Not a fan if there’s no direct analogue for people who prefer to only play on one platform and would rather buy-to-own than pay-to-rent. This feels predatory, very discriminatory by nature, as if they’re forceably trying to corral people into a subscription-gated prison that does not benefit the end user but the company vision at the expense of the end user.
Sales are always worth checking in the off chance you can grab a great deal, but more often then not I’ve already own everything that might be listed here. That’s what happens when you buy physical at launch to support the studios you care about and to prevent greedy corporations from exerting too much control over your personal ownership rights.
I think devs having more interest for the Playdate than Xbox cloud gaming is hilarious. I forgot what the playdate was, it’s that little yellow handheld with the crank 🤣
Also, why is PS+ listed here? That’s not a platform, that’s a service on a platform. Even if they stretched the definition so thin that they want to call it a platform, then where’s gamepass? Is gamepass so unappealing to devs it didn’t even make this list? You can’t say ‘oh that’s factored in whe they listed series X/S’ because again, they segregated PS5 and PS+ and they also segregated the Xbox consoles from Xbox cloud gaming. So…where’s Gamepass?
@Questionable_Duck well the good news is Sony will probably actually make an Xbox port before they ever patch the PlayStation version to a proper 60fps 🫠
Edit—wait, forgot these publishers bend the definitions quite far to include anything published by them in the list, as if it’s the same as an in-house first party developed game.
Nintendo as a company does a handful of things, but their gaming division is far and away their focus. Shut down everything else and spin it off and they’d be totally fine.
Sony’s other divisions are either doing mediocre or are tanking, while PlayStation is propping up the company. Close it all down and spin off PlayStation and they’d be fine.
Microsoft is a ~$3 Trillion-ish dollar company with fingers in endless pies, and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Meanwhile, their Xbox division is floundering. Spin off the Xbox brand and it’ll be dead before it hits the ground. This is a management problem first and foremost; and whether you want to point fingers at Phil, Matt & Sarah or Satya, Amy & the C-suite goon squad, this is why the brand is on life support.
@Shinato2024 are you referring to the past few PlayStation years (or the ones when they released multiple exclusive GotY contenders per year)? Or is this an attack on Nintendo and all their exclusive top sellers they practically crank out on an assembly line? It’s…almost as if there’s no correlation to exclusivity and the amount of releases a platform holder puts out in a given timeframe🤔
Dated, but fun. Running around in circles repetitively shooting at other people in multiplayer always felt like a low-IQ thing to me, but the creative level design (particularly when considering hardware restraints of the time) and puzzle like nature to the level progression rewards competent thinking. Fun, but not something I’ll replay on a regular basis.
I think we’ll get a verbal description of the machine’s capabilities, but no actual pictures or even a CGI depiction will be shown. I suspect it’ll see a 2027 launch and we’ll get images shortly before that time (not counting factory leaks which may or may not happen. But probably will).
Reading this article immediately after the one recently posted about the two games skipping Xbox is like hearing about a problem and then learning one of the explanations as to why that problem exists.
Talos 2 has been out since November 2023. The metacritic score didn't all of a sudden shoot up, as if it was a garbage game at launch and only just now became highly rated. Anyone with an Xbox could have bought it between 2023 and now, but this very article is catering toward the countless players who don’t buy games and instead think ‘I’ll just wait for it to hit gamepass’. Now maybe the two cancelled games from the other article were never going to go into gamepass, but that’s immaterial. This is a systemic problem. People are conditioned to ‘wait for gamepass’ and have shown they’re more than willing to do so, and thus games will inevitably end up skipping the platform in favor of prioritizing other marketplaces that they will see sales and profits in.
TL;DR: You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either buy the games you want to play to support the studios, or ‘wait for gamepass’—but don’t cry when they skip the platform.
@DaddyDuder I wouldn’t categorically agree in that there are some astonishingly impressive looking games on series X that are 1440p (or less), and that’s an understandable tradeoff for how much visual detail those games are pushing.
The problem here is this is not one of those games. Highguard doesn’t look anywhere near good enough to be running at only 1440p.
Alan Wake is easily my favorite 360 game (the reason I eventually bought a machine). The Remaster has its issues (no HDR? Are you serious?) but not including an up-res’d American Nightmare was a real missed opportunity. If you’re a fan and somehow never played it, pick it up here. It’s a bit more arcade-y but quite good nonetheless.
