I just wanted Skyrim where I could invite a few friends to come along for dungeons. Then they made Elder Scrolls Online as though that was at all the same thing.
Did we establish that? Most of the biggest games are not the hardest on system requirements. And while Microsoft would obviously prefer that they sold more Xboxes and reached more Game Pass subscribers (the 25M-30M is impressive regardless), I'd be surprised if they expected the majority of those to be Series S; but they probably did recognize that that customer base is still worth reaching. We're just not at a point in the history of consoles where they all have the same business model anymore, like they did 20 years ago.
The frequent complaints I heard (which I double checked just now against Open Critic) were monotony, uninteresting story and characters, and enough bugs to be annoying.
One day they might. PC has taken a larger and larger market share as time has gone on. PCs became easier to game on, consoles became less streamlined, and perhaps even the closed-off nature of consoles compared to the open nature of PCs has played a role. But as of 2023, you're still not making a $300 PC that plays games as well as an S. While consoles have become less streamlined, they're still more streamlined than a PC.
Game Pass does include PC gamers, which is why they're probably more interested in opening up that service to more people with a cheap console SKU than to sell Xbox consoles, likely because outselling Sony by doing the same thing Sony is doing is a very steep hill to climb.
I mean, unless their goal is to lose even more money on each console sold, I doubt they were interested in that. But that's not their goal. Their goal is to get people subscribed to Game Pass.
And do you think that would have panned out better if the cheaper console option wasn't available? Not to mention it would only leave them with the console that shared a lot of the same components as the PS5 during supply shortages as well.
Major studios burned down their existing businesses to try and jump into the streaming space
It sure seems like streaming burned down their existing businesses by its mere existence, not that they did it to themselves by abandoning their existing businesses, unless we're talking about a bell that just can't be unrung. People stopped going to the movie theaters in the same numbers they used to of their own accord. After all, if our TVs are almost as good as the movie theater, but we can watch the same thing for a tiny fraction of the price, with the ability to pause it and not have to deal with people talking over it, a lot of reasons to go to the theater just evaporated.
Since these Xbox consoles came out, maybe even since Xbox One X, they've been talking about being "beyond generations". I figured that would result in more periodic updates, probably with two simultaneous lines of Xboxes, X and S, but it hasn't turned out that way. So far, it's just seemed to mean that you don't have to deal with Sony's BS around PS4 and PS5 versions of the same game.
The previous two games, 20 years ago. It's what gave them the reputation of being a studio that made great RPGs. Then they went on to make Neverwinter Nights (another D&D game), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Star Wars with rules very close to D&D), Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age.
I'll use that for things I already have in my library, either from my Windows days or from giveaways, but I'm not going to spend money in their stores when they don't officially support me as a customer. Unofficial launchers like this could be broken by those storefronts at any time, and they were never guaranteed to work for me. GOG fares better than Epic in this regard, since they do sell Linux games, but I want official cloud saves and automatic updates as well.