Cakefish

@themightyant haha yes, probably will age just as gracefully as his other 2024 quote about how their exclusivity strategy won’t be fundamentally changing. Only for Xbox to proudly announce that Halo is a PlayStation franchise from here on out just the following year. Zero consistency! Phil’s quotes do seem to age like milk.

“ which is also likely to deter customers as Xbox Series X|S continues to be slowly phased out”

It’s just kinda sad to read this. It’s true of course, but it’s also a bit depressing.

Sorry Routine but 4th of December is Metroid Prime 4 day!

I’ll add it to my backlog if it’s good.

@Tdx oh absolutely, they are objectively different. If they weren’t then the whole Play Anywhere thing would be entirely redundant. The very fact Play Anywhere exists and is needed demonstrates that PC and console are very much separate platforms (for now).

@themightyant the five year old XSX is £500 already. No chance whatsoever that the next one will be £600 (sadly). I think it’ll very likely be even more than the PS5 Pro. If all the rumours come true (Steam plus no multiplayer paywall) then they won’t be willing to subsidise the hardware. It’s going to be sold for a chunky profit margin.

Could be $999 so that the famous quote that Phil Spencer made last year about not selling $1000 consoles stays technically correct lol. Looking at Xbox Ally X currency conversions that would mean £800! I think that’s a much more realistic number to expect.

@Sindayl yeah it’s a great point, both the Steam and Xbox backwards compatibility integration need to be seamless. Having some awkward dual boot system where your Xbox library is confined to a deprecated legacy OS that never gets updated whilst all the new games and Steam lives on the Windows side wouldn’t be a very elegant solution at all. One OS, one login (well aside from Steam obviously), all the games seamlessly integrated - that’s the dream!

Good luck to them in finding another publisher, hope it works out in the end.

@JayJ yeah absolutely agree, plus also I really enjoy nerding out about console/PC specifications and all the things that come along with rendering games on local hardware (I’m a big fan of Digital Foundry). So everything moving to cloud streaming only would feel so incredibly sterile and boring to me. I definitely think much would be lost if that were ever to happen. So that’s another reason why I will never fully embrace the cloud!

@teknium_ same for me, I noticed that last night too

@JustinSane Metroid Prime 4 makes this December a very interesting month. For me and all the Metroid fans out there. There’s dozens of us!

For Xbox specifically I’m very excited for Code Vein 2 in late January!

This is why I’ll never embrace cloud streaming. It’s fine as an additional option of course, but it can’t ever be acceptable to be the only way to access our games. The ability to play games offline is so incredibly important!

@OldGamer999 presumably there would only be one version of the game. The console/PC schism would cease to exist. It would just be the Windows version running on all devices.

@SalaciousCrumb Valve is able to protect sensitive Steam user info just fine without a paywall. I don’t think you need worry about that. Microsoft has plenty of money available to fund proper account security.

Such a device would be ‘chef’s kiss’ as far as I’m concerned. I’m all on board for this, it’s the dream come true.

I’d be perfectly okay with paying more for the hardware upfront, as long as it actually outperforms PS6 in practice. The rumoured specifications indicate that it should do.

Time will tell whether all this plays out the way that I really hope it will.

It’s not dead, it’s just sleeping permanently.

Official Xbox account posting 30 second clip of Master Chief twerking to the backdrop of Doja Cat WHEN?!!!

@OldGamer999 my Game Pass is stacked until early March next year. The end is fast approaching! I looked at the numbers and it’s currently £9/month to renew for 15 months at current conversion rates and prices. That’s not too bad, so I may well take that option if 2026 ends up being as stacked as they’re currently promising it to be. We’ll see! If not I’ll simply downgrade to Essential.

My XSX is going nowhere for the remainder of this generation. I love this console, exclusives or no. My beef with multiplatform is regarding my major concerns about the long term sustainability of a closed platform that has no exclusive content. Of course, the rumours are staying that the next Xbox will actually be an open platform as it’ll be merged with Windows PC - and obviously Xbox leadership are strongly hinting that this is their plan too. So an open Xbox that can access Steam while also having backwards compatibility with all the console games (already confirmed) resolves all my concerns about long term viability of the platform and would be absolutely perfect for me!

@OldGamer999 well it could also be that, despite proclaiming exclusives to be completely antiquated and that modern players don’t care about them, they secretly behind the scenes don’t actually believe in what they are preaching. So they pick and choose certain games to be intentional timed exclusives. This wouldn’t really make sense, as it flies squarely in the face of their recent public statements saying that multiplatform is the best thing since sliced bread, but who knows anymore with Xbox leadership? I choose to believe the theory about it being a matter of resources, but ultimately if it turns out that they simply aren’t being honest in their public statements - well it wouldn’t be all that shocking anymore lol

@OldGamer999 probably was too far into development before the sudden switch to multiplatform focus 1.5 years ago, so the PlayStation version simply needs more time to bake in the oven and they don’t want to delay purely for the sake of simultaneous launch. We saw the exact same situation happen with Indiana Jones recently. Meanwhile, the likes of Gears of War Remaster, Halo Remake, and The Outer Worlds 2 aren’t as large, complex projects so could release day and date on PS5. This is my theory.

