An Xbox has sat in my living room since the first one came out way back when I worked at Microsoft. Many enjoyable hours of Halo, Rainbow Six and what have you.

An Xbox has sat in my living room since the first one came out way back when I worked at Microsoft. Many enjoyable hours of Halo, Rainbow Six and what have you. The most current hardware (Xbox X) I mainly use to play remasters of old games (currently, Mass Effect) and as a Blu-ray player. Latest Call of Duty? Soooo tired. Jack up the Game Pass sub price? It’s just not worth it anymore. Xbox spent a ton of money pushing game streaming. Right, because I do what I can to reduce latency, and now I’m going to stream the game? If I’m going to play casual games, I’ll do it from my phone. There are paper cuts that start to add up. Like if I hit A to play a game, now I have to hit A again on some intermediate screen to activate the Play button on that screen. WTF is that for? Further examples abound. Part of the problem is on my end, as I’m growing a bit tired of the game industry in general (gambling-lite, with some gameplay thrown in). But part of it is the floundering of the platform I’ve used for over two decades. I’ve got a Switch that I’ve had a lot of fun with, and I think when it comes new hardware time, it’ll probably be a Steam Deck.