Cikajovazmaj

I understand the game price increase, but they are overpricing their inferior console. What's going on?
XSS now costs samey as a full fledged PS5, XSX 2TB costs more than PS5 Pro. Which is according to MS themselves best place to play their own games 🤦‍♂️
MS really hates selling consoles I guess.

Price increase would just be a death sentence to current generation. I'm not sure if Xbox can take a financial hit of selling at a loss in MS eyes, but it definitely should unless they want to phase out Series consoles and switch to XboxNext early.

Played for a few chapters, this game is very similar to Kena: Bridge of spirits. Seems like equal budgets, gameplay, some of art style and targeted audience.
Which don't get me wrong, I loved, but most Xbox players basically burned.
Suffice to say, South of Midnight works for me.

I'd say Split fiction and Xenoblade Chronicles X. While second one is platform locked, SF is an amazing game people should try out.

I guess this is why this guy is an ex-employee?
Games might be a bit pricey, but console most definitely is not compared to what is out there in the here and now. It's debatable if a price hike would have happened either way, or Nintendo will cause it. Many people predicted GTA6 to be the cause and turning point, either way I personally believe it was always in the cards (as much as I hate it).

To be frank, Nintendo's new pricing might have only been a predicted reaction to obvious world trading war that is ongoing and will undoubtedly result in global price increase in video games as a luxury goods. Just saying..

Immortals: Fenyx Rising. There, I said it.

Representing the minority here, but I really don't want a branded PC. Reason why I exited the PC master race space was because I wanted a hustle free gaming experience. I'm already bothered with multiple performance modes (it exists so I can see in 30FPS how game could look, but as I can't stand it I need to switch to perf). Making next Xbox a tinkerbox is only going to make that far worse. Please move away as far as possible from Windows, open platforms, driver updates, shader compilation, and all other annoyances taking attention from actual gaming.

I'm having trouble understanding how this would help Xbox brand. It's yet another device with scattered support to dilute brand recognition and confidence. MS is obviously going for 1st party handheld in less than 2 years. What kind of support and lifespan can one expect from "2nd party" device created in the next 9 months??
They should skip this and just run with their own device down the line. Or go all in on Xbox being a tool/service on certified devices. But don't make it a hybrid strategy, that literally never works out.

@Kaloudz Doom I believe could be a candidate for the GOTY. From what we have seen for now, it is looking absolutely amazing.

@Weebleman once all loop holes are closed and the price is stabilized, value proposition is gonna sit a bit differently with many a fans.

@Cakefish I absolutely agree with you that they "can't" or "wouldn't" do that, due to the situation they have put themselves into.
But you might have also picked up on me not being a fan of MS direction with Xbox hardware, and a long standing goal of creating a similar but more boring and maybe slightly faster PS.
Fact is MS is not willing to risk it to reach the top in gaming hardware, and instead is taking a biggest game publisher route for a steady and predictable route. Which is absolutely fine and on brand, MS always did that, and has always been service and software company above anything.
When I spoke about what MS should do, just as I would guess Seamus, I didn't expect they'll actually do it.
Hopefully they prove me wrong and Xbox Next hook doesn't end up being a bigger CPU/GPU.

@Cakefish "How else can one interpret ‘largest technical leap’ other than better performance?"
Not necessarily. Technical leap would also be exiting their comfort zone, and creating a console that uses piece of technology not conventionally used in the field. For example, room sensors making your whole living room a playground (in an actually functional way), which is something MS has historically been very interested in doing (Kinect, and the recent spyware I did not bother to remember name of).
Technology is a broader term, and one should not limit themselves by a confounds of a current trajectory and immediate market competitors when observing what it can offer.

This discussion has devolved into a measuring contest of how bad Xbox has it currently.
I believe Seamus's point, and what MS should be concentrated on, is innovation and change they can make to improve their status going forward. Even if they were market leader, there is nothing stopping them from imagining new ways of playing and shaking what gaming is for next generation. That is what sells systems, not graphics (is what Seamus is saying).
Historically, consoles that returned (or gained for the first time) market share were always like that, with differentiation factor. As an example, PS1 compared to Nintendo offerings of the time was a miracle of innovation, easier to develop for with better and cheaper storage medium, well performing 3D graphics which were unusual for the time.
Nintendo Wii made gaming accessible to everybody in the family, and all of a sudden it was not just for teens but also parents and grandparents.
Nintendo Switch took that further, and made gaming accessible everywhere, by making it a single console and a single game you were carrying around.
That is what MS needs, because it's very hard to flip market with heavy brand awareness and mental (and all digital) investments people make into these platforms. How they do it, I don't know. But if next Xbox is just another box with better graphics, I ain't buying it.

