My Xbox Honey Do List

I use my Xbox One console almost daily, so I have my own wish list of improvements that I would personally find beneficial for the way I use it. And yes, I've gone ahead and submitted or upvoted these ideas on the Xbox Uservoice forum (for which I applaud Microsoft for supporting).  For context, my main console is the original Day One Edition (stock 500 GB internal hard drive), with an external 240GB SSD attached via a USB 3.0 enclosure (which supports UASP) to hold my most frequently played games. BTW, putting your games on an external SSD makes them load MUCH faster, so it's worth doing even if you can't afford a big SSD drive.

So here is my prioritized wish list:

1) Faster boot or EnergyStar stand-by: My console takes a little over a minute to show me the home screen from a cold (power savings mode) boot. If I feel like gaming, my routine is to turn on the console, go do something else (like fill up my water bottle), and then come back. Compare this to15-20 secs cold boot with my Windows PCs, or 25 secs for the Xbox 360. I realize that putting the console into the Instant On mode would address this, but I can't get myself to leave it drawing 15 Watts of energy all the time doing nothing. I'm kind of obsessed with energy efficiency and doing my part for the environment, and if you multiply 15 Watts times all the Xbox One owners, that becomes a very significant contribution to wasted energy. I don't need the Kinect always listening, and I'm even ok with it not installing updates in the background. Just give me my instant gratification!

2) Snappy UI: This one probably drives me the most crazy. From the dashboard, if you click to the left to access Friends and others frequently used apps, I often experience a delay of 3-4 secs before that left menu bar appears. From a human factors perspectives, this is so long that it leaves me assuming that the controller input was not recognized, causing me to repeat the input, which gets buffered, and often sends me the wrong menu. This makes me feel like I have to slow down, wait, and delicately lead the Xbox UI to the destination I have in mind.  I suggest that UI performance get prioritized in a future system update. I'd rather wait longer for the dashboard to load to load the required input background tasks than have to deal with the frustration of my controller clicks flying all over the place from lag and buffering. Even giving me some kind of real time audio feedback that my controller input has been received would be helpful to avoid redundant inputs.

3) Reliable voice chat (bonus: higher quality voice audio): Although it doesn't happen often, there have still been a number of times when my friends & I could not successfully join each other's chat parties. Worst case, it would outright error out. Sometimes it hangs saying "Connecting" but does not successfully connect. Other times there is a specific person who can't be heard by another specific person. This then leads to players attempting fixes like logging out and back into Xbox Live, rebooting the console, and rebooting routers. Microsoft has their excellent and popular Skype service, which is what my kids & I use when gaming on a PC. It connects quickly and reliably, and the voice quality is noticeably better than Xbox One's voice chat (less latency, higher fidelity). While I recognize that Skype runs on a distinct server infrastructure than Xbox Live, I'm just sayin' that it would be awesome to leverage Skype's capabilities to improve the first party Xbox voice chat from a reliability and audio fidelity perspective. At a bare minimum, it should be so reliable that users just know it will work when we click "Join" vs. today's situation where my heart rate spikes in anxious anticipation of waiting to see what happens.

4) All SSD upgrade path: Once you go SSD, you never go back, and the price of SSDs continues to fall over time. Additionally, it is an inevitable certainty that all mechanical hard drives will degrade in performance over time and eventually crash. I admire the Sony's approach that enables players to fairly easily upgrade the internal drive of the PS3 and PS4, while the Xbox One only supports external storage upgrades. Microsoft's approach is admittedly hitting a good sweet spot, giving users the ability to add storage technology of their choice (big mechanical drives, small but fast SSDs, or hybrid drives for little of both) to improve game load times (where SSDs see the most significant performance gains). Making the internal drive non-user serviceable gives Microsoft the ability to optimize the console chassis design for size & airflow (similar to how Apple chose not to make iPhone batteries user replaceable). Another benefit to external storage that I just recently realized is that I can take a game that I installed on my external drive, and plug it into another console to side-load it (using the "copy" command on the Xbox) instead of downloading it again. This is a much faster way to install a game, along with saving bandwidth. For myself, I prefer the clean approach of having a monolithic console with no external components wired to it, along with the fastest possible performance for both boot and game loading. Thus, having the option to bring my own internal drive would be ideal.

