Coletrain

@Kraven it plays great in graphics mode, performance mode is far too low res for a 4k TV (but locked to 60fps) and doesn't do it justice.

After the brotastic cringefest that was FFXV I'm over the moon with it, deserves to be bought

FFXVI down to £35 already, go get it boys! (And girls)

@Markatron84 nicely put. I categorise my gaming in two ways: AAA titles for the series x, and indies on a handheld. Something so special about both experiences that way

@SleeplessKnight the one thing I have to 100% agree on is it's more silent than the ps5, it's honestly so impressively built.

The other stuff with loading times, graphics etc. I am not wading into that debate coz I think the ps5 definitely has it's merits, but overall I've been a happy XSX owner (MS conduct aside...)

@Scrubchub honestly my backlog is so long that I've not even considered getting a switch 2, still trying to play stuff on my 2017 switch. I plan out in my head what games I'll do in what order but every now and again a Clair Obscur or an Indiana Jones comes along and just screws the whole thing lol

@BrianRGI2X is FSR4 not hardware based like DLSS?

In terms of pushing graphical boundaries yeah it's fair to say the best is yet to come.

But in terms of number of high quality games? I can't keep up, so it's been an unbelievable gen. Still not played BG3, Metaphor, the lost crown, avowed, elden ring...I could go on.

So my opinion is, the gens been great, and I'll have very little need to upgrade early next gen no matter how many AI/NPU/fake frame marketing is thrown at me

Wouldn't mind blue prince coming down to £15 or so. I've enjoyed it on GP but I want to own that one

I think I'm right in saying that at the moment you get the series s version of games on xcloud, up to a maximum of 1080p 60fps, and the bitrate fluctuates wildly here in the UK making it often a frustrating experience.

Unlocking the bitrate and allowing higher resolution profiles is all I really want

@AlwaysPlaying thing is that cyberpunk was a great game lurking under p**s poor performance, Starfield is a good game that already performs well.

Dunno if Idris Elba can save Starfield from the critical masses, but I'm up for him trying

Keeper. Double fine is one of the best studios on the planet for fun and different experiences, and I pray that they don't get Nadella'd to death

I just assumed candy crush and all it's ilk were made by AI anyway, soulless time grabbing slop

@Kaloudz Beyond Good and Evil 2 would like a word 🤣

@NishimuraX Jon Clarke @ Xboxera mentioned that they've already trademarked and bought a web address with a different name if something happens. Speaks to the uncertainty when one of the biggest Xbox supporter sites is hedging

Gameplay was nothing to write home about, but the graphics are gorgeous and I enjoyed the humour a lot. Well worth checking out for those into the likes of family guy or rick and morty

@Mazitron I don't find DF biased, they seem as perplexed by the rest of us at the Xbox messaging. And obviously on the PC side where they focus a lot of coverage they're as sick of windows as the majority of users lol

@M20B25 yep, there you go then. It's not the full game 🤣 not even sure why they're doing a physical for Xbox then, it's a GP title anyway

@TheGameThrifter yes you're absolutely right. That's why the hardware needs to be able to cope with non-VRR TVs. That's really my biggest question mark over the whole thing, because now we're talking about system level (or maybe AI?) optimisations to each game with PC code.

But you have to look at everything they're doing or announcing, a traditional console doesn't seem to be the direction of travel, and I don't think it should be either coz it's not growing anything for them. I think we as Xbox gamers spend far too much time worrying if our platform is going to be supported, and if they don't fix that then I personally won't buy into the next machine

@Millionski yes I agree steam would be favoured. I'm just struggling to see another way that they stay alive hardware wise

@TheGameThrifter well, my honest opinion on this is that they know Xbox is fading to nothing in its current format. So matching the PC side of their gaming division is the only thing that makes sense. Oh and heavy advertising, coz it's MS and that's what they do on windows PCs now

@Titntin I just want to see the software front end on other windows PCs and handhelds. As is echoed in most of the threads on this, it's a cool product but overpriced in comparison to an actual gaming pc/laptop. But doing something to match steam OS efficiencies, now that's actually interesting...

How big is the current install size? I'd say all signs would point to it not being the full game, what do Xbox run discs to, about 50GB max?

@Cakefish yes exactly. If you see a mouse you think mouse, not elephant. Everything Xbox is doing points towards a platform agnostic future for them, if they wanted to do a xsx successor they would have needed to keep exclusivity.

I know we get a lot of comments about why would Xbox want steam, nobody will buy on Xbox store etc but simply put, 70% of something is always better than 100% of nothing

@Weebleman yes they let it through early doors didn't they, £640 for console plus disc drive at launch was incredible value. Hope you're enjoying it

@Kraven that's a fair sentiment that I share at the moment. Love the ecosystem and the games, hate the brand right now. Wish they would just come out and tell us what the vision is rather than tiptoeing around it and letting rumours fly about

If anyone wants to do this at a lower cost in the UK, grab a Rog ally z1e at Very when they go on sale as your first ever credit order (extra 20% off), grab a 65wh battery upgrade from Jsaux (takes a while to come) for £60 and game away for under £400.

Let's face it, NFS has been on life support for a while. It's definitely still got the potential to birth a great game, and I hope they do coz I love arcade racers

Maybe it's an extremely clever ad. "Xbox graphics is hiring coz our AI bots are 💩"

If MS can crack PC games on a standard non-VRR TV, they'll have my money. If not, ps6 will look very tempting, as will a big gaming PC

I've enjoyed everything they've ever put out, this one looks like it'll be no exception

@Nintendo4Sonic the Xbox controller works fine for me. I wouldn't use it on 2D games you're right, no need really, but it's better for this. Very little travel so quick inputs are easy

@Nintendo4Sonic the switch pro controller has a large and rigid dpad which makes inputs harder. I have one. THPS is much easier on an Xbox pad than a switch pro

@Balaam_ the switch pro controller's dpad is nowhere near as good as the series controller.

