Cakefish

It’s funny a bug like that slipped through the cracks for so many years but fair play to the new leadership, she’s really revitalised the software engineering teams and I love to see it.

Infinite is probably actually my least favourite of the mainline Halo games. It’s a game I’ve soured more and more on over time. Narratively it just feels incomplete, it’s just filler. Halo 5 may have butchered Cortana, but at least it tried to tell a story. And it had the variety in biomes and cinematic flair that Infinite sorely lacks. For Infinite to be partially redeemed in my eyes they need to actually directly continue the plot it set up (because that’s the thing, the entire game feels like just an intro chapter) and not repeat the ‘we’ll address the cliffhanger of the previous game off-screen and pretend it never happened’ thing again. Infinite feels like a game designed with a meaty story expansion in mind that just never arrived in the end. Do Infinite round 2 that addresses the issues of the original and you’d have a strong entry in the series I think.

I honestly like the new one. It blends the previous XSX one with the vibe of the original one. Very satisfying.

First Apple, now Microsoft. It all comes around in cycles. Flat was the fashionable thing for years and now glass is.

Kinda reminds me of original Xbox logo so I like it.

She read my mind.

“New feature drops on console have been less frequent.”

I’ve literally been repeatedly moaning here in the comments about exactly this for the past year or two.

The recent update was a good start, excited to see what comes next! 😁

Sounds good to me

@themightyant great point, that’s been exposed as a blatant lie now. I just went back and re-read Microsoft’s 2023 statements to refresh my memory and they’ve aged like milk!

I still think the Bethesda purchase was a success, but the Activision purchase was a disaster.

Very cool (nice job Asha), buuuuut there is a catch!

The conversion rate of Essential to Ultimate, which I consider to be the true price of Game Pass, only improved from 40% to 45%. So an effective 12.5% reduction in price. It’s nice, but not nearly as dramatic as the reduction in the monthly rolling price, which is a bit of a shame. I don’t think it’s quite enough to convince me to convert my stacked years of Essential into Ultimate.

Still, can’t complain! I really like the direction the new management is heading in so far.

@Krlozgod same as PS Plus Essential, Extra, Premium tiers. The key difference being Game Pass Ultimate focuses on modern day 1 first/third party games (excluding COD) whereas PS Plus Premium is focused on PlayStation’s classic back catalogue of games.

I’m just amazed we spent years discussing Day 1 COD in Game Pass as the key pillar of the Activision purchase and now it’s back to there being no Day 1 COD. In hindsight, it was all rather exhausting.

I just played Reanimal with my brother. Cool experience! Had to look up lore videos to know what on earth was happening, traditional for Tarsier by this point lol

Also continuing my Code Vein 2 playthrough. It’s a great game I think. Enjoying it a lot.

Fingers crossed it works on Helix too, though really Microsoft has a moral obligation to ensure official backwards compatibility to reduce ewaste and of course with it being the consumer friendly move too.

Jez is the same bloke who confidently dismissed the multiplatform rumours back in early 2024. He’s not exactly credible on this particular topic.

Oopsies lol

Guess it confirms that they lost a substantial number of subscribers since last year’s price hikes. They wouldn’t be saying this kind of thing otherwise if they weren’t seeing actual negative impacts to the bottom line. It’s not surprising, but interesting to see it all but confirmed nonetheless.

As for what would entice me back to Game Pass Ultimate I don’t even know. My issue is that the majority of games I want to play either aren’t in the library at all or get added years down the line after I’ve already bought them. That problem can’t be resolved, it’s just that my gaming tastes are niche. A more flexible system sounds good, but that wording is pretty vague, could mean anything really.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes and how quickly they make these changes! Earlier reports were saying there’d be no major changes to the Game Pass tiers this year, but with new management anything is possible.

Yay Metro is a great series so I’m looking forward to seeing this next entry.

I know asking for complete ad removal from dashboard is unrealistic, but I never want to see another damn obnoxious Tesco advert ever again on my Xbox like we were subjected to last month, or any non-gaming related advert for that matter. If you insist on adverts on my gaming box then I insist that they must be gaming related at the very least.

I’d also like the ability to order my store wish list by various things such as custom rankings, release date, pricing, current sales, console type, etc. Just like Steam has.