I’ll have to take a look at Windows central’s article on the game, since the part clipped and cited here makes it sound like the Xbox version of FF7R is the best ‘just because’. There’s literally zero actual explanation or tangible reason given as to why the article writer makes this claim, which is kind of funny. Here, let me try: “The James Bond films are on multiple streaming services, but the ones one Netflix are quite easily the best versions.”
Xbox’s framerate boost and backcompat programs were the best things they’ve done in the past…I don’t even know how many years, and it’s nice to see other publishers updating their stuff now and then. Still, I wish all publishers put as much effort into this area as Xbox does. Or did.
I’d kill to know how long the battery on this thing would last if left powered up with just a gameboy cart playing. I think I forgot to turn off my original gameboy 35 years ago and I bet it’s still on.
The $200 Collector’s Edition does not even include the game. I’ve decided to hold off until they release a $400 Special Edition with no game or merchandise, just an empty box.
Well written article, but we have diametrically opposing viewpoints.
This is the moped to your family car, a side piece, nothing more than an appetizer to the main course (be that a series X or a desktop pc with some actual grunt). My very first thought was ‘You had to play this thing for 8 hours a day? My condolences.’ I can’t imagine anyone choosing to sit hunched over this mediocre screen when you could be basking in the glory of the same games running and playing better on more capable hardware.
I don’t know, maybe my perspective is too specific. I simply want to have the best possible experience I can afford at any given time while I’m playing a game. I want as few compromises as possible. A portable has one use case, wherein you are physically unable to be where your hardware is and yet still have some available time to play a game. Train, schoolbus, airplane, hotel room, that type of scenario.
I will never understand the type of person who has a console/pc sitting right there and inexplicably chooses to turn this thing on. It’s like leaving the Lamborghini in the garage to take the moped out for a spin 🤷♂️
Reminds me of that classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial, except instead of the joyous union of two awesome things like chocolate and peanut butter it’s like combining two awful things nobody really wants except money loving executives desperately pushing an agenda to strip the end user of all rights.
‘Hey! You got your corporate greed in my comparatively inferior to native play cloud gaming experience!’
My Xbox is mostly full. As someone who buys to own, I have most of my frequently played titles permanently installed. To be fair, there isn’t that much to look forward to in a first party sense, and I do most of my third party gaming on Playstation, so it’s not a big deal to delete something once in a great while to make room.
Definitely the first game. In a strange way the Fable series has mirrored the trajectory of the Xbox brand. The first game was unique, original, and didn’t feel quite like anything else on the market. The sequels tried to broaden their reach and capture mass appeal in a very by-the-numbers way, losing so much of what made Fable 1 so charming. Fable’s 2 and 3 felt watered down, and in addition there were some poorly implemented mechanics and systems on top of that.
All the games on the list look good, but I’d wager only two look so astonishingly gorgeous that they really stand out from the pact. But this is an Xbox oriented website, so I’ll end my comment here.
No big surprise. Both are great games, but one is mass market consumer accessible, one is a hardcore action/rpg with a lengthy story. It takes more than driving around in circles to hold my attention; if the hour tracker is even remotely accurate on PS5 I’ve spent about 4x as much time in Yotei as in Forza.
Hard to say anything bad about this list at all. These are all fantastic games. I fall in the camp of Splinter Cell being a ‘Poor Man’s Metal Gear’, but back then that’s almost all we had as far as tactical espionage action (and when MGS2 eventually did launch, it was worse than the PS2 original☹️).
Good luck suffering through the achievement list, it’s a tedious nightmare of a chore. Loathed the poorly curated list so much over on Playstation I didn’t even bother with Rebirth.
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy—without precisely optimized code there’d be never ending load screens or countless bugs and glitches or a crash to dashboard, and that’d end your game real quick, wouldn’t it!”
First an best memory, and one that sadly died the moment the 360 launched, was of how unique and different that original Xbox was. It didn’t feel like Sega, Nintendo, Sony or any of the brands that fizzled (3DO, CD-i, jaguar etc). It felt utterly unique and like it was carving out its own space. So many og Xbox games captured that feeling, I had so many great experiences.
Then the corporate console launched. The one calculated in board room meetings to target mass market consumers, to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘social’. It was formulaic, by the numbers, like corporate suits checking off boxes they observed from behind a two way mirror. The 360 immediately killed off that spirit of uniqueness and in its place set up a false idol of bland mass appeal, and spelled the beginning of the downward spiral for the brand. Not in sales, obviously, but in the Rocky Balboa ‘underdog’ passion that first machine brought to the fight.
