I may have missed something but how does this get you extra achievements? We already have them with games for windows live, this is pretty much just the same deal with the friends list etc isn't it?

If it doesn't mean extra game, then honestly its not the sort of thing I want on my PC, its loaded full of multiple software sets as it is and I don't need apps that can't provide me anything extra. Unless this adds more games to the PC catalog then its just a bad gamers facebook in app form

@limewax,

Obviously it means XNA games and applications will finally be getting love on the PC. Something that XNA developers have been asking for, for a long time.

My guess is, XNA indy store games will all suddenly be available to windows 8 users via the XBLA store.

Obviously for the "reading between the lines" impaired, this means that windows 8 ready pc's are going to have Kinect like sensors built right in, and Windows 8 is going to skip the whole touch screen thing and move right on to touchless gesture controls.

For one thing, its going to be sitting on my computer weather I want it or not. Always open, active and talking to MS or XNA. Again weather I use it or not if I ever get it. And like other unwanted apps some even non-MS, reminding me of their existence.

Wake up. MAC has Steam and plenty of great games from that service available. Install Windows 8 and see how awful it is. I did.

Wow. Mac has Steam with a whopping 8 titles. Please don't even try to justify a Mac is suitable for gaming. In fact, quit trying to justify owning an overpriced PC.

Also, Windows 8 is not even out. Quit judging an unfinished product.

For people that don't understand how to operate a pc, for people that don't know a computer can be upgraded, for people with more money then brains.... Get a mac.

If you are a true pc gamer you know that a mac is a gimped service to gaming.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

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".