DarkTron

Is there really that little Xbox news that ye needed to ***** on another console (pr rather a port on another console) to make the claim "Xbox did it better"?

@BacklogBrad found the paid-off Microsoft employee

Same company that stated that there would be limited redundancies caused by the Activision buyout, then fired nearly 5000?
Same company that claimed there would be no price increase in Game Pass as a result of the buyout, and has now nearly doubled it in 2 years?

These words should be taken with salt, very much all Xbox-related statements by Microsoft in the last few years have been contradicted within weeks of being made.

@Kaloudz someone pointed out that August 20th seems to be a special date for the game (original debut was August 20th 2020 for the announcement, and both releases hae coincided. At this point, it just seems more deliberate they chose it to match the original idea (release it on the anniversary of being announced) than an exclusivity deal the developer has utterly denied.

@K1LLEGAL console-warring in 2025? Unnecessary and pathetic

@FraserG you're still pushing the rumour that's been outright denied. There is no deal for PlayStation, there has never been evidence of any deal, and the only rumour that was there has been outright disproven. This is poor journalism to continue implying anything without evidence.

@VoidPunk It's looking more like Sony find that solution than Microsoft. Sony are finally hitting a point where they're realising that these story-driven, AAA movie-style games aren't as manageable as seen (too long to make, too short, too expensive - Spiderman last year cost $400million, and they're just moving on without using that engine again), and with Astro Bot have found that even a smaller game (by the comparable standards) can have as good or greater impact (a 1st party title that wasn't even announced until May won GotY). Microsoft are unfortunately on the same path (judging the 2025 release schedule), but also don't have any active projects on the scale of Astro Bot (and that's with the fact that they have access to 3/4 in-demand platforming franchises), and the 2024 slate wasn't much better (Hellblade's praise for graphics was contrasted with criticism against gameplay, and the graphics themselves are more a point for UE5 than the devs). I'd be curious if we could see the 2024 figures for MS with and without ABK's involvement (i.e. how did the rest of Xbox fair?), although I would admit they're probably never going to give those figures without ABK's involvement (considering that they alone are propping up 1/3 of the gaming side).

@fatpunkslim you can almost tell who played the game, and who just knows to regurgitate the same Twitter fluff about how good the game is, just from how they write about it. Senna didn't deserve to be anywhere close to contention, it's everything that is wrong with modern triple-AAA gaming that studios have been moving away from for years; style doesnt work when there isnt substance to back it up (a fact 2023 proved in spades). The game's only being bigged up because there hasn't been any other major first-party titles this year (Indiana was too late, COD isn't aiming for that title, and the smaller games wouldn't have had a real shot in the first place)

@CallMeDuraSouka So your argument is you're against Google taking 30% of sales on the Xbox app, but fine that Microsoft do it inherently on every sale?

@Ilyn Would be quite disappointing if this ends up being the case; 2 years in a row that the big Xbox Game Awards announcement would be a port of one of the nominees, that was available on all other major platforms, and launched in an effective exclusivity on another console because of issues with development of the Xbox port.

@Nicstockes It's becoming increasingly unlikely that the deal (if any) actually occured. Game runs poorly on base PS5 (which is still more advanced than Series S), so it's not a stretch to assume performance is an issue. Game File have always asserted that there was no deal and there was genuine issues with the port, Sony have never claimed exclusivity (and anyone involved in the gaming community knows that PS-exclusive content gets shoved in faces extremely), and the only sources of a exclusivity contract are Microsoft (who of course are never going to admit their consoles are at fault) and Paul Tassi (who literally walked back his comments a week later, saying he exaggerated what he was told, which conveniently was near word-for-word what Microsoft were saying).

@PsBoxSwitchOwner it doesn't help when the major point of the rumour is making a sneaky back-alley deal to specifically hamper development on one platform over another.

@kelomaniack and a quick search for PlayStation shows negative articles towards them too. Fun fact; negativity sells more than positivity. Both sides have made mistakes, both sides got negative feedback. He isn't one for positive stories, he's just trying to write whatever will get clicks (very convenient he wrote an anti-PlayStation article on Wukong, after writing 2 anti-Xbox articles on Wukong).

@avoidercat that's a very neutral title, not at all "disingenuous" or "intended to stoke rage".

@kelomaniack Paul Tassi is not someone that would be called "anti-Xbox", almost quite the opposite at times (most of the time being neutral). IGN are also known for negative coverage of Wukong (for some reason), so claiming a shady backdoor deal is right up their alley. Forbes also pushed the Series S and memory leak rumours, so them coming up with an "Um, Actually" against themselves out of seemingly nowhere is pathetic. Plus, it's not as if Forbes (an American news outlet) would ever want to imply a Chinese company (Game Science) has gone against an American company (Microsoft), because American-Chinese news stories are definitely not just a common American media tactic to sow discontent.

@RazputinAquato you mean, starting from now, or including last week? Because I've got some bad news for you about Crash

@cragis0001 it's been very clear in the past when Sony made exclusivity deals, and we've known about them well before their release dates (because there's actually merit to announcing them more than 2 months prior to release). The fact remains this is near-identical to the situation with BG3 last year, which was not an exclusivity deal for Sony (in fact, Larian developed outright claimed that having to develop for Series S was the cause). This exclusivity rumour is nothing more than a childish "journalist" passing their baseless opinion off as fact.

@Widey85 this is a terrible reasoning. Considering that other developers have reported issues with regards to the Microsoft requirement for feature parity between S and X (Baldur's Gate 3 had to get Microsoft to relax this rule just to even release on the platform), it's fair that a studio with no prior experience with console ports might be struggling with this feature. Plus, your faith in this rumour being true is based on Jez Corden, a man with so little journalistic integrity he spends all his time outside of writing articles inciting other Xbox fans based on his "news" (through his social media). Don't make a decision based on the words of a person who's dedicated their career to bring pro-Microsoft.