It’s funny watching console gamers mourn the “death” of Xbox.
I was a diehard fan of the original Xbox and 360. But to me, Xbox actually died back in December 2012—the day Valve launched Big Picture mode. That’s when every PC suddenly became a console.
The only reason I ever bought an Xbox in the first place was because it brought PC gaming into the living room. The original Xbox was basically a stripped-down PC with a custom OS—and I loved it for that. Finally, I had PC-grade performance on my TV.
But let’s be real: Valve ate Microsoft’s lunch. And with the Steam Deck, they came back for seconds.
The good news? Microsoft finally seems to understand that Valve—not Sony—is their real competition. And now they’re answering with the Xbox handheld.
About time.
You must log in or # to comment.
Microsoft will be a publisher only. The problem with XBOX circa 2010 onward is they followed every trend and abandoned it.
I feel like Microsoft was their own enemy. They kept slicing off small portions of their market in pursuit of vendor lock-in. Now there is nobody left supporting them.
They ran off even their most loyal players one by one with their asinine moves. Lame games, vendor lockin, nickle and dining.
I was die hard for Xbox. Had every one, dozens of games, more probably. Have fond memories of lan parties and friends coming over to play split screen. I remember playing through halo 3 the night it dropped into the early morning, and getting the beta from Reach.
Then they killed off split screen. And lan gaming. You had to use Xbox live to play with your friend in the room. Oh no they don’t have Xbox live. Oh no there’s an update. Now they don’t have their password. They can’t join my party. The audio doesn’t work. It became a hassle to play with people
Steam just works. And it’s a fair price
Valve really operates in a different market from Microsoft or Sony, but what hurt them was a couple of things:
-
Repeatedly skipping Gamescom essentially told Sony “Yeah, we don’t care about Europe.” And the sales numbers show it. Sony owns Europe.
-
No differential between console and PC. Launching the same game at the same time on PC and Xbox doesn’t incentivize people to a) buy games on Xbox or b) develop games on Xbox. Why bother if it’s on PC the same day?
-
Focusing on digital vs. physical takes games out of stores. On a recent trip to Target they had a nice big Playstation section and a nice big Switch section. Hey? Where are the Xbox games?
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/target-not-selling-physical-xbox-games-anymore.1679241/
-
Who even uses steam big picture?
In my experience it has always had an horrible experience.
Also pc gaming has always been a thing.
It’s just that consoles have been harder to justify not only because pc gaming have gotten better. But because consoles have gotten worse. It’s no longer plug and play, now you have to do the same steps of installing, downloading things, checking if your version of the console can run that game… At that point big consoles are harder and harder to justify.
Sony will go behind of they don’t do some changes. Xbox fell sooner because they had a thinner base. But sony is not out of danger.
Nintendo is probably fine as they rotated to handhelds, which are a different niche than normal pcs. And because they hold massive exclusive IPs.
been using Big Picture for years. it’s a better experience than the ad-riddled UIs of the xbox and playstation.
I use Steam Big Picture.
Specifically, I have a desktop PC, with an RTX 3090, hooked up to my TV.
Now I don’t recommend doing it this way anymore. It’s probably better to buy something like a Legion Go, hook it up to an eGPU, while you dock it to a TV.
But probably your bigger question is, “Why do I use Steam Big Picture?”
Because I specifically want to play PC games on my TV. Half my Steam library natively supports gamepad. And of those that don’t, I can easily adapt keyboard controls to a gamepad—if community-built options have not yet been made.
Truly, Steam is what Xbox should have been.
