From what I read, they were genuinely apologetic for the state the game launched in (essentially it was early access, just not labelled as such) and were already putting in the work to make things better... Just a shame they'll never get to deliver on that and finalise what was clearly a passion project.

Unlike Build a Rocket Boy (Mindseye) they didn't cry about conspiracies of the industry being out to get them either, they just got their heads down and back to improving things before the bankruptcy announcement. Shame. I wish them well.

Seems like a great period to play some games from my backlog.

Mortal Shell 2 has been calling out for me to come back and play more, and I really should get stuck into the current No Man's Sky expedition before it finishes in a couple of weeks.

Sadly set list really doesn't do anything for me.

That said, it's a bit of a rock and hard place when making a new game like this now as we've already had so many bangers over the years in Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and I'd rather see new tracks in there than rehashing ones we've played a million times already.

Maybe I'll get curious enough to take a look, but I'm happy enough with my copy of Rock Band 4 (band in a box edition with all the instruments, and I picked up the adaptor to use the old Guitar Hero guitars too) on XBox, especially as it has almost every track from Rock Band 1, 2 and 3 imported into it (thank you Harmonix!) as well as the dlc's I purchased.

"ROG Xbox Ally X: The most useful "Xbox" device I've probably ever owned"

There's a certain amount of irony that the most useful XBox device you've ever owned is a handheld PC.

@Fiendish-Beaver I figured that was the case as you're clued up on these things. My reply was more for those who aren't as, as you rightly say, some people see the mention of AI and instantly think "all AI bad".

The upscaling AI technology is able to take a lower resolution image and present it in a higher resolution, making it look cleaner with less jaggies, without changing the artistic vision... Unlike the AI we're seeing in DLSS 5 which applies its own effects and lighting to the game, drastically changing the look in many cases. While I think that's using some interesting technology and techniques, I'm sceptical about nVidia's claims that it just enhances the in game graphics and lighting using the existing assets. If that were the case then why does everything look like it's running with generative AI filters applied? 🤔
Having seen some of the games it's been tested on with the pre release version coders got their hands on, perhaps it's not quite so intrusive and obvious when running at a lower intensity level... But I guess we'll see when the final product releases (supposedly before the end of the year).

@Fiendish-Beaver generative AI, yes. Machine Learning Language AI, no. That's been around for a long time and is/can be incredibly useful and effective, and crucially doesn't require anywhere near the compute power or energy that generative AI does. It also doesn't create moral and ethical dilemmas by stealing other people's work like generative AI does.

@shiningpikablu252 yeah, I know...it's just wishful thinking as it's one of my favourite XBox games and I'd love to be able to play it on the more modern hardware.
I'm also aware of how unlikely JSRF is to be added to BC due to the licensing nightmare that goes with the soundtrack, and not having the orignal songs in the game would be criminal.

At least I can still play the disc on my 360

Great news... Now can we please get Jet Set Radio Future added to the list of compatible ganes? 🤞🏻

Also: Halo under a new team is much needed. Hopefully they'll bring some enthusiasm and fresh talent in to turn things around.
As others have already mentioned though, I'd hate to see the series turn into Call of Halo under Activision. It'd be incredibly sad to see it become a low effort annual release cash grab, or a PvP live service Battle Royale a la Warzone.

Someone mentioned that Id should have been given the Halo IP... I couldn't agree more. I think they'd be able to do it justice with their gun play, and possibly even add a bit of the always downplayed horror to the franchise, making the Covenant and (especially) the Flood much darker.
I think that darker, gritty aesthetic was a huge part of why Halo Reach is up there with my favourites of the series. It genuinely felt like a last ditch battle to defend your home planet rather than the colourful, almost cartoon like laser show the series usually portrayed. It was a very clever and effective change in art direction.