I’m dying to see both the performance metrics and sales figures for this.
Last CoD on a Nintendo platform was on WiiU, so any sales numbers would have been automatically skewed by the poor sales of the console itself. Switch 2 might be brand new, but it’s a much more established system building off unbelievable momentum from Switch 1. It’ll be a far more accurate assessment of the number of fans and interested people on a Nintendo system than WiiU could ever provide.
@fatpunkslim he mentions the timed Xbox exclusivity for FH6 a sentence after the quote you cited. I think it’s more of a general statement, as in PS5 fans can tune in to the direct and see a lot of new info on this great next installment and thus have something to look forward to.
How is series X “the best of the best right now”? There’s no qualifier given. PS5 is cheaper, has almost every exclusive the X has plus many more of its own, and is the de facto 3rd party platform meaning developers optimize titles for it first (translation: X might be more powerful but you rarely if ever see any meaningful difference in real world scenarios).
Short of a few bells and whistles that are an afterthought to the core experience, I don’t see how Series X is “the best of the best right now”. And that’s all without mentioning the Ps5 Pro, which currently has the power crown.
Praying Fable doesn’t pull an Avowed and reappear after so long with a completely different, hideous visual downgrade. If they don’t butcher the aesthetic it had when last they showed it off, I’m quite excited for Fable.
On the other hand, I didn’t even remember what Beast of Reincarnation was, and after looking it up I don’t care at all about that.
@tho_mi To my recollection, all of Sony’s first party single player games are fully on disc and do not require an internet connection to start. That is categorically a “better” way to publish games than any other way, so you are incorrect.
Someone should tell them this is possible with a brand new media format: the disc. Most games will fit entirely on one of these shiny circles, and since they cost pennies to produce it isn’t a big deal to mint two if necessary.
Regarding the controllers—is that it? Is that the only advancement? There is no word in any human language to accurately describe how little I care about anything cloud related. I was hoping future improvements to a first party Xbox controller might include something more game changing like Hall effect sticks, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback or an included internal rechargeable battery.
I never considered Fable as the fourth “pillar” of Xbox franchises. I loved the first game and am really hopeful for the new one, but I’ve never heard of anyone likening it to a tentpole title in the same way as the commonly accepted 3 pillars. Weird
Can we get a piece combining the data mentioned in this article with the cratering console sales from the other article and how it all interrelates? One downplays the relevance of console sales and one highlights the largest revenue rise in years and includes consoles in that metric.
Even after stepping down and taking on much less hands on roles Bill Gates is still far too rich to care, but I wonder what he thinks of the current state of affairs with the gaming initiative he greenlit. I doubt he’s a gamer by any real definition (although he probably holds a controller better than Jim Ryan), but he can’t be too pleased with how things all turned out.
This is glorious. Exquisite. Immaculate. This is a true hardcore gamer, an elitist, a member of the PMMR (Physical Media Master Race). That ai-slop monger Satya has no power here, his greedy fingers can’t touch this bastion of ultimate control representing this man’s hobby. This is what it’s all about folks, embedding yourself into something you love and ensuring it will not be changed or altered without your consent.
This gets a physical release but Indiana Jones and Oblivion Remastered don’t, wtf. And No, a disc with a handful of MB’s on it is not a physical release, it’s a worthless drink coaster.
Kind of excited for Replaced finally being released. When these current gen consoles launched, there were two indie games (one on each platform) I was genuinely interested in: Replaced on Xbox, and Little Devil Inside on PS. At least one of them won’t dissolve into vaporware!
This is insane. Remember, this isn’t a flat percentage taken from a recurring baseline that magically resets each year, this is 40% down from the previous year’s sales figures which were also successively down year over year. In other words it’s like cutting a sheet of paper in half, then cutting one of those halves in half again, and so on and so forth, continuing to cut it in half until you’re left holding nothing but a little speck of confetti.
@Fiendish-Beaver same passion, but couldn’t be more different with the particular types of achievements I prefer. I get no sense of satisfaction from trophies and achievements whose only draw is that they are strictly difficult. That is a complete waste of time.
Creatively thought out and implemented criteria is infinitely superior to ‘foster a competitive spirit and inflate one’s ego’ style achievements. I’ll still complete those since each and every single game on my list will either be 100% completed or I won’t bother with it, but I get precisely zero enjoyment out difficult trophies that are a tedious chore to unlock. They’re about as bad as multiplayer achievements or ones that have you doing mindless repetitive low-IQ tasks like wave survival modes.
