Balaam_

Her statement implies everything they’re doing is the best decision possible. Only a fool misconstrues things that are ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ for things that are “new” and “different”. In other words, “prioritize what matters most” means ‘that which makes the most money as quickly as possible, no matter what’s actually better for gamers’.

A true master of prestidigitation.

‘Pay no attention to the focus of Satya, Amy Hood and the other corporate overlords; dismiss the mixed messaging and multiple 180 degree U-turns we’ve made over the past two generations; ignore the handwriting on the wall; just focus on me right now while I misdirect you.’

@Lup that’s like saying since the ozone layer will inevitably become more depleted as time goes on that factories should start spewing out more pollution sooner rather than later.

Let me see, if I remember right the first year is paper, the second is cotton…25th anniversary is to give away the most iconic franchise you own—your most treasured exclusive—to your former competitors, right?

@fatpunkslim That “team dedicated to multiplatform” you mentioned doesn’t refer to what you think, it’s for exactly the type of content @Fiendish-Beaver spoke about. Predominantly live service multiplayer fare on PC (and Xbox if financial prognostications make it seem like it’s worth it), as well as smaller spinoff stuff like that crappy Lego Horizon game on Switch. If you think you’re going to play a native version of God of War or something on an Xbox console (a real xbox console, not a pc with some Xbox compatibility layer) you’re way out in left field.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Steam Deck wasn’t the first pc handheld, but it undoubtedly defined the market for these things. ROG ally X represents validation, if nothing else. It’s a niche market, but one at least profitable enough for the manufacturers to consider worth pursuing.

@themightyant I was thinking the same thing. I bet the people who worked on these games find it frustrating though. I wonder how fast this issue would be resolved if instead of affecting these ‘never heard of it’ games, it was affecting CoD or Minecraft…

I’m of the David Lynch-ian mindset when it comes to handhelds in general: you will never get the best experience with any given game on a handheld. Period. It isn’t the same; it isn’t even close. Handhelds are neat from a strictly technological perspective, but are an inferior experience compared to enjoying the same game on the big screen—in this case, any decent modern television set.

I grew up with gameboy, DS, PSP etc and while those were fun distractions while riding the schoolbus I’m a grown man now. I’m not going to sacrifice framerate, resolution, screen size and possibly VRR or other bells and whistles (depending on the handheld) just to have an inferior experience ‘on the go’. My Switch has seen handheld play 2 or 3 times in its life, all of which happened during power outages. It’s been docked 99% of the time.

Tiny screens, compromised settings, blurry visuals chugging along at substandard framerates, one eye on the action and the other on an ever depleting battery—and all for exorbitant sums of hundreds or perhaps a thousand dollars or more? No thanks.

Do yourselves a favor and invest that $1K in a pc that’s orders of magnitude more capable than any overpriced handheld.

More choice is good, huh? Reeks of insincerity. How about we get more first party games shipped on disc with the full game on disc minus any internet download BS? We don’t get that ‘choice’ very often anymore.

Not being able to carry over saves and needing a restart isn’t as big a deal when the game is of this level of quality 👌

Younger me could never afford a 3DO when that system was on the market, and now that I’ve become more involved in the retro scene I wish I owned one at the time. I wonder if the Series machines will succumb to the same fate many years from now? I could see 8-10 year olds without a job right now not being able to afford a $600+ series X, and wishing they could have 20 years from now.

These metrics aren’t bad at all. Good showing for both systems. Say what you will about a million questionable decisions regarding CoD, but these developers consistently push fairly impressive tech under the hood on all platforms. Kind of depressing this junk runs so well while Oblivion is a seizure inducing stutterfest.

It would seem gaming never moved forward between the NES and the launch of the Xbox Series Consoles, what with all the exclusives and closed ecosystems and all.

This was expected sooner rather than later. Gabe is going to press the advantage and gain a foothold in the living room before Microsoft’s Steam-esque UI ambitions come to fruition. Xbox isn’t competing with TikTok, it’s competing with Steam and that’s a battle I don’t think they can win.

This is one of Xbox’s first and most successful pivots, namely the acknowledgment that Forza Motorpsort just can’t beat the ambition and lavish attention to detail of the GT games, so they needed to carve out a new path. Nothing like Forza Horizon existed on PS, still doesn’t, and Playground Games managed to dominate this subgenre for decades.

I like the translucent green motif. Reminds me of the glory days of the original Xbox; I had a controller with that same aesthetic way back then.

No Wandering Sword or Tokyo Xtreme Racer? ☹️

Where is the ‘I was never subscribed. I buy-to-own, I do not pay-to-rent’ poll option?

Reggie, E3 2004: “I’m here to kick @ss and take names.”

Reggie, Game Business interview 2025: “There’s one less @ss to kick, and one less name to take.”

