The entire game industry seems up in arms about Microsoft's seeming abandonment and "blunders" in recent years and Carrie Bradshaw voice I couldn't help but wonder, did Microsoft already win the console wars?

Now, you might be like, Belle! They're killing their own industry though, why would a company do that?

Because Microsoft is an operating software company, not a gaming company.

Xbox was only created to threaten Sony because they couldn't buy Nintendo in response to the PS2 - because Sony considered the PS2 a computer (even going so far as to sell linux discs with it). The entire Playstation brand was a way to trojan horse person computers and internet into more homes, through popular MMOs like Phantasy Star Online. Later the "failure" of the PS3 was because after capturing the gaming market, PlayStation intended to try and go further and take over media market by replacing the need to buy a Blu-ray player, introducing more personal competing technology into more homes.

In response to this existential threat from Sony, Bill gates got like, hella mad and made DirectX - an API that made it easier to develop games in English (similar products at the time only existed in Japanese).

Around the same time, Microsoft was caught by the US government for trying to do a big naughty by trying to fully monopolize the internet browser market.

If you could consider for a moment, the time that we're in, and a few facts about Microsoft:

If gaming is the trojan horse for operating systems, then they've got a hell of a competitor in Valve's deep investment into Linux - who have finally started breaking the open-source OS alternative into the mainstream by making windows games compatible with Linux via Proton, and the growing popularity of Linux based SteamOS.

The shift for Xbox to focus in on PC gaming instead of selling consoles makes a hell of a lot more sense when you consider that Microsoft is facing an existential financial threat to both their bread and butter OS business, and their need to kill Valve's momentum.

The need is no longer to get devices into homes - the need is to now make sure that the devices are running Windows - in some way shape or form. It would also explain why Microsoft keeps buying indie darlings and unceremoniously killing them even after doing well. Oh and Games too. Can't have competition if you buy and kill them like Henry the 8th when his wives bore a daughter.

Problem is that corporate strategy like that tends to rustle the jimmies of regulators if they catch wind, especially when you have a habit of doing so. But if you can just whine and cry that good games aren't enough to sell consoles, and you keep telling the media that - you have a really good paper trail for when the regulators hit you with an anti-trust lawsuit. And they'd have good reason to be fearful, because their good compatriot Google didn't make it through their last lawsuit.

So when you have your Xbox branded laptop with windows 12 come in the mail that forces you to talk to an AI chatbot to find a game, at least you'll know what happened here.

That is, if we make through the bubble popping at all.