Talking Point: Will The New '2027' Xbox Console Have Steam Support?

I was like; Wow! Everyone agrees with me when I voted, and then I realised I was the first one to vote... 🤣

@Fiendish-Beaver
Never mind the ducking new console, I’m getting so frustrated looking for a new Series x white discless for a work colleague.
That she can pick up in shop today or delivered say tomorrow or at the weekend. UK.
WHAT A DUCKING SHAMBLES.
What a ducking crap company Microsoft are with Xbox.

She even wants to sign up to GPU as well.
Xbox finally got the games so people want the consoles and GPU, and around great London none to found. Total and utter self destruction.

It'd be really interesting, mostly because having PC storefronts means Microsoft is making less money from game sales and developers do not need to make a bespoke Xbox version or need it to be available on Xbox/MS storefronts and still be accessible to Xbox players. Which kinda ruins how consoles make money whilst selling the platform at a loss.

From a "the meat lump on the controller side" it should be great I can save money buying the Steam/GoG/Epic versions, have greater control on performance, as well as being able to (in theory) play Fallout London on my Xbox.

I do think it dose face the same problem as Steam Machines and it's gonna have to justify it's existence vs buying a PC.

I've said this a number of times now, but I highly doubt that Microsoft will allow Steam on the Prime. The simple reason is sites like CDKeys. I find difficult to believe, simply because if Microsoft take that step, then people will be completely disincentivised to buy games on the Xbox Store because games can be bought more cheaply on (or for) Steam than it is possible to buy games on the Xbox Store.

Two examples:

Right now you can buy Split Fiction on the Xbox Store for £44.99. On CDKeys you can buy the game for £34.99 for the Xbox, whereas it is £31.99 for Steam.

When it comes to first-party games, the Premium Edition of Avowed is £89.99 on the Xbox Store. Alternatively, you can buy the game for £71.99 for the Xbox, and £63.99 for Steam.

So, in the case of Split Fiction, why would someone choose to pay £44.99 on the Xbox Store, when you can buy the exact same game for £13.00 less on Steam?

In the case of Avowed, that difference is even more stark; £89.99 on the Xbox Store, or £63.99 on Steam for the exact same game. That's a difference of £26.00...!

People would quickly become wise to this and would soon be shopping for bargains over buying directly from Microsoft. Essentially, if Microsoft do take this path, then it would cost them billions in lost sales, and would be yet another massive act of self-harm, which lends me to believe that Microsoft would probably do it...!

It has to include steam, and all the others. A more powerful series X wont do much better than this gen.

If you look at the state of the PC market for a newcomer all it really needs to be is more competitive on price. I'm not convinced it needs the functionality of a PC, just the ability to run games from different storefronts. That and some kind of driver level optimisation for TV play.

I'm really excited to find out what this ends up being!

Hope it happens all those indie games especially metroidvanias I could play with steam that I can't on Xbox😭

I understand what you say, @themightyant, but I think over time people would wise up. Word of mouth would quickly spread the news of the best places to buy games and to save money in the process.

Also, if you are shopping at M&S or Waitrose, then someone is doing well...! 😉 I cannot afford to do a big shop there. I would prefer to shop at Lidl and Aldi, but my son does my shopping for me, and he only wants to shop at Tesco, so I guess I'm in the middle-ground... 🤣

If a hardware manufacturer cannot guarantee the ability to subsidise the price of their hardware then I'd expect to see said hardware increase in price dramatically.

The Xbox becomes a premium piece of kit at that stage and one many won't want but it could be a nice entry to PC gaming without being too PC.

Of course it's possible anything is pretty much on the table from our side of the fence. At this stage though you might as well say it will come with a built in air fryer.

It's all speculation and while convincing arguments can be made (for steam not the air fryer), its probably best to temper expectations & just wait till official announcements whenever that maybe.

Enjoy what's in front of you now the future will take care of its self.

@Fiendish-Beaver it's all about Game Pass. It has and it will be even more about GP in the future. If they release more and more games on PS, that's where they'll get most of their sales and the rest of the income will be GP. If you look closely, that's where it looks to be heading.

Not will it only have Steam support, it is most likely that Steam will want to come under the Xbox umbrella, after next Xbox comes out and takes over PC gaming just like it has done with the console ecosystem.

I'm hopeful it will have official support for steam, GOG, and Epic. Or an easy way to side load other storefronts.

