I think MS tried to quell the Sega purchase rumors but fans keep bring it up and adding fuel to the rumor fire.
After reading more about what this current gen has been like, I think the new wars are going to be over exclusives. They always have been a driving force since way-back-when but I think this upcoming generation is going to be defined by it. I know back in the PS2 days, Square was a big pseudo-exclusive for Sony, really since the PSX days. Then I think the 360 started getting Square Enix games and Nintendo was last, at least not since the SNES days.
And another big acquisition at the time that upset people was MS buying up Rareware and all the IP. After classics like Conker and Banko Kazooie, all of it went to MS consoles.
But those acquisitions seemed few and far in between; I think Sony really took it ten notches higher during the PS4 era which is why the PS4 had so many exclusives. Good exclusives that people wanted and would buy a PS4 just to play. And I think MS finally heard the complaints of fans and the Bethesda acquisition was supposed to be a heavy-handed response to that. I don't think it puts them on-par with Sony yet, but it's a big step forward.
From my understanding, first party titles never leave Game Pass, so all MS Studios stuff will be there forever and you won't have to purchase the game, just the pass. And then there's the rotating offerings on Gamepass from other developers, usually available on launch day. So MS has that plus the Bethesda acquisition to build off of for this upcoming generation. It'd be huge if it bought Sega and those were the rumors earlier this week, but the counterpoints and MS coming out and denying the acquisition have cooled me down a bit on the idea of it happening. But MS needs to make a few more acquisitions of studios and start coming up with new IPs. You can't just rely on established stuff from Bethesda and continue to pump out sequels to those.
I feel like it's going to be a lot like the tech/app world where startups are going to be bought left and right and bigger companies, like MS and Sony, are going to incorporate their work in to their products. Sort of like Apple and Google and even Facebook acquiring these small start ups for millions and using it to make billions.
The Series S has a tiny, weak GPU. It's going to run cool, so I'm not concerned. Even last gen's Xbox One X GPU is 50% faster than the Series S, and the One X is also small and runs very cool and quiet, and the chip in the Series S is even more efficient. The Ryzen 7 4800U is a mobile chip that performs about as well as the Series S chip and it's cooled by tiny fans in thin and light laptops, and in a similar configuration to what you'd see in the Series S it uses a funny 15 watts of power. I wouldn't be surprised if it uses as little as 1/10th of the power of the Series X chip.
I know the price is tempting, but I wouldn't consider the Series S unless you were buying it for the kids or something. It's just way too weak. Even then in the long run you might get more bang for your buck getting the X knowing you'll be able to play used games for dirt cheap, especially as there is backwards compatibility. Imho the Series X is a great console. It's crazy powerful for a console, and seems to do everything just right. I would go as far as to say that it's the best implemented console I've seen so far from the hardware perspective, and accompanying services. It almost hurts a bit that I don't need it.
Well, you don't need it now because it would be silly to buy a SS or SX just to play Gamepass games on it from the One generation. I don't think there's a killer app at launch that is going to make people go nuts and buy the console, although people still lost their shit for the preorders anyway. I have a feeling most of them will be playing old games on Gamepass until a major title is released and even that probably won't push the X to its hardware limits, obviously. It just seems like a waste of $500 at this point. At least PS5 has Demon's Souls and Spiderman that might entice a good number of people to play it, although I think the latter is also a PS4 title.
I think the only one MS that exclusive is Dirt 5 and Halo: Infinite? That might be enough for people to upgrade and I do like Halo, but I still feel old, used One games from Gamestop will hold me over for a few years, along with Gamepass. And then I go the X route because the Series S with an expansion storage card is going to cost more than a Series X alone.