I get the feeling that these restructures are all parts of the machine to move away from XBox games day one on Game Pass. Look at how many studios are actually XBox Game Studios now, whereas everything else has either been shuttered, sold off, merged or moved under another publisher umbrella, namely Activision and Bethesda. Whilst still first party, these aren't XBox Game Studios, and I strongly suspect their games will follow suit with CoD being removed from the Game Pass USP.
I also suspect that it will be much easier for Asha to justify releasing games on other consoles when they're coming from Activision and Blizzard rather than XBox Games Studios, almost a technicality to try and appease the XBox only fans without looking like they have egg on their faces.

The question then remains, will Microsoft keep Activision and Blizzard as publishers for the long term, adding their games to GP at a later date and publishing to other consoles... Or will they look to sell off the publishers now they're bolstered with plenty of studios and IPs? It could be a smart move to add to their portfolios before looking to sell them off (much like UbiSoft streamlined what they were working on, and waited for the Assassin's Creed Shadows launch before going to market to maximise their stock value).

The next few years will be interesting for sure. Most of us are fully aware the industry is currently in a huge crash, but I don't think any of us can predict what it'll look like on the other side right now... and with the RAM crisis driving hardware prices up, consoles could find themselves in a very tricky place to survive, let alone thrive over the next generation.

XBox: "we're excited to announce that we're partnering with Kojima to fund his multi million dollar vision for a new game and multi media IP! That's right, not only is he planning the game, but possibly a film, TV series, and/or anime to go alongside it, and he estimates the project is about 5 years or so away from being ready."

Also XBox: "We're sorry to announce that we will be downsizing more teams, and consolidating studios in this difficult economic time in the gaming industry. We must find ways to be more efficient and effective with our teams and our spending."

Look at the price of the Steam Machine... That isn't subsidised and the specs are roughly comparable to the base PS5 and Series X (as in current gen) when using upscaling and frame generation techniques.

Now think about how much more powerful Helix is going to have to be to be able to run "next generation" XBox games and high end PC games. That's not going to come cheap whichever way you cut it... And those RAM prices are still going up, so the best we could hope for in a couple of years is that the prices plateau.

Both Sony and Microsoft are going to have a hard sell on their hands with the next gen consoles due to pricing (even the Nintendo Switch 2 is about to get a price hike!), so I wouldn't be surprised to see them offering lease schemes that allow people to pay monthly to try and soften the blow.

Personally, I still need to see something that really sells next gen to me, because right now there's not really any incentive to upgrade. Helix is potentially offering the most versatility right now, but until we see the specs, the price, and what it can actually run PC games wise (full PC store front integration including Steam, Epic etc, or just PC games from the Microsoft store platform?) and what the next gen games look like, it's all just fluff and buzz words (same goes for the PS6, but there's a lot less rumours and fluff to digest there right now other than there being a home console and a handheld device).

@Jaxx420 Peter Molyneux was definitely a dreamer/hype man when it came to his games. I almost felt sorry for his team every time he'd take to the stage and start talking about their next project cuz you just knew he'd get carried away and start making up new things/ideas that weren't in the game yet 😂

That said, as a studio Microsoft screwed them over. After being told to make Fable: The Journey, an on rails game for Kinect, which for want of a better term, sucked balls, they were then assigned to make a 4 player co op Fable title, which never made it past a closed Alpha testing session iirc and resulted in Microsoft closing them down.

I'm sure they would have ended up on the chopping block at some point if they hadn't been "misguided" down this path anyway though... Just look at what Molyneux is up to now.

XBox 360 by a long shot. Both physical and digital games (XBox Live Arcade and Indie titles were absolutely smashing it back then!). It was XBox's golden era, without a doubt.

I know it's taken Undead Labs a crazy long time working on SoD3, but damn if it doesn't sound like Microsoft is going scorched Earth on their "outer" studios right now.

I hope whatever their plan is pays off for them, but it's getting harder to see how when they're (supposedly) shedding so many studios, even with active projects in development... I guess all of this will form a big part of whatever the overhaul is that's coming to Game Pass.

Interesting that they don't bother to list the native resolutions that are being upscaled...

Sounds promising anyway. Just a bit pricey for a remake that's not even including all of the content of the orignal game.

