Cikajovazmaj

@Lightning720 precedent is exactly what it is. It's precedent that it is OK to miss a feature and promise to possibly add it later.
I'm not saying it is going to be exploited, as I can not know that without a crystal ball... but just as in legal terms, it does establish that it has happened once and all future cases will be evaluated with that in mind. That is unavoidable.

@trev666 I will most definitely not!! I won't play BG3 at all, as it is not the type of game I'm interested in. But I will be keeping an eye on the health of my investment (XSS), though.

@Lightning720 I wouldn't call it nonsense, I would call it a precedent. Especially as MS is backing this decision, after what feels like public pressure applied by a developer.

precedent - any act, decision, or case that serves as a guide or justification for subsequent situations.

There are no clear guidelines communicated by MS around what would be acceptable and what not.. which means any developer can try the same and use this case as an example, trying to steer public opinion in their favor.

@trev666 This is beyond the point.
I, and many others, have purchased Series S under the promise of feature parity. Making an exception and walking back on the policy only opens the door for future concessions.. and in a couple of years, games will ship without half of their content (and probably the ambitious half).

Would be a 436p game for me.. no, thank you. I might try it on GP if it ever gets added.

I don't see how this is a solution. I might not understand, English is not my primary language..
They just cut out a feature. As a Series S owner, I'm very worried by this!

Wasn't great, got bored through the show and stopped paying attention by the end. I gave it a D :/

Wow, creating the whole narrative around a menu screenshot.. nice, almost a new territory for internet.
Joking aside, there is no way to know how that menu scales with screen size. I'm assuming his criticism is based on menu not being front and center (as, khm khm, it is in D2) and items being relatively small compared to available real estate. Which might all be totally fine if this is taken from a 60 inch screen.
Also, you will spend literally 2 seconds looking at this everytime you boot. Nobody cares

@Bobarino as somebody very involved in UX and interface design, one of the indicators of bad design is that people have to learn it.
Good design feels natural and PREDICTABLE. By the way, MS used to know that, as it was one of their key principles when designing Office tools

Why somebody would defend using 60% of screen real estate for advertising is beyond me. Probably the same people not using ad block on their computers..
Changing the placement of the dashboard is the natural path of progress, and there will be slow adopters and people resisting the change. Some changes will succeed, others will not. But that is not the issue here. The issue is over-monetization and product placement all over the screen that BY PURPOSE is not a storefront.

@Kaloudz it's basically a day in the life of a cat. You get lost and separated from your family at the beginning, wander around, solve puzzles, break things, jump, break things, meet nice robots, break their property, meet evil robots, break their property too, all in a quest to reconnect with fellow mittens.
Sorry for the spoilers.

@gingataisen it's been a real challenge mate, took me 3 hours to type out this reply.
And let me tell you, them humans keeping treats in a sealed jar.. they shall know my revenge!!

I am so ready for this!!! I have at least 250-300 hours in GT7, I need a change of equal or better quality! LFG
P.S.
Post-release free cars and long-term support are exactly what I would prefer, to a fixed list and paid DLC every 6 months.

As a proud cat companion, played it when it was first released. Very good game, glad Xbox owners get to experience it.

Phil staying competitive through pure creativity in money offers he can make..
Seriously, Inside is a good game, but nothing to "make anything happen" for. Also, that sort of offer should never be on the table in game development. Teams will just exploit it and produce rubbish..

MS needs to fix Xbox controller in general. It is so stiff and clicky, with what at least to me feels like a terrible D-pad.
Haptics from DualSense are needed (I am unable to enjoy racing games without em anymore) but there are larger problems at play.

Extraordinary games, both Ori titles.

@Altaria_97 I would not recommend it, only because Will of the Wisps has some mechanic improvements that make it impossible to go back to Blind Forest if you ever decide to do so.

Played this years ago elsewhere. Amazing game, ridiculous fun!!

@Reptilio this is actually going out with the bang for me, I wanted both of these games. Also, I have long lost any faith Gold games would be AAA or AA level..

It ain't great, that's all I'll say. Changing backgrounds (when supported) is a neat feature lifted from PS5; but ads, just 2 groups, and somehow cards done poorly (this is MS, they literally made that design language famous once upon a time).. I'm using a 55 inch 4K TV at less than 3m distance and can't make out card content clearly. WTF?

Glad to see it. Especially as demo was great and more people should try this game.

Post Digital Foundry video, Ratchet & Clank SSD comments have aged like old milk.. :facepalm:
P.S.
I believe Quantum Error is just poorly optimized though.

Truly disappointing. I have no idea what metrics Ubisoft is using when deciding on which games to pursue... But they should rethink them.

@Old-man-junky what Medium did, as I believe this was explained by developers themselves, was very different from Ratchet. They almost constantly rendered 2 worlds with half the framerate (which I assume is the reason that game ran like s**t). There are games and genres where that approach can work, action platformer is probably not it.

On a side note, I might be reading wrong, but SSD is not required only on minimal R&C settings, which would make sense as the biggest driver for SSD is texture quality (and therefore size) which you don't need for 720p resolution. Not that I believe PCI gen4 drive is absolutely needed, but there could be method to the madness of not needing one for 720p gaming.

@themightyant "ultra-high-speed nvme SSD" are not the words I would have used.. but drives are of the same type, yes.

Great game, well deserved!
It shows the sad state of gaming we are in, that there was no real competition in the category. But I do believe it would have easily won during stronger years too.

Cocoon seems like the only one for me from this bunch. But that game looks beautiful.

