XSX vs PS5

[RetiredSkunk]

My gut feeling after reading basically none of the rumours is that they are transitioning towards Xbox being a Game Pass subscription service that is platform agnostic and the Xbox brand will be licenced out so that hardware like Steam Deck etc can be Xbox Game Pass certified.

This idea might be obvious or already out there in some form, but I just don't read gaming news enough to know.

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Call me an idiot if I just stated the obvious.

The problem is that GamePass is dead too.

If Microsoft drops their biggest games on PS5 and skips out on lots of (Day 1) GamePass releases like Call of Duty, why would third parties release their games on GamePass?
Sony and Nintendo aren't going to put GamePass on their systems. Microsoft is stuck because they are forced to release Call of Duty mutliplatform and with just ~20 million Xbox Series consoles out there they don't have nearly enough GamePass subscribers to make a good return on ever larger development budgets for other games. This was only going to work if GamePass would grow fast enough but it hasn't. It's more like the Windows Store / Steam situation. They just can't compete if PlayStation is outselling them 4:1 and people still prefer consoles to streaming apps. They need to sell full priced games on as many platforms as possible otherwise the business isn't sustainable. They are basically a bigger Activision now.

They will of course try to keep Xbox hardware alive but a Digital Only Xbox Series X or Samsung/MadCatz Xbox or whatever will look even worse in comparison to PS5 than the current hardware offerings.

I didn't understand why they literally destroyed the physical copies of Starfield, until I realized that if those are sitting for $3 in the bargain bin, they can't sell it for $80 on PlayStation 5.

Bro.

BRO.