Looks interesting! Gotta be worth a look at least

@themightyant this. If it was a remaster and included the dlc then the price could be somewhat justified... But just having the orignal game ported to modern hardware, and without the dlc content? It doesn't get more bare minimum than that.

There hasn't even been any mention of whether the games will use resolution upscaling or run at increased frame rates (which, again, would be incredibly basic "additions" when porting to new hardware and could have also been added to the XBox versions)... You'd think they'd want to at least push any kind of improvements to encourage sales, so the silence speaks volumes.

It'll be 30 FPS on consoles... Maybe the PS5 Pro will get an enhanced performance mode of 40 FPS or similar using VRR, but as has been mentioned many times before, it all depends on the CPU bottlenecks.

The real question we should be asking is what native resolution will GTA VI be running at across the platforms. Obviously there's going to be upscaling at work, but I suspect we're going to be looking at 1080p native on XBox Series X & PS5, around 720p native on Series S (maybe even into the 600's), and the Pro? 1080p - 1200p range, perhaps with dynamic scaling. I'd expect they'll all be upscaled to 4K or thereabouts using their respective techniques, with the S perhaps upscaled to 1200p - 1440p.

It'll be interesting to see if the Pro does get any kind of special treatment here as technically they could lower the native resolution without losing much noticeable detail while upscaling with PSSR 2, but whether that would give an advantage for extra FPS or not, who knows.

Either way, it looks like we're in for a treat. While it's great to be able to see the performance and optimisation differences across all platforms (something I've used Digital Foundry for for years as a multi platform gamer) we do need to stop getting hung up so much on the micro details... I mean, when all the other GTA games released on their respective consoles we never let resolutions or framerates stop our enjoyment of the games, and I'm sure once we start causing mayhem in Vice City once again all of these thoughts are going to be pushed to the back of our minds.

I haven't been a fan of CoD for probably 15 years now, so this is a great compromise as far as I'm concerned.

I completely agree that this does set a precedent for XBox removing other games from Game Pass day and date too... I wouldn't be too surprised if the current Ultimate tier becomes separated out as an option to keep the first party day and date games (let's call it XBox Studios Access for example), and the Premium tier (these naming conventions are terrible) becomes the standard access to the rest of the games library.

Let's just hope the pricing models are adjusted to reflect whatever changes happen...especially if the rumours of no longer having to pay for online access are true, which let's face it, we shouldn't need to pay for online gaming on any platform these days (and if true, I really hope it forces Sony and Nintendo to follow suit!).

XBox are working overtime to stay in the news headlines... But all of the comments and statements like these aren't really giving anyone any clear answers, and if anything are just further confusing the issue.

I still can't get my head around "we're going back to exclusives" but also "btw, Senua 3 and State of Decay 3 will be coming to PS5"... I guess those deals must have been in place already? But it seems so random to me.

I hope XBox can get past their mixed messaging and show some real focus. Asha has real potential to do something good here, but the odds really are stacked against her... even if XBox was riding high, the RAM & SSD pricing are really going to screw up the RRPs for the next gen of consoles. I think we're going to see the real impact of this with the price of the Steam Machine in the next few months. Rumour has it that it could be just shy of $1000 🫪

I know we have the "actually rumoured" two studios now, but I would have thought Double Fine could have been a safe bet to keep for outputting lower cost, AA games which would be perfect for Game Pass... But then I would have also thought the same about Tango Gameworks, especially after Hi Fi Rush, and we all know how that turned out

For these same reasons it still surprises me that Sony shuttered Japan Studio, they were one of their truly creative studios, and not exactly one that demanded big bucks for their games. These are the exact type of studios big companies need to make first party, non blockbuster games imo.

This looks like a lot of very welcome upgrades, but man this announcement must sting for those who already bought an XBox Ally X I get that tech moves quickly, but those handhelds haven't barely been out 7 months...and while this new version doesn't have a release date yet it still feels like a kick in the teeth for early adopters.

@fatpunkslim "PS+ was raised again recently, while Game Pass actually went down in price."