5) Virtual surround sound: I've been using Astro Mixamps for years starting with the Xbox 360, and was sold on the legitimate value of virtual surround sound processing with stereo headphones when playing Call of Duty. The gaming community even coined the phrase "sound whoring" for the practice of leveraging positional audio to locate opponents and get the drop on them. It is literally like having a constant radar for games that utilized good positional audio. While I really like my Astro Mixamp, it is somewhat of a mess of cables to use it, and I would love to see this feature integrated directly into the console and controller.

Virtual surround sound is not about making up surround audio from a stereo audio source, but is about taking audio with real discrete surround sound data, and applying real time psycho-acoustics to yield the same perceived audio experience but with stereo audio speakers. If you think about it, your ears are stereo, yet we have the ability to infer 3 dimensional audio because our brain applies real time psycho-acoustics from our two ears. Dolby Headphone is one of the most popular virtual surround technologies out there, but it's not cheap, likely requiring a royalty per device that it ships on. There are other solutions out there, but I can't speak to how they compare to Dolby, which I consider the gold standard (as I know for a fact that they put significant science & research into designing the tech). I'm guessing that Microsoft considered this feature, but found that it was too expensive to license and would not be valuable enough to allow them to charge extra for it, or would not be a compelling and differentiating feature to help them win the console war. Additionally, it would upset the partners like Astro, Turtle Beach, Mad Catz and others who make high end gaming headsets with this unique feature. Maybe Microsoft has some IP in this field and could roll their own, or they could negotiate a reasonable license with Dolby or another third party to bring this into all Xbox One consoles. This all assumes that the processing load for this feature is relatively light so that it could be added as a simple system software update vs. requiring a dedicated microprocessor.

6) Prioritize Xbox Live sign-in for already-active sessions: I have one console where I game, and one in my living room. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of a game, and then I'm suddenly booting out with a message telling me that I was signed in on a different console. This usually happens because a family member decided to turn on the living room console to workout with the Xbox Fitness app or to watch Netflix. Instead of the console automatically signing out an active session, it should ask the user to choose a non-active Xbox Live ID to sign in. If the user on the second console explicitly asks to sign in with the same ID already being used, the default behavior should be that Xbox Live asks the already-active user for permission to disconnect.  If the already-active user refuses, then the second console should report this back to the second user and offer other IDs to use for sign in. My point is that Xbox Live should honor the active gamer first, and not let anyone who just turned on the second console override the experience for an active session.

7) Low cost, ultra portable console: Before the Xbox One S was announced, I was predicting that Microsoft would come out with a $199 version that would turn the tables and make the PS4 look "expensive," and make the Xbox One obtainable by a much larger audience. My guess was that they would take out all the features that were not core to the gaming experience:

• Eliminate the dedicated Kinect connector
• Eliminate the HDMI input and video overlay feature
• Eliminate the Blu-ray drive (digital downloads only)
• Fewer USB 3.0 ports (can always use an external hub for more)

If such cost reduction could drop the price to $199, I imagine this gets it to a price point that we'll see a lot more of them under Christmas trees during the holiday season. For myself, I'm keen to have a console form factor that is so small that I can easily take it with me when traveling or for LAN parties (yes, these are still a thing). The Xbox One S mostly gets there with its 40% reduction in size and elimination of the external power brick. Of course, this would all be unnecessary if Microsoft made it possible for a Windows laptop to be able boot into an Xbox mode like I suggested in a previous blog post.

8) OTA broadcast DVR: This has been a hot topic from the Windows Media Center (WMC) community, ever since Microsoft discontinued WMC with Windows 8, announced they would bring DVR to Xbox One, then put this feature on hold. The Xbox One already support USB OTA tuners, a channel guide, and live TV pause buffering. Going the final step of enabling full DVR functionality to record broadcast TV shows is logical, and would enable me to also replace my occasionally crashy Windows Media Center PC with a stable living room device. And if you project into the future, traditional broadcast TV is well on its way to being replaced with video streaming apps that support live TV (for sports and news) as well as watching shows on-demand. Given this direction of the market and the tangential benefit of a DVR to a gaming console, I totally agree with Microsoft's decision to prioritize gaming feature over this, because that is what their core user base wants.

Microsoft & Xbox FTW (For the Win)

In my previous article, I described the steps that Microsoft is taking to bridge the gap between the Windows PC and Xbox app platforms through the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). But the problem with this approach is that it's still fully at the discretion of the game developer to go down this path. Without a major incentive to totally relearn all of their tooling and software development workflows, the game developers will stick to the status quo and write for PC or Xbox as separate and distinct platforms. I propose that Microsoft create a bridge to the UWP bridge that provides a benefit to the gamers who are faced with choosing between playing on a console or a PC.

