I end up buying a lot of the gamepass games on steam. If I like the game, I wishlist it and scoop it up when it gets to the bargain bin price of like $5 - $20.

I like the versatility of the steam library. I can play them on handheld pcs like my rog ally or steam deck but also on android devices with game native, droiddeck, laptops, my desktop, mini pcs etc. Maybe even the next xbox.

Xbox was teasing a future I really liked but now I am waiting to see if they actually deliver on that before investing too much more in my xbox library.

Jez from Windows central is also saying their sources indicate 2029 at the earliest.

https://x.com/JezCorden/status/2117714591673164221?a=uKSvJkVtMAyWjIBshc4&s=19

Well, I guess im dropping back into Halo infinite for a while. I love this game.

Not launching on gamepass killed any interest I had in the franchise. Its an easy skip every year.

This game is still at least 2 years away according to Jez and Jason Schreier. Jez tweeted that he is hearing that 2029 is the target.

Releasing the game 11 years after announcing it would be insane.

@MasterChiefoftheEast "trimming the fat" lmao. She is gutting it. Cut 20% of the workforce, with more to come. That is not fat trimming that is a drastic downsizing. If you thought xbox studios were not producing games, just wait. It will get much worse.

Wouldn't the easiest way to dispute this figure be to say what the actual cost of gears was? Their spreadsheets must be more detailed than a single entry of total expenses.

The original leakers within the coalition or xbox clearly wanted the public to think it cost $500 million to make e day. Why? Disgruntled employees, excuse for more layoffs, excuse for multiplats triumphant return? Maybe it will become clear in the future but in the meantime the narrative will continue to be that gears cost a whole lot of money and didnt perform very well. Not saying "actually this is what gears cost" seems to confirm that narrative.

I was hoping it would be a top down gta clone. Playing Chinatown wars recently made me want more of that.

It seems like Rockstar would be able to have a small team work on those style games with a relatively small budget/dev cycle. They could even throw a few red dead ones in the mix.

With game budgets so high, it is probably best to look at games like madden for inspiration (never thought I would say that). They should be looking at shared assets making up a lot of the next projects. Focus on having multiple fallout games on the same map, etc. They just had Gears: year 0, now they can make Gears: year 20 with mostly the same world carried over.

The quality of games might take a hit with repetition but the alternative seems to be for them to go back to having just a couple of studios, the "xbox has no games" era.

We see canceled games, closed studios, and thousands of people that make the games we love fired. Xbox sees "progress."

They are correct that star wars battlefront 3 is a much safer bet than mass effect. Still hate to see Bioware go.

@Yomv7t but nintendo could be doing better. And as we have seen in the past, they are not immune to awful console sales. Some of the best games they ever made were exclusive to the failed wii u.

Exclusivity will always equal less players.

@RTGX expect more sales reports like gears e day then. I hope they keep coalition around to make another one after this.

Whatever the number is, the game did not recoup it.

Having a finished ps5 version and not releasing it was a really stupid decision.

@RTGX tell that to the crowd playing nintendo games on every device but the switch. Loads of people willing to pay for the game if nintendo would let them. Think how much better splatoon would be if it had call of duty's player count.

Nintendo is leaving money on the table and games/gamers are not getting the full potential. Exclusivity always equals less players.

@strzelec I dont want exclusives, they make gaming worse. Gears e day is the perfect example of what a cancer exclusivity is.

Another iconic xbox franchise with a murky future. Hopefully forza motorsports lives on but I am doubtful.

Circana’s Mat Piscatella summed up the exclusivity push perfectly.

“Saying Gears is going to be exclusive hasn’t made any difference in terms of the hardware trend. In fact, it keeps getting worse.

Everything they’re doing seems to be getting Twitter likes from the most passionate part of their fan base, but other than that, in terms of actual results, I’m not seeing anything right now. And I’m looking really hard

We can probably forget about Disney licensing any more of their IP to xbox.

Im the opposite. I am not buying anything on xbox until I see what the deal is with the Helix and handheld. Are they really going to be $1800? All digital (handheld obviously will be)? Will it be a closed eco system or something more consumer friendly? Will this pay by the hour scheme they implemented on cloud get worse? Are they really going to give us in game ads? What will the "reimagining" of gamepass look like?

I dont feel comfortable buying on xbox with so many questions regarding their future.

There have been some very cool things with this already. Not only are the games available in newer convenient places, they are often getting more features than the original games had. A Halo 1 recomp has 128 multiplayer, I saw someone add signature moves to WWF Superstars 1 and 2 for the gameboy which the originals did not have any signature moves.

This is really exciting news for old games. The possibilities are endless for what this can update about old (or new) games. Adding mini maps or waypoints to old rpgs, adding Jordan to old basketball games, real car models to games that made up fake cars etc.

@Roxion I buy an absurd amount of games so I am not solely on gamepass. I think they lost the message when they won't put their own game in the service, make you pay by the hour for cloud, etc. They are ruining the best thing they had.

Its a nice way to try games, there are so many cases of games I never would have tried that ended up being some of my favorites. Don't sleep on the 20% discount on purchasing games in gamepass either. Buying 2 games at 20% off more than covers the cost of a one month sub. Then you can try out some of the other 400 games for a month.

