Microsoft is quietly sunsetting everything they cant make money on with AI.

The console wars have ended. The PC is victorious.

This is for the best. As someone who is forced to work with a lot of Microsoft infrastructure let me tell you things have never been this broken before. They keep doubling down on AI and it simply doesn't work.

It's insane how Microsoft is handling Xbox:

• They have their own console and Windows
• They bought everything they could and now own most of the biggest gaming franchises outside of Nintendo: Activision-Blizzard. Minecraft. Halo. Call of Duty. Warcraft. Starcraft. Diablo. Candy Crush. Elder Scrolls. Fallout. id software. Bethesda.

They have everything in place and are still getting slapped around by Valve and Sony and are now talking about shutting down everything?

I love how corporations work.

"Hey, we completely fucked this up. We mishandled it, made decisions our customers hate, and now we're scrapping it because we might lose money.

"Could we fix it? Sure. But that would mean changing the business model that made us money 20 years ago, and that’s terrifying. There’s a risk we might lose money."

"And sure, the board won’t lose a dime personally. But the stockholders, basically meerkats who scatter at the first loud noise might panic. And we can’t have that. We might lose money."

I think they are sunsetting whole company.

I love how nobody here is getting me actual picture. They're not going to sell Xbox to people anymore. What's going to happen is they're going to turn to a subscriber model where you have to log into a data center that they control and use your browser to play video games. Paying a monthly subscription for the privilege of playing their exclusive games. In fact I will bet money that the first product that will be introduced with this feature is going to be the highly anticipated upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.

Mark my words. Either at the time of release or shortly thereafter they're going to introduce the ability to subscribe to play GTA 6 in your browser on a remote gaming system. And then they're going to phase out physical Xbox systems over the next couple of years.

My feeling on Xbox since Xbox One days has been pretty much "this is an awesome platform, you're sitting on a gold mine Microsoft, what the fuck are you doing?"

The last bit of brilliance they did utilise properly was GamePass, and of course they cocked that up by getting greedy.

Last few years have been extremely rough. The only lucky thing about this is that instead of full Xbox exclusivity Microsoft was pushing Xbox/Windows cross functionality. ...Yeah, I've been pivoting to PC, but Steam/GOG instead.

xbone was the beginning of the end. when the enshittification kicked in before we had a word for it.

When you set an impossible goal (30% yoy profit margin for the gaming division), you know that you are killing off that division, just, slowly.

Satya just really wants an AI girlfriend that is also in everyone's homes simultaneously, that he can use to spy on everyone for the NSA.

Not that it directly matters, but I did literally work for MSFT during the 360 3RR / Windows 8 era.

I kinda know at least a little about the uh, corporate culture.

They’re sunsetting the platform alright, but nothing about it is quiet

I hate that Xbox is a joke now and that it's going to die out. I hate that there is going to be less competition in the console space. I hate that Microsoft have no idea what the fuck they're doing.

When xbox first hit the scene it was a breath of fresh air. Now its just a stale fart, its time for it to die.

I guess they're going to go all-in on AI despite only 3.3% of MS365 subscribers paying for Copilot. Stonks?

Ain't that quiet.

That was a really interesting interview. I liked that he did have some advice for the new Xbox boss at the end, basically "go talk to other people who have held similar positions in other games companies, like Reggie Fils-Aime. Tho he does seem pretty convinced that the new boss' job will really be to kill off Xbox in order to make more room for AI

This isn't new. I heard them say years ago "yeah Sony won the console war but that doesn't matter" implying cloud gaming

That's a 360

It's been for a few years now.

Look some people may say Xbox has confusing naming scheme, but it's very simple, number just goes up:

First one is Xbox one. Noone in Microsoft is dumb enough to call "one" console that isn't first of the series. Then Xbox X (because X is Roman 10) then the Xbox 360.

Very easy

It's not good for the consumer to have less competition on the market. But is there any legit reason to own an Xbox?