What Microsoft has been saying about Xbox lately strongly implies that this is a Windows handheld designed to solve software and user experience problems with using current Windows handhelds. And signs are pointing toward the next Xbox console coming sooner than the next PlayStation and essentially being a PC running a console version of Windows. Some speculation on my part, but I’m not the only one coming to those conclusions.
Microsoft following the same pattern.
- There is a need in the market they are aware of, but don’t care
- Someone else makes a huge splash by doing a great job
- Microsoft gets butthurt that someone else is making profit
- They take way too long coming up with a rival
- Microsoft hires thousands of engineers to work on the product
- The rival is way too late to market, and everyone has already chosen the cool product
- Microsoft quietly lays people off and kills off the product
You forgot
- MS buys all the competition
- MS kills said companies they bought before so everyone has to use their half assed shit product
While true, I don’t see Valve selling out to Microsoft.
Fun fact, Gabe left Microsoft to found Valve. Pretty sure a few other early Valve employees were also from Microsoft.
Never say never.
Who knows what happens when someone else takes the helm at Valve, might not be too long either. Lots of companies see a massive shift in company policies once a new CEO takes over. Hopefully it’ll be someone that upholds the same integrity as Gabe.
I hope so as well, as Valve is one of the few companies left these days not consisting of shareholder imbeciles.
Too expensive and too late mostly.
The surface is one of my go-to examples of Microsoft’s ineptitude. The surface is honestly an amazing tablet. It works very well, great battery life, and you can either use a standard tablet mode or it as a full Windows machine. For businesses too it was a slam-dunk, where since it’s Windows it already interfaces with most IT systems out of the box, no special setup or store integrations or Apple stuff, it’d work with Microsoft AD. Unfortunately it followed the pattern.
- They gave up on tablets before fully vetting the market
- Apple lands the iPad, and it takes off, is groundbreaking
- Microsoft got butthurt that Apple made profit on a thing they gave up on
- They take years coming up with the Surface, in the meantime every 3rd party came out with an Android one that was slow and choppy so the people have all decided iPad was the winner
- Microsoft hired thousands of engineers and pivoted the entire world to touch, forcing Windows 8 down everyone’s throats, making the public hate it
- Surface finally lands, but everyone already hates the interface, and anyone who wants a tablet already has one
- Microsoft quietly lays off everyone. Surface is still around, but on life support.
20 minute battery life incoming, also msft account required
Also it’ll be running windows, so it’ll be rife with vulnerabilities and need constant security fixes.
Maybe they should focus on it quicker. Surely it cannot be that difficult to build a handheld based on how quickly Steam Deck competition hit the market within, what, a year of the Steam Deck release?
(I’m lazy and did not read the article, only the headline.)
That few years is going toward making Windows less of a hindrance on handhelds and likely not so much into the hardware itself.
With any luck they actually want to bring true innovations to either Windows or Xbox. Getting support for gyros, accelerometers, back buttons or touchpads into Xinput would even benefit gaming on Linux since most games seem to default to that as a lowest common denominator.
I would prefer if gyros and accelerometers die off in controllers for gaming. Tilting and shaking the controller is not something I have ever enjoyed, except when the controller is a light gun for a game like Time Crisis or Silent Hill The Arcade.
Then you have never used it for aiming assistance. Still not as good as a mouse but it finally comes close.
The bad rep for movement controls comes from too many poor implementations. As long as it is subtle and meaningful it’s awesome.
I have used it. Played Metroid Prime 3, which is probably the best implementation of motion controls by far in any game.
I still would prefer using a normal controller with no motion controls. I would really prefer a trackball on a controller, but that likely won’t happen.
Aiming in MP3 is done through the IR pointer. I loved that game. It has the best FPS controls on the Wii. But it has absolutely nothing to do with gyro aiming.
With gyro aiming you do the large movements traditionally with the right joystick and only make micro adjustments with very small natural tilting of the controller. I thought I wasn’t using it until I deactivated it. It has nothing to do with picking up the controller and pointing it at the screen. It has nothing to do with making any gestures. An outside observer might not even notice that you’re using it.
The Wii controllers are no where near what gyro controllers have today. It’s not motion control, it’s an assist.
If they released one NOW they’d probably be shooting themselves in the foot. At best they’d get mid-generational performance improvements whereas likely in the next year or two Valve is probably going to drop a true SteamDeck 2 with significant improvements. All speculation at this point, but if you’re a bean counter at Microsoft, speculation is like 90% of your job. Unless they abandon the standard console release cycle and shoot for faster iteration, they’ll want to come out absolutely swinging to compete.
Not really. PS6 parts have already been selected and the chipset entered production in 2022.
Sure, but we’re talking about a handheld. Yes, performance is improving generation over generation, but in the handheld space power usage and heat dissipation are equally important. If you’ve been keeping up with recent innovations, you’ll see that generally we are making more powerful parts, but they’re getting much more power hungry for every little percent of improvement they bring in raw horsepower. So far it doesn’t look like you could even get Xbox series S performance in a handheld yet. At least not at a reasonably portable size, cost, or battery life. You could get a little better than PS4 pro performance in a handheld at present, based on what I’ve seen. Which is not a full generational leap over what’s out there.
So, Microsoft – how’s Windows for ARM coming?
Knee jerk reaction based on OEM feedback for a built in handheld interface for the OEM handhelds like the rog ally. Steam deck clearly caused a disruption in the market that Microsoft simply cannot stop. It’ll probably have alps joysticks that drift, they’ll slap an over powered AMD apu in it with a shit battery that it’ll chew through in an hour like every other handheld PC. Valve hit the sweet spot with the deck, and there’s no real reason to upgrade it, sure you have more powerful apu’s but battery tech hasn’t caught up yet and the only way to counteract it is slap a bigger battery on the device. At that point what’s the point of putting a power hungry apu in a handheld?
