Cakefish

I think Wuchang releasing a couple weeks ago might well hurt this game. Both have very similar themes and style. Wuchang has the advantage of being on Game Pass and launching on Xbox day 1 rather than a year’s delay. I know my own interest in Wukong has diminished since seeing the positive reviews for Wuchang.

Keeper is the clear highlight. Really eager to see more.

@Balaam_ they tack on ‘Xbox Game Pass’ to the headline of every article possible. It’s search engine optimisation. It does sometimes make the headlines read a bit strangely though, as in this case.

Currently very busy with other games right now so can’t justify buying this at launch. I may get it later down the line, when it is on sale. Lots of games I still need to work through beforehand to get to that point though!

And if they still haven’t fixed the performance mode issues on console that Digital Foundry were describing last year then I’ll just pass.

I honestly don’t really know. Xbox is in a weird place right now. By expanding to other platforms and deprioritising in-house hardware, they’ve kinda watered down the significance of these anniversaries. It now feels not unlike if Spotify or Netflix etc. were to celebrate their 20th anniversaries or whatever - it’s just another subscription service now, focusing ever increasingly on cloud. Where’s the fun in that? Subscriptions don’t really care about anniversaries, they just exist and gradually iterate in perpetuity, that’s the whole business model. Strange times.

So I guess I’d like to be proven wrong. To see that Microsoft does actually still care deeply about their in-house hardware, outside of empty PR platitudes. I suppose it would be a good time as any to reveal the next generation of hardware and it really needs to be as revolutionary as all the rumours claim. I also want to see that new hardware maintain compatibility with the Expansion Cards as a gesture of good will to current Series X|S customers.

£600 is a very tough ask vs Steam Deck OLED. Yeah this has VRR and can play some games that SteamOS can’t, but ehhh that price is really suboptimal to say the least.

The higher tier one at least justifies its existence with a more powerful SOC than Steam Deck.

At first I was fully ready to moan when I saw the headline, but reading on… if this means they no longer clutter up the owned games list then this is actually a fantastic change. About damn time!

A one-off doesn’t really prove anything. Going to need to see other games like Stellar Blade to see that Sony has truly changed. Then I’ll thank them.

New Katamari is hype!

It’s a backlog focus month for me. I’m hoping to finish off Horizon: Forbidden West on PC, then I really need to play Lies of P: Overture and then I want to try out Wuchang: Fallen Feathers.

Hmmm Reanimal got delayed then? Oh well, I suppose we have Little Nightmares 3 in the meantime.

Darksiders 4 is cool, but not much to say about the teaser trailer itself.

Stellar Blade? 👀🤞

Shareholders will only be able to buy one super yacht instead of two, oof these really are trying times. Thoughts and prayers to the billionaires.

Ewww CEO pretending to care about layoffs they themselves ordered. While simultaneously boasting about record earnings. The fake sympathy is nauseating 🤢

I don’t like this, but it’s not Microsoft’s fault. Ridiculous law, this is the government’s massive overreach. Forced to upload the most sensitive ID documents in our possession to the dodgiest of websites around who will happily sell it on to criminal gangs on a silver platter, an absolute cyber security disaster just waiting to happen. I’ll reluctantly trust Microsoft, but there’s so many other smaller companies which are not trustworthy in the slightest. Terrible, terrible law.

Not played enough yet to give a fair vote. It’s on the backlog list after Lies of P: Overture.

Stellar Blade

The rest are mere pipe dream territory.

Looking at the state of most UE5 games, probably not. They only really started to optimise for performance in version 5.3 onwards and we’re only approaching what feels like a mature, polished engine at version 5.6 that only just released a month ago. A handful of the most elite dev studios have proven capable of overcoming the challenge of optimising with earlier versions of UE5, but I’m not confident that 343 have such top tier talent working at that studio - as harsh as that sounds.

