@FraserG I'm not a learned scholar in this area, but it'd lead me to believe that ps5s VRR only kicks in on native ps5 apps, whereas Xbox having smart delivery gives VRR to Xbox one compatible apps. Just a guess but sounds most plausible

I can deal with Helix at a grand given the leaked specs. Ps6 can't cost that though, it needs a much lower cost for platform scale. Xbox can just reach people on all PCs, Xboxes and xCloud so hardware sales slightly less important

Darwin's paradox, replaced, Hades 2 and Mouse:PI for hire are all on my radar. All looks absolutely superb (Darwin's paradox demo was so pretty)

I have to say, since stopping using GPU I've been a lot happier, but it still has a place and the price does indeed need to be reconsidered and lowered. If that means stopping day 1 big releases then so be it, sales should be incentivised for a period of time (say, 3 months) before they drop on

@Fiendish-Beaver @fatpunkslim can you two please find something to disagree on, I don't come to these forums to watch you two getting along 🤣

@abe_hikura agreed. Whilst it doesn't make sense to me that they would need to again, it's well within their usual wheelhouse!

@fatpunkslim as above. And agreed, these new ps5 prices are quite frankly insane. Especially in the UK where we've been pretty sheltered from the extreme prices rises on Xboxes

My £450 XSX was a bargain.

If Sony is doing it then MS probably will, but it's a hell of a marketing boon if they don't and Asha Sharma starts a campaign about them being cheaper...

Hades 2 and Dispatch. Awesome.

They keep doing these really small, subtle things and my perception of Xbox has turned from "oh god, what now?" to "ok, things are looking up" since Asha Sharma started

Whilst we all wish the very best to the staff who have been laid off in these awful times we live in, I hope that the shared sentiment is "Fortnite has been a cancer on that which I hold dear in gaming, and can do one, the sooner the better"

No, no disc drive, the PC market has phased it out so at best an attachment for older Xbox games might be sold. I'd be lying if I said I cared, I've bought 2 disc games on XSX in 4.5 years.

I'd love to see them provide an option to digitise old disc purchases, but the logistics of having to prove you own the disc every now and then don't seem worth it

@themightyant yes they have to get the UX spot on for Helix to be a success, it's a very tall order! I'm still very, very interested but it's good to know that we will likely have ps6 to fall back on if Helix is somehow a disaster.

Quite a long term view there marketing wise and I agree in that sense, but as a quick, punchy little tagline I do think this one is a winner. I'm seeing XSX digital certified refurbished on my store for £344.99, not sure how well that's being advertised!

@Banjo- yeah exactly. And I've said this before, but at the time I was foolishly on board with the "everything is an Xbox" campaign.

In hindsight, I was miles out, and only an actual Xbox and a half decent PC are "Xboxes", everything else was a cloud dependent limitation to the real experience.

I do like cloud, I do like play anywhere, but they're complimentary, not the focus for me

@themightyant think about it this way. There was a disastrous marketing campaign that "everything is an Xbox", and now a campaign focussed solely on saying that "THIS (an Xbox) is an Xbox".

It's genius and a step above anything we saw with Sarah Bond at the helm

Edit: I do think she's quickly realised that Helix is dead in the water without a strong Xbox Series user base

This is incredible. No way this was a pre-Asha strategy. Love to see the fight!

@GeminiX53 no no you're right, it is a bit of a slur to be fair, I'll edit it. I don't find PC players insidious, takes a reasonable amount of research to get into it anyway. I'm a Rog ally owner, so I'm on the baby steps beginner programme 🤣

@GeminiX53 I didn't mean to be derogative, I meant for those that have really high end cards only. Sorry mate.

I don't like it. Can't deny how great it looks on the facial models, but it's still the kind of AI that I don't want. Plus, AMD aren't going to suddenly catch up with Nvidia and have this sort of thing ready for Helix so it's just a benefit for high end PC card owners

I'd held off on this because FF16 went on sale after about 6 weeks and that was newer. Today, I've bought this and pre ordered rebirth with some reward points. Very happy camper right now

I've been wanting this for the Amazon Luna app, pain in the backside going to desktop when I'm playing Dave the diver haha

Something simple, with prestige, and harkening back to their roots.. Xbox Halo

I'll hold my hands up as someone who was ok with the campaign at the time. But in hindsight, I was totally wrong to be. It's really clear how much it devalued the brand.

Hoping Asha Sharma is a bit more adept with messaging!

@BustedUpBiker sorry mate had the page open! Thanks, I'm 100% certain it'll be an all-timer for me

@BustedUpBiker I was gonna give fidelity with RT a shot with perf mode as a backup if it's unstable, thanks for the heads up! I can't wait to finally get round to it, been a backlog game for years

@Gemini53 re: comment 54. Yes, I'm currently about to start hogwarts legacy for the first time, tried to find the best graphics mode for series X and the DF video from 3 years ago is basically saying none of them. Obviously I'll just try myself and figure it out but I would love them to update on poor performers from launch (and I do enjoy their content in fairness, even if series consoles are getting much less coverage now!)

@TrollOfWar wouldn't solve my ergonomics issue unfortunately! But yep, I'd bet you can mate

I'm getting more and more excited for this hardware with each little tidbit. Looking forward to hearing how Devs are feeling about it too.

