CaptainCluck

I’m starting to really dislike the future vision of Xbox, and regret buying a Series X. I should have just spent more for a gaming PC or ROG Ally. It’s just failure after failure, and most of their recent game releases are bland and boring. All the talented developers and designers left years ago. They have a console for someone like me and it’s the Xbox 360.

@JayJ I only own a Series X, but I’m just not an unpaid marketer for Microsoft when writing comments here.

@JayJ You're repeating Microsoft's leaked Powerpoint, but I don't agree. A completely locked-down digital console that doesn't have any secondary market to purchase games is terrible for gamers and will kill any Xbox momentum. Sony's latest console release has merged both models with a detachable drive, and the Nintendo stuff is a complete guess.

I hope Xbox learned their costly lesson in 2013. The competition should do a quick video on how to share games with friends if Xbox try to go through with this.

Top Spin 4 is the only reason I keep a 360 hooked up. No Tennis game since comes close, plus I liked the roster which had Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Borg and Becker. Virtua Tennis is fun but more arcade-y. I hope they keep the same mechanics with the forehand timing, better animations and movement.

The management team leading Xbox are uncool. They turned a cool gaming brand into something lame.

The Phil Spencer era really took away the gamer edge to Xbox. So much is banned. Everything is toxic. The original Xbox and Xbox 360 were awesome and had a great vibe.

Mass Effect Trilogy, Mafia 1 Definitive Edition and LEGO Skywalker Saga are the remakes I enjoyed a lot.

Starfield would have been awesome if they had focused on 20-30 planets instead of over 1000, if they had written an adult sci-fi story with interesting characters, and also left the current day politics out of it.

I don’t think it’s fixable just because they add some vehicles or local maps. Vehicles will just highlight the flaws with random generated events and places on the planets.

A good remote control like previous consoles. The IR sensor on the Series X is woeful.

A lot of the adapters just convert the composite 480i signal to HDMI and it looks terrible. There are adapters available for $50 that convert the component signal, and it looks great at 480p/720p. Xbox2hdmi being a good one.

The Mass Effect trilogy is the LOTR trilogy of video games. Amazing experience, interesting lore, galaxy, characters and continuation. Mass Effect 2 wins.

Everyone is pretending it’s good, but playing it less than any other Bethesda Game Studios game.

I like using the Xbox Dev Mode to play emulators, and quick resumes get deleted when you switch back.

I loved the movies, but this is a Disney product in 2025+. Not hyped.

Starfield was a big disappointment and wasn’t worth the development time and cost. Bethesda’s reputation has gone, and I have no hype for Elder Scrolls VI with that team and direction.

Hopefully they send all the hideous New Atlantis NPCs to the Enhance shop. I'm not sure how they can fix the terrible storyline and dialogue with patches though.

Turning a beloved character into lame Master Cheeks.

The original Mass Effect did vastness better, and you can land on many barren planets, collect resources and find something random - in a vehicle.

In Starfield, even the populated planets are boring because of the NPCs. I can’t remember the name of a single one. They all looked hideous though.

Xbox just isn’t a cool brand anymore - like it was during the OG Xbox and 360 days. They definitely aren’t prioritising the games and gamers.

The writing is just horrible. Terrible story and quests. Not a single character in the game that is memorable. That angry bald guy shouting about how it's BORING was right about Starfield.

A tone close to Daniel Craig sounds boring and like a typical third person shooter.

Suddenly, I'm not so sure it’s a great thing for the industry anymore.

This is 100% greed, under the guise of safety and security. Microsoft want money from every accessory sold - either first party or from third party certification.

Not sure about that main character in the Star Wars game.

Good luck to he/him.

An optional disc drive for BC games would gain Microsoft a lot of goodwill after its leaked future console plans. We are headed to the digital future for new releases, but backwards compatible games are being removed for digital sale. I want to play my copy of Half Life 2, King Kong, Driver, FEAR, Syndicate, Indiana Jones, Telltale Guardians of the Galaxy and others on the Series S and the next Xbox Console.

They may have wanted to save FF7R, FF16 and others for a Nintendo Direct event, and then have a simultaneous release on Xbox - rather than announce everything at the Xbox Tokyo Game Show.

