Balaam_

Guaranteed physical releases entirely on disc, without any ‘internet download required’ BS

Even if it’s only on PlayStation where people actually buy physical media, and even if they have to mint two discs, if that’s what it takes. I don’t lease digital code I can’t own, and—how do I put this—it would save me the effort of having to buckle my swash to play something.

There is exactly one game on that 30-game list cited here that I’d even consider playing, and I would only ever want to play it in a single place.

They already did the good Quake, the original gothic horror single player focused game. Q3 is just low IQ ‘run around in circles shooting at each other repeatedly’ fare, and Q4 carries on the lame, generic sci-fi direction Q2 took the series. Personally I’m hoping for something new from them, although the odds of announcing something unrelated at *Quake*conn is admittedly pretty low.

…ouch.

Still, good to see they made the right call and didn’t punish people who own the better machine just because the weaker platform can’t handle it.

Unless the version of the game on gamepass is in some way different that I’m not noticing, I’m enjoying this the same as when it originally landed on Xbox. Fantastic platforming coupled to an achievement/trophy list that should be punishable in a court of law. It’s like Ferrari designed the next great supercar and decided to make the steering wheel out of razor blades when it didn’t have to be that way.

There’s so much spin here I’m getting dizzy.

I find it interesting the sister site has an article about most of the same subject matter yet it repeatedly reiterates how unlike gamepass Sony’s service is, highlighting how entrenched those executives are in their stand to specifically not imitate Gamepass in certain respects.

$20 says when DreamcastGuy makes his inevitable video on this, he’ll mispronounce Klobrille as ‘Kl-eye-oh-br-eye-uhll’ at least twice.

@InterceptorAlpha I’m aware of the discourse surrounding Alan Wake 2 (I don’t agree with it, I love the game with the exception of the Saga actress’ horrendous, slurred, ‘can’t decide which accent to use’ ear-bleeding voiceover work) but I was not aware of any negativity around Control. Not a single forum post or reddit thread or what have you. I’m not saying you’re making it up, just that I must be completely out of the loop about that one. Now I’m curious—what is it exactly people didn’t like about Control? Again, I absolutely loved that game as well.

Great article, stuff like this is always appreciated, and I mean that sincerely. Now if you really want to get on my good side (jk), show us how to block anything and everything copilot ai. Bonus points if you show us how to block it ‘with extreme prejudice’.

They’re going to dole these out with an eyedropper. Gotta recoup that $70Billion 🥴

So it’s a meta quest with the words Xbox on the package and some gamepass gift card thrown in. Reminds me of that Portlandia sketch where they go into a store, stencil a silhouette of a bird on different items and claim it makes them ‘art’

Not a big JezC fan but I’m even less a fan of a certain loudmouth on the Xboxera podcast. You know the one I mean. I don’t even watch the episodes without Shpeshal Nick; that channel desperately need him to balance out the endless opinionated remarks spewing from the fellow that can’t stay quiet without interrupting the other 2 panel members for more than 2mins straight. Seeing Jez rubber stamp the post as False is satisfying for that reason alone.

Haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to at least give it a chance. I don’t go to Remedy for live service-y multiplayer affairs the same way I don’t go to FromSoft or Sony first party for that stuff. I only want industry leading single player epic greatness from the above, not their attempts at getting a slice of the live service pie.

It’ll be a real shame if they don’t, the game is freakin fantastic. Best real time combat with a sword in any game, hands down. They truly nailed the flow of good feeling combat. My advice is play it wherever you can, even if it doesn’t come to Xbox. I don’t recall what won Best Action Game the year Stellar Blade came out, but it wasn’t SB and that’s nearly as big a travesty of justice as some broken slop like Skyrim beating out the og Dark Souls for GotY.

Edit-iirc Black Myth Wukong won best action game, and it’s garbage by comparison. SB should have taken that award, no question.

There is no world where they couldn’t have included backwards compatibility, especially considering who this future hardware is actually for.

PC users are good where they’re at. They have their multi thousand dollar rigs crammed with the most expensive, highest performing tech available. They have the ability to tinker with settings to eke out those few extra frames, to buy from multiple storefronts, to play the latest and greatest from PC centric devs/Xbox/Playstation, pretty much everyone but Nintendo. They’re good where they’re at; this console is not for them.