While "technically" true, the reduction in price for Game Pass didn't negate the price increase that it had shortly before. It was a reaction to an overwhelming response that the price increase was too much, and saw the removal of CoD day one from GP to offset the" reduction", which was put in place because including CoD last year had a significant impact on their revenue.

TL:DR - Game Pass also saw a price increase, just not as much as it was originally due to the removal of CoD day & date.

Either way, neither service should have had their prices increased. It's just another way to further monetise their existing player bases.

Moss Book 1 & 2 are absolutely fantastic games on PSVR 2. It's safe to say flat screen gamers are in for a treat with this one 😎

For me;

Jet Set Radio Future.
Burnout 3: Takedown.
Left 4 Dead 1 & 2.
The Darkness 1 & 2 (but mostly 1).

Thanks @Old_Man_Harper & @Gunonaboat, appreciate the replies

That's kinda what I was expecting tbh, which isn't a bad thing. This definitely feels like a perfect game for Game Pass / PS Plus, an experience for people to enjoy (or not as it seems for some!) as a mostly one and done shot in an afternoon. I know that's how I'll be approaching it anyway.

While I haven't played it yet myself so can't speak for the quality of the game, it seems to be largely being bashed because it's being labelled as "woke", DEI, and of course being marketed as a "coming of age" story.
Unfortunately we're now in an age where some gamers / trolls will just tear a title to shreds if it doesn't meet their criteria of "not being woke", whatever that even means. I mean, just look at the growing discourse around Saros being accused of stealth woke. It's absolutely and equally insane and ridiculous.

Games are entertainment. Games are also art. Not all entertainment or art is for everyone, but when someone's dislike is based on such flimsy and often indescribable factors (ask those people to define what woke is or what they don't like and they often won't reply or just run themselves in circles) then it's hard to take them seriously. Just look at the backlash around the Intergalactic trailer... People hating on a "character design" that's literally an actress scanned in and mo capped for the game 🤦🏻‍♂️

I haven't played it yet, but it looks kinda fun... My only question is, do you really need to play this game, or could you get (much) the same experience from watching a long play on YouTube? 🤔

It really does look like it's an emotive experience, but I'm not sure whether the interactivity is particularly necessary as it feels like this could also be a pretty cool movie.

@Fiendish-Beaver I agree with you, although I would amend one thing;

"Helix, for example, will likely see Sharma stood front and centre on stage introducing it, but it is not her baby, it is Spencer's."

Helix would have been Sarah Bond's baby. Spencer was pretty much out of the picture by this point, being wheeled out mostly as a mouthpiece for announcements etc. Bond provided the first glimpses and posts about the next XBox... I firmly believe that she was planned to take over Spencer's role with the (now) Helix being her big console debut along with the promotion.

By all accounts, it looks like this change of direction with Asha came in forced by the Microsoft upper management to shake things up, as a major (last ditch*, perhaps?) attempt to get back onside with XBox gamers after deviating and meandering for so long.

• I say last ditch as this could be a final large push with the way MS have been willing to allow Asha to make some major changes already, with more likely on the horizon. And perhaps this is exactly what MS need... Perhaps doing something similar is also what Sony need to course correct from their live service garbage blowout.

I'm interested to see what Asha comes up with, and therefore to what extent MS show willingness to go along with her ideas... There has to be a line somewhere after all, but if she can show some well planned out prospective result predictions, who knows... It's certainly giving us something more interesting to discuss than the usual doom and gloom hey!

This was objectively a great move to make to bring down the price of Game Pass... It only affects XBox players who want to play CoD, and the savings you make over the year pay for the game outright. For everyone else, they get to save a few quid (admittedly the prices are still higher than they were before the hike earlier this year, but let's not open that can of worms).

My only concern here is that this opens the door for future titles to become "day one on Game Pass" on a case by case basis, or at least a per franchise basis, and you know there aren't doing to be any further reductions on the Game Pass subscription price, at least until the arrival of Helix, if the rumours of MS ditching a subscription being required to play online are true.