It will open up some interesting issues like optimization and controller support but it would be well worth it.

I think the "home console" pc market is about to blow up. It sounds like Steam is making one, I'm sure brands like Asus and Lenovo will go there as well. Xbox should be looking for a way to get it's full xbox storefront completely on pc and not just gamepass or the microsoft store.

Steam is often cheaper. So how will that work in MS favour? Especially as there were the rumours of game prices going up with the likes of gta.

Or will MS just stop selling actual games and just provide gamepass.

Or else why use an ‘Xbox’ when pc is still there?

Will be interesting to see what comes. More importantly is the price. Considering the 2025 handheld is rumoured to be $500 and not play console games.

@Coletrain

While I agree about Steam, Epic etc, GoG likely won't feature on Microsoft's mainline console due to no DRM. GoG is quite an open platform that doesn't suit the walled garden nature of consoles. Can you envision a scenario where anyone can download their Xbox digital purchase bought via GoG to then store them on external media to do with as they please? No, I can't either.

@Dalamar73 Steam and epic contain some non-DRM games too though. Granted not on the industrial scale that GOG does! Given the type of games on GOG (generally older titles, cheap) I don't see why they would need to block it, especially if this new thing is more PC like than ever before.

They could just make it really hard to extract files, thus meaning you can only use a GOG game purchased on an Xbox through your GOG account (once you install it on your PC that's fair game though)

No seriously, Xbox themselves set the release date as 28. Why would you put pre-wrong info in your headline?

They can for sure ditch the box and go full PC with some sort of xbox OS on top of it but it means massive losses for MS:

1) The next xbox even if its a pc should a subsidized machine at least in early years similar to launch of xboxes/PS in the current and past gens to be competitive.
2) However the bet was to recoup by selling software on your own stores - now people will skip xbox store and buy in steam directly meaning MS loses another 30% of revenues. Pair it with GOG and free games on Epric store.
3) Every single player that only paid for GP core (estimated to be 10M) that buys next pc xbox, will not sign up for GP at all because online is free.
4) Every GPU player who buys next pcxbox will downgrade to a cheaper PC GP (a staggering 40% cheaper than GPU).

yeah they can also increase the price of the machine or even outsoruce to MSI and lenovo which means another price hike. In such case sales will be extremely low => losing money on current fanbase.

However, maybe they just dont care. Their desire to NOT sell current consoles at all kinda hints that maybe they just ok with GP count and revenues going down and fully winding down the console.
We will see I guess.

I think the right thing to do for MS: outsource these pc-xbox hybrids to MSI and such and charge whatever (1k+) but still produce at least 1 sku of SX sucessor in a traditional way. Literally could be a simple power bump to match PS6.
So give more options for players but at least keep your 30M of current console only players that are also like 80% of GP subs today. Then expand and do whatever with PC.
Fully replacing traditional console with any pc-like would be gambling.

You make a good point about portability convenience, @themightyant. However, that then assumes that a high percentage will be looking to take their games on the go. If the system is just going to sit under the TV, then it's not the convenience of saves you are thinking about, it is the cost of your games.

I do agree with you though, it is not something that I had thought of. I just do not know how many people that would affect, though there will undoubtedly be some that would prefer to pay 29% more for the likes of Avowed in order to have the game on the move. It's just how many feel that way...

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I just think their desire to be everywhere and too big ambitions will leave them without a platform (or very niche fanbase). Thats until cloud though but we wont be there in next 10-20 years. I dont really understand the push to cloud today and aggressive marketing for technology that barely works and dont appeal to 99% of gamers

@themightyant not many as without xbox console GP count will fall drastically. Also people who bought GP with the logic of having to pay for GP core anyways will completely unsub.

@Fiendish-Beaver they are trying to enter a market thats already 90% dominated by switch. The rest is for steam deck and only the last 3% or so for PC handhelds thats already competitive. ROG ally sold less than 1M and its basically will be the same thing.
Realistically such handheld will sell 2-3M in 5 years or so.

@Coletrain

"They could just make it really hard to extract files, thus meaning you can only use a GOG game purchased on an Xbox through your GOG account."

Possible, but GoG pride themselves on being an open, DRM free platform. I doubt they'll want to bow down to the whims of Microsoft.