PlayStation bros have all their exclusives, they’re evidently fine with that ecosystem, and they’re now getting basically every Xbox game too (eventually). They’re good where they’re at; this console is not for them.

Switch bros have their docked home console experience, their portable experience, quite a few Xbox games headed their way (and likely many more down the road), even the odd PlayStation game, as well as their highly vaunted industry champ first party exclusives. They’re good where they’re at; this console isn’t for them.

The only demographic this future Xbox(ish) hardware could possibly be aimed at are existing Xbox users who prefer this ecosystem and who’ve already built up extensive libraries. That’s who this future xbox(ish) hardware is for.

@Fraser Gilbert is the game pass version of The Alters different in some way than the pc/playstation versions or the version you can buy a la carte off the Xbox store? Or am I reading too much into the article title?

Not sure whether to go with the ‘when you release a low effort, poorly optimized port running at a butchered 720p resolution, what did you expect?’ comment, or the old reliable ‘Square is displeased when their games sell the same number of copies other devs boast about, big surprise.’

It’s like that Seinfeld when George’s gf got a nose job and Kramer just blurts out “…You got butchered.”

I realize the series machines will assuredly still receive support after next gen begins, as was the case with the prior gen(s). But what’s with the seemingly arbitrary length spans of the Xbox console generations?

OG Xbox was a meager 4 years, 360 had a good lifespan and basically kept pace with PS3 up to the end, Xbox one got massacred right out of the gate but lasted just as long as ps4, but now we’re back to a kneecapped gen length seemingly cut short. It feels like there’s no rhyme or reason as to Microsoft’s plans, and they don’t appear to be tied to how well the platform is doing—og Xbox got steam rolled by ps2 and they raced to market with the 360, but the Xbox one got butchered and they let it ride. Everything is so random and inconsistent.

@AlwaysPlaying “we be eating good”—I understand your sentiment, and I’d definitely agree with the point of what you’re saying (at least for what GP currently costs…), but that isn’t exactly the best analogy. Restaurants don’t pump your stomach to take back the food after you leave. You own what you spent money on there 😉

Ah, I get it. They’re going after the market demographic of geniuses who saw no issue with Apple’s thousand dollar monitor stand 😆

There’s a direct correlation between Xbox migrating away from a failing business model toward other revenue streams and Sony getting lazier and more complacent. When Sony is firing on all cylinders, no one can touch them. They shot themselves in the foot right out of the gate during the PS360 era, but managed to sprint ahead during the home stretch anyway (and keep on going throughout the next gen). Even Nintendo had to think outside the box to rebound from the slaughter of the PS2-GameCube era with the Wii. Sadly, lazy complacent Sony is a gamer’s worst nightmare. Bland, same-y games and absurd price gouging. Every hardcore gamer should want nothing more than for Sony to be backed into a corner, since that’s when we receive the best this hobby has to offer. Xbox removing itself from competition is good for no one.

Excellent. It’s now worth buying. Give this person a raise—actually, give them the job of the waste of space with the anti consumer ideology who thought putting only a few MB’s of data on the Indy and DoomDA discs was a good idea. That way those mistakes can be corrected.

It’s quite a good game, far better than I anticipated. I play my Japanese games on their home platforms whenever I have the option (it’s nice having them all in one place), but for anyone who hasn’t played this yet you’re in for a treat. I only hope this doesn’t become an FF16 situation whereby the performance is improved by a nearly imperceptible increment but at the cost of the resolution taking a nosedive down to 720p.

I’m of two minds on this.

I empathize with the extremely limited use cases I can think of, people like kids on the school bus/long family road trips or adults with insanely long commutes on busses/trains. This stinks for those folks.

For me, and I would argue the overwhelming majority of gamers (both hardcore and casual), this is a welcome development. I say use these resources, time and effort to double down on next gen’s premiere high end console. Don’t bisect the userbase trying to be a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. You still have the crappy pc handhelds for those that want them. You still have your gamepass for those casuals who are too dull to comprehend the drawbacks of owning nothing and leaving your gaming experience entirely at the mercy of the platform holders, and with any luck the next proper console will still have a disc drive (or add on) for the enlightened, discerning, competent hardcore gamer.