Double Your Pleasure

1) Enable the Xbox console to function as a standard Windows 10 PC.
Every Xbox has the same basic architecture of a Windows PC: an x86 CPU, a discrete GPU with VRAM, 8GB of system RAM, storage, HDMI output, wired & wireless networking, and several USB 3.0 ports. Sounds like a PC to me. Imagine how much more likely would a parent or gamer would be willing to spend $300 on a console if it could also double as a respectable PC that lets them play "real" Minecraft, Counter Strike:GO, League of Legends, and other PC exclusive titles, along with doing homework, surfing the web, etc. Image how many PC gamers would choose to buy Scorpio instead of a traditional desktop, knowing they are getting the graphics power of an NVIDIA GTX 1070! This could be conditioned upon the user buying an external USB hard drive to hold the secondary Windows 10 OS and programs, and even limiting the ability for the user to change certain OS configuration settings (e.g. only support the Edge browser and Bing search), but it would still be a steal compared to buying or building your own PC.

Upside: This could significantly boost demand for the Xbox One console, now that its value proposition goes well beyond gaming to include general purposing PC computing.  The resulting boost to the installed base provides a funnel for more sales of games, which is the primary monetization engine for the Xbox. A secondary benefit is that Microsoft will gain the ability to monetize console users engaging the Windows experience, such as sales of PC apps from the Store, not to mention Microsoft's own apps & services like Bing, Office 365, and Skype.

Downside: The Xbox hardware is at best a break even business, likely a negative margin business $300.  Console sales are known to be highly elastic (that is, demand generally goes up as the price goes down), plus Microsoft has to price the Xbox One competitively against Sony's PS4. So the profit is made primarily from sales of games, where Microsoft receives a share of the revenue for every game sold (similar to the ink jet printer or razor blade business model). If a significant number of Xbox One buyers purchase the console and use it only as a PC and never buy content from the Store, that would reduce the main profit engine that is intended to offset the margin loss in the hardware. A second downside is that such a low cost PC offering may upset other Windows OEM partners, as Microsoft is now offering a Windows PC that is priced well below traditional market value. Windows thrives from having a heathy ecosystem of OEMs who make PCs at a variety of price points and form factors, so it's important not to lose the OEM partners.

2) Enable Windows 10 PCs to function as an XBox One.
The end game here is to allow a PC gamer to easily play Xbox One games where they are, and on their existing hardware. No need to leave their comfy DXRacer chair and their 27 inch monitor with 1ms response time, 144Hz refresh and GSync. No need to have yet another box that they have to buy and wait over a minute to boot up. Given that most modern Windows gaming PCs have hardware that is significantly more powerful that the current Xbox One or XBox One S, why not let gamers turn their Windows PCs into an XBox console? Microsoft has attempted to bring this virtual  experience to PCs by enabling Windows 10 PCs to stream games from a LAN-connected Xbox One. However, many PC gamers have no desire to buy a hardware device that they consider to be technically inferior to their gaming rigs, and the streaming experience is not the most robust, especially for users who stream via Wi-Fi.

I imagine that the biggest concerns with letting users build their own machines for running the XBox platform are: (i) security and ensuring that the platform cannot be hacked to enable piracy of games or exploits & cheating, and (2) the QA nightmare of ensuring it will work with the millions of possible hardware permutations that the open PC architecture presents. Both of these concerns could be reasonably mitigated by working with hardware makers and only allowing certain "pre-certified" components (namely the motherboard) to support an Xbox One partition that is adequately encrypted with hardware measures like the consoles do now. This option does not have to be a cheap one or widely available in a wide selection of components, as PC gamers are generally willing to pay a premium for high performance hardware with future proofing features. But I bet that some smart guys at Intel & Microsoft who could figure out how to design a retail motherboard that could securely install an XBox One partition that is at least as secure as what the current consoles have. Just to prove the demand, Microsoft could start by partnering with a well regarded gaming PC makers like Razer to offer gaming PCs with the required security hardware countermeasures that make them "XBox Ready," or make it a feature on a future Surface PC.

