Important thing to remember about the “console wars.”
Other than the Nintendo Wii (iirc), most consoles sell at a loss at the beginning of the generation. They eventually turn a profit on console sales, but console sales aren’t the point.
Game sales are.
When each console was its own very specific architecture and games needed to be designed specifically for them, console sales matter a lot because that’s how you’d sell games.
But now that architectures are similar (if not the same), cross-compilation has become easier than ever. It’s why you see Sony finally releasing first party titles on PC.
Microsoft knows full well that their console sales aren’t great, but that’s okay for them. Their PC sales are. Many of their titles sell on Steam. And they sell some of their titles on PlayStation.
They’ll continue to make some form of console because without it they lose out on millions of Game Pass subscriptions from people who don’t want to make the initial investment in a gaming PC, or deal with the complexity, but their goal of making that next console more and more like a PC fits perfectly in their model.
It’s a shame the Series X has sold so poorly, it’s a great console, but I doubt Microsoft is too worried about “losing” the console wars to Sony. The game has changed.
Important thing to remember about the “console wars.”
Other than the Nintendo Wii (iirc), most consoles sell at a loss at the beginning of the generation. They eventually turn a profit on console sales, but console sales aren’t the point.
Game sales are.
When each console was its own very specific architecture and games needed to be designed specifically for them, console sales matter a lot because that’s how you’d sell games.
But now that architectures are similar (if not the same), cross-compilation has become easier than ever. It’s why you see Sony finally releasing first party titles on PC.
Microsoft knows full well that their console sales aren’t great, but that’s okay for them. Their PC sales are. Many of their titles sell on Steam. And they sell some of their titles on PlayStation.
They’ll continue to make some form of console because without it they lose out on millions of Game Pass subscriptions from people who don’t want to make the initial investment in a gaming PC, or deal with the complexity, but their goal of making that next console more and more like a PC fits perfectly in their model.
It’s a shame the Series X has sold so poorly, it’s a great console, but I doubt Microsoft is too worried about “losing” the console wars to Sony. The game has changed.