BacklogBrad

I wish them the best but the odds are probably against them.

This game has been in my Steam wishlist since it launched. I will definately check it out on gamepass. Hopefully it will bring back more good memories than bad from when I was working at a grocery store in high-school and college.

Without knowing the figures we cant really draw any conclusion from this. We dont know if there were the same number of each device available or just how many devices sold out means.

Hopefully the product is an overwhelming success but it still seems like a niche product that is even more niche with the price tag.

Im glad I wasn't the only one to vote for massive chalice. It's probably not my favorite one but its a hidden gem and deserves more attention.

Microsoft confirms the email is real and only applies to a few countries. Us and UK not included. The price will temporarily stay what it was for current subs in those countries. They need to provide notice according to laws and that is delaying the eventual price increase. Once that notice period ends they will also see the higher prices.

“Our recent Game Pass update remains unchanged. Current subscribers in certain countries will continue renewing at their existing price for now, in line with local requirements. We’ll provide advance notice before price adjustments take effect in these countries,”

https://www.theverge.com/news/794032/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-price-changes-countries

@ozkrmz expecting any company to release a product that is superior "in every way" than the competing products and is cheaper is never going to end well. You are setting impossible standards and will be disappointed.

Personally speaking, I thought xbox knocked it out of the park with the two different series consoles. Letting us choose if we want cheap or quality hardware was a win. It's looking like even more choices could be on the horizon. But if you want the high spec hardware expect to pay top dollar. Fingers crossed that its under a grand.

@ozkrmz its quite the paradox to expect their next console to be superior to ps6 in every way and also to be cheaper. It sounds like the ps6 is scaling back to avoid being outrageously priced so higher spec for xbox seems very possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have a lower spec and a higher spec again though. Might even be a few more 2nd party xbox consoles too besides Asus Ally.

I got the email saying the price will increase on next billing cycle so US is definitely getting the increase for exisisting customers.

I already downgraded but I'm back on the fence for Ultimate. I might end up going back to ultimate.

Buy it on GOG and play it on the xbox ally.

I've never been a fan of the high end controllers, the value just isn't there with the price.

The standard xbox controller is great and budget controllers are surprisingly capable. Then I have the trusty mouse and keyboard for shooters.

He is probably the best guy to have in the role. In a way he has been too successful in his role and now has microsoft executives fully invested in gaming to the point where their bleed every penny mentality has taken over. Ideally xbox would have been able to just live as a profitable part of the business. Now the accountants got the let's take these users for all their worth model and it doesn't seem like Phil has any choice.

Probably for the best that they went to Gears. They made some great Gears games.

Wouldn't an Uncharted rival just be a Tomb Raider rival which is just an Indiana Jones rival which xbox ended up making?

Hopefully Konami felt the mistake of taking the exclusivity deal and will strive for a multiplat only future.

What will the messaging be when this call of duty does much worse than last years? It will likely fail to reach the sales numbers that 6 did on all platforms, including xbox. Battlefield 6 will be a convenient excuse but I agree with Matt P and think gamepass helped call of duty. I had numerous friends that did not sub to gamepass for call of duty but bought it because a few of us were having fun getting back into COD for the first time in years with gamepass.

I dont expect to hear too many of the "player count" announcements from xbox now that many people said forget it to the outrageous price for day 1 games. It sucks for keeper and the outer worlds 2 but those games are going to get hurt by the lack of gamepass users playing them day 1.

It was always a bad take to suggest xbox would not be making a new console when it is so clearly part of their plan.

They are right to not put all their eggs in the hardware basket but it is clearly still going to be a part of the future for xbox.

It's fascinating that fortnite and a bunch of old ubisoft games ended up being the difference between "best deal in gaming" and bloated rip-off (for me at least).

If you haven't played any of them before, they are some of the best games of all time. But pretty much every one of these games is on sale for $5 or less regularly. I bet every one of them in the current steam sale would cost nearly the same as a couple months of Ultimate. Most gamers have played the ones they want already.

For me this does not add any value to the service. I would rather it not be included. It's inclusion and the price reflection is a major reason why I am no longer an Ultimate subscriber.

It's not a remake or a remaster, its a playstation/switch port. Im sure they will have some sort of visual improvements on top of the visual improvements they already did but this is bottom line just a port to other consoles.