There’s so many other possibilities here. How genuinely refreshing that they actually are bothering about consoles again after completely forgetting about XSX|S ever since 2023. The new leadership is firing on all cylinders so far, so promising, I only hope the momentum is maintained through the rest of the year and beyond!

What was Phil even doing? Asha has achieved more in a month than he did in years. I like the direction this is going.

The XSX. The impact of moving to SSDs can’t be overstated.

Two. 3DS and Switch 2. 3DS? Probably not worth it (at launch specifically). Switch 2? Yeah, no regrets there so far!

I got XSX in early 2021, so within the first year but technically not at launch.

I’ve actually really been appreciating Game Pass Essential since switching down from Ultimate. It still includes some cracking games like Deep Rock Galactic and it even includes Control too.

Obviously I’d prefer free multiplayer but that should go without saying really haha

Code Vein 2

Performance is noticeably better than launch so I’m glad I waited to properly dive in. Gameplay is more responsive too thanks to combat tweaks. Expecting patch 1.07 very soon that’ll bring even more improvements.

I’m really enjoying it!

I wouldn’t be interested even if it were real, I’m the type who pays for YouTube and Spotify to avoid all the ads!

2027 already? Time is going too quickly, slow down please, have mercy.

@Fiendish-Beaver ah thank you! I went to uni and got a master’s degree, but I don’t want to pretend I’m a genius science boffin or anything like that. I’m not very good at maths, so while I can do the basic statistics, I can’t do anything too fancy. So my current role is more data collection orientated than on the analysis side of things. Plenty of opportunities to develop and branch out though!

I’ll be starting Code Vein 2 tonight! I played a few hours before my extended work trip back in Feb, but deleted my character so I could start from scratch now that the game has seen a couple big patches while I’ve been away. Should apparently be another big patch launching next week that adds auto item pickup and more performance improvements so looking forward to that! Can’t wait to get properly stuck in, I love soulslikes so much 😊

I think it’s a good decision by Asha. One I welcome! I’ve never been a fan of it because of how it completely undermined the value of the consoles. Just felt like Microsoft abandoned XSX honestly, like a neglectful parent.

@Fiendish-Beaver sorta kinda but also not really. Let me explain!

This is a pseudonym I originally came up with as a teenager for some gaming related forum, can’t remember which one specifically. My brain thought of ‘fishcake’ and then flipped it around. The surreal concept of a fish composed of cake amused me so it stuck in my mind and here we are. I started reusing it for most other gaming accounts too. I was interested in marine biology back then too so fishy things were on my mind a lot.

The survey was beam trawling. Collecting data on fish such as length, weight, sex, maturity etc. Some larger sharks/rays get tagged and released. Lots of environmental data collected too. Water samples, chlorophyll samples, sediment samples etc.

I’m not at sea all the time, these things come about once or twice a year. Usually I spend a few weeks at sea per year. This year is a bit of a bumper one though where I’ll be spending ~9 weeks at sea in total if all goes to plan. Still got some more sea trips on the calendar later in the year.

I’m not good at ping pong at the best of times, I have terrible hand-eye coordination, so yeah you can imagine how that went at sea. Still good fun though haha 😂

Microsoft please please please keep the UK XSX prices where they are. It’ll give a nice little competitive edge that Xbox desperately needs right now.

Don’t price match Sony….

Yeah, I know they almost definitely will.

@Fiendish-Beaver fisheries science survey of the Celtic Sea and Western English Channel!

And yes, we had a ping pong table set up below deck for part of the trip lol

Wow that’s quite the story about the Falklands! I’ve met a crew member who’s originally from there!

@Fiendish-Beaver I’m still at sea on a work related trip! But we dock in port this afternoon so I’ll make a start tomorrow! Looking forward to it 😊

I would like to see some more of Tides of Annihilation.

At the risk of coming across as a hater here I personally think it’s rather silly to lump ports of old games in with brand new titles to generate annual meta rankings. When half the titles for Xbox are just PS5/Switch 2 ports what useful information is that even supposed to convey? It would be better if the ports of older games were separated out from the actual new releases, so we can just focus on the true 2025 output.

Translation: it’s a PC 🙃

@fatpunkslim yes agree, also they should introduce annual memberships as an option too like PlayStation has.

