AccessibleDaydream

This whole breaking news cycle has really convinced me that, as much as none of us have liked the decisions made at Xbox over the last few years, most if not all of them were done by the higher-ups while Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond had their hands tied. It’s sad to see this happen, and I can’t imagine having someone from the AI team be the head of Xbox will lead anywhere pleasant.

All the more glad I decided to move over to Steam the other week now.

Wow, this is bittersweet. For one thing, I haven’t used them in a long time. For another thing, they are how I made some of my first friends on Xbox, just a few months after I got my first Xbox console in 2021, a few of which I’m still really good friends with today, so it’s understandable yet unfortunate to see that the feature is going away. But hey, at least I still have the friends I (literally) made along the way!

Edit: I wonder what will happen to the clubs in Forza Horizon. Weren’t they directly connected to this Xbox social clubs feature? (Or did I just happen to join one similar to a club I was in and not even remember?)

@Cakefish just like the infamous "stay signed in" on Microsoft's websites! It never remembers!

@Markatron84 That's so weird!

@FraserG one of the most annoying bugs I had that never got fixed (before I traded in my series x last weekend, at least) is the one where some game or app would stop working of nowhere or cease to open, so I would try and restart the console, but it would get stuck with the Xbox logo on the console pulsing, and I would have to get up, hold the power button down to force the system off, turn the system back on, hope it doesn't also do the bug where it turns itself off again during the startup process, and then finally be able to use the game or app.

And yes, there's three separate bugs there that aren't necessarily connected, but at one point the middle two bugs were happening once a week or even every week, and I works often end up having to unplug the power cord from the console (and plug it back in after 30 seconds) after each update.

I'm just glad the bug where there's a Microsoft Store update that never completes, and the system is completely useless until you forcibly restart it, stopped happening a while ago.

How can Microsoft be so bad at this?

“To do this, change a setting”

I see Microsoft is still not very good at UI design?

@Millionski the decision between PlayStation and SteamOS comes down to the type of experience you want. Do you like the absolute certainty that things will just work with a console, but just don’t like Xbox or the decisions Microsoft is making with the brand? Go with PS5. You could even get a PS5 Pro if you want the best of the best. On the other hand, if you want to have a console-like experience, but also want a lot of freedom in how the system works, and the ability to customize it to truly make it your own, give SteamOS a try.

@Doomcrow adding on to that last sentence, just this past weekend I traded in my series x and ps5 digital and ordered a steam deck. (I still have my switch 2 for Nintendo games though.) I weighed the decision heavily to be honest, and going forward I think it makes more sense for me to trade the raw power of current generation consoles for the flexibility, customizability, usability, and affordability opened up to me by the Steam Deck and SteamOS. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it once the honeymoon phase wears off, but right now it seems to be the best long term play for me.

Obviously I don’t want the game to fail, but having not been personally invested in the game or how bad it apparently was, I’m worried that the types of comebacks No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk had are becoming some sort of aspirational goal for troubled studios, instead of the default being to ship a game when it’s not only stable, but as polished as it could be on day one.

My Game Pass Ultimate sub expires in the beginning of April, so I’ll be thinking over options. I’m highly considering selling my Series X and PS5 getting a Steam Machine, because I don’t want to pay $30/month, and I’m also just not a fan of Microsoft’s business decisions and consumer hostility as of late. But if the next Xbox is basically a PC, is it a better choice to wait for that than going all in with Steam?

So many decisions.

@oopsiezz @Leopold On the U.S. store right now, the "upgrade bundle" is listed at $60, the "deluxe edition" at $100, and the "premium edition" at $120.

"Back in my day, $60 bought you a fully finished game." Now it only gets you the DLC for a game, on top of having to pay $30 each month forever to play said game. 😭

@Feffster my sub expires in the first full week of April (a year and a half ago I bought a number of prepaid cards, but I can’t afford to do that now).

Great to see more content being released! Campaign Evolved this year too!

If the time will no longer be manually adjustable, does that mean that the 360 will have a c-bomb?

I wish it were available for Switch 2.

Why should we put in the time and effort to grind out a battle pass, when the developers couldn’t put in the time or effort to hand make assets for the game?