Play less live service games (I dabble with one or two now and again as things stand, but I’d like to cut them out entirely).
Buy games only when they’re fully on-disc/cartridge and don’t succumb to fomo and blow money on digital licenses if the physical release doesn’t coincide with launch (happened once or twice and while the games were great, I didn’t feel good about the purchase decision).
Lastly, skip games that have plans to go back post-launch and force in added content that has nothing to do with the core experience of the main game, i.e. the reason I chose to play it in the first place. Specifically referring to extraneous horde modes, wave survival, multiplayer content etc shoehorned in after the fact. This one I’m not sure I’ll be able to fully resist, as some games that fall into this unfortunate category (like Ghost of Yotei) are simply too good to not play.
Fallout 3 remaster drops and it’s a broken mess like Oblivion Remastered. Rumors of a physical version will circulate, prompting the hardcore fanbase to wait it out. The “physical” version will drop near the end of 2026 and will be a worthless coaster with 25MB’s on disc, pissing off the fans. Meanwhile the game itself will have had several patches promising improved performance that will accomplish absolutely nothing, and Digital Foundry will cite Fallout 3 remaster as one of the worst performing games of 2026.
There’s a 0.001% chance of this happening but if it came with a disc drive pre installed which let me play all my old Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox one and Xbox series games offline and without an internet connection, I’d be willing to pay a premium—$1K or even higher.
If they continue to push their greedy, selfish, anti consumer agenda which strips control away from the end user to line their filthy disgusting pockets and the device has no disc drive, I can’t in good conscience pay more than $99 for it. It would become an impulse purchase, a side piece to my actual main method of gaming, and anything over $99 exceeds what it would be worth.
Comments 611
Re: Xbox Begins Testing New Monthly Quest For Microsoft Rewards Users
Not a fan if there’s no direct analogue for people who prefer to only play on one platform and would rather buy-to-own than pay-to-rent. This feels predatory, very discriminatory by nature, as if they’re forceably trying to corral people into a subscription-gated prison that does not benefit the end user but the company vision at the expense of the end user.
Re: When Will The Xbox Lunar New Year Sale 2026 Be Revealed?
Sales are always worth checking in the off chance you can grab a great deal, but more often then not I’ve already own everything that might be listed here. That’s what happens when you buy physical at launch to support the studios you care about and to prevent greedy corporations from exerting too much control over your personal ownership rights.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Ranked 5th In List Of Platforms Developers Are Most Interested In
I think devs having more interest for the Playdate than Xbox cloud gaming is hilarious. I forgot what the playdate was, it’s that little yellow handheld with the crank 🤣
Also, why is PS+ listed here? That’s not a platform, that’s a service on a platform. Even if they stretched the definition so thin that they want to call it a platform, then where’s gamepass? Is gamepass so unappealing to devs it didn’t even make this list? You can’t say ‘oh that’s factored in whe they listed series X/S’ because again, they segregated PS5 and PS+ and they also segregated the Xbox consoles from Xbox cloud gaming. So…where’s Gamepass?
Re: All New Games Coming To Xbox In February 2026
@Questionable_Duck well the good news is Sony will probably actually make an Xbox port before they ever patch the PlayStation version to a proper 60fps 🫠
Re: Here's A Look At The Updated Xbox Game Studios Roadmap For 2026 And Beyond
Why is OD here, that’s not a Microsoft game
Edit—wait, forgot these publishers bend the definitions quite far to include anything published by them in the list, as if it’s the same as an in-house first party developed game.
Re: Microsoft CFO Admits Xbox Revenue Was 'Below Expectations' In FY26 Q2
Nintendo as a company does a handful of things, but their gaming division is far and away their focus. Shut down everything else and spin it off and they’d be totally fine.
Sony’s other divisions are either doing mediocre or are tanking, while PlayStation is propping up the company. Close it all down and spin off PlayStation and they’d be fine.
Microsoft is a ~$3 Trillion-ish dollar company with fingers in endless pies, and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Meanwhile, their Xbox division is floundering. Spin off the Xbox brand and it’ll be dead before it hits the ground. This is a management problem first and foremost; and whether you want to point fingers at Phil, Matt & Sarah or Satya, Amy & the C-suite goon squad, this is why the brand is on life support.
