Yesterday I wrote a blog entry trying to assuage my worries about the changes of gaming about video game subscription services. Today I found out that X Box is rumored to be making another console. It will be a streaming gaming console. It’s shockingly bold, and maybe even rather stupid for Microsoft to try to release a dedicated streaming console when Stadia was put to rest last week. Google doesn’t have as much money as Microsoft, but they are close. Maybe has Microsoft has that little bit of extra money to push streaming forward into the mainstream, and make it a mainstay in the gaming market.
As of right now, I can only picture the most ardent Microsoft fanboys buying this streaming console day one. The price point has to be substantially less to warrant, let’s face it, an inferior gaming experience than the X Box Series X, and even probably the X Box Series S. I don’t see how they’re going to be able to market this to the mainstream. An average person today who isn’t younger than 25 doesn’t know what streaming is when it comes to gaming. If I go to work talking about video game streams to my millennial to boomer coworkers and they have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m going into my late 30s, and I’m somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to video games because of my passion for the hobby. Maybe I’m not the demographic Microsoft is looking to attract to streaming.
But maybe even an average gen alpha to gen z gamer doesn’t know what streaming is when it comes to gaming. Stadia tried bring streaming to the public and failed before it really even scratched the surface of the zeitgeist. I hardly even read about Stadia in the news which I keep on top of everyday. If I’m not reading a gaming site or watching one of gaming YouTube influencers, I could go on forever not hearing about video game streaming. I think I may have once come across an article in the Wall Street Journal when Stadia was introduced to the public.
It’s going to be very interesting seeing how Microsoft markets this new X Box gaming console. It’s also going to be funny hearing about the stories of Santa gifting children X Box Keystones instead of a Series X or even S when the kids won’t be able to articulate what they want after so many SKUs will cause so much confusion.
Sony fanboys are going to be flooding my Twitter feed of memes ridiculing another X Box console, and to be honest, I have been siding on them with their argument that Microsoft is taking forever to release exclusive games. Halo Infinite was a puff of smoke, and the hoopla died out very quickly when the millennials that bought the game had to get back to work and their families after playing it for a month.