Cakefish

Disc to digital would be a neat thing for those with physical collections, but as an all-digital gamer already I really hope there’s some other neat features and improvements in there for people like me.

Sad news regarding the wider job losses, but I’m personally relieved that Double Fine survives. Phew! 😮‍💨 Hope they don’t have to downsize though. I’d love a Psychonauts 3 one day. Also good that the other endangered studios also found buyers or investors.

When we heard that Helix is at its core a PC then this was all but officially confirmed. PC market has been all digital for eons.

As others have pointed out already, the Xbox stats are much more heavily skewed digital than PlayStation is so there’s even less incentive for retention of physical.

Maybe Asha will surprise us, but given they’re strongly rumoured to be mercilessly axing half a dozen of their most talented studios because the financial situation at Xbox is so dire I doubt there’s the budget to prioritise physical games.

Things seemed really positive for a few months there. Why can’t good times ever last with Xbox? 😢

I can see why Phil jumped ship when he did, he didn’t want his legacy to be tarnished with all these brutal closures.

They bought all of these studios to diversify away from Halo/Gears/Forza and add variety to Game Pass and yet now they are mercilessly culling them all.

I still feel very sad about Double Fine in particular, but losing all of these at once is such a damaging blow to the brand. It’s as baffling as Sony closing Bluepoint, but on an even larger scale ugh 😣

I did the maths. £450 minus VAT and converted into USD at May 2021’s exchange rate was equivalent to $515.

How am I supposed to calculate regional equivalent? Exchange rate at time of purchase or current exchange rate? Tax or no tax?

Well that small window when Xbox had the price advantage over PlayStation was nice while it lasted lol
Can’t imagine the UK translations will be any kinder 🫠

Smooth & silky 60fps ❤️

@Fiendish-Beaver Halo remake and Fable had already been announced for PS5, cat was out of the bag. Gears E-Day had never had official platform confirmations, so was a blank slate. That’s why it’s an exclusive whereas the others couldn’t have been without severe PR repercussions.

It’s nice that they’re actually taking this seriously seemingly.

@Sindayl same here, Psychonauts 2 is my fav first party Xbox game in the XSX era. So sad to see them in danger like this 😢

So this is why Phil chose to retire when he did. He must’ve seen this coming and decided to bail ahead of time. He really mismanaged Xbox ever since that ABK acquisition honestly. Xbox has been in free fall ever since then. Now the talented studios have to pay the price 😢

@Kaloudz Microsoft wanted niche, highly rated games to add variety and prestige to Game Pass. I’m pretty sure there’s a Phil quote about it somewhere in the history books. I did find a Matt Booty quote about it: https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-needs-smaller-games

@Kaloudz @MrStark Psychonauts 2 is literally my favourite first party Xbox game of the XSX era, nothing else even comes close. What do you mean Double Fine have done nothing?! Keeper was a lovely experience too. Granted I have no interest in Kiln, but 2 out of 3 is still great track record. Double Fine are a great studio!

DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH DOUBLE FINE MICROSOFT! I WILL FIND YOU! NO MERCY! 😡😭

Phil saved Xbox back in the Xbox One era and then almost killed Xbox in the Xbox Series era. Strangely bipolar legacy to leave behind huh 🤔

I hope Asha can salvage all of this. She’s doing a good job so far in my opinion.

Yes please. Much better late than never!

Great decision by Asha. I was highly sceptical when she replaced Phil, but she’s already exceeded my expectations many times over. It’s a truly strong start to her reign.

The Halo and Gears ones seem a bit pointless, they’re just a bunch of skins and minor things 🤷

It’s very good that exclusives are back on the menu imo. It’s needed after Sony backtracked on PC ports in order to keep their games off Helix. Xbox hardware wouldn’t have been able to survive after that happened. Glad that Asha could see the current strategy was unsustainable. It’ll be too little too late to revive XSX|S, but they need to get the ball rolling now so Helix can launch with a solid ‘console exclusive’ lineup. It’s great that Asha actually remembers the promise that Phil made back at XSX|S launch of great Xbox exclusives, Phil forgot that over the years and the brand massively suffered as a result.

Not really feeling the same buzz as previous years now that my Ultimate has expired and I’m cruisin’ along on Essential, but I’m still curious to see more on Gears and Halo. Fable less so because of the delay into 2027, that kinda killed my excitement factor for that one for now. As is typical for me it’s actually the third party games that excite me the most because they are the complete wildcards. Might see more of Tides of Annihilation and I’d be well up for that!

No disrespect intended, but racing games just aren’t my preferred genre.

@Tasuki I think because Steam measures in hours it’s just easier for cross-platform comparisons for a lot of people. Online enthusiast gaming discussions are dominated by Steam users.

Hooray for smart delivery

Thanks for the reminder about the summer showcases, I’d forgotten about them until now.

I don’t know how I’ll play Horizon 3 now. Sad times.

I like the new visuals but I’m not so sure about the sound changes, it comes across as more… airy? I like the bass the old version has.

The pure irony of the former AI boss canning the AI on console lol

Legendary move though, one I wholeheartedly endorse. Another solid win for Asha.

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!