I recently had an IM with my nephew, an Xbox One S owner, and FIFA player about the next generation of consoles. He told me he was set on moving to a Sony PS5 console. I didn’t get too deeply with his choice but I found it interesting that I had assumed my own move would be from my Xbox One X to a Series X at some point. Mostly I play Call of Duty. I just like shooting stuff although it is really fun and I am not good at it.
I thought about this a lot. Too much. However, the last time I really bought into a console was the Xbox 360. Just for a bit of gaming after work. I ended up with two. One went under the TV to show movies, TV and play DVDs. The other was a “full time” gaming machine. I bought the Xbox One day one console as a natural upgrade. I spent more than I wanted because you had to have a Kinect sensor that I never used for anything except logging in.
That first Xbox 360 was all about the ecosystem. I had a music pass, a PC, rented movies from Microsoft, I had email from Microsoft, then Skydrive (Onedrive), and then a WindowsPhone. It made sense. It drove me to just get an Xbox One when it came out.
In 2020 I now have an iphone, my movies and TV are rented from Amazon or Google and play via a low cost dongle. My music is from Spotify. I still have an Office 365 personal account but Microsoft is just another supplier. As Microsoft moves towards an Xbox Cloud future my console and just having fun with a small number of games is looking out of time.
I haven’t decided not to buy a Series X. I haven’t decided to buy a PS5. I have started thinking about my needs as a games player. I recognise the Microsoft value proposition of a subscription games service in the cloud is a potential future. What I also realise is the ecosystem that drew me to Xbox no longer exists. As a consumer I have a choice on which console I will buy for my gaming needs. Xbox is the last Microsoft consumer brand. There is no consumer ecosystem that ties it all together anymore. This year will be interesting to meet my needs. Other than my Office 365 subscription and my PC I may be out of what’s left of Microsoft’s consumer offering by 2021.