Re: Albion Online Is Finally Making Its Xbox Console Debut After Nine Years
@Shinato2024 are you referring to the past few PlayStation years (or the ones when they released multiple exclusive GotY contenders per year)? Or is this an attack on Nintendo and all their exclusive top sellers they practically crank out on an assembly line? It’s…almost as if there’s no correlation to exclusivity and the amount of releases a platform holder puts out in a given timeframe🤔
Re: Talking Point: Three Years Later, What Do You Think Of The GoldenEye 007 Port For Xbox?
Dated, but fun. Running around in circles repetitively shooting at other people in multiplayer always felt like a low-IQ thing to me, but the creative level design (particularly when considering hardware restraints of the time) and puzzle like nature to the level progression rewards competent thinking. Fun, but not something I’ll replay on a regular basis.
Re: Talking Point: Will The Next Xbox Console Be Revealed In 2026?
I think we’ll get a verbal description of the machine’s capabilities, but no actual pictures or even a CGI depiction will be shown. I suspect it’ll see a 2027 launch and we’ll get images shortly before that time (not counting factory leaks which may or may not happen. But probably will).
Re: One Of Metacritic's Top Games Of 2023 Is Available Today On Xbox Game Pass
Reading this article immediately after the one recently posted about the two games skipping Xbox is like hearing about a problem and then learning one of the explanations as to why that problem exists.
Talos 2 has been out since November 2023. The metacritic score didn't all of a sudden shoot up, as if it was a garbage game at launch and only just now became highly rated. Anyone with an Xbox could have bought it between 2023 and now, but this very article is catering toward the countless players who don’t buy games and instead think ‘I’ll just wait for it to hit gamepass’. Now maybe the two cancelled games from the other article were never going to go into gamepass, but that’s immaterial. This is a systemic problem. People are conditioned to ‘wait for gamepass’ and have shown they’re more than willing to do so, and thus games will inevitably end up skipping the platform in favor of prioritizing other marketplaces that they will see sales and profits in.
TL;DR: You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either buy the games you want to play to support the studios, or ‘wait for gamepass’—but don’t cry when they skip the platform.
Re: Highguard Comparison Shows Difference Between Xbox Series X And Xbox Series S
@DaddyDuder I wouldn’t categorically agree in that there are some astonishingly impressive looking games on series X that are 1440p (or less), and that’s an understandable tradeoff for how much visual detail those games are pushing.
The problem here is this is not one of those games. Highguard doesn’t look anywhere near good enough to be running at only 1440p.
Re: Deals: All 40+ Backwards Compatible Games In This Weekend's Xbox Sales
Alan Wake is easily my favorite 360 game (the reason I eventually bought a machine). The Remaster has its issues (no HDR? Are you serious?) but not including an up-res’d American Nightmare was a real missed opportunity. If you’re a fan and somehow never played it, pick it up here. It’s a bit more arcade-y but quite good nonetheless.
Re: Roundup: The First Reviews Are In For Final Fantasy 7 Remake On Xbox Series X
I’ll have to take a look at Windows central’s article on the game, since the part clipped and cited here makes it sound like the Xbox version of FF7R is the best ‘just because’. There’s literally zero actual explanation or tangible reason given as to why the article writer makes this claim, which is kind of funny. Here, let me try: “The James Bond films are on multiple streaming services, but the ones one Netflix are quite easily the best versions.”
Re: Here's Your First Look At The 60FPS Far Cry 3 Upgrade On Xbox Series X|S
Xbox’s framerate boost and backcompat programs were the best things they’ve done in the past…I don’t even know how many years, and it’s nice to see other publishers updating their stuff now and then. Still, I wish all publishers put as much effort into this area as Xbox does. Or did.
Re: Prince Of Persia Remake Team Shares Final Message Following Game's Cancellation
When we consider all the slop that somehow got greenlit and made it to market, this is even more inexcusable.
Re: Xbox Ally Owner Explains How They Added Real Game Boy Cartridges To Their Handheld
I’d kill to know how long the battery on this thing would last if left powered up with just a gameboy cart playing. I think I forgot to turn off my original gameboy 35 years ago and I bet it’s still on.
Re: Bungie's Marathon To Release In March 2026, Voice Cast & Pre-Order Details Revealed
The $200 Collector’s Edition does not even include the game. I’ve decided to hold off until they release a $400 Special Edition with no game or merchandise, just an empty box.
Re: Five Things I've Learned After Using The ROG Xbox Ally X For Eight Hours Per-Day
Well written article, but we have diametrically opposing viewpoints.
