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@Grumblevolcano the helix is very likely to not have a disc drive or support physical media in any way.

The "outrage" over that playstation decision is blown out of proportion by X users and bots. Circana has shown no noticeable change in playstation users gaming behavior since the announcement.

Xbox should not expect a mass exodus to their platform which has been pushing people away from discs for over a decade.

I dont like getting ripped off so no, I will not be getting the "premium" edition.

I will be at the hunting cabin for the next 9 days with only a few handhelds available.

Zelda: tears of the kingdom (switch 2)
Final fantasy X (odin 2)
Wreckfest 2 (steam deck)
Sonic frontiers (steam deck)
TheHunter: call of the wild (steam deck)

@Banjo- taking games off of steam has not worked for any other pc store. They all went back in the end. Xbox would be foolish to follow ubisoft, EA, etc down that route. It would surely lead to more game failures and less xbox owned studios.

@Banjo- nothing says system seller like bringing the Windows store to console. They must have the market research to see that no one willingly uses the windows store.

I am confident that the community will find a way to bring steam, epic, gog to the helix regardless of xbox's intentions just like the Steam Deck. But I still think they realize that going down the same old path against nintendo and sony will be another losing battle. I think they will stick with the plan of the console being very similar to Rog Ally X.

@Banjo- im just asking for access to other pc libraries not the actual storefronts (but would very much welcome the actual stores).

Asha did promise helix will play our pc games.

"Great start to the morning with Team Xbox, where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console,” Sharma wrote on X. “Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games."

If it can access other pc libraries (as promised) and gamepass still has day 1 games, I will buy the Helix. Even if it is $1200+, I am in with these two features.

Otherwise I will find another product. I have a feeling "pc home consoles" are coming from a wide array of companies like pc handhelds recently blew up. I should be able to find something that meets my needs if xbox cant.

I liked control 1 a lot when it launched. I replayed it a couple months ago to hype myself up for this game but I hated every second of the replay. Now im on the fence for this one.

I have never had a case like this where my second playthrough was so much worse to where I am now sour on the franchise.

There is a decent future with digital only games but we are nowhere close to that right now. Full drm-free ownership with ability to resell digital entitlements will get us most of the way there.

There is no scenario where I subscribe to game pass without day 1 releases. It would be an instant unsub the second they announce it.

Without gamepass, I wouldnt really see a reason to be on an xbox console. So I guess my future on xbox rides on this one decision.

Having pc stores on xbox makes the device stand out from a ps6 or switch 2. If a few exclusive 1st party games is their only differentiating feature then it will be another generation in the dumps for xbox.

Without day 1 releases, I would not subscribe to any gamepass tier. I wouldnt even consider it.

My opinion of xbox is reaching record lows. I might end up making a clean break after this gen.

Im certainly not going to be making purchases on xbox until the picture is clearer on what their future looks like. Buts its xbox, they dont make anything clear.

Xbox customer support is pretty terrible though. When I was getting billed for two different tiers of gamepass after upgrading to ultimate, I was yelling at the AI bots for hours. I had the toughest time getting them to transfer me to any human.

Its somehow even more frustrating knowing that other people got a direct line to the ceo.

Announcing games now that are targeting 2029 and 2030 is way too early.

I wonder if Sony pulling out will finally open kojima's eyes. Making weird,niche games is fine but craming them full of celebrities and massive budgets is not a good financial investment. If he continues down this stretch then funding will be hard to come by. In todays climate, he either needs to reign in the budget or make safer games.

Amazon is also giving away the enhanced Doom1+2 this week for GOG. Available now.

@Fishmasterflex96 if it doesn't work then why is it still a thing? Microsoft are pros at pulling the plug on things. Why haven't they done so here?

I think they view it as a success.

@fatpunkslim I think the linear limitations of Wolverine are have more to do with the character and source material than budget. They cant really have wolverine web slinging across an open world map like spiderman or jet packing like iron man. What are the other options, drive cars? It had to be a linear, cut-scene heavy game.

I doubt this Kojima game was announced day 1 of development. It was likely in the works for awhile before that date, probably at least a year or two. Kojima likes to hype the games up for years before release but they should not have announced this game yet. It still might not see the light of day judging by how development is going so far.

I don't think its accurate to say gamepass "didnt work."

Did the growth plateau? Yes but its still 30+million people paying for the service. Its still THE gaming subscription, no other subscription really compares to what gamepass offers.

Any thoughts that it would be the only way to consume games was never going to happen.

Huge shout out to Kojima for not caving to the stupidity of permanent exclusivity.

It would be interesting to know what the budget is under xbox. Apparently sony canceled it due to it already being over budget with years left of development.

It also sounds like it won't be an xbox exclusive as playstation would have only been able to secure timed exclusivity. Another reason sony aborted the project.

At least we know the game won't be a full xbox exclusive. A new report says sony wanted to cancel this game because it was already overbudget and because they would not have full exclusivity, only timed exclusivity. It also notes that neither death stranding game met their sales expectations.

@StoicSlab xbox is in safe mode too. I think they might be blinded by the Kojima name here. Or maybe this is the excuse xbox is looking for to cancel the OD experiment.

These two Kojima games go against xbox's desire for big safe games. I dont like their chances of success, especially if xbox thinks they sould be exclusive.

Not necessarily good news. Sony wanted out for a reason. They either dont like the game or dont like its chances of success.