I played the intro up to the first checkpoint. Reminded me of Lies of P - in a good way! It was humorous hearing these supposedly Chinese characters speak in thick cockney accents lol - a little immersion breaking but whatever.
Performance was a bit rough even in that initial tutorial though, so will need some patches. I still have Lies of P: Overture on the backlog and the second half of Horizon: Forbidden West so will be a while before I play, hopefully it’ll be fully patched up by that point.
A promising start though!

Ah seems I spoke too soon, they’ve changed it today to £60. Great! Glad they saw sense. I hereby retract all my grumbling at Microsoft.

I instead direct my moaning at any publisher attempting to charge £70 RRP for new games. £70 is $80 now. The exchange rate changed and companies need to acknowledge this fact (they never hesitate even for a second when pound weakens).

@darylb24 the US dollar has weakened throughout this year so 1:1 pricing no longer respects current market conditions.

@Fiendish-Beaver they weren’t charging £80, they were charging £70 (which is the equivalent of $80 minus tax) and still are. They haven’t dropped the price a single penny in UK. Boo 😒

Still the same price on UK store. So cheers for that Microsoft, guess we’re not deemed worthy. And yes, even after VAT is removed £70 RRP (£58.33 pre-tax) converts to $80 (well $79 to be exact). So yeah, I’m not very impressed honestly.

Marmite game then, as soulslikes tend to be. Bit concerned about the PS5 performance issues they mention, presumably will be the same for XSX. Well, I suppose this is where I wheel out the classic ‘nothing to lose as it’s on Game Pass’ observation. Fingers crossed I enjoy it. I’ve enjoyed other soulslikes with mixed critical reception such as Code Vein, so it’s entirely possible I could fall in love with this.

@WildConcept6 during covid my brother and I were playing loads of online coop games to pass time in lockdowns. We eventually ran out of games on Switch. At the time my brother didn’t have a PC but he really wanted to play Borderlands 3. So he got an XSS. The game didn’t support crossplay at the time, in fact most games didn’t back in 2021. So he convinced me to get a XSS myself and offered to partly pay for it as a birthday present. I was reluctant at first, but I also wanted to continue playing games online with him so I conceded.

Then I very quickly fell in love with console gaming again in terms of relaxing on the sofa in front of the TV with a controller. It was a nice, cosy experience. So I quickly upgraded to XSX, as did my brother too. Then I invested in a fancy OLED TV, which increased the appeal even more. XSX had fixed my biggest critiques of consoles - HDDs and mostly 30fps games. It also massively helped that Microsoft Rewards was on fire back then and I was easily earning £25/month in those golden days! I was able to ‘buy’ so many games for free.

My PC has since been used for games that don’t show up on Xbox (unfortunately a fair number of these as this article demonstrates) and games which run considerably better on PC (Plague Tale: Requiem and Hellblade II before they got 60fps patches) or games that just play better with mouse & keyboard. The reason I don’t use my PC in the living room is because Windows 11 is just so utterly mouse & keyboard dependent in its current form.

@WildConcept6 I had an original Xbox as a kid, but kept using it for the first half of the 360 generation as we were a poorer household so were behind the times. Then I switched to PC in the latter half of the 360 gen and remained so all throughout the One era. I only returned to Xbox in early 2021!

They’re absolutely fine, they don’t bother me at all. In fact, I quite like them even. I left them enabled.

Unlike the cloud history nonsense that they’ve just announced. I dislike that concept greatly. They absolutely should make that optional too.

It’s great knowing I won’t ever have to worry about buying the wrong version of a game, which is entirely possible on Switch 2 (where I had to triple check I was buying the correct version of Sonic x Shadow Generations).

Reading that I’m confused why they didn’t offer a VRR mode from the outset? Oh well, better late than never. The game plays significantly better at higher framerates, I played at ~50-60fps on my PC. Light years superior to the 30fps experience.