Fantastic game. Some of the best real time combat out there. I played this immediately after FF16 and it reinforced how much of a repetitive spamfest of a joke 16’s combat was by way of comparison. Stellar Blade looks great, plays great, and was different enough story-wise to keep me interested to the end.

The best part? The trophy list was an absolute joy, perhaps the most perfect platinum I’ve ever had the pleasure of unlocking. All other developers should take notes regarding their own trophy and achievement lists.

If this ever comes to Xbox, do yourself a favor and don’t sleep on it. Stellar Blade is eminently worthy of a playthrough or two.

Every multiplayer live service focused title should be multiplatform. Keep top tier single player experiences exclusive to create a compelling reason to draw players into your ecosystem, then let third parties and multiplayer multiplats keep them satiated until the next major tentpole exclusive reminds them why they stick around.

The only time(s) this tried and true formula has failed is when a platform holder either cannot create good enough first party exclusives or the third party support has been woefully lacking. The first half of PS3’s lifecycle, the WiiU, and the past couple Xbox’s all demonstrate a failure to walk this line. In contrast the first half of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle, the second half of the PS3’s lifecycle into the PS4 generation, and the Switch all demonstrate the proven success of this formula.

Series S has a lot of positive points working in its favor (or at least it did prior to exorbitant price hikes), but the decision to exclude a disc drive or any possibility of ever attaching one immediately killed any desire I would possibly have had for it.

It’s an anti-consumer decision that tries to strongarm people into being held hostage to the Xbox marketplace where you own nothing and can’t resell used games, or have any way to revert back to a previous version of a game if devs screw it up with a bad update.

The hardware capabilities are excellent. I don’t think anyone could nitpick the actual tech, especially back in 2020 when it launched.

Implementation is another story. Things are often done in the worst possible way (ads? On my console dashboard? Fire the person responsible.)

Games are hit or miss. Sometimes they launch in a crap state but slowly improve (Halo Infinite), sometimes they’re awesome right out of the gate (Forza 5), sometimes the game is great but worthless corporate stupidity and greed drag it down anyway (games like Outer Worlds 2 that get a disc version which could hold the full game but instead there’s a worthless 50mb keycode on the disc), and other times the game is just irredeemable broken garbage that no amount of time or attention can fix (Starfield).

Overall the generation was a disappointing letdown.

Is it just the faceplate and the hard drive that’s custom? I didn’t notice anything about the console itself, unless I missed it

Tried this on gamepass at a friend’s house. Seems to be identical to the physical disc copy I already bought? I couldn’t notice any gamepass specific differences, but simply knowing I don’t own this version and that it can be removed at a moment’s notice (and that it requires an internet connection to stream or download) makes it the less enjoyable experience of the two.

@DennisReynolds this is true. Although technically it’s ‘free’ in one of the PS+ tiers if you’re one of those people that enjoys renting games

“With multiple Halo titles in development, we’ll need our whole team's combined focus to deliver new experiences with the same passion…”

Halo Infinite was one game and the whole team was focused solely on that, and look what state that launched in. Now they’re splitting the team’s focus between multiple entries…? I can only imagine what state each of these will launch in.

@fatpunkslim That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve heard all week. It isn’t launching into PC, and Microsoft’s console market share is a drop in the bucket. There’s no incentive for R* to partner with Xbox. They aren’t in need of any cash and it’s highly unlikely Microsoft would offer enough to make it worth their while, not with Amy Hood guarding the books. And since you don’t believe in coincidences, when your speculation turns out to be utterly inaccurate, does that mean you’ll understand why it would never have happened? Or will you chalk it up to coincidence?

Good game. Story beats felt unfinished/unpolished, but it had a lot of great stuff going for it too.

And people say Xbox fans don’t buy games!

Halo releasing in November to coincide with the anniversary would be ideal from a nostalgia perspective, but I don’t think they’ll wait until then. I say we see it early spring for no other reason than execs salivating over all the money PS will generate. I’m sure they’ve done the math and the revenue loss from dropping it in gamepass is a drop in the bucket compared to what will be generated over there. Greedy execs like fast easy money, so Halo first, then Forza, then Fable last.

I’m hoping Fable doesn’t get the axe as that’s the one I’m most curious to see how it turns out. It would be a real shame to see it canceled before we get anything close to what resembles a proper gameplay deep dive.

Physical edition with the whole game on disc without any ‘internet download required’ BS? For this, I am a man of infinite patience. Take all the time you need.

Easily my personal GotY thus far. For what it is, it’s practically perfect. If Xbox somehow made their own take on it, even if it was only half as good, it would still be a fantastic game. Hope they go for it

Kind of irritating they sent this game out to die with little to no fanfare or advertising. It deserves so much better.

