Partially agree. The series as a whole fully agree, game by game is iffy
XC1 can absolutely stand alone and really needs you to go in blind
XCFC doesn’t make sense without having played XC1
XC2 again can stand alone but you’ll catch some story stuff sooner if you’d played XC1
XCTTGC makes no sense without XC2
XC3 is this bizzaro mess I’m still not sure what the fuck happened but I think it does need XC1 and 2 background knowledge
XCFR retains XC3 heavy reliance on the previous games, but cranked up to levels that makes the Star Wars sequels seem almost reasonable
Realistically no. The support needed to manage the devices we all use is just insane, and I think a lot of people take for granted how the x86 platform has evolved over the last few decades. The ARM landscape does not have the standards set that x86 does and that will always hold it back. Qualcomm learned long ago that it’s within their best interest to be constantly changing the SoCs and never really documenting/supporting them very well because it forces all of the downstream vendors to do constant refreshes. Toss in the development hellscape my fellow programmers created ourselves and we get the vicious cycle we’re in today where Google saying they’ll support a device for longer than a few years was the headline sales pitch
-typed on a Pixel 8 which was purchased due to that sales pitch