For the measuring convo, I'll only reflect on 100 million subs target. That was never realistic, as there is not such a big market out there. If you combined all GP and PS Plus subs you wouldn't get that big of a number, and human population is just not gonna grow that much in next 5 years

I kind of agree with Seamus (although he is eccentric and a bit out there, it's hard to argue his points).
But I don't think it's just content, it's a differentiation factor that is required to survive in today's market. Nintendo has handheld and family gimmicks nailed down, Sony tried their best at immersion (DualSense, PSVR, Audio, avoiding loading, etc..).
Xbox differentiation factor is GamePass, which is not marketed very well, and claim at the most powerful console on the market, at the time when that claim has historically lowest value.

@Reptilio to be fair 90% of modern RPGs devolve into a checklist, as they tend to have up to 5 different types of side quests that are rehashed and reskined until any joy is taken out of them..

Smart move to turn around a failing business and potentially grow it bigger then ever.
I'm sure people managing their shelf in mother's fridge will criticize and provide wise leadership advices, but I'm with Phil on this one (would be cool if he was transparent about it earlier though).

I can never understand how PR for these companies works. They announced biggest technical leap ever over a year ago, and it has been approved just now. How would they have know?

@Vaako007 that's the thing, I don't have a GP sub currently. Also, I'd either be picking this up on PS (when inevitably it's released) or PC.
Maybe it will get a trial and I'll be able to get a taste... (and yes, with my gaming habits and how much I expect to get from an RPG, it makes sense to buy vs. get GP)

Apologies to everybody on this website doing their job conscientiously (if they find this offensive), but online video game reviews have really became a laughing stock.
I'd say about 50/50 split as of now, switching these pros and cons points from one category to the other. How is one supposed to get the feel for the game reading these?
Is it just reviewers complaining for the sake of it?

This sort of news makes me sad regarding current state of gaming 😞
I loved Alan Wake 2, got myself a Deluxe/DLC edition as soon as it was released (I kind of expected it and held off, as that is a move they do woth all their games). One would expect such an awesome game to turn profit earlier, instead of all the MT, live service, F2P garbage that is polluting the space in recent years.

I am surprised Indiana Jones was not played by more than 4 million people. That is shocking given it's a genuinely good game and only competition it had on GP was COD.

Broforce. Just Broforce.
You'll love it.

@OldGamer999 now VRR, that is a real difference and a measurable win for Team Green. I am currently playing FF16, and that game is rough on PS5 performance mode. Might get to shine on XSX, although it's tough to justify developers expecting users to have VRR displays to make the game playable.

This might be the most meaningless difference in the history of video game consoles... It's theoretical extra bandwidth that is not ever used.
If anything, cutting that down for the sake of cost management would be a sign of lead architect maturity and proper optimization approach.

@Markatron84 played it on Switch 1, and can confirm it's a very decent port. Genuinely cool to be able to play proper Diablo on the go.

Great PR firing people just before dev direct.. are featured devs allowed to thank their fallen colleagues?

Meanwhile, Phil is still large and in charge... The brand is pivoting what feels like daily, failing financially in most endeavors, and thousands of people losing their jobs, but Phil and higher management are hanging on.

@TheEstablishment is there any real verified data showing users are actually buying into the ecosystem through these alternative avenues? I understand in vacuum it's a marketing and business strategy that sounds reasonable, but are there any numbers to support that current gen is not just an absolute failure it seems to be through "classic" metrics?

While I do believe number of people that haven't tried Titanfall 2 and would be interested is fairly low, it still is a gem and an awesome FPS campaign.

Frankly, wouldn't rate any of these 10/10.. every one of them has something significant in the cons category, be that performance, outdated engine and mechanics, or niche concept.
I do feel like there were better games on Xbox in 2024. though.

@OldGamer999 I have recently started to stream trials.. they tend to last about 2 hours and require a 100GB download. Easier to stream those two hours and sample the game.