Hopefully the recent track record of these ports holds and the improvements will be free to those who own master chief collection.

Can't really say too much until they actually announce it (if they announce it). I wouldn't mind if it turns out to be watch 2 minutes of ads at the start and every hour. It's very hard to see 5 hours per month as the cutoff if there would actually be a limit to how many hours per month.

It brings up an interesting situation if you are in a multiplayer game. Do you get kicked right at the moment its ad time? Does it pause the game for everyone or just you while you have the ad break? Etc.

But we need to keep in mind that the only constant with xbox is change. Whatever they decide with this will likely evolve over time or change drastically one day.

It's one of the best games of the last few years. An absolute gem.

Won't be playing it on gamepass tho.

The GP ultimate price hike took the wind out of the sails for me. Looks like I won't be able to play it thru a lower gamepass tier and probably not buying it.

Call of duty is no longer on my radar for games coming out this year.

I will wait and see. If these are ID at xbox titles or small indie titles then it won't move the needle much for me.

Ultimate is bloated now in an attempt to justify the price. Im still weighing premium and pc gamepass as the only real options for me right now.

I picked up 10 games to own forever in the Steam Autumn Sale for the same $30 it would cost for 1 month of Ultimate.

I would rather continue to build my Steam library of nearly 1500 games in the seasonal sales than pay monthly for gamepass.

They should let us build our own tier. They bloated ultimate with so much needless stuff. Make each petk an add on to a base subscription.

Steam seasonal sales are the official "best deal in gaming." Key retailers are the unofficial "best deal in gaming." Xbox can no longer lay claim to this.

I have already preemptively switched to Premium ahead of my ultimate expiring late this month. I am still considering switching to just PC gamepass so i can keep playing day 1 releases. I mostly play on pc but it was nice to be able to pickup the same save in the living room on the Series x or on the floating series s with xscreen.

Gamepass Ultimate at $20 was the thing keeping xbox consoles appealing as my number 2 choice of platform.

The theory seems to be to stuff Ultimate with as many perks as possible so they can charge a lot for it. On paper, adding roughly $20 worth of subscriptions and "only" increasing the price $10 seems like a deal. I just dont see who would want all of the ultimate perks or enough of them to pay $360 per year for them.

Hopefully they get to the point where the add-ons are optional increases instead of lumped into tiers. Base amount $9.99, day 1 xbox games +$4.99, Cloud gaming +$2.99, fornite +$2.99, ea play +$2.99, etc. Give us a checklist to build our own tiers.

Ultimate seems like a good value on paper but there has to be very few people that would want every one of the included perks. I dont know who ultimate is for anymore. Don't people who play fortnite enough to want the subscription only play fortnite, why would they want the rest of ultimate?

Ultimate was perfect for me at $20 but they added two services I dont want and it pushed the price to something I no longer want to pay. Im switching to premium for now but might just go with pc gamepass and say bon voyage to console life all together. At least with pc gamepass I can get day 1 releases.

This has to be the most unappealing all 3 consoles have ever been for me and all for very different reasons.

Guitar hero seems like an obvious choice for an Xbox owned comeback. They could have that controller team go wild with limited edition guitars. Go wild with dlc song packs.

Seems like a slam dunk evergreen title. Avoid the new game every year that wrecked the franchise and just have the one forever title on all platforms.

Menace and whiskerwood look promising. I will be checking those out.

I want to see more optimization settings for steering wheels.

I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed it out a month to see if there is more clarity on if tariffs will remain. The supreme court will hear arguments on Nov 5th so a decision would probably be shortly after. Seems like a weird time to release a product, might as well see what happens with that decision first.

Delaying a month would be cutting it close to holidays and they probably already felt tariffs on the already built units but longterm waiting for a resolution on that might benefit them.

One thing that will probably never leak is extended gameplay because they were never able to get to that point in development.

I will look for the bullet point list of reveals afterwards. Might watch the trailer for any that interest me. Im kind of over the whole showcase thing.

@BAMozzy let's be honest, Steam is much more of a threat to take away their hardware sales than xbox and sony is more than happy to send 30% their way for every single game they release.

The idea of them turning down $49 because xbox would make the other $21 does not make sense. Going back to the shareholders, why would anyone invest in a company if this was their thinking?

