Obviously we shouldn't take things any company representative says as hard fact (they're obviously not going to say something "nah, we done" any earlier than absolutely necessary), but that's not a reason to act like the opposite is true either. The logic to expand to Windows 10 makes sense, you could be talking 400 millions Winows 10 users versus like 40-50 million Xbox One consoles.. however despite both pools being "potential customers", they're not really equivalent in all other ways. Xbox One customers have explicitly demonstrated that they're both looking to buy games, and that they're willing to buy them from MS specifically. They've also demonstrated that they're willing to pay for online subscription services. Steam theoretically has a potential addressable audience far larger than every console combined... but that doesn't equate to the potential (or at least predictable) sales scaling along with it.
Honestly, I can't see many scenarios where the expansion into PC gaming causes the existence of the consoles to make less sense then they did prior. I can see the argument for less games being produced (ala Valve), but not for them no longer valuing a box that sells to people that are adverse to the specifics of PC gaming, which also doesn't present them with their competitor's ecosystems as a direct alternative.
It's not that consoles would make less sense, it's that traditional consoles wouldn't. Their plan is to have their own brand of PC windows box that will run xbox OS, but also have windows 10 functionality with apps.
It's already starting with announcing they want native apps on xbox one. Once their fresh comes out that they were talking about. They will probably make deals like steam did with third party manufacturer's as to have different tiers of a box that wil play xbox one games and play newer ones more optimized and designed with the higher tier specs.
Then once those take off, they may get out of having their own brand of box all together, and just throw in a licensed controller, or make it compatible with any existing xbox controller.
That's how I think it will go down. And the days of traditional console for MS will be gone, and if UWA pissed people off, they may quite with their dedicated MS branded PC box, and go with third party running windows 10 with xbox gui like big picture mode setup for people to use.
UWA could blow up in their face and force them, to allow more third party development on windows 10 platform, which would in fact kill the console. People would just buy a dell, gateway, acer, asus lenovo branded xbox pc box plug it in and start playing games they can get digitally cheaper, or games they bought retail.
This E3 will be telling if we see and hear alot of PC talk with xbox brand.
I'll give him an A for effort at least.
Don't worry guys, there's plenty of crow to go around when MS is still here for years to come. Just like they were 5 years ago. A wish is a far cry from reality. Opinions are great, but come on now, even I feel pretty embarrassed reading some of these posts.
Who is saying they are not going to be around? I'm saying they won't be the traditional XBOX we know, in a few years. That their focus won't be on a dedicated traditional made console. It will be on the xbox platform itself, which would in fact make the dedicated console be irrelevant since there will be more options to play your dedicated xbox games.
If this actually goes through and UWA get's accepted.