This isn’t even technically a ‘loss’ since nothing was officially announced anyway. And who knows, maybe Microsoft will pivot again in the next few hours in reaction to some other perceived threat and the handheld will be brought back into discussion once again.

Is there any specific reason I’m missing why silent hill 1 is presumed to be on Xbox? Not saying I wouldn’t want it to be, just questioning the legitimacy of the idea. I was under the impression that the upcoming Chronos game by Bloober Team was the game referenced in the linked article, the ‘next project’ that’ll be on Xbox consoles in addition to Sony platform. I’m wondering if wires got crossed and this one’ll be locked to PlayStation like SH2 was

Why are they apologizing on behalf of the bad actors paid to trash this brilliantly designed, well optimized game?

Wait, hold up—I thought Koei-Tecmo was making Ninja Gaiden 4? I didn’t know Xbox has a first party team coding and developing this! Is this a case of Koei-Tecmo just licensing out the IP to another dev, kind of like Konami did with Silent Hill and Bloober Team?

What’s that beautiful saying floating around out there, ‘If buying a digital license isn’t ownership, piracy isn’t stealing’? Looks like unless they decide to put out a physical copy (with the entire game on disc) for the PlayStation crowd, then I’ll be wearing an eye patch while I play Ninja Gaiden 4.

Has the achievement/trophy list leaked for this yet? I’m anxious to see whether the list has those same god awful mp achievements from the original, or if they put achievement/trophy hunters first and cut that slop. I would love to play through the campaign again and never need to touch the mindless, repetitive, ‘run around in circles killing/dying/repeating’ low intellect multiplayer modes.

These appear to be the same games I could play on the best pc I can afford, or else on a big 4K tv screen on console. So if I play elsewhere I can get either a higher fidelity, ultra high framerate experience or the ease and comfort of the console experience. I see no reason to downgrade my experience to play on this handheld.

Objectively I’d rate this a solid B or B+. There had to have been something for everyone. However this was a mere C for me. The only things I was interested in that we already knew about were Elder Scrolls 6 and Fable, neither of which were shown.

We saw a bunch of new stuff but it was rather mediocre looking (especially that ‘we have Bioshock Infinite at home’ game, can’t recall the title) , with few exceptions. Keeper and the Ghost Hotel both looked quite good, but that was pretty much it.

And the handheld? Seriously? So you’re telling me my choices are either parked in front of the best pc I can afford for as close to max settings as I can get, or sitting in front of my 77” 4K 144hz OLED playing on console, or…sitting hunched over a 1080p screen, one eye on severely compromised settings and the other on an ever dwindling battery? Who is this for? Whatever the handheld will cost, you can build a more capable pc or else go the console route. Is this for kids on the schoolbus? People who ride the commuter train for 2hrs everyday to work? Oh, also it’s hideous. It elicited the same ‘oh dear god that is one ugly hunk of plastic’ that the PS5 reveal drew out of me, only in handheld form.

Fable and Elder Scrolls 6 are the only things still in the pipeline that I care about (the only things we know about), and it’s too early for ES6 except some cinematic nonsense trailer, so as far as I’m concerned this is either a Fable showcase or a big nothingburger. That could possibly change if they revealed something we don’t yet know about, but it’s foolish to bet on unknowns.

I would be mildly pleased if some lesser known stuff got ported to PS5; the idea of a Quantum Break or Sunset Overdrive platinum is mighty enticing. It would be nice to have all of Remedy’s and Insomniac’s stuff in one place too, and to me they always felt like those high quality PlayStation cinematic masterpiece type of games.

I wanted to like the first game but just couldn’t get into it. It had some great aesthetics and creature designs and such, but the parry system being absolute trash didn’t help things. Maybe it’s time to revisit it and give it another chance.

Funny how the vague, misdirection metrics vanish into the woodwork when something actually sells. No “user engagement” or “…has reached x million players!” gibberish here. All of a sudden there’s nothing to hide—when something sells well.

I’m waiting for them to fix the mistake of only putting a few MB’s on the disc and screwing over the hardcore enthusiast gamer who prefers to own rather than waste money renting/leasing.

The hypocrisy in the entire gaming industry is truly disgusting. All platform holders like to champion their various initiatives for the disabled/differently abled, with all sorts of customizable controller options and layouts and foot pedals and so forth.

