EvenStephen7

In light of Jim Ryan stepping down, this takes on a whole new meaning.

MK1 gameplay is fantastic, even if it feels a little unfinished. There are some hiccups still needing fixed (the premium store is bugged and won't refresh, some QoL from 11 are missing, etc.) but those are undoubtedly coming.

In the meantime though the gameplay is better than ever, there's a TON of kontent (especially for single-player), and it's just a lot of fun.

There's no point trying to compare it to SF6 — they're radically different games with different intentions. It's like trying to compare Final Fantasy 16 to Cyberpunk — they may both be RPGs, but that's about where the similarities end. SF, MK, and Tekken all serve unique purposes and fighting game fans are riding high right now with updates from all 3 in less than 12 months.

@RedShirtRod 100% agreed. So much of it is the personal branding of executives themselves. "Business casual."

@Titntin Hahaha it's just now dawning on me that it's an X "Box" that's cylindrical. That's hilarious, and normally the kind of thing that gets under my skin too lol.

I weirdly like my consoles to be kind of discrete and easily hidden. I have the Series X tucked away. It's a little harder to hide the PS5, haha. But this would be easy to tuck away in a corner.

Not for me, but I love the look of this thing.

Gotham Knights on Gamepass is how I feel about Saints Row on PS+ this month: games that are perfect for these subscription services.

I've been very intrigued for both, but negative word-of-mouth around launch kept me away.

Dare I say it, but the (presumably) lower time commitment means I'll probably play Gotham Knights before I play Starfield .

@RedShirtRod Agreed with all of that; the A/B deal was definitely the last major "get" they know they can pull off for a while.

I don't this makes him a monster, but I think some people get so upset and shocked when they don't get the PR-filtered version of Phil Spencer and realize he's a corporate suit like the rest of them. Sure, he likes videogames. And that's cool! But his #1 priority is not being some laid-back gamer, it's to make his company as much money as possible and hit career aspirations. At any and all costs.

So people build up these visions of "Uncle Phil" and then are shocked and upset when they see he had buying a beloved company like Nintendo as a "career moment" and "endgame" for Microsoft. CEOs don't get to where they are without being cutthroat and focused on growth.

@BrilliantBill Yea agreed (I essentially said the same in my comment). I don’t think it’ll be a heavy left for third-party publishers who are already putting games on PS5, similar to how trophies and achievements often mirror each other.

Sounds like a nice mix between the Xbox controller and PS5 Dualsense; I'm totally intrigued. My only concern is that, as an optional controller coming out midway through the console's lifecycle, enough devs won't use it. But maybe third-party devs working on PS5 games already will be able to easily bring over their DualSense efforts to the Sebile.

@RedShirtRod I think the new concern with these docs is that Spencer says they're "playing the long game" until they can buy Nintendo. So while I don't think it's going to happen, it's probable that Xbox is still making attempts. They even talk about Nintendo stock.

This is some Bob Iger energy.

@Zochmenos Switch is probably the bigger JRPG for sure, though PS still has some big exclusives. I just meant if you’re super into JRPGs and fighting games (or honestly just super into video games period) you probably have other consoles and means to play these. It’s best when games are available to everyone so I hope SE one day decides it makes financial sense to put FF on XB. Until then, Xbox has tons of other great games without focusing on what the other ones have. It’s the same advice I have to PS owners who were desperately looking for signs that Starfield was still coming to PS5.

@Cashews

“The PS5 has no JRPGs”
The Final Fantasy franchise and other Square Enix games say otherwise, along with a bunch of more obscure ones. Plus tons and tons of games that aren’t exclusive. Not sure where “no JRPGs” comes from; every console has them.

“Any fighter on PS5 is on XSX”
Also not true. Street Fighter 5 is a big one. Also lots of collection like Art of Fighting Anthology that are important to fighting fans, especially those of us who are trying to preserve its history.

You may not be a fan of these examples, but they’re well-rated and popular (well, SF5 was better received by the community once it got past that awful launch and into Champion Edition). And if you’re a fan of fighters or JRPGs, they’re probably a reason why you have a PS5 as well.

I honestly think everyone should own all the systems because of their various strengths, but I also respect that not everyone can afford that either. But people act like the Xbox doesn’t have any good games and they need to obsess over what’s available elsewhere.

I mean, at this point the obsession of FF7R on Xbox comes off a little comical. All of the systems have their strengths and specific games; Xbox has shooters and is quickly locking down western RPGS, and if you’re into fighters and JRPGs you’ve already got a PS5 anyway.

If it happens, it happens. But interpreting every sign as something bigger is heading into “Half-Life 3 confirmed” territory.

@themightyant I forgot all about how that first one was locked behind 360 for years.

I have a Series X — and also have a PS5, PC, and Switch. Plus a busy career and 3 kids.

I finally have the means to buy any game I want, but ironically no longer have the time (wouldn’t change a thing though). I try to find a few hours throughout the week after the kids go down.

But no doubt this year will go down as one of the best across all systems.

@Lurkes His hype meter counts for sure (he’s not the only one with this variable).But I was thinking the ways kameos change to the entire gameplay, the longer combo strings than you said in 10 and 11, faster gameplay than 11.

The new Invasion mode that’s replacing the Krypt reminds me of Smash Ultimate too in a good way.

But ha I totally understand if this isn’t your jam either; I know they aren’t for everyone and get that. I have sadly bought many, many fighting game sequels/revisions that offered far less though (don’t ask me how many times I’ve bought a version of SF2 over the years that had some very minor upgrade or new feature— I’m still doing it haha).

