So software and services are up and earning revenue, while hardware is down. Given MS earns more on digital sales than physical, I think we know the message they are likely to take from this.
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Indeed.
Really though, I just thought it was funny that literally two stories one after the other had such difficult outlooks on MS’s fortunes. 
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Had a weird thing happen with my Series X over the last few days. After about and hour or so of playing I suddenly can’t take screencaps. Hitting the share button does nothing, but stranger still the capture option doesn’t appear if you try to di it the old way of hitting the X-box button. Even stranger, if I try to select “setting” from the dash, or anything via the dash side menu (sidebar? I can’t remember it’s proper name) nothing happens. Only seems to kick back into gear after a hard reset.
Anyone ever experienced anything like this before?
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It’s a recordatory that companies would love to canibalize us if they could.
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Xbox is trying to go everywhere
Interesting. Even if they do release a handheld, they’ll have to do a lot more good to keep me sticking with them over Steam Deck.
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How large of a digital Xbox library do you have? I think it might be appealing if it will play people’s back catalogue of Xbox games. But that won’t help for those with extensive physical libraries.
Regardless I agree, it would be hard to convince me to switch away from Steam Deck. It will depend on their approach. Part of me is still kind of wondering if they will release the Xbox OS so that it can be installed on third party hardware so that other manufacturers can license it for hardware like the current Rog Ally that runs Windows. If they want to move toward being a service they might do well to get their OS onto all the hardware they can, much like Windows. And then they can get Game Pass into more people’s hands. I wonder if they want to go down that route.
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I’ve a decent digital library, but at the moment my plan is to have everything downloaded so I’ll be able to still play the games once the console is cut by MS.
I know that’s not a foolproof plan, so I’ll have to wait and see what happens. That said, I’m not above finding…alternatives to keep playing games I own. I’ve done it before. 
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X-Box sales a out half of Playstation’s.
Probably not helping they are now porting their own games.
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I just noticed how bad the X-Box rewards program has become. It takes MONTHS just to eat £5 credit. If it’s going to be this useless why bother even having it?
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I think they have been slowly shifting rewards over to their stupid browser rewards program where you get points for clicking on websites. Aside from feeling kind of invasive, it’s also a lot less fun than playing games. I eventually stopped paying attention to it because I no longer earn enough points for anything worthwhile.
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Microsoft not offering the Starfield: Shattered Space DLC free with Game Pass really feels like a mistake. Not offering their subscribers first party DLC for any of their games feels like they are nickel and diming people. A subscriptions is roughly $250 a year where I am, and having to shell out extra money for DLC feels low.
I thought about giving the game another shot in the hopes that the DLC livens things up a bit, but I’m not going to buy DLC for a game I don’t own. It doesn’t seem like a smart model.
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That does seem incredibly stupid.
$250CA is £140. I wonder if I’ve spent that on games this year? Would be interesting to go back through my purchase history and see. Honestly not sure if I’ve kept receipts though 
Edit: Because I’m a nerd I totalled up how much I’ve spent of games so far in 2024. Turns out it’s £188. So more than a sub to GamePass, but only just as it’s adjusted in the UK to be £180 a year for Ultimate.
It should be noted that the above includes two physical games as well as games from GoG that I’ll get to keep in perpetuity.
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Smooth move Microsoft 
Microsoft pulls $1 Xbox Game Pass trial just before new Call of Duty release
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
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So most of that was paywalled, but of what I could see, this stood out,;
The team is acutely aware of the negative perception of AI features from gamers and creatives,
So rather than take heed of this they are just gonna sneak it in there? Well, fuck them, then.
I already do all I can to minimise the intrusion of AI on my laptop, and it’s overindulgent inclusion in Edge is one of the main reasons I ditched that browser.
I’m really hoping that someone, somewhere is making cool AI-free alternatives to all this crap. Just another reason to ditch X-Box after this generation I guess.
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I get what Microsoft is doing here, but I don’t think it works in their favour the way they think it does:
