@rlow1
> Xbox brand is now unhinged from the console
And that’s not a good thing, IMO. How much money they wasted now on Xbox brand, marketing it and making consoles? That a lot of waste now.
> Why buy a console in the first place?
You know, that’s a good question. To me, console games (i mean exclusives here) are the reason to buy the console; to me, they used to be associated with:
– Games that take full advantage of the hardware (only one console, much easier to do some cool stuff, like MGS 1 and save reading);
– High quality, no (or almost no) bugs, everything is buttery smooth;
– Everything can be played offline and online is just a cherry on top;
– Every game comes out complete (meaning, no early access type of deal, when devs can abandon the game later on).
Consoles gave us a ton of great games and very popular franchises. Probably most the best games i’ve ever played (MGS, Drakengard 3, Demon’s Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, 3D Dot Game Heroes, both GoW – Gears of War and God of War, etc) are console exclusives. That’s the main reason i’m buying a console. Don’t have to install anything, just hook up, pop a disc and play. Many are used to this simplicity as well.
Thinking about this now, most of what i used to like/expect are going away slowly, which is kind of sad. I don’t like the direction we’re heading, that’s all probably.
As for the consoles themselves, you have to keep in mind that:
Consoles are pushing technology forward, like Bluray and making stuff like SSD and liquid cooling more popular, increasing adoption rate
They spend a lot of time and money on R&D, build factories to manufacture them and employ a ton of people to work on them; that might go to waste
Nowadays, consoles are tied to their online services, without consoles those will also go to waste to be forced upon people, making you «install Steam to install Xbox/PS/other launcher, connect online, to launch the game», aka, making experience worse.
If they’re going away, that might send a bad ripple across the whole industry. I might be melodramatic, i do understand that.