I don’t think it’s as black and white as that. Not to say that Microsoft isn’t dubious at times, but it seems they’re trying to weed out dodgy devices here.
Give companies free reign to create third party devices and they’ll create things that can be considered borderline cheat-y, or create things that are so bad that they affect people’s experience of Xbox consoles.
All this error code seems to be doing is requiring third party hardware to go through proper checks to verify hardware.
I mean I get it, it sucks for third party developers to pay a fee to develop for Xbox
But if you look at the quality of third party hardware available on PlayStation, Apple etc, it’s usually at a much higher quality and that gives people a perception that the hardware is better overall, even though Xbox series X and the PS5 are direct competitors.
If Xbox controllers cost $70 and crappy Chinese knockoffs are retailing for $20 and have no quality control, have cheat-y turbo buttons and break easily, they’re losing money that would have done to official controllers and also losing their brand image.
They’re not outright saying that third party devices are no longer allowed, but it does seem they want to manage the quality a little more
You’re looking at this from a “what is good for microsoft” position. You won’t find much purchase for that thought process here. People care more about what is good for consumers and real people over companies.
I don’t think it’s as black and white as that. Not to say that Microsoft isn’t dubious at times, but it seems they’re trying to weed out dodgy devices here.
Give companies free reign to create third party devices and they’ll create things that can be considered borderline cheat-y, or create things that are so bad that they affect people’s experience of Xbox consoles.
All this error code seems to be doing is requiring third party hardware to go through proper checks to verify hardware.
Translated: They want third parties to pay for the “Xbox seal of approval”.
I mean I get it, it sucks for third party developers to pay a fee to develop for Xbox
But if you look at the quality of third party hardware available on PlayStation, Apple etc, it’s usually at a much higher quality and that gives people a perception that the hardware is better overall, even though Xbox series X and the PS5 are direct competitors.
If Xbox controllers cost $70 and crappy Chinese knockoffs are retailing for $20 and have no quality control, have cheat-y turbo buttons and break easily, they’re losing money that would have done to official controllers and also losing their brand image.
They’re not outright saying that third party devices are no longer allowed, but it does seem they want to manage the quality a little more
You’re looking at this from a “what is good for microsoft” position. You won’t find much purchase for that thought process here. People care more about what is good for consumers and real people over companies.