Your TV is an Xbox. Your computer is an Xbox. Your phone, your old Android tablet, your car's infotainment screen, everything is an Xbox. If Microsoft is right about the future of gaming, your game console could soon be an Xbox, even if it's not an Xbox. It's an interesting idea that raises fascinating questions for the gaming industry .One of those questions is: shouldn't an Xbox play Xbox games? Another is: will it ever be good?
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In this episode of The Vergecast, Sean Hollister kicks off the show by talking about his experience with two new Xboxes: the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X.In a sea of Windows-powered portables, these carry the official Xbox branding and therefore come with high expectations. However, they largely fall short of those expectations. Which makes us wonder: is Microsoft's vision for the future of gaming the right one? And even if it is, can Microsoft deliver on it?
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Next, Hayden Field joins us to discuss some recent controversial studies that seem to suggest that AI is making us dumber. This kind of worry always arises with the advent of new technologies — people thought the newspaper was the end of civilization, and then they thought the same about radio, television, and a thousand other things. Is the backlash against AI just another series of moral panics, or are we making a cognitive error by transferring our thinking to chatbots? The science is still in its early stages, but it’s already interesting.
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Finally, Sean returns to help us answer a question from the Vergecast helpline about whether hybrid computing, an idea that's been around since 2012, could be the future of computing. Why have multiple devices when you can have one device, in multiple places?