Upside: This move effectively expands the reach of the Xbox platform but without incurring the financial losses from hardware sales. And with a larger installed base of Xbox One, game developers are motivated to prioritize the Xbox over other platforms with their games, and richer content brings more users coming to the platform, which brings more content, and now we have a virtuous cycle. Sales of content from the Store feeds the profit machine, and Microsoft now gains an opening to financially benefit from PC gamers who traditionally buy their games from third party distribution platforms like Steam, where Microsoft does not receive any revenue.

Downside: There would no doubt be significant engineering work to enable this capability with Windows PCs. The worst case scenario would be having the XBox's security mechanisms compromised, resulting in piracy of game content and hacking that brings rampant cheating into online gameplay. There would potentially be a large amount of QA testing involved to ensure such a secondary platform partition would run reliably on numerous possible permutations of third party hardware. The latter could be mitigated by only enabling this in select pre-configured PC systems.

The Xbox Play Anywhere strategy is brilliant, and is the right end state for Microsoft to have a unified gaming platform that appeals PC gamers, console gamers, and game developers. But it could be a very long time (if ever) that we see game developers embrace it and make Play Anywhere games the de facto release choice. Changing the minds of software developers who currently view Play Anywhere as extra work with minimal gain is the critical path to Microsoft's success gaming. My hunch is that we will see much faster user adoption of this "dual platform" offering, and that it will catalyze the thawing of the wall that current divides console and PC gamers.

The Next Generation of Gamers

It all started 4 years ago when I built PCs for my 2 sons so that they could play Minecraft. Thanks to their avid viewing of YouTubers like PaulSoaresJr, they wanted to start installing mods. I was uncomfortable installing mods that came from questionable websites on our home PCs, so I figured that dedicated machines which could be easily reset was the clean way to go. They split their time playing shooter games like Halo on Xbox 360 with me, and Minecraft on PC. Soon they were playing online matches on Minecraft on servers. Next, they started to schedule online Minecraft playdates with friends, using a speakerphone or Facetime to voice chat with their friends. That led me to get them headsets and Skype accounts so that they wouldn't be yelling into a phone or tablet. For a while, there was clear dichotomy where the Xbox was the platform where I played shooters with them, and the PC a Minecraft machine to play with their friends. But that all changed when I got them Steam accounts.

I thought it would be fun to play games that I enjoyed like Team Fortress 2 and Left for Dead, and we did indeed have some good times with those. Then in the summer of 2015 when my older son was consistently able to hold his own in Halo (i.e. able to get a higher K/D than me), I decided to give him a shot at playing Counter Strike: Global Offense (aka "CS:GO"). CS:GO is probably the most popular competitive first person shooter PC game in the world, with numerous professional e-sports tournaments held around the world. My son was almost 13, and spent the summer immersing himself in the game by watching YouTube videos on strategy, game mechanics, map control, etc, and of course playing and practicing. After he started to play the competitive mode, I was surprised to see the rate at which he advanced in ranking, and was soon playing tough games where he was clearly the youngest player. He hit the rank of Legendary Eagle with less than 200 hours of time played, and was regularly accused of playing on a "smurf" account by opponents who couldn't believe that a person who achieve this rank in such a short amount of time. After having a talk with him about gaming not being a likely career choice (and making him watch the sad documentary "Free to Play"), I offered to help him build his own PC so that he could have a no-compromise gaming experience, and hopefully stoke an interest in PCs in the process.

Today, both my sons spend the vast majority of their time playing on PC, and they are successfully converting their friends to join them in the PC Master Race. In fall 2015, we helped one of their friends build a gaming PC, following by another in spring 2016. Last month, 2 more of my son's friends asked him to help spec out parts to build their own gaming PCs.

I didn't see this one coming. I was sure that this generation of kids would be playing primarily on consoles, which have the obvious benefits of being much easier to use and much lower in cost. How the heck did this happen?  Here are my theories on the contributing factors based off of my observations:

