You realize its customizable, this is like looking at the default windows xp theme.

I love Metro UI! It actually efficiently uses the space in a minimalistic fashion. Easy to read, find and very efficient at spotting important information.

The awesomeness comes to full fruition when you customize the screen to your liking. It's like iGoogle, but it actually works well!

My only complaint? To some degree, I have to re-learn the UI.

People are nincompoops because they have opinions that differ from yours??

That's exactly it. Tablet it'd be okay, but a desktop needs a OS with, well, a DESKTOP. Look at what Ubuntu users did when Unity came about, they jumped ship and slammed it so badly they had to put GNOME back in it. But not with Windows it won't happen, most users just sit down without even knowing what the OS is and just click things and say "Ooo, it's different, neat!" instead of choosing the one that is logical for getting stuff done.

"That's exactly it. Tablet it'd be okay, but a desktop needs a OS with, well, a DESKTOP."

good thing windows 8 has a desktop, just like windows 7 lol.

the metro interface is the start screen, nothing more. press the windows button and you go straight back to the regular old desktop.

The only real change for desktop users is the new start screen instead of the start bar if you want to ignore Metro all together, but why would you?

The start screen is vastly more useful than the start bar, that was cluttered with crap when apps were installed.

Searching would give you irrelevant content, and navigating the bar was tiresome. Now, I just hit Windows Key (like I used to), type in the search and optionally choose one of the filters. Instant access!

Also, you have to learn to use the taskbar pinning feature. With that you can bypass the Start Screen altogether!

Your originality is astounding.

and be like sony...nah, they are doing it right by naming it something else. Sony should do the same. Playstation 4 sounds kinda awkward.

I still jokingly think that calling it "Xbox 8" is cheating. "No yeah, Xboxes 3-7 happened. You guys just weren't paying attention."

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".