Cakefish

This should be setting off alarm bells at Xbox HQ, that they’re having to issue these public statements on a weekly basis. “We triple pinky promise we’re not doing a Sega”. Every. Single. Week. Can they not see that these rando trolls are only able to successfully light all these wildfires around camp Xbox because of declining public brand perception? People hosting negative opinions about the brand will more quickly latch onto the doomongering rumours as confirmation bias.

@el_pieablo yeah I just saw this tip shared on Reddit. Too late for me though, I’ve already redeemed all my points on the Xbox ones. Oh well 🥲

Thanks for the heads up! I just redeemed all my points on Xbox credit.

£63 total from ~70K points. Would’ve got more had I not just spent £35 worth of points on Little Nightmares 3 on Friday, but ah well, it was a fun game for the weekend!

Now I’m all set to buy Once Upon A Katamari 😁

Little Nightmares 3 (in co-op).

Why are these perks always so boring? I can’t even remember the last time there was anything remotely interesting in these.

Going against the grain here but I think 2027 is perfect timing personally. It matches up with the expected GPU/CPU refreshes on the PC side really nicely and seeing as this Xbox is supposed to be much more PC-like, well that just makes a lot of sense to me. The hardware spec has been set already, it’s locked in. Delaying to 2030 would only mean you get 5 year old hardware at launch (as is the case with Switch 2).

Personally, I want Xbox to provide cutting-edge hardware. They don’t have exclusives so can’t be as sleepy and relaxed about console specs as Nintendo are. I want great visuals at 60fps on my living room console (PC?). Next year games are expected to push the limits of these consoles with 30fps GTA 6 being an obvious prime example. If you want 60fps you gotta refresh hardware every now and then, we all have seen how heavy UE5 is and things aren’t gonna get any better over time!

Two years may seem like nothing to old folks like us, I get it, but keep in mind that XSX will still get the latest games for many years beyond that. Next gen is not the death of XSX, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it keeps getting games well into 2030 looking how long the XBO has lasted.

Split Fiction

Though Metroid Prime 4 might still have a chance at taking the crown, we’ll see.

I was always sceptical of those 2026 ‘we need to get a headstart on Sony’ rumours and look at that, the rumour tides have indeed changed direction.

I’d class it as more of an iteration than a novel invention, but okay.

Me likey. Me likey this lots. This is the correct path to take. Can’t survive vs PS6 by repeating the mistakes of XSX, which failed to differentiate itself enough. Needs to completely dominate PS6 in performance terms to successfully target the enthusiast crowd. Then you need to merge with the Windows development environment to ensure it retains support despite having a niche audience. Backwards compatibility is already confirmed, so happy days. Sensible thing to do would be to scrap the multiplayer paywall to somewhat compensate for the higher upfront hardware cost.

It’s nice and all but we know how this rolls. Cross-gen means most games won’t benefit fully from the hardware advancements for another decade from now, towards the end of that generation.

Well it’s not quite as high scoring as I’d ideally like, but I can use my rewards points so I think I’ll still get it. Then the rest can be spent on the new Katamari later in the month.

It’s got to be Psychonauts 2 for me. The original is great too, but I think the sequel is just that much more polished and refined - with a more in-depth and emotive story. My GOTY 2021 and easily my favourite modern era first party Xbox game!

I’ve built a digital games collection and all the hardware accessories so I really hope there is a new Xbox to migrate over to. I was really enthusiastic about the Xbox PC rumours, and still am, I think it sounds great. Though there’s still the elephant in the room of paid online multiplayer and how that would work with Steam/GOG and XSX backwards compatible games.

I need to milk it for all it’s worth while my Ultimate is still in date! It expires early March.

I’m hoping it starts before Little Nightmares 3 comes out on Friday, but looking less likely as each day passes. I want to preorder to get the remaster of the original bundled in so only have until Thursday to act!

Wow a surprisingly meaty update for such an old game. Well done Remedy!

Little Nightmares 3 looks good. Holding off preordering to see if that prophesied rewards gift card sale actually materialises this week 👀

The impact is dampened by the fact that half the games were already on Game Pass before this announcement. Most of the Far Cry and Assassin Creed games were at least. The games that weren’t are very old and could be picked up for cheap in seasonal sales. It’s not all that exciting.

At least it guarantees Star Wars Outlaws will come to Game Pass eventually, but my Ultimate will probably have expired by then - I only have it until March next year and then I plan to transition to Essential.

My brother ran out of money this month because of an unexpectedly high bill so no Borderlands 4 for me yet :’(

We’ll still be able to do Little Nightnares 3 next week thanks to the friend pass though!

My long work trip is over and I’m back home, so have access to the Xbox again. I’ll probably start Borderlands 4 in the next few days if my brother is available to play. Also looking forward to Little Nightmares 3 next week.

Ultimate stacked for another 5 months until March and then I’ll probably be sticking to Essential thereafter I think just for the online multiplayer.

@Fiendish-Beaver I remember many comments of yours in recent months questioning the profitability of Game Pass and predicting this significant price hike. So credit for reading the room correctly, but I think we can all agree that it kinda sucks that you were right in the end haha 😅

I completely failed in my prediction of no price rise until 2026. I didn’t think they’d be brazen enough to do another price rise for a third year in a row. They went above and beyond that though with such a steep price hike so soon!

