Elbow

@N00BiSH Double Fine does have multiple teams, I believe. The only question I have is why has it taken so long for these, but at least they're finally starting to release games.

@dreadful They have to try to see. Shooters and MMOs and the like were all once unproven gambles. I don't think this game is going to light the world on fire, and I'm not even sure I'm that interested but I will at least play it to see if I enjoy it or not.

I wouldn't be surprised if they delay, but if it does drop on the intended date I will give it a try. It didn't give off a great first impression but I want to see if the game is actually good and the trailer was just bad.

Beast of Reincarnation because Game Freak is known for lowest effort garbage that barely runs, so how is THIS a game from them? It's so day and night from Pokémon that I don't understand how it could possibly be from the same company.

@Tasuki Was playing it for ages before I jumped back on COD lmao

Oh yeah. I remember this.. huh. Good on them for changing it up at least.

@Tasuki Those two collabs are genuinely why I played Black Ops 6 at all. Haven't touched 7.

I kind of cracked myself up thinking that when I get my Series X on Wednesday, THESE are the first games I could play. (Not really, that's gonna be Death Stranding or RE4 Remake.) ...but it's funny to think about.

@Coletrain I already bought a lot of the FF games, and Kingdom Hearts, on Xbox. Put my money where my mouth was late last generation when we were trying to get Square to port their games to Xbox. Just haven't played a lot of them, and I can start on the Pixel Remaster series.... which for some reason isn't on Xbone, when those really easily could've been lol.

Well.. I just bought a Series X yesterday. Finally upgrading my old Xbone. I know it's VERY late in the game to do so, but GTA 6 and rising costs means this thing is probably going to be relevant just as long as the previous generation was.

So my resolution is to catch up on my Xbox backlog and also play a lot of Final Fantasy. Lots of FF.

@NeoRatt oh man, I'm so sorry. I hope your dad and your wife are resting easy now. That's awful, and I completely agree with you.

Jesus... cancer is bad enough. My brother is a 3x cancer survivor.

To leave a family behind makes something awful even worse, somehow. Rest in peace. I hope he has peace and that his family will be okay.

Happy New Year to everyone here. Regardless of everything going on I hope everyone's 2026 is a great year.

...and that prices don't rise again. yeesh!

Obsidian is the one team that has been consistently pumping out, not just new updates but new GAMES at a breakneck pace. Easily-- and I'm only going by output here-- Xbox's best purchase. No wonder Obsidian has been safe from layoffs (...that I know of.*)

*Also yes it goes without saying devs getting laid off from any company from Xbox sucks and that's an Xbox problem.

@TheGameThrifter Sorry I thought you were talking about Clockwork revolution I lost track of the convo, but that said even though it's insanely likely GTA will sweep everything I still want to wait to play it before saying anything definitively.

@TheGameThrifter I don't know about GOTY claims, it's not even out yet. It looks absolutely incredible though.

@TheGameThrifter IF it really releases next year. With how ambitious GTA 6 is, wouldn't be surprised if we get yet another delay

@Balaam_ Clockwork looks bad? Did we see the same game? That was the only thing at Xbox's E3 summer event that got my attention. Honestly, it looked incredible.

....The guy in the image is cosplaying as Shrek. I don't really have anything else to add.

@Brigurugi There are earlier years where it's 100% clear they already had winners picked before the event, but I don't think this update is. This one can easily be argued as a goodwill update for Christmas that happened to coincide with the award.

There were earlier years, I think when it was on Spike TV, where they had characters "in-game" (mocapped and all in a cutscene basically) accept the award and talk about it and everything (it was one of the Black Ops games, but I don't know which. 1 or 2 for sure.) The amount of dev resources and time it would take to do something like that is 100% not something they'd do if it was just a "maybe" to get the award.

TGA absolutely is rigged/pre-determined, that's not up for discussion, but this update can definitely just have lucky timing.

@themightyant Unironically, if those in charge just talked like that and were honest, I'd respect them so much more. Phil Spencer revealing their internal yes-man butt kissing review setup for Redfall and how internally it reviewed well was insane, but refreshing to see the honesty.

I'd love more of that. Humility is way more appealing than drooling PR speak.

@bert0503 Mega Man Legends was pretty good, I think that worked. Also I love your cat

E33 cleaned house. Haven't played it yet, been waiting for a big sale, but wow.

Did anyone else think Dan Houser coming out was going to be related to his Absurd Ventures works? Didn't expect him just to show up for the best story award/E33 and dip.

Also a moment to throw out that Dan Houser has a comic book he's writing with Lazlow Jones (yes, that Lazlow from the GTA games) called American Caper. Not quite GTA, but not far away from it either.

Better than expected. Though I have to dock as many points as humanly possible for putting the mental image of Geoff Keighley and Miss Piggy having a romantic mattress mambo in my head.

Six years of therapy undone in a few minutes.

I actually thought this was a big shiny HD remake of Racer on the N64/PS1/Dreamcast at first. Some segments looked familiar, but to be fair "giant frozen racetrack" isn't very original. I hope it has some levels from that first game included.

Not really a Star Wars guy but that game was amazing. Keeping my eye on this one.

