Is Microsoft Trying to Kill What's Left of XBox by Year's End?
Months ago: Asha Sharma "a Palliative Care Doctor Who Slides Xbox Gently Into the Night"
Now:
Earlier today we mentioned the latest XBox downtime [1, 2]. This seems to be happening every few weeks and one simple (even plausible) explanation is that the mass layoffs meant losing the minds that know how to keep things running.
A day after the latest downtime we see reports about Microsoft worsening the XBox experience some more or, as one site puts it, "Microsoft Just Found Yet Another Way To Enshittify Xbox Game Pass".
The former site says: "Under the new system, Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will get 15 hours of cloud gaming per month, while Premium subscribers will receive 10 hours and Essential subscribers will get five hours. Currently, eligible Game Pass subscribers can use cloud gaming without a monthly hour limit."
The latter says: "Following layoffs that have beloved studios hanging by a thread, a re-focus on franchises that reliably print money, and—pretty much guaranteed to partially counteract that—a third Xbox hardware price increase, Microsoft has found another place to penny pinch until it draws blood: Game Pass, an ever-reliable victim of enshittification."
Way to alienate what's left of their loyal "fan" base, i.e. people who might buy what's left of the stuff in spite of the sharp price hikes.
How many people will still bother purchasing these consoles by the end of the year? It was already very bad a year ago. █