@Schonks the "ultimate" tier doesnt seem very ultimate to me....limits you to 30 min per day of cloud streaming, not all xbox games are included, we get them on day 6 because they want to milk us for an extra $20 to play it on the true release date. They be scamming.

Im not playing any xbox 1st party games that skip gamepass.

After seeing the failed Netflix negotiations, I wonder how seriously xbox is trying to "save" the studio. I wouldn't be surprised if they are sticking a ludicrous price tag on it and waiting to shut it down like they always wanted. Find someone dumb enough to overpay or get what they originally set out to do. Win-win for the spreadsheets, big fat L for gamers.

Wreckfest 2
Bioshock 2
Gta Chinatown wars DS
Zelda tears of the kingdom.

Annual call of duty movies coming soon. Think of all the COD and minecraft content you will be able to consume.

What makes people think xbox is not also in cost control mode? Have they not been watching xbox for the last 2+ years? They are still in the middle of gutting xbox studios and there are more layoffs coming. There is zero chance that they turn around and start buying more IP/studios. Xbox fans should be more worried about which xbox IP/studio are at risk of being cut next. Xbox is struggling to save its own games right now.

Terrible name but looks kinda cool.

Imagine the future price increase announcements when they have to list 25 different perk prices compared to their old prices and how that affects the bundle prices. Not to mention how every region will have their own prices and some will and won't get each price adjustment.

@Shmoo the sister site that focuses on steam (steamhype) is even better. Every single article is just "check out this cool game we found." Its refreshing to just read about games and not what a dozen ex executives think every time one of the mega corps make a new spreadsheet decision.

@Millionski I think it should be like steam deck/ steamOS. It has the full desktop experience but to get there, you have to exit the console like front end that it boots to. It gives a nice compromise to people who want ease of use and those who want to mess around with other pc stuff.

@Weebleman yeah that where i have been pod racing too. They have a good selection of games on there for something that's just included with a prime membership.

Its sad when Amazon's Luna is more attractive than xbox cloud gaming right now. They really killed one of the better features xbox had.

This is a bummer. I thought vielguard was fun. I enjoyed the 40 or so hours it took me to finish it. I liked the older ones a little more but that's true about literally every franchise that i played 20 years ago.

@GuyinPA75 this is a nice hypothetical scenario of a total collapse coming from nowhere but the likelihood of a total collapse is next to nothing. Odds are they will continue to be a trillion dollar company now and far into the future.

His job is very safe right now. Microsoft has been very successful for the entirety of his role as CEO.

How can you claim he has stopped all innovation at microsoft while also claiming he put all the eggs into the cloud and AI baskets? Those are probably the most innovative fields to be in at the moment. Its not a coincidence that all major tech companies are putting a lot of resources into these fields. Everyone agrees, they are a huge part of the future of tech.

Ideally it would boot into the console front end but would have a desktop mode to access the full windows side.

@GuyinPA75 I think microsoft and their investors would disagree strongly with Microsoft being better without Satya Nadella. Their stock price was roughly $40 per share when he became CEO in 2014, now it is $529.44 per share.

Its hard to say if xbox would be better off with or without microsoft. Obviously it would depend on the group buying it but there are advantages to being under microsoft and there would be advantages to not being under microsoft.

I hope it runs windows so I can play more games on it. If it only runs xbox store/games, then I will gladly save the $1200 or whatever. I dont see how that can compete with the versitile handhelds already out there that can run all the pc stores, xbox included. Same goes for Helix, I will happily skip that if its a closed ecosystem.

I imagine there will be unofficial methods to get other pc apps working like on SteamOS but official methods are always better.

Coordinating which knick knacks to include in the expensive collector edition boxes which include a download code.

Not much left to protect the code in a plastic box for your DRM required entitlement.

Its kind of absurd that there is this 'dont ask, dont tell' mentality towards AI in games. Almost all new games are being developed with AI in some compacity but people still freak out when one is revealed to be using it in even a minor circumstance.

We can expect long, vague posts from xbox leaders.

We celebrate the past, look forward to a bright future yada yada. We will continue innovating on hardware yada yada. We're laying off hundreds more employees.

Flight sim 24 was the probably the most impressive on series s.

I hardly touch my series s these days.

Wreckfest 2 has its hooks in me. Great online community there. This is looking like my regular multiplayer game for the foreseeable future.

Otherwise I am getting close to the end in Zelda tears of the kingdom. Also playing through GTA Chinatown wars on a ds clone. If I finish totk soon I might have time to start gears e day.

I hate the idea of making any game exclusive. They benefit the consumer in no way, they often do irreparable harm to the franchises. If I had my way, they would be on every platform and store possible.

Returning to exclusives when the console costs nearly $1000 and still going to rise more seems like such an obvious mistake.

If it was releasing on gamepass I would be excited. I dont see myself playing this one.

@theduckofdeath remastered games will probably be coming out at a rapid pace in the near future. The interesting thing will be how they approach the fan made ones.

This quote is impressive as this whole thing revolves around using AI almost exclusively but she never mentions AI. This new division might as well be called xbox AI Lab. She has good PR skills to avoid using the actual word while the entire message is about AI.

I was wondering what xbox thought of the Halo1 recompile (which I am having more fun with than the actual halo 1 remake). Not only does it have the multiplayer, it has 128 player multiplayer.