I laud her attitude (if it is indeed sincere…) but this isn’t rocket science. Fix what’s broke. Don’t touch what isn’t. If something is clunky, slow or unintuitive then make it streamlined, fast and efficient. Observe what your hardcore audience wants/expects as these terms coincidentally seem to dictate what the mass audience learns to enjoy. We want to OWN WHAT WE PAY FOR. No more of this anti-consumer ‘you’re paying real money to lease a temporary license that can be revoked at any time without your consent’ BS.

On the plus side, I remember this from one of the PS shows a year or two ago. Might have given it a try (might being the operative word), but as Sony is attacking customers’ right to own what they pay for it’s a hard No now. I’m sure there are plenty of other people with the same mindset, so when it inevitably underperforms on PlayStation it’ll be all that much more likely we’ll get a port over here after all.

@RadioHedgeFund Series X is a significantly more capable piece of hardware, offers more consumer freedom (doesn’t shackle buyers to an online storefront like the S), is only modestly larger and (at the time) offered just as much price-to-performance value as the S. As it is better in every way than your self proclaimed “single greatest product Microsoft has made” Series S, where does that put the X? Better than the single greatest product Microsoft has made?

Maybe it’s my appreciation of a classic South Park joke, maybe it’s my hatred for what always online games glutted with recurring subscription fees and microtransactions have done to the industry, or maybe it’s my disdain for the core games themselves, but all I could think of when reading this article was ”How do you kill that which has no life?”

Would have been supremely excited for Diablo…if they hadn’t turned the franchise into live service fare years ago.

I’m holding out for that original Xbox boot up. Take me away to a better time, a time before an internet connection was mandatory, a time when you owned the game you bought because it was fully on disc, a time before microtransactions and subscriptions and multi billion dollar buyouts that lead nowhere but studio closures, a time where the brand had a unique identity that set it apart from its competitors, a time where my cup runneth over with exclusives. Before the dark times, before the Empire…

This was the big PS6 exclusive looming on the horizon as far as I remember. That ‘it’ game that could theoretically help push people who were maybe on the fence to get a PS6. Now it’s an Xbox game.

I can’t really think of any other big name PS6 exclusives in development that we know of. I’m sure they’ll churn out more iterations of existing IP’s (probably another Ghost of something game with trash roguelite slop bolted on post launch, probably another Horizon with an even chubbier Aloy, probably another TLoU with even woke-er characters etc) but nothing fresh or new comes to mind.

I’d wonder what the strategy is, but there’s no sense in trying to perceive the inner workings of executives intent on driving their own brand into the ground and who are complete idiots.

Now imagine his account gets hacked, stolen, or he gets otherwise banned or locked out of access to it. All those years of work gone in an instant, all those “purchased” digital games gone in the blink of an eye. All that time and money down the drain. We need exponentially better account protections than what’s currently available, and that’s already bearing in mind Xbox is probably the most secure of the Big 3 platforms. There is really zero excuse anyone should ever have their account hacked or stolen without being able to get it back 100% of the time.

@duncanwarrior99 That’s more than enough to turn away those of us for whom the mindless repetitive multiplayer slop holds no allure. If these extraneous modes had achievements which one could grind out relatively quickly and painlessly, I’d feel much more inclined to just speed through that crap and get to the good part. Probably why the series as a whole has never grabbed me.

My kingdom for an Xbox controller with a decent Dpad.

I’m waiting on the Digital-to-Disc announcement where you insert a blank disc, it burns your digital license to it and then revokes your access to that digital game.

Don’t make me tap the sign…

“Snake, I’m revoking access to your Stealth Camo. Before you grumble a single ‘Hnngghhh…’, if you had read the terms and conditions you’d know you don’t actually own Stealth Camo, you’re only leasing a license to use it.”

@Deformedpye It’s brand new. I doubt anyone’s seen all it has to offer yet. This article is all about one aspect of the game we do know of, performance metrics. The game seems big enough that I’m sure it’ll get a review article at some point.