It’s not a fair trade.

@themightyant could you explain why going from 45 FPS to 40 FPS works better? Wouldn't it be the reverse?

Wow, Ubisoft can’t even resist putting their subscription on a big discount. (I’m being cheeky here, yes.)

This is a historic moment here, y’all. I don’t really have any thoughts beyond that.

Except for hating the radar in the upper right.

Interesting that it’s exactly one year after the Switch 2 launch…

@Kezelpaso I, too, love to use italics (and strikethrough, and spoilers) for emphasis, lol.

I had so much fun with the beta back in August that I’ve had my sights set on this weekend for a while. Given that the beta was my first experience with Battlefield proper, and that it helped me fall in love with the franchise, going ‘back’ to 2042 in order to get some of the Road to Battlefield 6 rewards was somewhat jarring, but also had some good moments. I now know that I prefer the engineer class above everything else, for example.

I tend to agree with a lot of what @Kezelpaso says in this review, especially Conquest just feeling kind of off and Breakthrough really shining here, and with so much of the content being locked behind challenges (which is great for me as a new Battlefield player, yet at the same time can get tedious even for me, since I end up feeling like I have to play the game is telling me to in order to make any progress with unlocks). Thanks for the suggestion to turn off cross play as well, as there were a number of times where I just wasn’t having a good time due to (probably) players on PC with much, much better aim and reaction than I could ever have. This is why I’m a proponent of input-based matchmaking instead of platform-based!

Finally, and this ties in a bit to my last point, I don’t know if it’s just me not being very good at the game, but I found that the tighter, city based maps (such as Siege of Cairo, Iberian Offensive, or Empire State) were much easier fire my playstyle than larger, more open maps (such as Mirak Valley, Operation Firestorm, or Liberation Peak). I realize some of that may be familiarity from the beta, and some of that is probably individual skill, but it’s still a noticeable difference.

I’d probably go 9/10 on this one, but I haven’t tried the campaign yet, and I’m honestly a bit afraid to after some of the comments on it, though actually playing it myself still could affect my opinion I suppose.

@Kaloudz I am friends with you on Xbox! Thank you for sharing your thoughts friend! ❤️

@Kezelpaso Battlefield is better anyway 😉

This article only has 5 comments after 9 hours…maybe cod rely is dying.

@Kaloudz I've been doing well, yes! We should play a game together sometime!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! As for mine, I think the idea is in the right place (protecting children from content that is harmful to their development, some of which I would argue isn't even really appropriate for adults, but that's a completely different topic), however I strongly disagree with the implementation. I don't think it should be the government's job to decide what is or isn't appropriate, especially since the World Wide Web as a technology was not created by the government.

I don't have any better solution though. I know that, when I was a kid, I eventually got to a point where those dropdowns on, like, Steam game pages didn't mean a thing to me.

Completely beyond the scope of just this, I find it absolutely fascinating how political climates and world governments seem to be moving further left and further right at the exact same time, and yet, outside of those spheres, people seem to be unified in just living life and trying to get by.

It's so interesting. (I got off topic, I know 😅)

@Kaloudz friend, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the age verification thing!

@Kaloudz (hi friend!)

I would recommend the Elite controllers, to be honest. Even though they’re extremely expensive, for my use case (avoiding blisters from clicking the analog sticks, and completely remapping the controller so that older games are still accessible to me) it works wonderfully, and it was far less expensive than trying to make an adaptive controller work for my needs.

My two favorite features are the button mapping profiles, and the adjustable trigger stops, which I mostly use at their shortest and longest.

@Kezelpaso

> Honestly, people are going to be priced out of anything but free mobile gaming at this rate...

That's probably what large companies want, to be honest... it's horrifying how people are being conditioned to actually prefer "free-to-play" games that nickel and dime them by abusing human psychology, instead of the $50/$60/$70 games where you pay once and get everything.

The original Series X from 5 years ago is now $150 more than at launch.

The original Xbox Series S is $100 more than at launch.

For literally nothing new, compared to launch.

Absolutely insane..

Even though this update is for the matchmaking on PC, I wonder if it will have the side effects of improvements on the console side? Sometimes the matching is bugged, and it ends up being very involved trying to find a match.