@Questionable_Duck good spot! That’s kinda hilarious lol

I really, really dislike that ad campaign.

Xbox actually trying to promote their own hardware? Woah.

Are pigs flying? Has hell frozen over?

Haven’t seen this sort of thing since 2023.

Hopefully actually optional and not ‘optional’ in the way first party game releases and store sales are where they shove a full screen advert down your throat. I want the option not to be continually harassed to use it.

Well if this momentum continues then it seems like Phil leaving may prove to be very beneficial after all. Seemed like a nice chap, but can’t deny that console became a complete afterthought under his watch, to say the least. He talked the talk, but he didn’t walk the walk. Early days still, but a very promising start for the new leadership.

Good work Asha. Done more for console than Phil has in literally years. Perhaps this is when we start to find out that Phil was actually what was wrong with Xbox all this time 👀

@Globo I cycle between the same half dozen colour options so it’ll be really nice having more choices available!

Oh wow, very nice! It’s been a while since a meaningful console update. Mad that it’s taken 5 years for a per-game Quick Resume toggle, but better late than never eh! Great stuff and good to see the stingy 2 group limit be lifted too.

Steam already has this feature, but it’s a very good thing Xbox is copying them. It’s what I keep asking for. Be more like Steam. The ability to set custom artwork is a great example of mimicking Steam’s customisation ability. More of this please Xbox.

It’s so hard to say as so many things still up in the air, especially as the leadership just changed. The route they appear to be going down is transitioning to a PC only brand, but attempting to make PCs much more living room friendly in the process. I’m very interested in seeing where it goes, but also I struggle to see how they can compete with Steam which de facto owns the PC market.

@Balaam_ Play Anywhere will be made redundant on Helix. If Helix is a PC then Windows handhelds such as ROG Ally will automatically support Helix games without a need for specific Play Anywhere support. I guess it’ll still be useful for legacy support for XSX|S of course, but that’s it as PCs already support PC games by default.

“so bringing them from Steam to the Xbox Store hopefully won't present anywhere near as many hurdles in the next generation.”

Well not really, in my opinion. Xbox App already exists on PC and most publishers default to Steam regardless. Not a problem if Helix supports Steam of course, but just wanted to point out there’s no barrier to developers using Xbox on PC currently, they just choose not to. I don’t see how Helix will dramatically change this dynamic honestly, usurping Steam as the default PC storefront is a gigantic mountain to climb, to say the least!

Having more timely indie releases on XSX in the meantime would be a very good thing though.

It’s strange reading these articles knowing my Game Pass Ultimate has expired, after 5 years of being subbed it’s taking some adjusting mentally to not have automatic access to all of these games.

Both of these look very promising!

@BacklogBrad it still hasn’t come to fruition I would argue. I recently purchased Borderlands 4 and Code Vein 2, neither of which support Play Anywhere. It’s only really going to become reality when Helix launches, until then there’s just insufficient support from third party publishers.

The words may change, but the question is will their actions follow suit or will they still follow the ‘everything is an Xbox’ doctrine while simply pretending otherwise 🤔

@Fiendish-Beaver I personally think it’d make much more sense to simply raise price of Ultimate until it’s profitable, if it’s not already. Maybe it sheds a lot of users but at least then it’s still technically offered as an option, avoiding the terrible PR from spending a decade hyping up day one Game Pass titles only to suddenly kill them off completely.

@Fiendish-Beaver wasn’t the whole point of the pivot to PlayStation intended to offset loss of Xbox first party game sales? I don’t see why it’d be beneficial to give up on years worth of cultivating a brand (Game Pass) only to kill it cold. The whole thing would’ve been pointless and with no exclusives to turn back to and no Game Pass either then how does Xbox hope to compete with PlayStation and Steam? After putting all their eggs into the Game Pass basket I don’t see how they can ditch it and survive.

I’m no longer subscribed to Ultimate so it’s not an issue for me personally, but the main talking point about Xbox the past half decade has been Game Pass. I think the PR hit would be quite significant.

Well if the 25% price hike thing is true then that’s not good at all. Microsoft will be in hot water for sure if they go for that yet again (fourth year in a row if I count correctly). Hopefully Essential escapes the price hike madness 🤞