This is the moped to your family car, a side piece, nothing more than an appetizer to the main course (be that a series X or a desktop pc with some actual grunt). My very first thought was ‘You had to play this thing for 8 hours a day? My condolences.’ I can’t imagine anyone choosing to sit hunched over this mediocre screen when you could be basking in the glory of the same games running and playing better on more capable hardware.
I don’t know, maybe my perspective is too specific. I simply want to have the best possible experience I can afford at any given time while I’m playing a game. I want as few compromises as possible. A portable has one use case, wherein you are physically unable to be where your hardware is and yet still have some available time to play a game. Train, schoolbus, airplane, hotel room, that type of scenario.
I will never understand the type of person who has a console/pc sitting right there and inexplicably chooses to turn this thing on. It’s like leaving the Lamborghini in the garage to take the moped out for a spin 🤷♂️
Re: Report: Microsoft Is Set To Launch An Xbox Cloud Gaming Ad-Tier This Year
Reminds me of that classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial, except instead of the joyous union of two awesome things like chocolate and peanut butter it’s like combining two awful things nobody really wants except money loving executives desperately pushing an agenda to strip the end user of all rights.
‘Hey! You got your corporate greed in my comparatively inferior to native play cloud gaming experience!’
Re: 50 Backwards Compatible Xbox Games That Are 'Disc Only' In 2026
Ah, the superiority of physical media. Warms my heart
Re: Poll: What Are Your First Impressions Of Star Wars Outlaws On Xbox Game Pass?
No discernible difference between the rental gamepass version and the version available to buy.
Re: Talking Point: Xbox Series X|S Owners, How's Your Storage Looking In 2026?
My Xbox is mostly full. As someone who buys to own, I have most of my frequently played titles permanently installed. To be fair, there isn’t that much to look forward to in a first party sense, and I do most of my third party gaming on Playstation, so it’s not a big deal to delete something once in a great while to make room.
Re: Resident Evil 4 Fans Should Be Well-Served By Requiem's Third-Person Action Next Month
Let’s hope Survival Horror fans will be well served with old school sensibilities and design. Less RE5, 6 and 8. More RE1
Re: Poll: Ahead Of Developer Direct 2026, Which Is Your Favourite Fable Game On Xbox?
Definitely the first game. In a strange way the Fable series has mirrored the trajectory of the Xbox brand. The first game was unique, original, and didn’t feel quite like anything else on the market. The sequels tried to broaden their reach and capture mass appeal in a very by-the-numbers way, losing so much of what made Fable 1 so charming. Fable’s 2 and 3 felt watered down, and in addition there were some poorly implemented mechanics and systems on top of that.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Almost Had Full Ray Tracing On Xbox Series S, But Its RAM Caused Issues
Missed article pun: For those who forgot, the Series S has memory issues.
Re: Two Xbox Game Studios Titles Will Compete For The Same Outstanding Visuals Award At VES 2026
All the games on the list look good, but I’d wager only two look so astonishingly gorgeous that they really stand out from the pact. But this is an Xbox oriented website, so I’ll end my comment here.
Re: Forza Horizon 5 PS5 Sales Beat Sony's Biggest 2025 Exclusive In Europe, Other Xbox Games Make Top 20
No big surprise. Both are great games, but one is mass market consumer accessible, one is a hardcore action/rpg with a lengthy story. It takes more than driving around in circles to hold my attention; if the hour tracker is even remotely accurate on PS5 I’ve spent about 4x as much time in Yotei as in Forza.
Re: These Are The 10 Highest-Rated Original Xbox Games Of All Time, But Do You Agree?
Hard to say anything bad about this list at all. These are all fantastic games. I fall in the camp of Splinter Cell being a ‘Poor Man’s Metal Gear’, but back then that’s almost all we had as far as tactical espionage action (and when MGS2 eventually did launch, it was worse than the PS2 original☹️).
Re: I've Never Played Final Fantasy 7 Before, But I'm Liking The Remake On Xbox So Far
Good luck suffering through the achievement list, it’s a tedious nightmare of a chore. Loathed the poorly curated list so much over on Playstation I didn’t even bother with Rebirth.
Re: Star Wars Genesis Creator Explains Why Viral Starfield Mod Is 'Never' Coming To Xbox
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy—without precisely optimized code there’d be never ending load screens or countless bugs and glitches or a crash to dashboard, and that’d end your game real quick, wouldn’t it!”
