At SDCC one year, some of the writers on The Simpsons came by to say hi. They told us something we thought was bizarre at the time, but they would know better than us: that it's okay to use the same joke again but it has to be at least ten years later. The parachute stuff was back in 2002; I think we're in the clear.

I saw a couple videos about the ROG Ally X, and they more or less reflected the obvious concerns - Windows is goofy on something like this. Desktop mode on the Steam Deck is no less goofy. But when they put the X on there I guess it's not unreasonable for a person to think they might have access to their Xbox games on there. I will agree that it seems pretty weird to project into that space without a robust story around how much it is or isn't an Xbox, but when your campaign says that everything from a iPhone to a wild boar is an Xbox, there might be some messaging challenges.

Microsoft was deeply wigged out by Sony's incursion into the living room. Their answer was called an Xbox because it was a Direct X Box. It was a Pentium processor with an nVidia GPU, a DVD-ROM, and a hard drive - that is to say, a bog-standard computer at the time. It was always a branded computer, and after years in the wilderness I don't think it requires any divination to understand that it is returning there.

The portable PC space by now is completely proved out, not by them but by somebody else, and they could become as definitional as they wanted to be here. What they can't do is just Windows but you carry it around. They need a "Windows" in quotes, they need to hold a kind of Battle Royale where every memory resident process is tested and smirked at and judged. They need to pull Windows 11's pants down and spank its bottom until it's bright red. Stop fucking around. Full backward compatibility. It's a pair of handles you use to hold GamePass. Use your draconian size and dark gravity to do something cool. You beat Sony for a generation, you know? Go find those people.

Look. If Nike could brand the calorie, Microsoft can brand gaming on a computer. They just took the really, really long way around the fence.

(CW)TB out.