@OldGamer999 objectively Sony's streaming tech is better compared to Xbox currently. That is against all odds and expectations, but it's what it is. They are just not advertising it as hard 🤷‍♂️
I believe Sony streams PS5 version of the game at 1080p60, whereas MS streams XSS version at 720p60 (edit: there are ways to get 1080p60, but there is artifacting compared to PS). That is not crucial difference on a small screen if you are streaming to a steamdeck like device. Also, Sony's service is more stable with less drops/freezes on average (far better then it used to be just a couple of years ago). Additionally, MS has a minor advantage in input lag (56 ms vs 52 ms), but that is really negligible for most casual users.

@GeorgeKal I'm gonna assume you are just trolling and wish you Happy holidays! 😄

@Coletrain "There's no reason windows shouldn't be able to layer stuff well, it already does on Xbox consoles."
It in no way represents how the current Xbox Series works (which I think does it well), but I have always loved the Seamus Blackley story about randomly removing DLLs and checking if it'll boot when optimizing Windows for the first Xbox

People might hate on me for this, but I really hope SteamOS and Linux raise their share significantly. It is already incredibly easy to set proton on a regular linux distro, and performance in many cases is not that bad.
Due to configurability and lightweight nature, performance should be higher compared to Windows, but sadly all translation layer shenanigans need to happen.
All this is to say, I believe Windows is a terrible basis for a gaming system, due to many dependencies and intricacies developed exclusively for all-purpose desktop systems that are hard to extract.
Hopefully MS creates a super-optimized version of the OS, but historically they are only adding to the stack, never properly removing bloat.

@Cakefish definitely worth claiming as I believe Battlefront 2 got the bad rep due to microtransactions, but was in fact one of the better shooters and Star Wars games at the time.

I swear, I read that subtitle: by taking the joy out of gaming everywhere. 🤦‍♂️

Kind of a shame that reviews got published before the Path Tracing update landed. Personally, I'm interested in how it will transform/change visuals, although I think they are fine as they are.

I was kind of surprised by a low score here and I wanted to check the state of the game for myself. So I fired up first couple of hours of a walkthrough on YT.
Few takeaways:

• getting this out of the way, it is not a game I wanted it to be
• technically it seems rather good, no big issues, beautiful visuals and production values all around
• person playing the game doesn't seem to be good at it, which took some fun out of experience
• I visited opening locales over last year and it was fun catching glimpse of actual details
• gameplay feels a bit boring, unless it changes significantly later on
  All in all, seems like a good/great game, just not my type of thing.

@Fiendish-Beaver well, you really don't have to live with it. It's a piece of tech, a gaming box under/next to your TV. You can always change it for a reasonable price to a one that offers you more for your buck. It's a console, not a godly creature with users it's following

Haven't played in a few months, so I missed latest updates, but it really wasn't that great before. Very sterile and plain feeling from menus and career mode, weird driving model, just plain villainous AI and even worse online players.
For my money, GT7 and even F1 23/24 are much better and exciting games.

The Quarry is a better game than it was given credit at the time of release. On a short side though, so perfect to take on before being removed.

I have completely forgotten this ever existed. Which is weird, because I liked the idea of it.
Maybe it will be a shadow drop sometime in the future.. (one can dream)

My logic might be flawed, but isn't Sony already in this market? Portal streams PS5 and cloud games. My assumption is this new console would be Portal 2, including streaming PS5, cloud games, and last gen local play (or something similar).
I do hope MS can enter handheld arena strongly, meaning with a proper device and ecosystem (as MS branded Rog Ally alternative won't cut it).

@Balaam_ local media preview called visual design style "Unreal Engine 5 Stock". Still, game might be good, doesn't have to be a looker.

@UBERSICKO well, there is a small caveat with those 40 million people. It's 40 million people who tried/downloaded a game that at one point was the only decent new product MS had on GP. I would assume all 30 million subs (not sure about the number) at least gave it a chance, which is what they would have done for any of the games on that list if they were on GP day 1.
On the other hand on Steam, I think game has a 18k user peak over the last 30 days. I'm not saying it's not popular, it's just not as popular as the likes of Fortnite or Diablo 4.

All this seems perfectly on brand for Stalker game. Every game in the series has been released broken and compromised, but had core to become great following the excessive patching. I would have been surprised if this one was any different.

A bit delusional if you ask me.. it's a good game, but was a bit boring/sameish compared to FH4. Also, nominees are genuine juggernauts compared to FH5..

Might sound harsh, but I think only ones that should win are Hellblade 2 for Performance and CoD for MP.. wasn't a particularly great year.