Re: Talking Point: As Xbox Celebrates 25 Years, What's Your First Ever Xbox Memory?
First an best memory, and one that sadly died the moment the 360 launched, was of how unique and different that original Xbox was. It didn’t feel like Sega, Nintendo, Sony or any of the brands that fizzled (3DO, CD-i, jaguar etc). It felt utterly unique and like it was carving out its own space. So many og Xbox games captured that feeling, I had so many great experiences.
Then the corporate console launched. The one calculated in board room meetings to target mass market consumers, to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘social’. It was formulaic, by the numbers, like corporate suits checking off boxes they observed from behind a two way mirror. The 360 immediately killed off that spirit of uniqueness and in its place set up a false idol of bland mass appeal, and spelled the beginning of the downward spiral for the brand. Not in sales, obviously, but in the Rocky Balboa ‘underdog’ passion that first machine brought to the fight.
Re: Call Of Duty On Switch 2 Looks Imminent As 'Nintendo' Files Appear In COD App
I’m dying to see both the performance metrics and sales figures for this.
Last CoD on a Nintendo platform was on WiiU, so any sales numbers would have been automatically skewed by the poor sales of the console itself. Switch 2 might be brand new, but it’s a much more established system building off unbelievable momentum from Switch 1. It’ll be a far more accurate assessment of the number of fans and interested people on a Nintendo system than WiiU could ever provide.
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Hits Huge Sales Milestone In Its First Year On PS5, According To New Estimates
@fatpunkslim he mentions the timed Xbox exclusivity for FH6 a sentence after the quote you cited. I think it’s more of a general statement, as in PS5 fans can tune in to the direct and see a lot of new info on this great next installment and thus have something to look forward to.
Re: Eight Free-To-Play Games To Look Forward To On Xbox In 2026
“to look forward to” —hey, that’s not how you spell avoid
Re: Is It Worth Buying An Xbox One In 2026?
How is series X “the best of the best right now”? There’s no qualifier given. PS5 is cheaper, has almost every exclusive the X has plus many more of its own, and is the de facto 3rd party platform meaning developers optimize titles for it first (translation: X might be more powerful but you rarely if ever see any meaningful difference in real world scenarios).
Short of a few bells and whistles that are an afterthought to the core experience, I don’t see how Series X is “the best of the best right now”. And that’s all without mentioning the Ps5 Pro, which currently has the power crown.
Re: Poll: In Order, Which Games Are You Most Excited For At The Xbox Developer Direct?
Praying Fable doesn’t pull an Avowed and reappear after so long with a completely different, hideous visual downgrade. If they don’t butcher the aesthetic it had when last they showed it off, I’m quite excited for Fable.
On the other hand, I didn’t even remember what Beast of Reincarnation was, and after looking it up I don’t care at all about that.
Re: Phil Spencer Reveals 'Xbox 25' Logo And Shares Video Message Ahead Of Developer Direct
@tho_mi To my recollection, all of Sony’s first party single player games are fully on disc and do not require an internet connection to start. That is categorically a “better” way to publish games than any other way, so you are incorrect.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Licensing Old Games For Physical Cartridges, And More Are Coming In 2026
Someone should tell them this is possible with a brand new media format: the disc. Most games will fit entirely on one of these shiny circles, and since they cost pennies to produce it isn’t a big deal to mint two if necessary.
Re: New Xbox Hardware Is Reportedly Set To Arrive In 2026
Regarding the controllers—is that it? Is that the only advancement? There is no word in any human language to accurately describe how little I care about anything cloud related. I was hoping future improvements to a first party Xbox controller might include something more game changing like Hall effect sticks, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback or an included internal rechargeable battery.
Re: Xbox Reporter Teases What Might Be Shown At Developer Direct, Including A Potential Surprise
I never considered Fable as the fourth “pillar” of Xbox franchises. I loved the first game and am really hopeful for the new one, but I’ve never heard of anyone likening it to a tentpole title in the same way as the commonly accepted 3 pillars. Weird
Re: The UK Games Industry Had Its Biggest Year Since 2020 Last Year
Can we get a piece combining the data mentioned in this article with the cratering console sales from the other article and how it all interrelates? One downplays the relevance of console sales and one highlights the largest revenue rise in years and includes consoles in that metric.
