>>1083419
They haven't fully confirmed it, but that "accidental" leak which showed a Steam tab was no "accident". Companies are constantly teasing features early as a way to gauge public reaction and interest. Phil has been saying this is the route they want Xbox to go for years. It's not all just empty bluster.
Strategically, it makes no sense for Microsoft to be fucking around in the console market just for the sake of games anyhow. You've got a 200million market cap at the absolute most optimal environment - and 50-80 million more realistically in any given generation. Why the fuck would Microsoft even care about such a small market compared to their other ventures?
Fact of the matter is that Microsoft never cared about video games. It's always only ever been a means to an end. For the first Xbox, it was a way to prevent Sony from dominating the livingroom with a PS2 that promised upgradability into a PC. And even then, Xbox never should have been what it was. Bill Gates wanted a Windows Media extender - a kind of super-WebTV. Seamus Blackly and Ed Fries had to go behind his back to make a game console - which pissed off Bill and damned neared got the entire Xbox staff shitcanned until they reminded him that Sony was still a threat.
Sony only marketed the PS2 as being upgradable to a PC as a way to skirt EU import taxes on luxury electronics
Even when the Xbox 360, their most popular console, was at the height of it's popularity - a lot of people at Microsoft wanted to spin off the division as it's own independent company.
They didn't get a seat at the big table until Phil took over Why? Well two big reasons. Firstly, because EU import laws had changed, and Sony no longer had to pretend that Playstation was a PC. Overnight OtherOS on the PS3 became more of a security liability than a tax evasion boon... so they went in and forcibly removed OtherOS from people's systems. This lead to a hilarious class action lawsuit in which Sony had to pay out to anyone who claimed to have even CONSIDERED downloading OtherOS at some point in time, even if they never had it. The other reason is that around that time, Tablets and SmartPhones put a computing device in everybody's hand. The fight over the livingroom became worthless.
Ever since then, Microsoft has just been phoning it in with the Xbox. They tried to pivot it into a multimedia box that also played games, more in line with the Xbox's original vision. This is what got Don Mattrick shitcanned after the disastrous E3 reveal. Phil took over, but mostly he seems to be more concerned with selling controllers than actual game consoles. A lot of the games, especially mid-gen Xbox One titles, were just $60 shells to experiment with commercial proof-of-concepts and refinements. Crackdown 3's Multiplayer is a hot fucking mess exacly because they didn't give a single shit about making a good game - but a kind of laboratory for streaming game content on-demand. MSFS2020 is a further refinement of this, and as it stands now - Xbox doesn't generate much in the way of hype for it's actual games, but as a vehicle for GamePass.
To the crux of the matter as it stands today - Sony is zero real competition for Microsoft in any meaningful sense. Microsoft will only ever lose to the console market what they put into it in any given generation. Which is a fucking rounding error for them at the end of the day. Consoles are going nowhere, existing in their own limited market. However, as a consequence of Microsoft trying to go full SmartPhone/Tablet with Windows 8 and introducing UWP (essentially killing Win32 applications and forcing everything through "Trusted Platforms" - I.E. the Microsoft Store) - Steam has been building a lifeboat in the form of SteamMachines and Proton. This is actually a major threat to Microsoft since it has the low, but real, potential to displace Microsoft from their functional monopoly over the PC market. They won't have the power to shape the future of the industry and technology standards with the ease of which they're used to. So just like Microsoft used Xbox as a lever to protect their OS's from Sony's PS2 - they're going to turn the Xbox into a streamlined entry-level PC in order to try to protect their monopoly in the PC space.
And hey, as a bonus - this will kill Sony too, because if the feature ends up being popular, then Sony can't match it. "Xbox" games running on an Xbox will always out-preform Steam games running on the same Xbox - because the Virtual Machine needed to just run the game will always be lower than the VM overhead needed to provide a full PC experience. People on Xbox will still, on average, tend to buy their games from Microsoft for the ease of use and higher performance. Expanding Cross-Buy will help boost Microsoft Store purchases as well. Even if they only ever buy Steam games on Xbox - you're still in the Microsoft ecosystem where they can scrape telemetry, push Co-Pilot, and integrate GamePass right into the OS.
Sony has none of that. If they try to put Steam and Proton onto their system to match Microsoft, Steam will just eat into their sales. Playstation is Sony's largest corporate division. What are they going to leverage, Sony Music/Sony Pictures? Sony's financial services? They have nowhere to go from here, and meanwhile are drowning under the iron weight of AAA development around their necks.
Sony's best move right now is to just scale WAY THE FUCK BACK on AAA development - enforce exclusivity, and open up their vault of IPs to re-establish the Playstation brand as a place to go for games only Playstation can provide. They're going to have to go the same route as Nintendo if they want to survive from here on out.
Two other points I can't be bothered to fit in above. First, if Microsoft does go the PC in console's skin route - Microsoft's ability to subsidize the reference hardware via Distribution and Royalties will make it one of the cheapest entry-level mid-range PCs available on the market. OEMs will cost more, but provide a "premier" experience with higher specs. Secondarily, and purely conjecture on my part, but Microsoft opening up to OEMs is a good opportunity to work with third parties in order to put hooks into future videogames that allows Microsoft Co-Pilot AI to auto-configure graphics options to not only the capabilities of the hardware, but around potential bottlenecks as well. It will provide the "one click simplicity" that console faggots crave for the PC market. Microsoft can, at least for now since Valve doesn't have an AI solution, use this as a lever to both provide training data for their AI as well as keep people invested into the Windows Ecosystem.