They’re playing musical rakes with Sony. The cosmic ballet goes on…

Not sure if some of these game descriptions are intentional or if someone’s elbow was resting on the keyboard. ‘[Game] is a PvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvE extraction shooter…’

Just played the Resonance demo. Came away with mostly good impressions. Love the visuals, battle system (Turn Based! 😃), Espers and what little story/character arc/world design was shown.

Voice acting is incredibly hit or miss. Some sound fine, others are either untalented randoms who have no idea what pacing, diction, sense stress/modulation are or else there’s some piss poor ai voice work on display here. Thankfully, there’s both an individual slider to mute all voices or the option to put them in Japanese.

Still not sold on whether a company that habitually makes as many bad decisions as SquareEnix can successfully transition the core game away from its mobile roots and make it a coherent experience. This is, after all, the company that put FF7 parts 1 and 2 fully on multi-disc deluxe editions then just botched part 3 by forcing a download, making the physical version essentially worthless. I have very little faith in their useless, incompetent management to make the right decisions but there’s at least a glimmer of hope with Resonance.

It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but I wouldn’t call it transparency just yet. It’s more like translucency where some—but not all—light gets through.

True transparency would go something like ‘We hear you. Needing any online check in or internet connection to play your owned, paid digital or physical games is anti-consumer and we will be doing away with that horribly archaic practice. You bought it; you own it; play it wherever, whenever and however you like.’

<slams cartridge into Super Nintendo, turns on power, game automatically boots up>

What sorcery is this?

If there’s a single ‘Beat the game on Master [presumably the hardest] difficulty’ achievement this article’s title is null and void. That would be the devs encouraging [forcing] you to play on one specific difficulty.

Asha and Xbox need to do more to serve achievement hunters. Imagine just getting around to Grid Legends and now it gets shut down before you’re able to finish that list 100%. That’s part of the game, part of the experience you would have paid for and now you’re permanently locked out of it. Gross.

There needs to be platform wide mandate that unless your game is 100% online only, you must include redundant backup methods to earn all online achievements either in single player or while otherwise offline. A simple and elegant solution where no one gets screwed out of their achievements because of the whim of a publisher/developer. There’s precedent for this too, as many years ago Mass Effect 3 followed the same principle.

I would vastly prefer a ‘more compromised world’ (i.e. less NPC density, traffic turned down etc) to hit that 60fps mark than a super dense nausea inducing 30fps. I just can’t go back to that sluggish, high input latency, stuttery experience anymore. Of course none of this really matters to begin with as I tend to avoid paying money for things I can’t actually own and control.

Because nothing says quality like ‘Sold in Bulk’

Utter BS. These aren’t multi-hundred-million dollar lithographic machines for etching microchips. Making drives is a relatively inexpensive process using fairly common parts. It’s like saying ‘Gee it’s too hard to make vinyl anymore so no more records or turntables.’ Complete and utter BS. Microsoft has in excess of $3 TRILLION DOLLARS to work with, just spin up a disc drive factory or two. Problem solved.

I sincerely hope Xbox’s new Disc to Digital entitlement system catches the eye of Legislators and we get something put into law forcing everyone to follow suit. This is the single best initiative Xbox has ever spearheaded, by a large margin. Physical media will always be the ultimate in Ownership, Preservation and Control, but if it really is on the way out then this is th next best thing. An elegant, ideal solution.

TL;DR I hope the FTC or CMA or whoever’s job it falls to goes to town on Sony’s kneecaps with a legal lead pipe and forces them to capitulate and offer their own Entitlement system.

It’s been awhile since I’ve redeemed any points, and it was very deliberately tedious to do so the last time I did (particularly when going with a non-Microsoft related reward, like an Amazon gift card). Is there a way to redeem multiple gift cards at once yet? In other words I don’t want to redeem two dozen $5 gift cards one at a time, I just want to funnel all my points into a single gift card of higher denomination.