@nomither6 thus is exactly why there should be options for input-based matchmaking!

Ever since the rewards rework a few years ago, I’ve been completely unable to redeem any points at all because I apparently need a phone number linked to my account, but I can’t link my only phone number because I get an error every time that says, “This alias cannot be added to your account. Choose a different alias."

I don't know if anyone else has had an issue like this? It's so bizarre...

Completely forgot this game existed. Two years later seems like a lot of time to not have had previous match information?

Super excited about that Ranked Legacy playlist! I’ll have to check it out this afternoon!

Some of the Reach maps are so great, too, so this is wonderful!

Edit: I’m sad that we never got a remake of Waterfall for Infinite.

This game just came out, out of nowhere? I remember seeing the announcement in some presentation a year or two ago, and now…it’s just out? What have I missed?

Like I told my friend, it’s a better Mario Kart than the new Mario Kart.

Is it my thing? No, my preference lately is just driving around the open world in Forza, listening to my own music.

But also, Battlefield 6 seems like it will be a better Call of Duty than the new Call of Duty, or even the last few year’s games.

What timeline is this again?

Coming from an outside perspective, as a very casual Gears player, who has played Gears 5 multiplayer a few times a year, Gears 3 multiplayer every few months, but mostly modern Halo, and now Battlefield 4, 1, 5, 2042, and the 6 beta, I’ve enjoyed the prevalence of people being on the mic, i love the pre- and inter- match lobbies, and it’s great Gears fun, but it’s kind of plain (understandable for a straight remake of 2006), and sometimes the lobbies seem to just not work?

Overall, 9/10.

I downloaded the game, and I wanted to play it, but it doesn’t sit easy with me at all that I need to make another, completely different, account to play this game, especially given the developers' ties to China.

I still don’tunder how these companies can get away with shutting down the servers less than 5 or so years later, or in the case of WWE, less than 2 years later.

@CallMeDuraSouka What issues were there before?

What reasons are there for and against trading in my Xbox Series X and just plugging this into my TV with a USB-C to HDMI cable? There are some PC-only games I want to play, but I don’t have a gaming PC, and I can’t justify one when I already have a Mac and my Xbox.

Quick Resume has been pretty much useless to me, I've been all-digital (and a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber) for as long as I've had an Xbox, I can tell the difference between the 4K dashboard on Series X and the "4K" dashboard on Series S, but Switch 2 games running at likely lots than 4K still look beautiful to me.

I'm sure all my Xbox accessories (minus the Seagate storage cards) would work as well, right?

I’m so excited to see what comes of Halo in the future! I love this franchise, and it means, so, so much to me. Even though it’s not great to lose the status and tradition of Halo being exclusive to Xbox, it at least means that our beloved franchise will last beyond the Xbox consoles.

@BacklogBrad hot wheels unleashed also has an incredibly steep learning curve, shockingly. It's not an easy game, or at least it wasn't for me.

@Ricky-Spanish there’s mountains of content compared to even two years ago, since even amidst Microsoft being Microsoft, the Forgers have been able to do incredible things. At least in terms of maps and modes, Halo Infinite has really been saved by the community, and while it’s unlikely that the franchise will ever be at the highs of 2007-2009 again, those of us remaining in the fanbase and sticking with the game are having a lot of fun with what’s there.

@Balaam_ As others have said, it's heavy-handed search engine optimization (SEO). It's the reason why certain types of websites can end up feeling almost homogeneous. It's also the reason why recipe websites have ten paragraphs to scroll through before showing you the actual recipe. And it's the reason that a majority of headlines have superfluous words in the title.

It's very much unoriginal, but at least it isn't outright clickbait-y.

I wish there were a way to stream PC games on the Xbox console.

@dskatter YOU’RE RIGHT! I was thinking of UltraViolet, but I’ve also used MoviesAnywhere since then. What a throwback!

I thought movies anywhere was shut down? I remember using the service with the iTunes movie store back in 2015/2016.

Also, first. (I'm making it a thing again)

I tried going on the insider hub, and I couldn’t see the game under the preview section at all.