@FraserG thanks for the reply if it is an equivalent exchange, and available as an option then that's definitely a good thing! With any luck they'll keep it that way too... It never hurts to have options after all.

"the feature will only work for single-item purchases at first, and it won't apply to subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass."

But could you still redeem the points for a pre paid card to use against the cost of a subscription? Or will they only leave us with this new option? 🤔

Also, what's the conversion rate like? Is it equivalent of the current redemption for a pee paid card, or cheaper / more expensive points wise?

Outside of convenience, those are kinda make or break points for it tbh. It's usually a case of whenever changes like this are introduced, it's to make the consumer slightly less "well off" compared to what we had before.

@themightyant it's crazy isn't it. I really hope they haven't disappeared into the development hell abyss, but realistically it's not looking good.

But hey, Replicant and Replaced getting released have shown that crazy things can happen!

@Balaam_ same here... Replaced, and the ever absent The Last Night, and Little Devil Inside.

We can live in hope, hey.

So now we have rumours of:

• Call of Duty may not be a day one release on Game Pass.
• Game Pass is too expensive and they're looking at pricing.
• some XBox games may go exclusive again.

If we look at all three rumours, it wouldn't be a wild jump to make to assume that removing most first party games from day one Game Pass, reducing Game Pass pricing to reflect these games not being included day and date, and XBox games becoming at the very least timed exclusives could well be on the cards.

I'm not really sure how well all that would go down with XBox gamers though. Game Pass has been the big saviour for MS, so potentially reducing the value of its USP to lower cost doesn't sound like the best way to go (even though many have questioned its sustainability for years), and I'm not sure I'm seeing anything that would make me personally want to buy the next gen XBox just to play those games right now (for clarity, I'm not seeing anything that'd be a "system seller" for me on the next Playstation right now either).
I guess we have Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 coming at some point, but after Starfield my excitement has kinda been dulled for them somewhat, not to mention they're literally years out shrug

I couldn't care less about Call of Duty, but if this happened it would set a precedent for the major first party games not being included in Game Pass day one going forward. Things could get very messy... Expect yet another overhaul / adjustment to the tiers!

@kmtrain83 lol, yeah the term does get thrown about these days. To be fair though, the updates to Crimson Desert that have added things like extra mounts, improved load times and sharper graphics have been literally game changing. While the former speak for themselves, the latter has seen the Performance Mode graphics go from looking blurry, to crisp and clear.

It's nice to see the developers (Pearl Abyss) listening and reacting to player feedback to improve the game...and we're only 2 weeks post launch.

I think Helix be all digital for next gen, being primarily a PC device using either the XBox Gaming Mode running in the OS, or as a dual boot system.

I imagine there will either be an optional disc drive attachment that supports backwards compatibility only (no Helix generation games on disc), or MS will find a way to make it so you can use your existing discs on one of the other XBox consoles with a disc drive to allow them to assign a temporary license or similar that way.

Microsoft have made some of the biggest moves to support backward compatibility and game preservation, including games you own on disc, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

It's still way too early to put a score to it, but what I've played so far has been fun. There's a ton of stuff to see, do and discover, and the combat and skill systems seem pretty good too.

I can't believe that at no point during play testing no-one came forward and told the devs that they've way over convoluted the control system though. I don't have a problem learning new controls, systems or mechanics in a game, but when you have to hold 3 or 4 buttons in a combination to perform a fairly simple action you have to wonder what they were thinking, especially when you can perform some of those actions with a single button at other times (context sensitive controls are here in places, and could have been used more for a much more streamlined experience).

My biggest concern at this point is how grindy the game could become due to its MMO origins and developer history. In terms of exploration I can easily see this being a joy to play for many hours, but if they lean too heavily into grinding the basics it could get old pretty quickly.

I'm happy for now though, well worth the £45 it cost me.

I was gonna wait, but the DF video swung it for me. Got my copy pre ordered for the PS5 Pro, looks like it should be fun! 😎

XBox Helix is a good enough name tbh.

