Probably ai

I never was an xbox guy, so talking about them is confusing because of the naming scheme. They lost me after the 360.

Xbox - 2001
Xbox 360 - 2005
Xbox One - 2013
Xbox One S - 2016
Xbox One X - 2017
Xbox Series S|X - 2020

Though, seeing it laid out like this makes it look like the S|X(6) was intentional. But clearly that’s too much credit for whoever is constantly day drunk while naming.

Microsoft is one of the worst companies at naming things. Only second to how Sony names their headphones.

One evolution went like this:

At launch, it came with Kinect and 10% of system resources were reserved for Kinect processing, even on games that didn't support Kinect. That resulted in lower framerates and resolution than equivalent PS4 games.

Then Microsoft, wisely, removed the Kinect requirement and released a Kinect-free version of the one. With that extra performance boost, the One gained parity with the PS4.

Sony announced the PS4 Pro for 2016, but while it had more power than the stock PS4, it lacked a 4K Blu Ray drive.

Seeing the opportunity, Microsoft added a 4K drive to the Xbox One and launched the Xbox One S one month ahead of the PS4 Pro.

They also pre-emptively announced the Xbox One X which would be the powerhouse machine of the generation with 4K gaming and 4K physical media.

The idea being that hopefully people would choose the One S over the Pro due to the 4K drive, or would at least wait on buying anything until the One X dropped a year later.

Last generation was really weird as to one company having both the weakest and strongest hardware in the same generation.

Xbox One W/ Kinect
PS4 / Xbox One No Kinect
Xbox One S (same hardware + 4K Blu Ray)
PS4 Pro (stronger hardware, no 4K Blu Ray)
Xbox One X (strongest hardware + 4K Blu Ray)

If Sony does what they did with the PS4, they’ll release a PS5 Pro next year and a PS6 in 2028. Pretty easy to follow at least.

Historic generations were about 5 years...

The big problem with the Xbox One was that it was underpowered because of the Kinect requirement, so they ditched Kinect then rebranded as the Xbox One S, throwing in a 4K Blu Ray player.

Still wasn't enough, so the One X had full 4K capabilities.

If they had launched with the One X things would have looked a lot different.

I don't know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it's not exactly unheard of.

I can totally relate. Paying 30-100€ per game is something for rich people or something I'd do once or max twice a year on very carefully selected games, hoping these games are worth it. With Game Pass I spend 120€ a year to access a wide range of games.

Once I played through or once version 2 of a game comes out, I'm not likely to play it ever again.

Also I have phases where I play a lot and phases where I do not play at all. I can simply discontinue Game Pass in these cases.

Yeah, I get that gamepass is a good way to play games but the thing is when this is if I really like the game and want to purchase it, I can't. They won't ever sell me the game files, they'll only give me the key to rent it out and can revoke that whenever they want.

Rez PS2

I hear some horny teens have tried to use switch joycons for that because of how small and thin they are