Xbox - 2001
Xbox 360 - 2005
Xbox One - 2013
Xbox One S - 2016
Xbox One X - 2017
Xbox Series S|X - 2020
Though, seeing it laid out like this makes it look like the S|X(6) was intentional. But clearly that’s too much credit for whoever is constantly day drunk while naming.
Wasn't the One S just a refresh of the One? I wouldn't count that, tbh. I think it just had a 4K Blu Ray player and a new case. Like, I wouldn't call the Xbox 360 Slim a new Xbox, even though it had a new case.
At launch, it came with Kinect and 10% of system resources were reserved for Kinect processing, even on games that didn't support Kinect. That resulted in lower framerates and resolution than equivalent PS4 games.
Then Microsoft, wisely, removed the Kinect requirement and released a Kinect-free version of the one. With that extra performance boost, the One gained parity with the PS4.
Sony announced the PS4 Pro for 2016, but while it had more power than the stock PS4, it lacked a 4K Blu Ray drive.
Seeing the opportunity, Microsoft added a 4K drive to the Xbox One and launched the Xbox One S one month ahead of the PS4 Pro.
They also pre-emptively announced the Xbox One X which would be the powerhouse machine of the generation with 4K gaming and 4K physical media.
The idea being that hopefully people would choose the One S over the Pro due to the 4K drive, or would at least wait on buying anything until the One X dropped a year later.
Last generation was really weird as to one company having both the weakest and strongest hardware in the same generation.
Xbox One W/ Kinect
PS4 / Xbox One No Kinect
Xbox One S (same hardware + 4K Blu Ray)
PS4 Pro (stronger hardware, no 4K Blu Ray)
Xbox One X (strongest hardware + 4K Blu Ray)
The big problem with the Xbox One was that it was underpowered because of the Kinect requirement, so they ditched Kinect then rebranded as the Xbox One S, throwing in a 4K Blu Ray player.
Still wasn't enough, so the One X had full 4K capabilities.
If they had launched with the One X things would have looked a lot different.
I don't know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it's not exactly unheard of.
I remember when the current generation of consoles came out (Series X/S and PS5) that both MS and Sony and all the various gaming magazines were claiming that they would be the last hardware consoles ever. Uh huh.
Yeah, discs are still a thing for Xbox and PS5, steam decks just download these really big folders for each game’s files to your SD card like our PCs do and the Switch has its tiny cartridges you keep in a little box in your carrying case like previous nintendo handhelds.
Fuck microshit for their predatory pushing of game pass and not being able to own games. I would never buy an xbox and hope others don't fall for it as well.
People also seem to genuinely believe MS won't just massively inflate prices once they've cornered the market lmao
The current gamepass pricing is unsustainable. There's a reason why MS refuses to say how much money they make from it (if any) and they lump it in with other stuff in their financials.
I can easily envision a future where gamepass is £30 a month or something, but because MS has bought a lot of studios and people don't own their games, people have to choose between continually paying that price, or starting all over again with zero games, and not being able to buy a decent amount of the big games, because they're only on gamepass.
Either that or it ends up like TV streaming where we have to have 5 different subscriptions to access all the games we want access to.
Fuck that. We shouldn't let either of those things happen.
Game Pass is awesome. Back when I was a kid, you rented a game for a weekend and it cost you like $8. Now for around that price you rent a hundred games for a month.
Game Pass is just streaming for video games. It works and lets me try out so many games that I would never have spend money on, but ended up liking a lot of them.
Yeah, I get that gamepass is a good way to play games but the thing is when this is if I really like the game and want to purchase it, I can't. They won't ever sell me the game files, they'll only give me the key to rent it out and can revoke that whenever they want.
I can totally relate. Paying 30-100€ per game is something for rich people or something I'd do once or max twice a year on very carefully selected games, hoping these games are worth it. With Game Pass I spend 120€ a year to access a wide range of games.
Once I played through or once version 2 of a game comes out, I'm not likely to play it ever again.
Also I have phases where I play a lot and phases where I do not play at all. I can simply discontinue Game Pass in these cases.
I didn't say people wouldn't be able to buy any games. Please don't strawman.
What I said was that plenty of people won't own games (due to gamepass being sold cheaply initially), then when MS massively jacks up prices, people will have to choose between swallowing that and buying all their games again at whatever the retail price happens to be.
It's a trap designed to extort people in the long run.
The other thing I said was that some games will be exclusive.
Please address things that I've actually said, not things that you've imagined I've said.
Why would they need to release a new console for game streaming? The advantage is that it can run on anything. It would also guarantee that Sony wins that generation before it even begins.