As I've said before, the internal project names are often better than what we end up with.

"Another positive bit of news included here is..."

Sorry, but where was the first bit of positive news?! This is a stinker all round for anyone who plays the game.

KCD2 is a good addition. It's not too old, and the more "hardcore" nature of the gameplay may have put some people off of buying it, but now they have the chance to play.

Cyberpunk is a great game, but man, it's going on 6 years old now. Most people will already own it and/or have played it. Even if they haven't, it's often on sale for less than a month of GP would cost, and then you have the game to play through at your own pace cuz it's huge.

Cyberpunk 2077 is fantastic now, but it's one of those games that most people already own or have played.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is the real highlight here, and funnily enough deserves more fanfare than a shadow drop.

The rest of the line up is super underwhelming though. Outside of the XBox Game Studios titles, it's becoming tough to justify the price of Game Pass. It's getting to the point where it may end up like the UbiSoft subscription service; worth subbing for a month once in a while to blast through the titles you're interested in, then skip it.
And let's be clear here, I'm not inferring that PS Plus is by any means better.

I think people are assuming Asha will have a lot more sway than she actually will...

Let's just take a moment to remember how Matt Booty intended for all of the XBox Studio Games to be XBox exclusives after the Bethesda & Activision Blizzard acquisitions (as shown in the internal emails over that period). The buck ultimately stops with the higher ups, namely Satya Nadella, and he made it quite clear that he has no interest in exclusives.
If Matt Booty wasn't able to change his mind with Phil Spencer behind him, I honestly can't see it being any different with Asha at the helm.

Microsoft want to recoup their expenses from that period of acquisition, and the sales of their games over on Playstation aren't giving them any reason to reconsider their decision.

For balance, I don't disagree that exclusives are what help sell systems. I have owned all the systems across each generation to play the games I can't get elsewhere, but there can come a time when it's just not sustainable, and sadly XBox have backed themselves into this corner through the whole "play it day one on Game Pass" system. It's been great for consumers, but why buy their games when you can play it on the subscription service? And why buy an XBox when said subscription service is available on a multitude of devices from phones to TVs, laptops and handhelds? 🤷🏻‍♂️

I'm sadly not very optimistic at all for XBox as a hardware manufacturer. I don't think they have a clear direction or vision on what they want to achieve, let alone how to achieve it.
While I see numerous benefits to a console/PC hybrid system, I can also see it being a means for XBox to haemorrhage income (no need for an online subscription to play the PC games, PC games are usually cheaper etc etc) as people move over to the PC side of said hybrid.

XBox as a publisher however? I think they'll do ok. I'd like to see Microsoft push for a more quality over quantity vision for some of the Activision Blizzard studios output for example (cough Call of Duty cough), but I think they're finally building the game catalogue they really needed to have in place at the start of this generation. I see XBox Game Studios (or possibly/inevitably Microsoft Game Studios) remaining for years to come.

Phil will absolutely be remembered for turning that disastrous start to the XBox One generation around. While it never got the momentum to catch up to the PS4, the fact that it was more than enough for Microsoft to keep investing in XBox for over a decade and still ongoing is testament to his work.

I echo the thoughts above though that the Activision Blizzard and Bethesda acquisitions were the tipping point for XBox. I'm not sure those decisions lie exactly on Phil's shoulders (remembering the internal communications from Matt Booty stating his intention of locking everything said studios produce down as XBox exclusives), but Phil was still the XBox head hocho so would have had sway in those decisions. Unfortunately they proved lengthy, costly, and ultimately divisive both internally for Microsoft and externally for gamers, which lead to the changes in business strategies as we now see them.

Regardless, Phil's legacy will live on. He was the leader XBox needed, and a personable corpo to boot... Something that we sadly can't say we have in any of the big three companies anymore.

@themightyant that's usually what happens with any kind of acquisition or restructure...a self imposed period of no change while they plan for the big changes behind the scenes. It'll most likely be 6 or 12 months before there's a shake up off of the back of this.

It's just as good as when it launched. A solid 9 😎