Re: Today Marks 25 Years Since Bill Gates & The Rock Unveiled The OG Xbox
Even after stepping down and taking on much less hands on roles Bill Gates is still far too rich to care, but I wonder what he thinks of the current state of affairs with the gaming initiative he greenlit. I doubt he’s a gamer by any real definition (although he probably holds a controller better than Jim Ryan), but he can’t be too pleased with how things all turned out.
Re: Exclusive: Xbox 360 Fan Talks To Us About Completing Their Collection After 20 Years
This is glorious. Exquisite. Immaculate. This is a true hardcore gamer, an elitist, a member of the PMMR (Physical Media Master Race). That ai-slop monger Satya has no power here, his greedy fingers can’t touch this bastion of ultimate control representing this man’s hobby. This is what it’s all about folks, embedding yourself into something you love and ensuring it will not be changed or altered without your consent.
Re: Hi-Fi RUSH Physical Editions Will Be Available To Pre-Order For Xbox Later This Month
This gets a physical release but Indiana Jones and Oblivion Remastered don’t, wtf. And No, a disc with a handful of MB’s on it is not a physical release, it’s a worthless drink coaster.
Re: Feature: 30 Xbox Series X|S Games To Look Forward To In 2026
Kind of excited for Replaced finally being released. When these current gen consoles launched, there were two indie games (one on each platform) I was genuinely interested in: Replaced on Xbox, and Little Devil Inside on PS. At least one of them won’t dissolve into vaporware!
Re: Xbox Console Sales 'The Worst On Record' In 2025 As Microsoft Shifts Focus (UK)
This is insane. Remember, this isn’t a flat percentage taken from a recurring baseline that magically resets each year, this is 40% down from the previous year’s sales figures which were also successively down year over year. In other words it’s like cutting a sheet of paper in half, then cutting one of those halves in half again, and so on and so forth, continuing to cut it in half until you’re left holding nothing but a little speck of confetti.
Re: Three Casual Xbox Games Arrived For 'Free' Over Christmas, Easy Achievements On Offer
@Fiendish-Beaver same passion, but couldn’t be more different with the particular types of achievements I prefer. I get no sense of satisfaction from trophies and achievements whose only draw is that they are strictly difficult. That is a complete waste of time.
Creatively thought out and implemented criteria is infinitely superior to ‘foster a competitive spirit and inflate one’s ego’ style achievements. I’ll still complete those since each and every single game on my list will either be 100% completed or I won’t bother with it, but I get precisely zero enjoyment out difficult trophies that are a tedious chore to unlock. They’re about as bad as multiplayer achievements or ones that have you doing mindless repetitive low-IQ tasks like wave survival modes.
Re: Talking Point: What Are Your New Year's Resolutions For Gaming In 2026?
Play less live service games (I dabble with one or two now and again as things stand, but I’d like to cut them out entirely).
Buy games only when they’re fully on-disc/cartridge and don’t succumb to fomo and blow money on digital licenses if the physical release doesn’t coincide with launch (happened once or twice and while the games were great, I didn’t feel good about the purchase decision).
Lastly, skip games that have plans to go back post-launch and force in added content that has nothing to do with the core experience of the main game, i.e. the reason I chose to play it in the first place. Specifically referring to extraneous horde modes, wave survival, multiplayer content etc shoehorned in after the fact. This one I’m not sure I’ll be able to fully resist, as some games that fall into this unfortunate category (like Ghost of Yotei) are simply too good to not play.
Re: Xbox Developer Direct Has Always Had A Surprise, But What About January 2026's Showcase?
My prediction:
Fallout 3 remaster drops and it’s a broken mess like Oblivion Remastered. Rumors of a physical version will circulate, prompting the hardcore fanbase to wait it out. The “physical” version will drop near the end of 2026 and will be a worthless coaster with 25MB’s on disc, pissing off the fans. Meanwhile the game itself will have had several patches promising improved performance that will accomplish absolutely nothing, and Digital Foundry will cite Fallout 3 remaster as one of the worst performing games of 2026.
Re: Talking Point: How Much Would You Be Willing To Spend On The Next Xbox Console?
There’s a 0.001% chance of this happening but if it came with a disc drive pre installed which let me play all my old Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox one and Xbox series games offline and without an internet connection, I’d be willing to pay a premium—$1K or even higher.
If they continue to push their greedy, selfish, anti consumer agenda which strips control away from the end user to line their filthy disgusting pockets and the device has no disc drive, I can’t in good conscience pay more than $99 for it. It would become an impulse purchase, a side piece to my actual main method of gaming, and anything over $99 exceeds what it would be worth.