The footage and synopsis gives me the impression this is building off Mega Man 11 and the double gear system. That game was pretty easy so I'm not too jazzed on that, but I'm also glad to just see Mega Man return.

Pac-Man and Mega Man both get announcements this year? Man it feels good to see.

Also available on Xbox One! Only a handful of people (myself included) who care about that, but worth it for us!

@Sol4ris I was thinking about Alpha Protocol just yesterday. I think Sega owns the rights? Not sure. Would be cool to see it again, even if it's just to remake the first one to improve all the glaring faults.

Fingers crossed for this one. The original Nightdive remaster was a rare botch by them, (look up Civvie11's "BLOOD: Pink on the Inside" video on YouTube for a great rundown) so I'm hoping this second attempt is much better.

And to be fair to Nightdive they DID patch the problems with the original remaster, but it launched in a terrible state.

@themightyant Counterpoint: GOG does this with a service called GOG Connect, or they did. If you had a Steam copy of a game, logging on with connect would give you a GOG copy as well. Publishers/indies had to opt in to do this, of course, but it's been done. I know of at least two games that took part: Hedon (indie boomer shooter) and Witcher 3, because I used Connect to get GOG copies.

Microsoft and Phil could put their money where their mouths are and do something similar... but they won't.

They did exactly what I expected. Nothing. Couldn't even keep the 360 storefront open one more year to end it with a 'bang'. Didn't even put their own 360 games on sale during that.

They don't care.

I wish the Dragon Age DLC ever went on sale...

I dont know much about Bond's background so I can't say much there. She at least is good at PR. Reggie from Nintendo worked at the corporate side of Pizza Hut before Nintendo, so I won't turn my nose up at her credentials.

That said, actions do speak louder than words, she even said that herself. It's very hard to give her words merit when Xbox's actions as of late have been the exact opposite.

Edit: Of course I fatfinger submit before I'm done. Dammit. She at least called out Play Anywhere and that it was shelved, while a major focus now. That is one of their huge plusses as of late.

@Questionable_Duck I hear a lot of people argue TowerFall was. That one got news posts back when it was ported elsewhere.

For the unfamiliar, Amazing Frog? started life as an Ouya game. I think it was one of the better known games for the device at the time because of how silly it was. It made the jump to Steam and has trucked on ever since.

Not the kind of game you want to play if you're looking for a serious story, but if you just want a goofy sandbox to play around in and have dumb laughs, it's worth a look.

Well I've said for awhile they NEED to push Play Anywhere... though with everything else going on it's still hard to ignore the overall sour feeling with Xbox lately, but it's good they're finally getting on it.

Well at the very least hearing that another console is coming from the head honcho of Microsoft itself is reassuring. Silver lining of some kind.

@JayJ They don't, but people jump to conclusions on it being official or endorsed just because it's used.

Egging On and Routine might be of interest, I need to see more of the latter. Dome Keeper also has potential, and I need to play Darkwood...

@JumpingJackson Not Xbox/Halo studios official, but Homeland Sec really did post it. 99% likely they did it without permission/approval, if that's what you're concerned about.

The big confirmation will be if Xbone, 360, and Series consoles will also get free online. Which would be good, however that would all but guarantee Xbox 360 servers are on the next inevitable big chopping spree.

So a lot of purists don't quite get that devs generally make do with limited resources of the time (especially back then) and they fill in the gaps with their own interpretation of why things were made the way they were. Sometimes the purists are right (Halo is meant to a party game in PVP, not competitive esports drool.)

And then sometimes they completely invent their own stories in their mind about why XYZ is the way it is and SHOULD be.

I'm not intending to come off mean. I've done it before, but I stepped back and realized I was acting like that and had to chill out.

I wouldn't be surprised if Forza Motorsport was a once-a-generation game. Or something close to that.

Maybe it will stay dead, I don't exactly have faith in anything Phil says.

I've never really cared about Halo outside of a super casual passing interest, so I don't care. It does, however, signal the Xbox consoles are done for.

Sea of Thieves already did that, but it was just the opening shot. This is the death blow.

@HeavyHoggJP Not all of these games are bad, for example Vambrace was a game pass title years back and it's actually really fun (if not soul crushingly hard).

There is definitely some junk in here, but not all of it is bad. I just don't like tossing out the good with the bad.

I don't want to admit how many games in this list I just added to my cart. I'm a sucker for JRPGs-- I might not be any good at them, but I like 'em.

It's hard to spend time on their platform lately. I still buy games, but basically it's down to Play Anywhere and/or purely backward compat titles.

Glad I've just been putting my points into the recent DC/Halloween movie redemption they've been offering. What a let down lol

Brutal Legend released in 2009, not 2007.

So just bringing up this side of the argument for people who look down on digital libraries: I have a small apartment. I don't have room for physical media. Much, at least. A couple books, some old DVDs from back when that was the only option, but those DVDs are all in my closet. As is my 360 collection. I just don't have space for much of anything.

I'd like to, sure, but I can't just snap my fingers and bump up my income and housing automatically. Digital libraries are a godsend for things like that.

Now I'm not saying digital is better, just that sometimes, that's the only option.

A bigger surprise at this point would be if it wasn't coming.