It likely keeps Microsoft in the gaming business, which isn’t a bad thing.
There will be a console to compete against Sony, and Microsoft will leverage cross-platfotm gaming with PC’s as a way to sustain this. That Steam effectively released a Linux-based console probably means Microsoft is going to have to fight more in the PC Gaming space. This is probably why a lot of the ads in consumer grade Windows has been to promote its gaming division.
Microsoft hasn’t been bad to Minecraft, so I don’t think the games will get worse. If anything, I might have expected Microsoft to go for a DLC route with Overwatch to add characters instead of doing what Overwatch 2 did.
I expect more stabs at RTS, with Microsoft going to get more people to game on a computer. They did buy the company that made WarCraft and StarCraft.
Xbox Game Pass advertising is going to get annoying.
If 95% of the games aren’t worth the price, then there is something wrong with that business model.
Yeah, a full priced game might not have had DLC or MTX, but it was more expensive adjusting for inflation and didn’t have nearly the quantity or quality of in game assets as current games do.
And old games definitely chased fads, they were just different fads at the time fed in part by the differences in game economics.
The AAA market seems to be chasing a business model that isn’t there any more. I don’t know why game developers still chase photo realism, it isn’t what makes money.
Or it just means Nintendo isn’t going to rely on video games for growth.
The idea of paying anything for video games is already going away, with free to play games doing well in the youth market. And while the Switch is their best selling console, it is effectively a tablet with Bluetooth controllers and standard hardware. I don’t see Nintendo being able to maintain selling hardware after this next generation.
But Nintendo has a lot of IP that it hasn’t really tapped outside of video games. I expect that to change.