Lots of anti-timed exclusive hate. Doesn’t bother me in the least, in fact sometimes it proves advantageous in that it takes the pressure off a crazy few months where everything seems to hit at once. This September-October-November is a perfect example. There are no less than 5 full ~60hr+ games I’ll be playing through in that window, and now I don’t need to speedrun Townfall to try to fit it in. I can take my time and savor it whenever it finally does hit Xbox.

Ah, but does it support physical bricks?

Any word on if they’re cracking down on players that camp public events in inaccessible areas of the map to farm for XP/loot drops? It’s not like the public events are hard or anything, but it ruins the experience when lazy scum don’t contribute and expect others to do all the work. It’s a main part of the reason I dropped the game.

I’ve gone so far as to report it and believe it or not the support agent tried to tell me that it fell under what Bethesda considered ‘appropriate behavior’ and no terms were being violated. I asked him how he would feel if his coworkers sat in the break room all day and forced him to answer all the submitted tickets. He said he’d probably look for another job. I said I’ll probably look for another game.

Vapor Ware: Out of their Mind

I’d pay twice that amount for a Helix with a dedicated internal disc drive that’s 100% fully backward compatible with all Xbox discs from all Xbox consoles.

Well, they certainly can’t do any worse. Halo is so far behind what it once was that I’m ok with a Hail Mary play. If it works, fantastic. If not, it’s probably a dead franchise.

@Cakefish I’m in the same boat. There were some things I really liked about the atmosphere and monster designs, but it didn’t ‘feel’ good to play. Something about the controls just felt off. The parry timing was inconsistent and certain actions didn’t provide any feedback, leading to that dreaded ‘did it work, or should I push the button again?’ feeling. I need to try a demo or game trial of it or something to see whether they fixed these issues.

Will the full image be on the card, or will it only be partially complete with a code to download the rest of the picture?

I’ve had really good luck with consoles. In the past 40ish years I’ve not had a single console break or had any other issues whatsoever. Not even with my original model 360 or my fat 60GB fully backward compatible disc based launch model PS3 (back from when Sony executives still made the occasional good decision and weren’t entirely worthless anti-consumer scum). I attribute it to simply taking good care of them.

To answer the question, if my Series X broke tomorrow I would simply wait for Helix (provided of course it either ships with a disc drive or some way to digitize and yet still permanently own my physical games—otherwise I have zero interest in Helix). In the meantime I have most of the other systems and can happily chip away at Mt. Backlog.

What precisely is being optimized, the lousy job Virtuous did with the UE5 wrapper or the original garbage spaghetti code rotting underneath? If you’re wearing contact lenses of the wrong prescription and smudged eyeglasses on top of that, fixing just one won’t solve the problem.

@Mr-Cage “I own Toy Story 3” You mean to say you’ve claimed a temporary license to access the digital version of Toy Story 3, and that license can be revoked at any time and without your consent. To my knowledge Xbox has never done this on console (although Microsoft itself has with Games for Windows Live), but it still accentuates why people need to get behind the idea of legislation that guarantees digital ownership rights.

Xbox seems to be on the right track (far more than Sony as things currently stand), but there is plenty of ground to cover between having a way to digitize your old physical discs and actually owning your digital purchases.

@badboidre I feel your pain dude. I’ve not had any issue like that happen to me personally, but the whole ‘it’s like pulling teeth to bypass worthless ai to speak to a real freaking person’ syndrome is a like a shared disease infecting countless corporations and businesses. Hope your situation gets rectified in a timely manner. You shouldn’t have to pay for the incompetence and anti-consumer business model decisions of others.

Everybody’s praising this forthcoming ‘diamond achievement’ or whatever it will end up being called (and rightly so, I like the idea very much), but no one’s talking about the ugly dark side lurking in the shadows. It’s always existed, and now will be even more evident.

Glitched achievements? Premature server shutdowns? Achievements that are either overly tedious or just plain too difficult for you to unlock?

Kiss that ‘Diamond Achievement’ goodbye

We need more stringent criteria from the platform holder as to what is and what is not acceptable for a given achievement to ask of the player base, and we need a much higher degree of latitude when it comes to sorting and curating our own achievements unlocked within games on our profiles.

