Good evening to you as well.

🤣

Just like the good old days we had to visit an internet cafe to buy a time bundle and send an email

even more shocking.. it was google

that is correct.

they don't want to sell.

they want to rent.

this is just another step down that path.

That's why you ditch consoles, get a PC and buy only from stores that don't do this rubbish.

They aren't the same GPUs that are in Xboxs. those are nvidia GPUs eg the nv72 or gb300. There's no way to make them compatible with Xbox. Source: my unc works at Microsoft data centers.

Awful idea, but unfortunately completely in character for Microsoft. Windows is basically spyware at this point.

I wonder which high-ranking Microsoft employee made this dumbass decision, knowing it would net them more money

My job trialled azure cloud PCs a couple of years ago.

It was pretty good from my point of view as a user.

However the cost was higher than $8000 laptops we have, so we didn't adopt it.

Wonder if it's still the same. Guessing the cloud is still suffering the same hardware price hike anyway.

Running a comparison, assuming it's in use 8 hours a day 5 days a week, looks like a CPC runs around 640-760 a year (just googling quickly checking the numbers). course that's just basic hourly office computer, meant to be comparable to what normally would be normal office computer. Didn't bother to look and see what say an 8,000 high end graphics card laptop or something would compare... of course if your company was doing 8,000 laptops "a couple years ago", those are probably at least 15,000 laptops today.

Lol for comparison geforce now is $8.33/month(for yearly plan)for 100 hours a month, plus 15 unused hours roll forward.

They don't have to give up digital sovereignty. They'lll just subscribe to the Executive plan which grants them more control for cheaper than 30,000 laptops

I dont understand the reasoning behind people seem to think prices for components will climb for ever and ever without generating more supply. if RAM becomes obscenely profitable for long enough others will get in on the act and produce their own to get some of those profits. The only reason people arent yet is that everyone thinks there is a bubble pop coming down the pipe (me included).

so the two options are:

• Bubble pops-demand from hyperscalers vanishes, prices collapse

• Bubble doesn't pop, more supply comes online due to pent up demand, prices stabilize then come down over time

Neither involve cyberpunk dystopias of cackling supervillians monopolizing PCs

Why do they need to be compatible with an Xbox? They could just use the PC version for streaming

Yeah I get the feeling a lot of people don't understand how crazy expensive virtualized desktops are.

You really don't go to it to save money. It's for standardization and security and it costs you. Then you're at the mercy of the company anyway. Just witness VMware now.

Windows is basically spyware at this point.

Always has been.

Man, I feel like peak gaming was the xbox 360.

I think steam deck 2 as and when it comes out will be a golden age. I think it stands a chance to completely consolidate the market.

I haven't thought about geforce now for a while. It's a bit of a different prospect now it's owned by the highest valued company in America.

The consumer will gobble this up like hot bread and then ask "but why things bad? Must be immigrants"

Shitty behaviour by a shitty species

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/07/23/game-streaming-ad-supported-xbox-insiders/

Today, we’re starting to test an ad-supported way to stream select games from your library for a limited time, available to XBOX Insiders.

During this test period, XBOX Insiders with an XBOX account will be able to stream games they own for free with ads. Players will have one hour session limits across supported devices and regions.

Here’s what you can expect:

1. Ads will play before sessions begin.

2. The core game experience is unchanged.

3. This is optional. Players can choose other ways to play at any time.

Tech is still great but you have to know where to look and invest. Sony/MS have lost the plot that's for sure, but the pc gaming ecosystem is vibrant, and there are amazing foss solutions to just about everything, including streaming.

Xbox and PC versions aren't exactly 1:1. Plus, those are extremely expensive GPUs to not be selling for top dollar to the AI bros instead.

Edit- I'm leaving out things like architecture, shaders, tensor cores, NVIDIA vs AMD, SXM vs PCI-E, etc.

Back in my day it was called an arcade video game.

sad to said that, but most players, are locked into their ecosystem. Most people know shit about piracy, linux, or even tinkering with their computer. It's sad, yes.

Depends on the price, most people don't want a 1k euros console.

They can have my longest finger while I game on Cachy

Yeah, back in my day the games came on a cassette tape. Sometimes the tapes got tangled up or broke, but when you bought it, you owned it.

Oh, and you'd get those magazines with pages of code for a game - you'd spend a day typing it in and never be able to figure out the tiny error you'd made.

Actually, games are so much better these days. It's just unfortunate that capitalism.

Once again, I pray for the time when China floods the market with GPUs, RAM, and storage to the point where all these technocapitalists get fucked.

Fuck renting shit.

I'd argue early PC and 3rd-4th gen (NES to SNES era)

Fire game

yeah, i should have been more specific, but thats why its so shocking.

those GPUs were sold for top dollar to AI bros.

its why microsoft has so many of them, sitting in a warehouse, waiting to be used, for stupid AI bullshit.

I would say that's true about Sony and its ecosystem.

Xbox, on the other hand, isn't doing so hot. I'd argue that Microsoft could potentially be heading toward a serious decline in the console market. When a consumer base is pushed hard enough, eventually people start pushing back.

That's why we're seeing PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles being jailbroken. It may be a sign that some consumers are tired of being restricted and exploited by the platforms they use.

Xbox has a particularly serious problem: if Microsoft fails to deliver games and experiences that make its ecosystem worthwhile, people will simply move to PlayStation or Nintendo to play video games. They aren't necessarily going to care about Xbox as an entertainment ecosystem if the gaming experience itself isn't compelling.

Microsoft needs to remember that people buy gaming consoles to play games, not to buy into an ecosystem.

the idea is to first make people accept the idea, then over time they will increase the price slowly so people dont react too fast.

I bought the Xbox x for starfield. Mistakes were made.

Isn't this just free on both pc and playstation?

They want to charge you for something that's free on other platforms.

I hate this new trend of corpo speak using compute as a noun. Ew.

They are sitting in the warehouse because there aren't enough other parts (e.g. DIMMs), power, or data centers for them. And as stupid as AI bullshit is, they are paying more than gamers by orders of magnitude.

If they did that, the technocapitalists would just make Chinese hardware illegal.

And we've come full circle back to arcades. Just with extra(fewer?) steps now.

Exactly. And they will use the excuse that the chinese hardware might spy on us, all while the hardware they allow us to buy is doing that openly.

I see this as a feature most people wouldn't actually use.

Only use case I'd have for it is wanting a game to render at higher specs while travelling at like a hotel.

I bought a steam deck for a vacation when it came out. Used it on the flight and that's it. Never played games except at the airport so I was fine rendering at the steam deck.

Not 1:1 sure, but I'm struggling to think of a meaningful difference that would make the PC version an inferior one besides incompetent porting.

Yes, thank you for circling back to the original point.

God what a mountain road that was.

They did it, they made something worse than google Stadia!

If Americans cannot get their treats and the bread and Circus stops, then they will resort to other means of expressing dissent.

The USA is highly individualistic and materialistic. If they can't get their treats, then stochastic crime will take place (not that I'm against that, fuck capital).

For 2-3 hours per day is what you mean I guess?

Because 400 is pretty close to the amount of days in a year, meaning you would have a bit more than a buck per day.