Concordtraband

Whoever decided No Multiplayer needs to get a giant raise. In fact, take it out of the salary of whoever decides their physical disc prints don’t get the full game on-disc. The latter deserves less money, the former deserves more money.

It’s a much better remake effort than I expected. Played it free on PS+ recently and liked it so much I bought the physical copy for permanent ownership. Anyone still on the fence as to whether Bloober Team ‘gets it’ or not can rest easy and expect a solid game. Only hope the performance is improved for the Xbox release.

It seems like hardware drops by around ~30% each and every year on a consistent basis. I can see why Xbox is anxious to get new hardware to market sooner rather than later; it’s like tearing off a third of a piece of paper each year until you’re left holding a sliver of paper so small that one more tear threatens to split the atom😆

Lots of mitigating reasonings in this comment thread. Maybe this vision will succeed and play out as hoped. I’m more interested in what will happen if Microsoft’s next gamble here doesn’t pan out. If this fails too, will it be more goalpost moving and mitigation in the comments, or will that finally be enough for the apologists to start pointing fingers and laying blame?

@Briarback I agree with you on this one, but according to corpo speak Mr Stark is actually ‘correct’ in that Ninja Gaiden 4 is considered a 1st party game by virtue of it being published by Xbox. Even PlayStation holds this same interpretation. I hate that interpretation and do not agree with it at all, but in the interests of fairness Mr Stark is technically correct…the best kind of correct.

Free online play sounds great, but parts of the overall strategy here don’t add up.

This device will undoubtedly be significantly more expensive than a traditional console. Spec wise, it’ll be barely in mid-range pc territory by the time it launches. That means they’re pricing themselves out of the mainstream console market, while PC bros will just build rigs with far better hardware rather than invest in this machine. It just seems like Xbox is trading one small userbase for another.

I lived through the ‘Sega exiting the hardware business’ era of gaming. Sega was never my preferred platform, but I owned them all and have may fond memories of th systems and games.

When news broke they were exiting the console business and transitioning to becoming just another publisher, it was quite a sad announcement. It may not have been my preferred place to play, but I would have infinitely preferred Sega continue to make hardware and keep their stuff exclusive.

Homogenization killed a lot of their unique spontaneity, the spark of life that differentiated their stuff from other publishers’ games. During the PS360 era I barely played a single Sega game. It was mostly watered down content indistinguishable from every other 3rd party game.

It’s the burden of necessity that drives innovation, the burning need to craft unique experiences for your own platform to set it apart from the competition and create an allure, a desire to buy into your ecosystem. That doesn’t exist to the same extent for a third party publisher.

Looks promising! Seems they ditched the multiplayer, which I couldn’t be happier over. The mp achievements with their absurdly anti-achievement hunter criteria should never have existed, and this looks to correct that mistake. Put the full game on a physical disc version and make it a trifecta 👍

I couldn’t get over how astonishingly awful the foliage and vegetation looks. That animation cascade is a joke. Is there something wrong with the engine that it can’t animate a meager amount of generic looking grass more than 6 inches ahead of the player? I don’t recall other UE5 games having this glaring problem.

@eduscxbox that’s spurious reasoning. PS5 and PS3 are two different generations of device. You’re trying to say that rog ally x is a different generation of device compared to the series machines? Seems more like you’re arguing one ‘Xbox’ can’t play another concurrent ‘Xbox’s’ games and yet somehow both are xboxes.

I imagine the subsequent conversation between Phil and various studio leads went something like the beginning of Return of the Jedi.

“Mr. Spencer, this is an unexpected pleasure, we’re honored by your presence—“

“You may dispense with the pleasantries, I’m here to put you back on schedule.”

“I assure you Phil, my developers are coding as fast as they can. I tell you, we will reach 30% profit margin as planned.”

“CFO Amy Hood does not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation.”

“She asks the impossible. I need more developers.”

“Then perhaps you can tell her when she arrives.”

“The CFO is coming here?”

“That is correct, and she is most displeased with your apparent lack of profits.”

“We shall double our efforts…”

“I hope so, for your sake. The CFO is not as… forgiving as I am.”

That’s the ghost of lower prices forever trapped inside, unable to escape

@dskatter This. I couldn’t even be bothered to waste my time finishing that broken janky mess, and I have no intention of wasting any money on the PS5 version.

Was previously somewhat interested, and planned on picking up a physical copy on whichever system was offering it. Instead news broke earlier that they screwed over the hardcore fanbase yet again by producing an essentially blank disc when th game could have fit. There’s 1.3GB on disc, the rest is held hostage via an internet download. Maybe I’ll pick this up when it’s in the bargain bin for $1.30.

No shame lifting something that’s genuinely useful for people when they’re trying to get the most from their money these days. I hope this or something similar gets implemented in the storefront 👍