Borderlands 4 also has kinda jank foliage. Something to do with nanite not properly supporting vegetation in earlier versions of UE5 I’m guessing? Sadly it appears we’re still seeing games based on those much older versions of the engine.

Once Upon A Katamari for singleplayer.

Borderlands 4 for cooperative multiplayer.

@TheGameThrifter your first paragraph in comment #18 mirror my thoughts exactly. If exclusives truly didn’t matter anymore in the current market then there would’ve been no need for the damage control that we saw early last year and the blatant ‘boil the frog slowly’ strategy they’ve employed since then. They could’ve just been honest and said ‘yeah we’re 100% multiplat now’. The fact they didn’t speaks volumes.

I’d be despondent about the state of Xbox if I weren’t aware of the future plans to merge the platform with PC. It’s the saving grace of this rapid change in strategy, as PC is not reliant on exclusives to survive and thrive. This is just an awkward transition phase until next generation hardware course corrects.

And thus the final domino falls…

I’m still really not a fan of this marketing campaign. It still tries to pretend that this is all one happy little unified platform when it’s not, it’s two distinct platforms in the form of PC and console. We know now that merging the two together is the long term goal for next gen hardware, but we’re simply not there yet. This ad campaign is putting the cart before the horse.

@Matthewnh yeah the disc drive is £70 RRP now. They reduced it down to that sometime last year if I remember correctly.

I’m confused why you’re including the fancy luxury controller though? The Pro already comes with the standard DualSense controller. It’s not like Switch 2 where the Pro 2 controller is light years beyond the joycons, the default PlayStation and Xbox controllers already have great ergonomics.

@Matthewnh it’s £770 RRP? £700 for the console and £70 for the disc drive attachment.

God-tier feature, but yes it should go much further back in time than just 30 days to reach maximum utility.

It’s finally here! Katamari week!

I just finished Keeper. It’s so strange, weird, and trippy but 100% worth experiencing! It’s cliche to just state that a game is a work of art, but this game deserves such praise more than most. So much care and love went into crafting this little gem. The gameplay actually evolves in quite clever and interesting ways as you progress, it’s well paced and never gets stale. A short but sweet adventure. I can’t say I completely understand what the hell that story was about, but I had an absolute blast playing anyway and it successfully made me very curious about this world and feel a variety of emotions throughout the narrative journey. Looking forward to the YouTube lore videos haha! It’s just a great time all around. Double Fine delivers the goods yet again!

I’ll mirror what I said yesterday though and note that the experience is definitely better on PC due to a much superior framerate. A few shader stutters here and there, but overall way, way smoother and more fluid than XSX. The lack of a performance mode on XSX is really my main complaint here.

Interesting device, but I already have a Switch 2 for handheld play. I simply don’t travel around away from home often enough to justify having two dedicated handheld devices.

Keeper

Amazing art style, wonderful soundtrack. The vibes and atmosphere are on point. Packed full of charming little details. The gameplay is basic sure, but this is clearly intended to be an audio-visual experience first and foremost.

My only real critique so far is poor framerate on XSX. I downloaded the PC version and it’s honestly night and day smoother. I think I’ll have to continue the rest of the game there instead. Hope they can patch the XSX version. It really suffers from having no performance mode. The fixed camera perspective helps to a certain extent but it becomes tiresome for the eyes after a certain point.

The actual core game though is great.

I love Double Fine ♥️

Looking forward to checking this out.

Art style looks gorgeous!

@FraserG probably for the best honestly. It’s less than a week old after all. They would really burn day 1 buyers (like myself) if they discounted it so ridiculously soon!

Battery life is rough, but it’s the nature of the beast. Switch 2 has similar battery longevity and obviously this is a lot more powerful than that system. It is what it is.

You having a laugh Bandai Namco? Little Nightmares 3 on sale less than one week after launch? Come on… I enjoyed the game but seriously… WTF?!!! 😑

@Banjo- it certainly seems to heading in that direction! They’re clearly trying to consolidate/simplify the offerings under these three main tiers that cover all devices. Yeah I agree that’s the most likely scenario to avoid uproar in the PC community. I wonder just how much life PC Game Pass has left, if next-gen is 2027 then there’s only two years left for Microsoft to complete this transition 🤔

@Banjo- yeah sorry I edited my comment when I spotted my mistake but you were too quick for me lol

@Banjo- Premium doesn’t actually get COD within a year. They made a specific exception for it in the small print. Just FYI. Edit: oops I see you knew that already and I just misread your comment, sorry!

