Gamedev

The "PC gaming" really hinges on whether or not it can play games from Steam, Epic, and GOG. Logic and reason point to no, but they'll say it because they also sell PC games via the Xbox app, so they can say it and not exactly be lying.

Seems like we have three doors here, assuming it can, in fact, play PC games. One, it can play Xbox for Windows games, Steam games, Epic games, GOG games, whatever PC games you want. That's the ideal. Two, it can play Xbox for Windows games, and that's it. This is more logical. This way, they don't have to certify anything they don't want to. Like, it can't be made to run, say, Deus Ex (the first one, which was never on any console — the PS2 port doesn't count because it changed too much). Or three... it can only play Xbox for Windows games, and Xbox games (made only for the consoles) can only be played via GamePass. Which isn't going back down.

Building off of #3, it's entirely possible they make a $100-$150 thin client that can only play GamePass games, and it can only play them remotely. So you're buying the hardware and a controller, and all the hardware can do is stream. It's not powerful enough to run any games, and it can't run anything natively, because it's run off some slow ass SD card you can't remove, EMMC, or some other shit that is just good enough to run the OS, and all the gaming is done in the cloud. And Microslop can say that they released a $150 (or less) console, and you'll just pay $30 a month for GamePass, at least until they raise the price. "You'll never own anything and you will like it."