No surprise there, indy developer and publisher enjoying a massive platform with a current slight content deficit providing enormous marketing opportunities and extending their reach. In other news water is wet.
Hopefully, come this October the deficit will end and we'll see how many people will spend tens of hours in mobile-first games with Starfield and Forza on their Series drives..

Hopefully, PC is not benefited by having DLSS and XeSS excluded, and all should be fine.
Not sure what the news is here though, potentially limiting the pool of upscaling technologies? How can that benefit the players?

@Benjamin that depends on expectations, doesn't it? Me, I liked the first one and am expecting a similar tailored and focused single-player experience that uses all the tricks to punch above its budgeted weight. As long as it achieves that, I'm good.

Apologies to everybody who got triggered by my comments, it was not my intention. I was just stating my opinion and did not want to sound like a troll.

Anyway, I wanted to leave another comment, as I think DMC is actually a great game and I totally did not get all the hate at the time of release. I felt like it was a great coming-out party for Ninja Theory solidifying their "devs of future" status, but not everybody agreed.

@Friendly agreed. And number 2 (Nintendo) has done remarkably well, using a creativity and partnership strategy. Indeed, there is a large group of independent studios considered "Nintendo companies" that are choosing to only develop for their platforms, due to the support and conditions Nintendo provides.
Some of Nintendo's acquisitions were saving such perspective developers from bankruptcy. Therefore, it can obviously be done without "spending Sony out of business."

@ZuneTattooGuy
Oxford Dictionary (English is not my primary language): "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."

Additionally, I couldn't care less about Sony. What I do care about is the price of the gaming hobby I have (be that through a license purchase or service subscription). Whenever any corporation sets itself up to own future "supply", it usually spells a price hike for me and dips in quality/innovation.

@ZuneTattooGuy @Fiendish-Beaver there is a significant difference between approaches though. Sony is mostly paying for timed or full platform exclusivity to INDEPENDENT studios. All consolidation was on a smaller scale compared to MS. While that influences the current state, it does not directly dictate future position. The same developers can take their next project elsewhere (Kojima) if that is a better fit. Sony does not own the market itself.
MS approach is to directly acquire and own all big and active market participants. That is a definition of monopoly.

Technically they were not in a great situation at the time, so it makes sense. Also, this is exactly the type of investments MS should be doing, acquiring and funding smaller talented teams, growing them into something bigger, AAA ready. Instead of buying and consolidating giants (and monopolizing market using capital brute force).

Hopefully and helpfully, maybe patch 1.12 deletes this game and frees up space for Starfield on my SSD.. as I don't see how it can be fixed through minor patching.

Man, MS is something else..

Not surprising that there are people on this site that are actually defending this move, because fan site... But damn. Combined with price hike in face of first decent game release in years, MS managed to lose good will they earned on my end through that last showcase in record time.

Basically MS is openly saying we invested money for 4 generations and lost as we were not able to create/design competition. So allow us to buy external competition and market advantage. And some are eating that up..

They schedule first decent game for release to GP in 3 years.. they also announce price hike. I don't extend my subscription. That simple.

There are some good games here.. but it is ok. A lot to look forward to in the near future (and can't be bothered with anything except TotK immediately).

What would have been cool MS, would be permanently discounting storage cards to make this console not needed in the first place.

@Banjo- at least personally, 40fps option has been blessing. It's enough to makes things feel smooth and keep decent fidelity (most of the time full).
However, I understand not everybody has such a display, and can see why it's not considered a primary target :/

Feels like this has to be said.. framerate issue is surely not (or it shouldn't be) caused by the scale of the game world. Agreed, just the currently loaded piece of the map is complex enough, but the fact there are 1000 worlds present unrendered does not task the system as much as you think.
As evidence, I'll use exhibit A: Tears of the Kingdom. It has a huge world that tracks if 2 branches interacted on the other side of the map due to winds.. and it works on a 10-year-old tablet. CPU-s in this day and age are far too powerful, with way too much computing power to be limited by such background tasks. (admittedly it could have been a problem 20 years ago, but with XSX/S issue should be in designing all that complexity, not executing it)

@Kevw2006 depends how you choose to read it. I read it as "we weren't able to achieve stable 60 fps so we opted for 30." That seems like exactly what every other developer does when they settle on the 30 lock.
Related, I can't play 30 frame locked FPS games, so this might be problematic for me. Given the scale and awesomeness presented in that showcase, I'll give it a go anyway. But I might be a casualty of "creative choice".

Xbox Games Showcase has been hyped to such absurd levels, that I doubt it can fulfill those expectations now. Even if it ends up being the best show ever.
Can everybody just relax, do the presentation, and tooth their own horn once it is done?

There were some good games, especially if you are platform agnostic.

Starfield is the game I expect to be disappointed by the most. I have been tricked by Bethesda too many times to fall for it again.
However, showcase in general I expect to be awesome.

All for it, these events should use as much in-game footage as possible. Given how much Sony misfired with their latest showing, I'm really banking on this being a success..

Yeah, been a huge fan of Diablo series in early days (D1 was an addiction among my friends in 90-s), but for some reason I ain't feeling it for D4. Maybe Blizzard has finally depleted my good will well with all the shenanigans lately. Anyway, I'll wait to see player reactions 6 months down the line to evaluate if I should jump in.

Just wanted to remind everyone this game still looks sketchy as hell, just as it did when it looked like Sony exclusive.
Keeping my expectations low, but would love to be pleasantly surprised.

Technically, Sony put on a better Xbox showcase than Phil... (although it was boring)

Instead of introspecting at the fact Xbox is undoubtedly third out of three console space competitors, leave it to purexbox comments section to make this news about "Sony lied about Nintendo".