In this week's DF Direct Weekly, we spend some quality time with Helldivers 2, get to grips with the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo and say a lot of positive things about the upcoming Penny's Big Breakaway - but discussion is dominated by the big Microsoft story.
The bone of contention appears to be its higher profile exclusives, with the likes of Halo and Indiana Jones mentioned - and that's caused a spectacular backlash, particularly amongst the Xbox influencers on Twitter/X who have relationships with Xbox execs.
The signs point to a change in strategy - the question is, is it going to be an evolution or a revolution? The meltdown from select Xbox influencers, perhaps briefed by people in the know who aren't happy with the change in direction, does suggest that Microsoft is - or maybe was - set on radical and controversial changes. Porting lower profile games isn't likely to be the game-changing strategy that will transform Xbox's fortunes.
In our Direct this week, John Linneman talks about the concept of opening up Xbox's Windows-based operating system to work on more PC hardware, which would be challenging bearing in mind the infinite combinations of components out there. I've put more thought into this idea, but perhaps an interesting step forward would be to tie Xbox OS to specific PC hardware in the handheld space.