And it’s this kind of shit that has ruined my love for tech. It’s all soulless dystopian slop they want you paying for monthly for the rest of your life. Fuck all these techno dweebs. It’s a shame all the normies will go along with this…
They’ll average $1700/year to play the fucking games they already spent $100 to borrow indefinitely? Fuck, gaming sounds so stupid now.
$1700/yr is 12 hours of gaming each day at $0.40/hr, which is more than the $0.24 you’d actually be paying. Nobody gaming that much would otherwise be spending $100/yr on games in any case.
This is a very stupid thing for the industry, but your numbers are hyperbolic and anti-useful.
ah but what about the hardware rental fees
“Indefinitely”, huh? They can just rent it forever? Sounds like a missed opportunity for shareholders, I bet we can get that line even higher
Indefinitely just means unspecified. Could be 3000 years, could be 15 minutes; it implies “until further notice” depending on the whims of the noticer. See “suspended indefinitely” in crime drama shows, where they’re back on payroll by the end of the episode
That’s why you ditch consoles, get a PC and buy only from stores that don’t do this rubbish.
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.
Go along? They’ll be zealots demanding everyone get on board, just like heavily exploited console players are today.
>laughs in piracy
I’ve called this so many times over… It’s not just going to be xbox… it’s going to be PCs in general, With AI data centers raising up the price on all hardware, They are already making moves in the government on banning routers. The plan is going to be for personal computers and hardware to leave the world. Either price them out of consumer reach or flat out outlaw them. We get thin clients like stadia, Luna etc… Actually having a personal computer capable of running software itself will be considered a national security threat. Why wouldn’t you keep your stuff in the cloud where the government can audit it, companies can make sure you aren’t pirating or running unapproved illegal LLMs that could make bombs etc…
Ok, whats your answer for all commercial companies without their own data centers then? You think they’d all be happy to give up their computers/laptops as well, or pay so much higher prices in the future?
If they aren’t rich enough, then they are in the same boat as us. This ain’t exactly new… AWS workspaces, Azure Cloud PCs, Google docs, office 365, one drive. The tech has been creeping it’s way into businesses for the last 10 years. Obviously they are getting hammered right now by the raise in prices of new PCs. As the prices go up, they will have to make decisions.
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.
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.
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.
This is exactly what european digital sovereignity is all about
Microsoft has reinvented the arcade, except this time you buy the game first and then feed the machine quarters to play it. Next up: a premium tier that lets you pause without the meter running. At this rate, Xbox’s most profitable game will be watching customers try to escape the billing screen.
Next up: You get a free hour if you watch this AI slop ad. And since we’ve now required eye tracking to be enabled, if you look away from the ad for even a moment, then pay up.
DRINK VERIFICATION CAN
They played too much Roller Coaster Tycoon where they charged an admission fee for the park and then for every single ride too.
Xbox Developers: Hell yeah! Playstation is shooting themselves in the foot. All we have to do is sit back and we’ll kill it.
Xbox Business : or… hold my beer.
Rent-seeking is definitely a sign of a financially-healthy company. Yup. No red flags there.
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
Fuck everything about that. Fuck that to hell and back again not a hobbits tale.
Stadia didn’t charge to stream, though I suppose if it still existed it probably would by now.
the most shocking thing about stadia is that they released the means to de-fuck the stadia controller so it could be used as a normal pc controller
Only 50 center per hour, you say? I mean it’s only 75 cents, that won’t even buy a soda anymore. Who wouldn’t pay a dollar an hour to play the games they love?
They did it, they made something worse than google Stadia!
And we’ve come full circle back to arcades. Just with extra(fewer?) steps now.
Microsoft wants to never sell another product to me again? Fine
Stopped buying their garbage years ago.
Isn’t this just free on both pc and playstation?
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:
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Ads will play before sessions begin.
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The core game experience is unchanged.
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This is optional. Players can choose other ways to play at any time.
I bought the Xbox x for starfield. Mistakes were made.
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