I do think its only a matter of time especially with spiderman where 'count every penny' Disney holds the IP. I fully expect the big single player games to come to switch and xbox. Those are the ones that would sell the best.

We know playstation publicly complained about the profit margin on their AAA games and we now have evidence that more revenue is right there for the taking. I think the decision has been made for them. Sony execs and shareholders will likely be pressing for more if they haven't already put wheels in motion for whatever games are next.

@BAMozzy I dont think they would consider the fan boy reaction as a pr disaster especially on the Sony side (not playstation side). If you were looking to invest in a company and knew that Sony had this easy revenue boost to every single game they made but they deliberately are not doing that, you're taking your investment somewhere else right?

People on twitter/bluesky dump on these companies all the time. Yet they still put making money first by increasing prices, laying off employees etc. Twitter blowback is not preventing them from doing anything when it comes to their bottom line.

There are like 20,000 games releasing every year. One or two exclusives per year does not have the console selling power that it used to. It would be more beneficial for them to take the 70% from multiplat then just simply cut off people that are not going to move to their ecosystem.

I've been saying this for a while now but its only a matter of time before Sony executives and shareholders force playstation leadership to go way harder in multiplatform releases. Unless Playstation leadership come to that conclusion themselves, it will be forced on them by higher ups.

If xbox and switch ports of games like spider man 1, uncharted collection, ratchet and clank are not being made right now then they are shooting themselves in the foot.

It would be interesting to know how many units have been made before the launch of the xbox ally and the Lenovo go 2. Guessing the demand for such a niche product must be tough. I dont think this thing will sell very much more or less than the other non steam deck pc handhelds.

They probably won't convince too many others that own a pc handheld to convert to this one and people that wanted a pc handheld probably already have one. I think this will be a very cool product that doesn't have much of an audience but that's true of all pc handhelds.

The key is to use mouse and keyboard on console.

@Markatron84 that sounds promising.

I misunderstood the title and subtitle, it had me hoping they fixed the bad combat system. This is just a difficulty setting.

I hated the combat system where it seems like action rpg but once a meter fills up you have to constantly pause the combat and select an action from a menu. Like 10+ times per battle you are fully pausing combat. It would have been better to hotkey those or go with a full turn based combat. It was a bad mix of both genres that didn't work for me.

I didnt hate the combat enough to want a god mode but I did hate the combat enough where I haven't played part 2 yet. Not sure if I ever will.

@GeeEssEff pokopia

The company that patents commonly used game mechanics and goes after every small game that slightly resembles their games is making a blatant Minecraft clone. The Evil Npire strikes again.

Thankfully 3rd party (and 1st party) publishers are seeing how badly exclusives are harming their IP. Multiplatform is the future.

I wish they would go back to one of the weird ones (blood dragon/primal). Not necessarily a sequel to either one but way outside the box.

Far Cry is one of my favorite series. I think a lot of people dont understand that its up to you to make it fun. Approaching every outpost and mission with the same weapon setup and play style is not the ideal way to play.

What a world we made where making an average game means the studio might be shut down while others are intentionally making bad games.

I didn't like part 1 of the remake. It's doubtful I ever play parts 2 or 3. Loved the original though. It's tough to watch such a great 30 hour experience get turned into a 100+ hour bloat fest.

Licensing is one area where the videogame space can improve. Especially from a music standpoint. Do the musicians or record companies really care if a song can be heard in a game from years ago. It's not like people are thinking I want to hear 'Flirting with Disaster' by Molly Hatchet, I better fire up Nascar '98 instead of just streaming it or spending the 99 cents or whatever to own it.

I wish ip holders realized the value of what is essentially free marketing at this point. Is it the worst thing in the world if someone new stumbles onto your music, car, or IP from a retro videogame? Maybe they become a fan and seek out more of your stuff. It's not like Microsoft is going to be laughing all the way to the bank by selling forza 1 or PGR.

I want a dlc that expands on the base building and resource farming. That was so close to being an awesome feature. They could even have a story dlc around building your galactic mining empire.

I liked building the bases and connecting them but didn't feel there was enough reason to go through the trouble of doing it. I only really dug into it on the first playthrough and mostly ignored it on all my new game+ runs.

I won't knock it without trying it (probably wont be trying it). I dont mind the blatant knock-off clone games, more power to them.

I love the franchise and look forward to playing it but waiting them out for a decent sale, probably $20-30.