Im surprised xbox is still funding OD in the current no risk environment. Im still expecting them to pull the plug on that one at some point.

It seemed strange that the heavily discounted ubisoft games wouldnt particate in the disc to digital. They practically give their games away after a couple years. Glad it was just a delay.

Ps3 emulation has gotten to the point where many standard USB blue ray drives can read and play the disc. I hope xbox discs will work soon. Emulation might ironically save physical media too.

Sounds like you really have to go out of your way to have anything spoiled by any of this.

Im not a huge fan of either franchise. It looks like I will have an entire month to focus on old games.

I did get a switch 2 before the price hike but only have mario kart and all my switch 1 games. I'm going with fire Emblem instead of Zelda remake tho.

This game looks incredible. It won't take much to pass FH in terms of narrative. FH is one of the worst narratives out there.

Like all racing games, it will live and die by the gameplay. If the driving is fun then the game will be good.

I have 248 physical games between xbox1 and seriesX. I will try to convert most of them so they are playable on my seriesS and maybe pc. Some that are still sealed might stay sealed.

@strzelec classy

It looks decent, much better than kiln.

Classic xbox to give out mixed signals.

Im thinking about canceling again. Might as well at this point and see what price im offered. Worst case, I just stay unsubscribed like I am considering now.

Reviving a game that was canceled for non budgetary reasons (it was bad) is not a good idea when so many quality games cant be made in the current climate.

But xbox has a habit of making terrible decisions so maybe they will revive it. They could even make it exclusive so it is even more likely to fail.

If platinumgames is so keen to bring it back, then why dont they fund and publish it themselves? Rebrand it if they dont own and cant buy the valueless IP.

Why are the 3 platforms in such a heated competition to be the worst company possible? Is that the real console war?

@strzelec its going to be hard for them to increase the focus on consoles when the prices are this high. These current systems will probably hit $999 in the next year, ps5 pro for sure will. I cant imagine what next gen consoles are going to cost and how many people will pick them up.

Its not a good time to be a plastic box under the TV. But it sounds like being a cloud gaming app on the tv is also going to be expensive now.

If its anything like the playtime counter in the xbox app, this will not work very well. I played a small indie game called Wheel World for a couple hours one time and the xbox app says I played it for over 200 hours. Even though i turn my pc off every night, it still somehow logged over 200 hours as playtime. Imagine it saying you reached your time limit on day 1 of the month because you or it didnt quit properly.

Waiting in the cloud gaming queue just to play for 30 minutes a day doesn't sound like my idea of paradise.

I have a feeling a cloud only but unlimited tier is coming to gamepass.

Otherwise, If cloud gaming is your thing, then I dont think xbox is for you anymore.

Everytime xbox makes a consumer friendly decision, they counter it with a policy that is a disaster for consumers.

Ultimate members only get an average of 30 minutes per day??? This is a horrible plan.

Game pass ultimate is not even close to the best deal in gaming anymore. Is it even a decent deal anymore? Probably depends on the user but I am not seeing value there anymore.

Cloud cannot be a big part of the future of the industry if this is going to be the pay structure. Awful, awful decision by xbox.

Imagine buying a "stream YOUR OWN game" title for $70, paying a $25 per month subscription, and still being asked to pay for additional hours to play something you already purchased.

Maneater 2 and metro 2039 were the standouts for me. I didnt see a single excuse to turn on my ps5 in the near future.

I would love another brutal legend but not nearly enough to break my policy of never participating in crowd funding.

If they were to raise $100M, Kickstarter would take about $10M of it. Kickstarter and similar sites are just a bunch of wealthy people making money off of other people's compassion.

Xbox Pc app is working fine for me

I think this game will be great. Hopefully they prove xbox wrong.

Old reports said xbox wanted them to take more time and make this a huge title compared to state of decay 2. This might just go to show the difference between two leadership groups at xbox. Make the best game they can versus take zero risks and lean into legacy ip.

@Llamageddon I dont think that will be an issue if they stick to the pc architecture for the helix. It would be similar to what developers do for steam (which is the current platform where all developers want to be). Develop for the lower system as minimum specs but allow better systems to reach higher resolution and frame rate.

Asha referred to Helix as a family of devices so its looking like there will be a few different xboxs available. Maybe one of those is a disc based one but I doubt it.

Probably means there is a budget model to keep them in the ballpark of $700 while the flagship model costs something like $1200

"Relatively stable 30fps".....relative to what? I'm not liking the sound of that. It must dip in some capacity.

I was already preparing myself to wait this one out for a better price or pass. Im not paying $100 for the full game or $80 for the stripped down version. I might as well wait for pc where I will probably be able to get stable 60+ fps and the whole mod scene.

I dont like the sound of them wanting to package more than a dozen games into one deal. It makes it sound like they are expecting low effort adaptations. Quantity over quality.

With Sony out on physical games, its not like publishers (including xbox) will go through all of the trouble to print and ship discs solely for xbox where physical sales have always been the worst.

Best case scenario, xbox helix is compatible with a USB disc drive that is way more expensive than it should be. It will only be used for back compat and the random limited run title (also probably more expensive than a standard release).

We should all be expecting no disc drive in any capacity. Its the most likely outcome.

I would be interested in the keyboard if it was full size and not 3/4.

I wonder how many they made. I assume its wasnt very many.