1. It starts with Minecraft as the gateway drug. They may start on a tablet, but kids know that PC is where the real fun is with all the mods, servers, and other features that they see their favorite YouTubers playing. Minecraft can also play just fine on low end laptops, so the barrier to entry is fairly small. Finally, Minecraft is non-violent and positioned as a digital Lego-type creative game, so parents are less fearful letting their kids play it. Brilliant acquisition, Microsoft!
2. Consoles divide, but PCs unify: my sons' friends all have different types of consoles (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Nintendo), and there is no way we'll be able to convince them all to buy an Xbox One. But all of them have a Windows PC that their parents were willing to let them play on.
3. Games are cheap(er): Console games are usually $60, and while the same games start off at $60 on PC, they usually come down to $40-$50 soon after launch. But compare that to Minecraft ($26.95), CS:GO $15, and Gary's Mod ($10). PCs invented the free-to-play model, so games like League of Legends, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, World of Tanks, and Warframe are all free. And don't forget the numerous free browser games like agar.io and slither.io.
4. Network effect: The games my kids play the most with their friends include CS:GO, Overwatch, Minecraft, and Gary's Mod. All of these are highly interactive team based games where coordinated teams will play much better, and I often hear lots of gleeful screaming and laughing when they are playing with friends. You can bet that these guys are talking about that epic game they played at school the next day, and word gets around about how much fun it is.
5. Parents see PCs as productivity tools: Parents who have a negative view about video games are not going to get a gaming console for their child. But PCs have an image of being an educational tool that their kids can learn to code or watch Khan Academy, so they may feel comfortable getting their child a PC is an "investment" in their education.
6. Kids don't fear complexity: I had wrongly assumed that this generation of kids would have no tolerance for learning how to update drivers, configure their audio devices, or tweak a game's graphics quality settings. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they are not deterred by this, and they are pretty good about helping each other out and sharing their individual learnings (e.g. my son will regularly get a text message from a friend asking for PC tweaking advice). Ironically, it's my middle-aged friends who have the low tolerance for complexity, and are thus unwilling to consider gaming on a PC.
7. Kids recognize and value performance: Consoles sacrifice a lot of visual quality to hit 1080p resolution, and it's a noticeable difference when they play a game on console vs. a mid-end desktop PC. These kids understand frame rates, screen tearing, and drool over the latest NVIDIA GPUs. Things like voice chat using Skype is much more reliable, higher quality, and adjustable (i.e. balancing the game vs. voice audio) compared to the voice chat services on consoles. Kids complain about consoles requiring over a minute to boot up and the laggy response of the UI, compared to 10-15 sec boot for a PC with snappy responsiveness.  In short, they have no interest in going to a console after gaming on a PC.

So what does this mean? First, it validates what the reports say: the PC is the largest gaming platform in the world with a massive $32B in annual business that is continues to grow. Compare that to console gaming bringing in around $25B, or the stunning monetization of the top PC games compared to console. Secondly, games are becoming a social platform for kids to play and interact together. Besides the convenience of playing online, we sometime host or have our kids go to LAN parties to play Minecraft or other games, and it's always on PCs, never consoles. They always leave these parties having a great time, and looking forward to doing it again.

I've come to embrace the fact that my kids are PC gamers, while I play mainly on Xbox One because that's where my own friends are (there is a group of dads with whom I play every Monday and Thursday night, and we call ourselves the "Halo Dads" because we started doing this little league with Halo 3).  As a result, I play less with my kids, and I generally have to convince them to fire up the Xbox for us to play together. Basically, these distinct gaming platforms have created a barrier that makes us choose who we play with. Going forward, my plan is to upgrade my desktop PC with a modern graphics card and start playing the same games my kids enjoy, because playing together with them is a special shared experience that is incredibly important to me. Ultimately, I hope that Microsoft is successful unifying the Xbox and Windows PC platforms with Play Anywhere so that I can simplify my gaming setup with a single machine, a unified game library, and the freedom to play with both my own family and the Halo Dads.

Xbox One: Almost 3 years later

Up through the summer of 2016, the PS4 has been handily outselling the Xbox One at a ratio of almost 2-to-1. I believe this was due in large part to a disastrous E3 2013 launch that revealed 1) the console's higher starting price point, and 2) a marketing focus to be a mass market media device for non-gamers.  While Sony's E3 launch was laser focused on gaming, Microsoft's event spent a significant portion of the time demonstrating things like its ability to watch broadcast TV and the Kinect's ability to support hand gestures and voice commands. The moment they announced that it would be priced at $499 ($100 more than the PS4), the audience reacted with an uncomfortable pause, and a subdued applause that reflected palpable disappointment. To make matter worse, there was also a requirement to be connected online to even solo campaign games, and no ability to trade-in or share game discs. Just 9 days after E3, the Xbox boss issued a public statement to announce that the latter two policies would be reversed. 12 days after that, it was announced that the same Xbox boss was leaving Microsoft to become Zynga's CEO. That's a rough a way to start off a new product launch.