This game will not stand the test of time or have longevity like previous Bethesda games. It’s technically impressive, but lacks soul and good writing. There isn’t a single good character and it feels like an obvious social lecture. I now have zero hype for TES VI.

The shooting mechanics were the best in any Bethesda game to date, ship and outpost building is a fun side activity and I felt levelling up was rewarding and exciting. It’s technically very impressive, but soulless.

I didn’t get immersed in the “world”. The storylines are boring. The characters were horribly written and I didn’t care for ANY of them. Mass Effect and KOTOR are still better spacefaring adventures and had a greater feeling of exploration - despite the linearity.

Starfield is a 6/10 game and not GOTY worthy.

@Spider-Kev
You clearly won’t get much agreement on an Xbox enthusiast site, but I kind of agree with your sentiment. Gamepass seems cool right now, but is the Trojan horse for an all-digital future where we own nothing and games can be taken away forever. We had recent leaks that show the next Xbox won’t even have a disc drive and therefore the death of backwards compatibility. Starfield was a real disappointment and not even in Bethesda’s top five games. I’m starting to regret buying a Series X now, and hope Nintendo can create something compelling and powerful enough.

The original Lara Croft model and control scheme. Very happy with this.

It’s already very easy to get rich in this game with outposts if you plan it well. Can build some impressive cargo operations.

There are quite a lot of unlikeable NPCs in the game so I love that this is an option - as it always was for Fargoth, Count of Bravil and his Skooma addict son, Delphine, etc.

@Ocat My TV switches to HDR when I launch the game. Is that the Xbox doing auto-HDR? The auto contrast toggle really made it look detailed for me.

I spent hours exploring everything at Argos Mine and Kreet to gather resources. The scale is insane, especially when reaching New Atlantis, exploring the space port and jumping over the metro train into the water and walking far from the city. All the systems have clicked for me including the space combat. It was the first game that looked a little washed out with HDR on my TV, but I enabled dynamic contrast and it looks a lot more detailed now.

@somnambulance
There is an accessibility option to increase text size.

I thought a 7 was IGNs lowest score?

Europe and America are getting a really bad deal. I have a Singapore PlayStation Plus Premium subscription and the price is SGD104/£60/$77 for 12 months. Includes Games Catalogue, Classics Catalogue, monthly games and Ubisoft Classics. The only thing it doesn’t have is cloud streaming.

There is no debate. That is an absurd strike to receive. They’re possibly using AI or auto strikes.

It’s definitely possible but I think FFXVI and Pixel Remasters should be prioritised, then we will have ALL the mainline games 1-16 minus XI.

Good work by the CMA in scrutinising the deal and Microsoft’s Azure cloud dominance. They make the FTC look like amateurs. It’s pointless listening to people who only think a few seconds ahead and just want a few more games on their GamePass subscription.

They create some technically beautiful games, but lack creativity and quickly gets very boring. Skull & Bones just looks like an inferior version of AC: Black Flag and Sea of Thieves. Ubisoft’s best games were from Michel Ancel - Beyond Good & Evil, Rayman, King Kong - and BGE2 is vaporware at this point.

I like the simplicity of that main menu. New developers seemingly want to shove 10 different sections on a main menu to sell micro-transactions and battle passes.

I can’t even redownload my digital games on Xbox 360 because I moved to a new country than where I purchased and it just cancels the download on 79%. I’m glad they removed that on Series X.

Some great 360 games not BC: Quantum of Solace, Blood Stone, Singularity, LOTR War in the North, LOTR Conquest, Alpha Protocol, Riddick Dark Athena/Butcher Bay, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Space Marine, Brink, Jericho.

@AlexAtwell It's hard to predict. I wonder if governments would have made different decisions if they saw how Google, Facebook, Amazon and others monopolised the entire internet.

Microsoft obviously believe the UK is an important market - which is why they delayed the takeover again. They will give concessions and work out a deal. This isn't about acting important, but about protecting the internal market for the next two decades.

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but the X360 BC version still has online functionality, The PlayStation and Switch version doesn't.

Win-win. Microsoft will get to close the deal, and the UK will extract further concessions for their market.

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3 months Xbox Live Gold voucher - converts to 2 months of GP Ultimate for those that don’t already have a sub.