@Dalamar73 yeah maybe not. I guess with the likes of GOG MS will just leave it up to them to decide if the rub is worth the green. I mean, it's other major USP is game preservation, which MS do want, so there's enough synergy to make a deal I hope!

I'd say so. Given MS wants to tear down barriers, it makes sense, and I am all for it!

@Coletrain

Never say never in this industry, eh? 😊

@RiverGenie I really want it to have a built-in air fryer now. ☹️

Oh I agree, @Kaloudz. The whole ethos of Microsoft is to do away with the need to own an Xbox. I think that this is the one area that Microsoft has actually managed to do well... 🤣

@Fiendish-Beaver I had to Google the word Ethos. For some reason I thought it was one of the three musketeers lol.

I still really don’t know how Microsoft would actually make money from such a move (outside of the games they publish on Steam of course). Unless they do some really unpleasant things such as locking Steam access behind Game Pass Core or burying it under a bajillion sub-menus that are really inconvenient to access - which would be seriously nullify the selling point of having Steam support in the first place!

I don't see Valve agreeing to split royalties for something like this. Giving your userbase another way to avoid paying you also doesn't sound like a good idea...

Can't see this happening for several reasons mentioned above but never say never in the ever evolving world of gaming.

Microsoft aren't making money from the consoles, it's purely to drive sales of game pass and games/services. Steam being on the hardware, and by assumption EA, UBI etc they may have to have some sort of deal financially that makes it worthwhile, whether steam has some sort of link to pc game pass or something like that

I don’t have pc and see so much interesting stuff popping up on steam I would play. So I have fingers crossed. Interesting chat and some real valid points why it might not

What would be Steams incentive for allowing their service to be on Xbox hardware? That is the question that needs to be asked.

I think it's possible and I really hope it's happening. They will just stop loosing money on consoles sales like sony already does and they will add a small fee for the steam/epic sales on their consoles (maybe something like 5%?).

@Fiendish-Beaver the hardware is sold at a loss on the console side and made up on the software side in a closed system. The only way a hybrid would work is if they cut a deal
With steam and sold the hardware at cost, that way they could price match steam and not care if you bought in the xbox or steam strore

I get what you're saying, @Valhura, but it wouldn't be quite so simple as that.

Let's say a game costs £100 (I know they don't, but it keeps the maths simple) on the Xbox Store. When that games sells, on the Xbox Store, Microsoft get the full £100. However, when Microsoft sells that same game for £100 on Steam, they would receive just £70 once Valve have taken their 30% cut as a thank you for the hard work they endure in selling the game on Steam.

For Microsoft to receive £100 from Valve for selling a game on Steam, they would have to list it at £142.86, which they obviously would never do (although, ironically, that would likely drive the consumers to the Xbox Store).

So, what would happen is Microsoft would list it at £100 on both Steam and on their own store front, and would likely sell vastly more copies of their games on Steam than on the Xbox Store because PC gamers much prefer Steam to the Microsoft's store. Therefore, the upshot is that Microsoft will lose money on their games if they include Steam on their next console...

@Fiendish-Beaver sorry I was not clear, what I meant by "cut a deal with steam" was they find away to profit share steam games bought on the steam store on the Xbox hardware. So MS get say 95% of MS games sold on steam store on xbox, but take say 10% or 15% of PC games sold on the steam store on xbox hardware as it does open the steam store to say another 30 million devices compared to just the PC market. I am not sure what the % would be that would be acceptable to both Valve and MS but I am sure the bean counters on both sides could come up with one that is beneficial to both, without such a deal there is zero benefit to MS allowing any other store on their hardware as it would just mean the potential to lose even more profit fron sales of their own games and that 30% cut they take on 3rd party games. It would also allow MS to make a little bank off Sony games sold on the Xbox hardware steam store, and also make Sony extra money as they too would have access to say 30 million additional consoles, it would be a win win all round and Sony would not have to face the wrath of the PS fanboys

That makes a lot of sense, @Valhura, and you could be on to something. It is certainly not something that I had previously considered, and it would, indeed, open up the possibility of Steam being on the Prime. Knowing what PC gamers are like, I image there would be a real imbalance in percentage shares though, as there are many more PC gamers than Xbox gamers, and with the ability to game more cheaply on Steam than on the Xbox, many Xbox gamers would also start to primarily use Steam. It's a proper minefield for Microsoft, but probably not insurmountable...