Things continued to be rough for the Xbox One over time:

• Feb 2013: Sony announces Destiny will have Playstation exclusive content.
• Aug 2014: Benchmarks show PS4 hardware slightly more powerful than Xbox One.
• Nov 2014: Halo Master Chief Collection launches, but turns out to be unplayable due to severe online multiplayer matching bugs. It was not until the April 2015 patch that the game had a robust multiplayer matchmaking experience.
• June 2015: Call of Duty Black Ops 3 announced as a "Playstation first" title, a privilege that Xbox had held for the last several Call of Duty titles.
• June 2016: Call of Duty Infinite Warfare announced as again being a "Playstation first" title.

But there is a silver lining:

• Mar 2014: Phil Spencer officially promoted as new Xbox chief. By all accounts, he has done everything right and has regained the trust of Xbox players.
• June 2015: Microsoft announces backwards compatibility of Xbox 360 games at no cost, along with a sizable list of supported games.
• Oct 2015: Halo 5 releases with a fairly flawless online experience.
• March 2016: Microsoft announces opening up Xbox Live service to support cross platform play, including other consoles.
• June 2016: Xbox One S and the beastly 4K-capable Scorpio announced.
• July 2016: 343 reveals that the Halo 5 has the highest monthly active player count since Halo 3.
• Sept 2016: NPD Group reports that Xbox One outsold PS4 in July and Aug 2016.

The last point that the XBox One actually outsold PS4 for the last 2 months is what I find most intriguing, given the historical 2-to-1 volumes between the two consoles. My guess is that this is due to the "Osborne Effect" that cooled down PS4 sales while consumers waited to hear about the rumored PS4 Neo, along with aggressive pricing and compelling new upgrades that increased demand for the new Xbox One S.

So what does the future hold for Xbox?  It's main competitor, PS4, has a lot still going for it: a big installed base of players who are telling their friends to get one and play with them, a healthy lineup of titles with exclusive or early release content, a cost-effective virtual reality offering, and Playstation Now, an innovative app streaming service to support PS3 games.

My personal take: Xbox One will make a come back. It might take a few years to make up for the gap in the PS4's player base, but Microsoft is not merely chasing after Playstation players. Microsoft has a unique approach and player base that they are tapping to be the dominant gaming platform: PC gamers. Think PC gaming is dying? Intel thinks there are 711M PC gamers in the world, and the Entertainment Software Association puts it at 1.2B. The PC game Dota 2 had an $18.5M tournament prize pool in 2016, compared to Call of Duty's (console) tournament purse of $1M.

The Xbox One and Windows 10 now run the same app platform, enabling game developers to make Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games that can run on both. Xbox Play Anywhere further allows games to be bought once on either the console or a PC, and entitled to played on both with seamless roaming between devices. The Xbox and Windows Stores have merged to unify what used to be two distinct gaming environments. Unlike the old Microsoft who might have taken a draconian approach, Microsoft is doing this in a way that gives choice to the game developers and the players.

For developers, they are free to choose to participate in the unified platform that lets them author once and sell to a much larger customer base through a single store. This means making the move to authoring as a UWP app, publishing in the unified Xbox/Windows Store, and if they choose, enabling cross platform play for online players between PC and console. Or they can keep going old school, authoring for Xbox and PCs with separate dev teams, or only one platform with a smaller customer audience. Perhaps the only downside of UWP is that game do not have the opportunity to double dip by selling two copies to players who want to play on both PC and Xbox, but the number of players who would do this is very small.

For the gamers, they simply go about doing things the way that they've always done: buy their games, and play where they want. The only difference is that games that embrace Play Anywhere might have players mixed from both console and PC matching up. Again, this will be up to the developers to enable cross platform online play, and I'm sure they will be sensitive about ensuring it will be an even playing field where players on particular platforms do not receive inherent advantages.

Microsoft is leading developers and gamers into this new unified world by launching their popular first party games Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, and Halo Wars 2 as Play Anywhere. Partners have responded by announcing another dozen games added to the list.  On Sept 8, 2016, 343 Industries released the Halo 5 Forge for Windows 10 as a free app, which not only allows users to design their own maps, but to also play online with other PC players to test the maps. While 343 has not confirmed making Halo a Play Anywhere title, this seems to be a strong hint towards that direction. As someone who was originally a PC gamer and became a console gamer through friends who recruited me to play Halo, it excites me to no end to think that I might be able to play my first love on my gaming PC rig, with a diverse and larger community of gamers.