Can’t go a month without some game skipping Xbox or being majorly delayed on this platform. It’s exhausting :/

@Gabrie that’s definitely the feedback I’ll be sending once it arrives on the beta ring. Just give us a choice Microsoft, easy way to please all.

@Gabrie but I’ll have to sacrifice one of my precious game tiles for this useless folder that’ll be just full of cloud junk.

I won’t be able to check it out at launch because I’m going to a music festival that weekend (first world problems eh?) but I’m eagerly anticipating the reviews for this one. Hope it’s a good one!

December is decent timing too. I know it’s intended to promote the new film, but it means it stays well clear of obvious co-op competition in the form of Borderlands 4 and other big single player releases like Metroid Prime 4. I’ll keep it on my wishlist until then and may very well pick it up in the winter sale.

Hopefully we can disable this. I don’t want cloud games to show up on my console. I only use cloud to farm Rewards quest points by loading up all sorts of weird and wacky games on the iPad for the required 15 minute daily runtime. This will just clutter up my console with a load of nonsense!

Probably a 10 year long deal I’d wager. Back in 2020 Microsoft expected Game Pass to take over the world, so they would’ve been confident in signing such a long term agreement.

Wuchang hype! Well, I hope it’s good 🤞

Fingers crossed Wuchang is good. The trailers look promising 🤞

I recently purchased Lies of P: Overture so yeah I still buy games. Why would I let a bunch of corporate lackeys at a soulless trillion dollar company dictate and micromanage my gaming habits? Eww no. Game Pass is an accessory to my gaming life, not the centrepiece.

Yay no more adverts on dashboard for movies and TV. That’s an absolute win!

Edit: okay I scrolled down and it doesn’t quite make as much difference as I was hoping, as they still have a giant ‘watch and listen’ ad spot for streaming apps. Still, less advertising is just always an unequivocal positive. It’s a games console, keep it gaming focused. Movies and TV almost killed Xbox in 2013 - so good riddance I say.

I, for one, welcome Further Miyazaki Content with open arms!

I don’t plan on buying anything in this sale. The backlog demands my attention instead. Plus, I need to save up Microsoft Rewards points for Borderlands 4 and Little Nightmares 3 later in the year (assuming they review well).

Yeah I guess the problem is games take so long to develop these days that the generation is almost over by the time the first games that fully utilise all the tech actually appear. How many games actually use mesh shaders? Alan Wake 2 and I genuinely can’t think of any others. Then there’s the issue that Unreal Engine 5.0 released in a half-baked state so that set back games by many years too. How long will it take for UE5.6 games to finally surface? Probably not until the next generation hardware is already out sadly.

More evidence that next Xbox is in fact a PC. Evidence just keeps on stacking up.

Keeper and it’s not even a close contest.

@Coletrain yes I completely agree, by giving up on exclusives they made this transition to PC and a more open platform essentially mandatory for the Xbox brand to endure.

@Millionski to clarify, I agree with you. The market can’t support a XSX successor because Xbox doesn’t really offer anything unique these days other than Game Pass, which has proven to be an insufficient selling point to maintain a mass audience for a premium console. The hardware has got some neat tricks like Quick Resume but the market has spoken - it’s not enough to remain competitive. This is all a consequence of Xbox leadership’s poor management of this generation (and the obviously the one prior too).

And by thrive I mean that I think a PC ‘Xbox’ could thrive in the same sense that the Steam Deck thrives and not that it’s going to outsell the PS6, because that’ll absolutely never happen.

All signs point to Microsoft sunsetting traditional consoles in favour of console-like simplified Windows boxes that also have Steam and other PC stores etc.

It’s true I think that the market can no longer support a traditional XSX successor. Going the PC route is the only way Xbox hardware can survive. If they do it right though they won’t just survive but thrive.

Exciting times ahead next generation.

The art direction looks top notch. The screenshots are gorgeous.

Will Rare ever do anything other than Sea of Thieves or are they doomed to eternally work on live services for all eternity?