Also, would love haptic feedback on the pad. Love that on dualsense but not a fan of the ergonomics

Dear Xbox,

You keep raising the prices on Hardware and Game pass, and nerfing the rewards program. You made V bucks and Ubisoft classics a part of GPU. That's not a very useful move to actual Xbox players.

The things we "expect you to do" you keep doing and we're now used to getting screwed over.

I hope GDC shows everyone a clear direction so that I can go a day without reading that Xbox is dead!

Yeah I noticed this yesterday. Leave rewards alone MS, it's by far the most value added tool in your arsenal. People engage with your product, you can advertise to them and little old me gets discounts on his games

@Millionski I'm hoping for the following:

1. A design similar to series X with good airflow where you can barely hear the fans

2. A way of auto-optimising settings for TV friendly frame rates (probably just 60 and 120 FPS) that don't have VRR support

That's it. The rest is just access to the (frankly embarrassing) amount of digital PC and Xbox games that I already own

It'll be a niche product and I'm happily going to be in that niche

I've always maintained 2027 and I'm sticking to that. With a semi official announcement yesterday I think that makes 2027 pretty much a shoe-in

@PsBoxSwitchOwner pro was £700 (still is) but it's lower than that on Amazon and Very quite often!

I'll go for £800 as a hopeful price point for helix, but £1000 doesn't sound out of bounds either. State of the world right now eh

Hell yeah. Nice to have the confirmation. Could be an absolute game changer for me

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I'm not saying that to artificially inflate the number, but seeing as the PC push is for extra sales on PS published titles only that would be the apt comparison. Also, 2% of whatever the revenue is (it's in the billions of dollars, right?) isn't chump change.

Obviously this move is strategic and their prerogative, all I'm highlighting is this 2% of revenue thing is likely quite a decent portion of first party game sales. The way the narrative threads itself online is like Sony 1st party sales on console are massive.

@themightyant oh yeah I agree, they all have their own distinct direction, it's more curiousity as I'm sick of seeing the whole "it's only 2% of their revenue" argument online, when we know the vast majority of their income is PSN charges on 3rd party software.

Keep up the good work mate

@themightyant I suppose the most useful metric would be % of PC sales on first party output Vs console sales on first party output. So you know, if revenue of first party games on console is only 6% of total revenue, then 1.5% of total revenue on PC games is pretty good. But if it's much higher then not so good.

We're relying on you for the facts here as you have a decent interest in scrutinising the financials 🤣 which is much appreciated

@Millionski I agree that the "you don't need an Xbox" was a ridiculous misstep.

Further bleed? Yeah, maybe. Very price dependent of course. As I mentioned I don't think for a second that ps6 won't outsell a nextbox, I was just making points that Sony won't grow any further due to exclusives. If it can grow again, it'll be based on price and Xbox failures (fingers crossed they're not a failure!)

@DennisReynolds I'm not comparing a ps6 with a next box, it will obviously sell more, it'd be naive to think otherwise. I'm saying the exclusive thing isn't the needle mover given dev costs (and time) unless they improve it.

It's not going to attract new users, just existing ones. All the data and reports have consoles trending down. PS6 isn't magically immune to this.

@DennisReynolds next gen consoles are going to cost more than this gen, Xbox couldn't possible bleed any more users over to ps5 than they have already; the install base becomes lower by default. Exclusives aren't all going to sell Spiderman numbers. And they're costing more to make. You're looking at 4-5m copies sold at full price to break even on some of these projects.

1st party wise Insomniac and team asobi are the only ones coming up smelling of roses. It's been a weird time this gen for them

Sony better up their pipeline then because the current cadence of Sony 1st party titles won't draw in new users. That leaves two options: reduce scope & production costs, or raise game prices

I like gaming leaks, but I don't care about call of duty ones. It's the same game every year with a different skin.

@Gemini53 yeah I think that's exactly what she means. Not a return to console first approach, but that when you use the Xbox platform it feels like the series consoles do at an interface level.

To all the other comments about dropping the hardware prices from other users: I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE!

@Banjo- I 100% agree my friend

@Banjo- for sure. To be honest I find the Xbox "exclusives" more interesting to play anyway, they just don't hit that 90 on metacritic to sell the consoles as well as ps5 games do (although I do think some of them are a little overhyped in reviews, like Spiderman 2 looks good but not 90 good)

Give me more stuff like Keeper and South of Midnight and I'm a happy camper

@Banjo- could just do it case by case. Like Forza makes total sense for various reasons (mostly because it sells so well!) but it will have some exclusives anyway coz some games don't go to console, and the Xbox will run PC games!

I went with "pretty optimistic", some great games to look forward to and already signs that we will get hardware news this year.

I have mild excitement around what the ps6 will be like and zero excitement about the switch 2 unless they do an oled model. So Xbox is winning by default anyway!

@islandfishguy I like engaging in the internet BS but honestly, never had as many unbelievable games to play

@themightyant I'm already really caught up in the hyperbole but she is saying all the right things 🤣 perhaps she should take a run in Westminster

Timed exclusives (as in, not on ps5 and Switch 2 for 6m to a year) feels like the right play here for me.

But I'm not super bothered either way, if I wanted a ps5 or switch 2 I'd buy one, I'm just enjoying how frigging good the XSX is and I never run out of great games to play