They laud their accessibility features in games, then in the same breath give the ok to developers to create Achievement and Trophy criteria that no average person could ever accomplish. I guess handicapped people who would very much like to be achievement/trophy hunters aren’t worth considering? How is someone who truly needs the Xbox accessibility controller or that playstation one supposed to beat Crash 4 levels which require superhuman reflexes where literal tenths of a second mean the difference between success and failure?

Lest everyone forget, trophies and achievements are not equivalent to the medals given out during the Olympics. Only one person/team gets the gold in a given event, whereas achievements and trophies were designed from the very start so that everyone could unlock them. But that can’t happen when scummy devs gatekeep these achievements and trophies behind absurd criteria only the best of the best can unlock.

Hm, no mention of the ‘End user owns nothing and this game can be forcibly changed, altered or removed without notice due to lack of physical disc version’ bug a lot of people are reporting. Seems to only affect those bright enough to realize renting digital code is strictly worse than owning the said game physically and in perpetuity.

Physical versions up on SquareEnix North American store, lock in a preorder while you can

Warning to all Achievement hunters: There are games included on this list with broken, glitched, or otherwise impossible achievements. Not sure how both platform holders get away with that anti-consumer practice, but they have been getting away with it since achievements/trophies were first introduced. Platform holders really ought to have their foot on these developers when it comes to broken achievements (or simply bad, achievement-hunter-unfriendly criteria), then press down.

@Kaloudz I never thought I’d be typing this, but for once we’re in complete and total agreement.

False. Bethesda does not employ Q&A testers. A lifetime’s worth of playing Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallouts 3/4/76/New Vegas and encountering an innumerable, unfathomable amount of bugs, crashes and game breaking glitches is all the proof I need. And yeah Bethesda themselves didn’t do F:NV, but it was built on their antiquated, geriatric, decrepit engine that someone needs to take out behind the barn and put out of everyone’s misery.

In another article I noticed Jez was all too happy to give everyone his two penn’orth regarding Shuhei Yoshida’s putting subscription services on blast. Jez made a long list of quotes from industry executives to…’prove’ Shu wrong. I wonder if Jez will include Mike Ybarra’s comment in any upcoming articles regarding whether canning the handheld was the right decision or not🤔

I’m fine with this. More than fine, actually.

We finally clawed our way out of the ‘Xbox has no games’ decades/generations of consoles, now I just want to enjoy them—and I can’t do that squinting at some tiny barely HD screen, one eye on settings-decimated gameplay and the other on an ever dwindling battery as my hands devolve into arthritic claws from cramped controls. Prioritize making 4K 120hz on console viable and keep pumping out mid-80’s scored hits or above so I can actually enjoy them on a large OLED from the comfort of my armchair. That 3rd party handheld they showed is good enough for that crowd, that ROG or POS or whatever it’s called.

I’ll have to look into the trophies/achievements more thoroughly after all the praise this game has gotten. When it came out, I thought to myself ‘this looks interesting, but I have too much else to play that I know for certain I’ll enjoy. I’ll put this on the back burner for now.’ Maybe it should be pulled forward after all. If the trophy/achievement list is competently designed, I’ll look for a physical copy to own.

I wonder how these fancy pants controllers fit into the overall ‘everything’s an Xbox’ narrative. Can we presume that since ‘everything’s an Xbox’, this Xbox controller made by Xbox will connect to every device? Can I use it on my Switch, PS5, upcoming Switch 2? Kinda neat if true, deviously disingenuous if not.

Die hard FromSoft fan, since the og King’s Field days. This one’s a hard pass for me. Played the closed beta, not impressed. I buy From games for the gripping single player experience and meticulous, intricately designed, handcrafted worlds to explore. This is none of those things. It’s like they took the parts of their games that are the least enjoyable and mashed them all together.

I don’t mind them trying something new, but I hope to god they don’t pursue this direction any further.

Love these old school, turn based RPG’s. AND it’s getting a physical release (with the entire game actually on-disc)! Win-win-win!

Time to remake an old meme. Scumbag Satya and Good Guy LRG. One pushes an anti consumer agenda where they retain full control of your game, you own nothing, and it can be changed/altered/removed at a moment’s notice and without your consent; the other gives you what you want and lets you own it in perpetuity.

Thanks! Frustrating when I tried to claim it initially and couldn’t, but better late than never.