t really affect them in any way.
I still expect them to have 1 or 2 SKUs that they won’t sell at a loss but will continue the trend of selling way less than the competition (though its still selling millions), just like they have their Surface laptops even though they could happily coast knowing practically every third party out there (or the end consumer) will pay them for the Windows license
You realise thos indicates that their next xbox will be an xbox branded pc right? And will cost pc prices as a result. So look forwards to a 600 dollar and 1000 dollar version with vast performance differences, with the upper range having similar performance to the ps6 that will be like half its price. The 800 dollar rog ally x makes this abundantly clear.
I saw this years ago. I don't see how it took this long for people actually close to the industry.
I said this years ago, mind you I know nothing about computers, but I always thought Xbox would go more PC-like.
As I said, and always said, I know squat about PCs, so I thought Xbox would become modular. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I thought they would build a basic frame/shell and gamers would be able to configure their Xbox how they wish, similar to PC and buy motherboards, sound cards and graphic cards. I don’t know if that’s practical or even possible though.
This was when they first entered the gaming space.
I think consoles are so cheap and punch above their weight is because everything is so tightly designed around each component. Opening up to multiple permutations with modules would probably make it more expensive to build, develop for, and manage. It's not impossible, but probably gets in that gray area where it's not much different than a garden variety PC.
Well to clear up my thought process on the matter, I figured they would every so often within a gen like a pro model system, give gamers the proprietary parts.
Let’s say the original Xbox they built it modular in mind, so certain parts they would manufacture newer slightly more powerful components. That way you can either stay with the original configuration, or swap out the parts you choose, building your own pro. Then when the next gen comes around a new even more powerful components that would put the system in the Xbox360 range. Then another half step to tweak your system to a pro of that gen.
I guess similar to how I see people here talking about new 4080 cards, I’m just making up an example, and every so often people mention nother with a number larger than the last indicating it’s more powerful.
I understand what you’re saying about how it’s much easier to just have a closed system, and much cheaper. It was just something I thought might happen when Microsoft introduced the first Xbox.
"First-person roguelikes like Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest can be quite fun when done well. Another such game is MythForce, which comes from Beamdog, the developer that brought Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to modern platforms (while mostly ditching the co-op). MythForce features cartoon-like visuals and a fantasy theme, making it quite different from most of its peers. It will soon reach its "final form" via the upcoming Version 1.2 update," says Co-Optimus.
Today, SCS Software officially announced Project Coaches, the next evolution for Euro Truck Simulator 2, adding buses to the game.
I love the sarcastic way you went about writing this piece! "Whats that? you dont have any money for the co-payment?" Cheers man!!!