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Microsoft To Unify PC and Xbox One Platforms (theguardian.com)
New submitter Serzen writes: According to The Guardian, Microsoft is planning to end fixed console hardware for the Xbox One as a move towards one ecosystem running Unified Windows Applications. The head of the company's Xbox division, Phil Spencer, said that the Universal Windows Platform would be central to the company's gaming strategy. "That is our focus going forward," he told reporters. "Building out a complete gaming ecosystem for Universal Windows Applications." What this could mean is that the Xbox One becomes more like a PC, with Microsoft releasing updated versions at regular intervals with more powerful processors and graphics hardware. In theory, because games will be written as UWAs, older titles will remain compatible with the new machines.
If your PC can run everything that the console can, why bother with the console?
Cost.
Consoles usually represent good value for the processing they provide at time of release.
It obviously doesn't occur to them that lots of former PC gamers turned to consoles specifically to get away from yearly hardware upgrades. This is a very anti-console move by Microsoft, indeed.
It might be good news for Sony, at least in the short term, but I'm afraid it's bad news for most console gamers.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
Looks like the fact that Valve largely controls PC gaming and is doing everything they can to push it away from Microsoft's platform has earned them Microsoft's perceived #1 gaming competitor. Make no mistake, Microsoft knows that gaming is one of the few remaining compelling reasons for consumers to use their platform. Most (but not all) desktop application use cases can be accomplished with a web browser these days. Microsoft knows that if they don't create a reason for game devs to use DirectX 12 then there is a risk that game devs will prefer Vulkan due to the multi-platform targeting (Windows, SteamOS, Android) which will erode the position of Windows as the best PC gaming platform.
Basically this is Microsoft saying that they don't care very much about Sony anymore, they perceive Valve as a greater threat and they are willing to give up the hardware sales that XBox exclusive titles would normally drive to instead incentivize continued purchase of Windows licenses for gaming PCs. It would not surprise me if Microsoft starts licensing the XBox brand the same way Steam Machines are licensed. We could see an "Alienware Xbox" sometime soon.
Consoles usually represent good value for the processing they provide at time of release.
That was the case with the Xbox 360, which had a triple-core PowerPC back when x86 PCs were still on single-core Pentium 4. Not so much with the current generation consoles, that were kind of "meh" from the start.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The flip side is that whatever you save by going to consoles you lose by paying through the nose for the same game. And certain kinds of games simply don't travel well to consoles.