Otherwise I’m in agreement with you. Pure Xbox definitely mentioned the additions to Essential and Premium in their coverage though, I just double checked.

@Feffster same for me! Weird bug

@Kezelpaso oh interesting, thanks for the tip! I’ll download tonight

@Banjo- in the case of PC/cloud being added to Essential and Premium not being discussed much online I think there’s two factors at play.

Firstly, most users online are enthusiasts on the Ultimate tier so it simply got overshadowed by the changes there. Secondly, most Essential and Premium users probably game on console only and don’t own gaming PCs so the addition of that is not very useful to them (else they’d be Ultimate or PC GP subscribers). Further to this, a lot of those Essential subs are probably legacy Gold users who primarily just have it simply for online multiplayer and so having a small subsection of the Game Pass library that they already don’t care much about available on cloud wouldn’t excite them either.

These changes do make a lot of sense given the context of the many prolific rumours for the upcoming merger of console and PC next-gen, but I don’t think it’s all too shocking that current subscribers of Essential and Premium aren’t too fussed about getting access to PC and cloud. I’m not saying they’re bad changes by the way, they obviously are good for consumers in the long term (though there is a obvious question remaining of whether Microsoft eventually plans to sunset PC Game Pass).

@themightyant the fact that COD is specifically excluded from the Premium tier really makes it look like the prime suspect for the latest Ultimate price rise.

@themightyant I’d add boasting how Hi-Fi Rush was an absolute success on every metric and then promptly selling off both the IP and dev studio to the list of egregious contradictions in recent years. Then they followed it up by immediately saying how they need more creative AA games that give them prestige and awards in their portfolio lol

@abe_hikura it’s funny how Tom’s comment mirrors our discussion in yesterday’s article comment section so closely!

Certain titles only. It's very circumstantial. It's a whole mix of factors like genre (soulslikes and platformers more likely to be replayed), game length (shorter more likely to be replayed), narrative linearity (games where there's loads of player choice in the story very rarely get replayed because I come to see my initial playthrough as 'canon' ), remasters being released (sometimes tempts me to replay a game), whether it gets ported to Switch (handheld novelty factor!), new game release schedule (I have more time to revisit old classics during dry spells), my own perception of my backlog (if I feel it's overwhelmingly long then I may feel 'guilty' for replaying games), my mood in any one month (sometimes I'm feeling nostalgic, sometimes I want new and shiny), direction of the prevailing wind etc.

I set the Keeper one the other day. Probs will keep it for a while (ah pun unintented). It’s gorgeous!

I wonder when the preloads will begin? Every time I check the store page it glitches out and tells me I need to upgrade to Ultimate. Need to fix this by the 17th!

@Banjo- yeah I think it’s largely avoiding making poorly thought out public statements that proceed to age like milk. So things like:“only 4 games on PlayStation, don’t expect floodgates to open”, “ABK won’t result in Game Pass price rises”, “Hi-Fi Rush is a huge success in every metric”, “we’re so happy with how Everwild is shaping up”, “if we just made you redundant consider using our AI to ease the emotional pain”, “everything is an Xbox now” etc.

Death by a thousand cuts.

@Grumblevolcano Yep, that’s precisely what I’m talking about! Their messaging has been so inconsistent over the past 5 years that the public are gradually losing trust in the brand. They keep changing their tune every 5 minutes, it’s hard to keep up.

> “The ABK buyout won’t result in game pass price rises”

> Proceeds to significantly raise prices three years in a row.

@abe_hikura yeah that’s the thing, the very fact that Xbox feels obligated to officially refute all these rumours prove they are reaching critical mass in the public realm outside of just the troll community. Such rumours very rarely gain so much traction amongst the masses for Nintendo and Sony because the overall public perception of these brands are healthier. That’s my thoughts on the whole situation. Half the battle for Xbox is that they keep botching the messaging!

@fatpunkslim I think there’s something to be said about the state of Xbox PR right now. Nintendo has also courted multiple controversies this year (Mario Kart World price hike, Game Key Cards, Welcome Tour being a paid product etc.), but they’ve weathered these storms much easier than Xbox has. The ***** merchants are targeting Xbox because they’re easy prey. They’re easy prey because Xbox is currently awful at maintaining positive, consistent messaging about their brand. It’s often been diluted, ambiguous, cryptic, misjudged, confused, tone-deaf, and/or poorly timed. They can’t seem to get it right for more than a few months straight before they stumble into yet another PR blunder.

Reminds me of Breath of the Wild.

I still think it’s such a shame all that work went to waste and Rare seemingly is doomed to be a one-trick pony (Sea of Thieves) forever more.