Giving players the option to permanently remove (not ‘hide’, permanently delete ) games from our achievement lists no matter what percent complete they are would fundamentally solve this entire issue. No more incomplete games staining otherwise perfect accounts, no more need to check what a game’s future dlc might include to factor that into deciding whether or not to even bother playing it in the first place. A simple, elegant solution to a problem that’s existed since the introduction of achievements back on Xbox 360.

The fact Asha & co. have not already capitalized on this supremely easiest of slam dunk PR wins over PlayStation has me more than a little worried.

Either eat the cost and add a disc drive to Helix for instant overwhelming PR victory, or if they’re still intent on trying to bleed their consumer base for every cent they can get like Sony, then at least do it smartly and blow the doors off the next showcase with this Positron disc-to-digital thing. It’s strictly worse than actually fully owning and controlling a physical copy of a game, but it’s the next best thing and would still curb stomp Sony’s disgusting, anti-consumer arrogant greed.

@Grumblevolcano Unlikely. He was probably referring to the fact GTA6 would require multiple discs to fit the whole game on. He’s saying it’s going to require beaucoup storage space.

The gamer and Quake enthusiast in me loves the new content, the trophy&achievement hunter in me absolutely hates that there are new achievements for a game I’ve already slogged though multiple times to get that full 100% completion. Nothing worse than being forced to drop what I’m currently working on to retread old ground. They’d have done better to not add any new trophies to this.

Handheld looks cool, but it has the same ‘low set sticks’ issue so many handhelds do. Going from the infinite comfort of Steamdeck’s ‘at the top’ stick alignment to awkwardly contorting my thumbs to use ‘at the bottom’ analog sticks is very uncomfortable. I wish they had two models, or perhaps a modular layout or something.

I’m not the biggest GTA fan; I approach the games like I would a summer blockbuster movie. Cheap dumb fun, more about being part of a collective experience than the quality of the thing itself. Alas, choosing to not release on a format I can own and control has killed any interest I had in GTA6 whatsoever.

Awesome news, but we need better achievement criteria management.

Striking a good balance between difficulty and frustration is tough, but these ‘Beat [game] on super turbo ultra hardcore nightmare mode without dying or taking damage in one sitting in under 3 hours on a Tuesday in November’ type achievements are a tumor that needs to be excised, as are the ridiculously tedious ‘Collect 500,000 [thingamajigs]’ type achievements.

Also, how about letting us permanently erase games with partially completed achievements from our lists? Xbox will still have collected all relevant data and metrics so they aren’t losing anything, and for completionists it would be a heck of a relief to not have to worry about glitched achievements, server shutdowns rendering 100% impossible, future dlc you aren’t interested in and would have made you think twice about starting the game in the first place etc. All manner of issues would be solved by simply letting users permanently delete games from their achievement lists no matter what percent complete they are, preserving one’s perfectly complete list.

How about more control over our digital purchases? ‘More’ as in total, complete, legally protected, guaranteed ownership and control?

I wonder how many more PS sales would have been garnered from the hardcore audience if they put the game on the disc instead of pressing a worthless coaster? Not that it matters much when the platform holder is actively infracting on consumers’ right to own. The unintelligent are so easily beguiled.

Nifty. I watch this channel all the time, he’s shown off some cool stuff in lots of different games. I keep hoping he’ll do a bloodborne episode where he’ll show what’s underneath that trapdoor in Byrgenwerth college that can’t be opened.

If true, this is fantastic. In more ways than one. Anything to put pressure on Sony to get them moving in the same direction is a massive win. They sit on a mountain of gold and do nothing with it except mediocre remasters, to the dismay of fans the world over. Whatever kicks them back in line and on the road to pleasing fans is a good thing.

Idk how I feel about no stamina management. I’d need to give this considerable time to see if it really does improve things as the one reviewer claimed, or whether it’s just another dumbed down decision to appease a mass audience. Also need to check whether they addressed the unintuitive parry timing from the first game.