You ever got anything useful to say on here or do you just come to tell us how much you hate Xbox?

Thanks for the review, lovely stuff!

I suppose back in the day each entry iterated and added something new to the moveset. Now all 4 have the same pretty much so I was expecting it to be more of 1+2. Still, I'll be playing it coz there's nothing quite like a THPS game

Yeah he's deffo a gamer. A well paid one though 🤣 also, it has started to feel like he's slowly winding down to hand the reigns to Sarah Bond...

Oh, and so I don't have to trawl back to find an old thread, regarding an older discussion we had about E33: now played it, amazing. It's kinda what I wish final fantasy would be!

@Millionski oh yeah, I don't mean in relation to Xbox. That ship has sailed long ago. I just mean that because we're not seeing the deep mid and end of cycle discounts I don't see ps5 quite matching PS4 sales by the end of it. They've probably already picked up a few Xbone players who didn't like the direction MS were headed in.

Remember, this is only a 3% YoY rise over last May, and sales had already started to slow down in 2024 (plus this is N America only).

Guess GTA VI will be the big revealer. PS4 didn't have a game like that.

@Millionski you could be right on the ps5 sales, my only scepticism would be that prices have remained high and even risen. It'll be close though.

Yeah, Devs won't follow a more powerful series X so it needs something to attract then for sure!

PS5 looks like it's gonna be a similar beast to PS4, MS offering no competition even in their home market any more, and yet they still make games that I love.

As long as the Devs keep supporting Xbox, I'm good

@Kaloudz yeah, it's hard to believe that he would be pulling the strings on such a massive job cut. I could see him being the one to pull the plug on PD (boooo!) and everwild as GAMES (not closing the initiative as a studio though), but turn 10? That's gotta be higher up coz that one is cruel!

@EfYI that's some nice balance there dude, well said.

As someone who loves game pass, if I'm going to be critical, it definitely drives consumer behaviour away from buying newer games that aren't on game pass UNLESS they're popular or 9 and 10s. I'm not sure it's bad for the industry at the moment because the reach is quite low compared to PS and PC users, but IMHO if PS were to adopt the exact same model it would be an issue because that would drive the same consumer behaviour en masse. It's not something I want to continue long term really, but it's a hell of a ride!

Gears 3 hands down. Looks and runs amazing.

GtaIV on the other hand runs great but looks like crap, everything is super aliased and distracting on a 4k set!

@Kaloudz you know what mate you could be right, but look how many bad messages go out now and we're in the Phil era! This future pivot to a more PC focussed model is the last throw of the dice really, although it is something that will definitely work on me if done right 🤣

He seems like he wants the best for Xbox though, that message always shines through to me, even when he gets made to cull staff. I guess it's ok for me to like Phil but hate MS more generally at the moment!

@Kaloudz @Soup-Rules I have nothing against playstation users, it's a great console with a cool controller, but it's success is built solely on how good PS4 games were. We all know MS screwed up last gen, and they've tried everything under the sun to win people over with limited success. And yet, we as Xbox players this gen have access to some unbelievable bargains. I'd say that's a fair trade off for a bit of a lack of Dev support at the start of the gen!

The comments sections though just become echo chambers sometimes, it's a small minority but playstation (and sometimes PC) elitism is a powerful drug; as if I wouldn't just trade the Xbox in and get a ps5 if it was a better deal for me!

@Soup-Rules it's weird isn't it. "Game pass isn't sustainable" well now we know it is.

"Game pass is ruining the industry" PC and playstation sales prove that's not the case, very few people comparatively engage with it compared to buyers in the market.

For me, I engage when I want to and disengage when I've bought something. F2P behemoths are far worse for the industry than game pass, and it's probably what's driving a multiplatform push from the big 2!

@FraserG are you chaps doing a review on this one or is it not worth it due to timing or anything?

Watched the IGN review and looks like a solid game but agree that cutting most of the OS is a bad choice!

The amount of discourse this started on here and Push yesterday was horrendous haha. Should people have to delete comments that were like "I told you it wasn't profitable and is hurting the Devs"? (I'm joking of course, game pass is divisive, especially for those that don't use it)

Irresponsible reporting from Chris Dring, and as always people are better waiting for the facts than believing stuff from him. Mat Piscatella does much better industry analytics anyway!

@somnambulance yeah they both have in different ways. Sony had been pushing me away for a while last gen with overly serious AAA games (I don't mind them, but it was getting to be like every release) but this gen has held nothing of interest outside of Astro Bot.

Xbox has been making games that I love but damaging the brand as soon as they do something good.

I'm not done with them, but I'll be waiting a while after the next machines come out to see which is really being supported

A lot gets levelled at game pass being good for consumers, bad for Devs. I can't imagine it's anywhere near as damaging as Fortnite or Roblox is for them.

I do agree with the sentiment that it'll scale back or die out over time, because as price goes up there's only so long people will continue to pay more for the same product. But not having game pass wouldn't have helped revenue from gamers like me who will happily wait for a sale for a year or more. Game pass gets me to their games sooner.

@somnambulance yes I totally agree. Every time I find myself excited by the direction xbox is heading in they find a way to damage the brand, which makes it hard to see the wood for the trees as a consumer.

I think the one saving grace is Xbox Play Anywhere, because it means people who decide that they've had enough can still take some of their library over to PC. Cool to see stuff like death stranding and final fantasy games on there.

It's cool that they're doing this, but it's a no from me. And not because it's not on game pass, but because it's just not my jam. FF16 on the other hand, very much is, so that got my wallet vote recently