Something doesn’t add up here. Essential is supposedly the same price as Core/Gold, but the conversion examples they give for the latter two are not 40%? They say 24 months Core/Gold converts to 6 months Ultimate. That’s 25%, not 40%? I don’t understand?

Will be moving down to Essential tier after my Ultimate expires in early March next year. I don’t use Game Pass enough to justify paying these prices.

Bit bummed that they’re keeping console multiplayer a paid feature. Wonder how they can possibly justify that with the next Xbox PC hybrid thingy that will also have Steam? No one will want to pay to play their Steam library online - PC gamers will revolt. I suppose we’re not there yet, but ominous warning signs here.

@OldGamer999 yeah mine lasts until early March ‘26 and I’m definitely downgrading to the Essential tier after that with these price rises. Oh well was good while it lasted!

But worried that the 12 month Essential (formerly Core) codes will be going away, there seems to be no mention of that? Will we still be able to buy annual codes from third party retailers as we can now? If not than that’s a colossal price jump at £7/month

Weird how Apple hasn’t been affected by tariffs (iPhone 17 £799 = $ 799) but Xbox has (Ally £499 = $599). Same is true for the other models but I’m not bothering to list them all. What is Apple’s secret? I guess smartphones are exempt where game devices aren’t?

I have a Switch 2 already and I don’t travel often enough to justify owning two handhelds 🤷‍♂️

It’s been happening for a couple months now on insider beta ring. Seems to be server side I’d guess as it occurs randomly. They need to fix it, kinda crappy to have such obvious UI bugs on a console.

The regular one is overpriced vs the Steam Deck OLED considering it has the same 4 year old APU. At least the X offers tangible performance improvements so can better justify the price differential.

Either way it’s not for me as my Switch 2 is my current handheld and I only need the one as I don’t travel all that often. I’ll keep an eye on the eventual Steam Deck 2 and Xbox Ally X2 as those should be a generational leap over Switch 2.

I assume they mean PC rather than actual Xboxes. The difference does matter for as long as the game libraries remain separated. Play Anywhere is still only supported by a small minority of games.

Code Vein 2 release is way earlier than I expected. Hyped! 😄

Well it’s nice to see other regions remain unaffected this time. Leave us out of your tariff fetish party USA, please and thank you.

I guess it’s fortunate I can’t play until next month. Should be in a smoother state by then let’s hope 🤞

I’m quite excited for LN3. The co-op aspect could be quite fun. I can’t try the Xbox version out until next month, but I’ve downloaded the Switch 2 version to play with. Hoping it’s good! 🤞

Little bit apples to oranges comparison pitting a second hand Series S against a brand new Switch 2.

96K points sitting in the bank. Perfect timing! Lots of games coming in October.

Split Fiction still going strong! 🥳

@Nintendo4Sonic that was the original point behind Series S SOC design. It’s a lot easier to scale for GPU performance than CPU performance, optimising for the latter results in more fundamental changes to game design. So the idea was that with XSS having a very similar CPU to XSX it’d be able to keep up with XSX frame rate wise, just rendering the graphics at lower resolutions to account for the weaker GPU. That just never ended up happening as many games lack 60fps modes on XSS. The original vision for the console failed to materialise.

I actually liked 6 more than 5. I found having a voiced protagonist really helped the story and narrative. A silent protagonist just felt a bit off in 5 as all the characters just monologue at you relentlessly and it’s a bit weird. That’s just my opinion though.

I absolutely agree though that the series should stay true to its roots and not morph into a live service abomination!

Oof another 30fps game on XSS? The whole point of XSS having such a similar CPU to XSX was to have framerate parity at lower resolutions, but that’s increasingly not been the case as the years have rolled on. I wonder where things went wrong exactly? Memory bandwidth I guess? Just a bit of a shame XSS never lived up to Microsoft’s original vision for the console. At least the hardware engineers can take notes for the next generation.

@RiverGenie great to hear performance mode is decent so far for you. I hope it stays that way for the late game too 🤞

@darylb24 Steam is also £60, though I guess it’s typical for PC to be £10 cheaper so no surprise there! I’m definitely going to get it on Xbox as I don’t fancy the 30fps on Switch 2 and it’s not a game I need to have portable.

Not sure how I’ll pay for it. I have enough Rewards points to get the base game, but then I wouldn’t have enough for either Little Nightmares 3 nor Once Upon A Katamari. Too many games not enough points! 😭

@Fiendish-Beaver strangely the base game is £60 on Nintendo eShop vs £70 for Microsoft/Sony stores.

Sounds promising! I can’t play until October due to work related reasons but it’s nice to know I have a decent coop game I can play with my brother next month.

@SMJ ah Asus? Yes well that explains it then. PC component manufacturers love this sort of thing. Especially prevalent in the discrete GPU market. As a PC gamer I’m well used to it. All you can do is sigh and roll your eyes 😂
The sad realisation is though it must work because they keep doing it! 😳

Zero/anti gravity… 🙄 suuure riiight mmmhhhmm. Microsoft embracing the typical gaming PC marketing nonsense I see!

Very impressive spec sheet!

With that price though I can now understand why Switch 2 has an LCD VRR screen instead of OLED VRR… 😅