@Lurkes New fighters, new stages, new rebooted timeline. New mechanics and special moves (and new strategies). New modes like this cool-looking RPG/board game mashup. And the Kameo fighters, which dynamically changes the moment-to-moment gameplay.

As far as fighters go, this is a pretty big jump in new content and features.

@TheSimulator They’ve done that before actually. The 360 era had third-person story modes, and there were third-person games like Shaolin Monks (and the awful Sub-Zero Mythologies and Special Forces).

MK1 has a quasi third-person mode with Invasion, though it’s more like a RPG board game.

@mazzel They already did that for MK11; you can play as the first movie’s Shang Tsung, Raiden, Johnny Cage, and Sonya.

@Kienda Agreed. It’s the vocal minority. Not even worth giving them the oxygen.

Any adult doesn’t give a ***** and either plays on multiple systems or doesn’t care.

If it’s an PS5/Xbox/Nintendo exclusive I just ignore the user score these days and read the actual reviews.

It’s pretty easy to tell which reviews to take seriously and which ones are nonsensical fanboy rants.

@Cashews Agreed. I vividly recall comments here (including some from Xbox-only warriors) insisting that this game was going to be/MS needed this to be a revolutionary redefining moment. It always felt a little unreasonable to me (and ironically unfair to Xbox and Bethesda).

“A very, very good RPG” is totally what I want and worth celebrating. And that’s saying something in a year FULL of very, very good RPGs (Baulders Gate, Diablo, Final Fantasy 16, Tears of the Kingdom, Sea of Stars, etc — what a year!). It’s also finally the big exciting exclusive that Xbox really needed.

Newborn baby demands, busy work week, sick toddler, etc. has kept me from booting up Starfield but it’s installed and I’m eager to jump in. Especially since my last Bethesda RPG was Morrowind.

Dafuq, Microsoft.

“They poured themselves into Starfield.”

Ew.

The promise of those Xbox 360 tech demos, finally realized in all its glory.

I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous that Microsoft’s most popular game (by a country mile) doesn't have a next gen version with the raytracing features of its PC brother.

It’s weirdly taken a long time to get here (and would have helped during Xbox’s infamous year-and-half dry spell) but surely this is it.

Lol Nightdive’s “list” of dream projects grows by the day.

I say let them tackle all of them. Between Quake 2 and Rise of the Triad remasters (and just a month apart!) they’re having a banger year.

Now this is more like it. Previous footage looked worse than GT7 but this looks very good. Excited for another sim racer in the mix and the long-awaited return of Forza Motorsports.

@BAMozzy Sorry there must have been some disconnect; I’m not arguing against this or pro-splitting online communities.

I respect the hell out of Xbox for their environmentally friendly stance — they’re going to be on the right side of history and it just makes sense.

@Moonglow To be fair, Quake, CoD, and Diablo are everywhere (but if we go by this measure we’d have to add MLB The Show under PS5). And not counting first-party games, PS5 had other exclusives like FF16, Forspoken (aka Sony’s Redfall), and several PSVR titles. So it’s not a great 1:1.

That said, I wouldn’t worry about who has more. The good news is after several years XBox finally seems to have their foot on the accelerator again. I’ve said this before, but owning all 3 consoles I’ve always wished I had more reasons to turn on my Series X (and more examples of what this beast is really capable of). It looks like that finally changes this year, and I’m ecstatic.

This is one hell of a year for video games.

Responses to this tweet show the gulf between people who understand business and people who
are just rabid gamers.

Larry has been in the business for many years, and made a lot of professional contacts and friends across the industry — including Sony and Nintendo. He’s clearly just visiting colleagues across the street in Seattle.

There is nothing of substance to “speculate” on.

Didn’t you guys have an article about the BC titles you can find on the old store? Might be helpful to include here - I’d love to see what else I need to grab before the store shuts down.

There are still some backwards compatible titles that are ONLY available through the old store (Jet Grind Radio Future, Daytona USA, etc.).

For anyone interested I’d grab those ASAP

This is unfortunately just a part of modern gaming. I’ve had to avoid spoilers from fanboys and trolls on PS5 and Switch exclusives too; they’re petty and juvenile but they’re also easy to avoid. I’ll do fine avoiding these too, but it’s worth the reminder to everyone to keep their guard up.

Review bombing is just as obnoxious. Few games are worth a 0 or a 10, and I wouldn’t trust a single user review score until at least a few days after launch — and certainly not before.

@Dan1283 I'm glad you said that because I was sitting here, feeling like I'm going insane because I could have sworn I played Firewatch on Gamepass before.

Ironically I still have my physical Quake 2 disc for Xbox 360, which was a preorder bonus for Quake 4.

@Cashews Plus unless something has changed, last time I checked Samsung still didn’t have Dolby Vision. That’s what kept me away when I upgraded my TV at the start of the gen.

Cloud gaming, including xcloud, works perfectly for me. I even use it to sample games I’m curious in but don’t want to download.

My problem is I hardly ever touch my Gamepass sub, so just having GP cloud gaming isn’t as useful. If they open it up so I can play my entire owned library on the cloud I’d use it a lot more.

@Jenkinss Seeing as your profile says you love a millionaire corporate executive, I’m not entirely surprised by the snarky response but can see this conversation about goalpost moving isn't going anywhere. Best of luck with everything and I genuinely hope you have a good day.

@Jenkinss Ah, so timed exclusives and moneyhatting are okay as long as a competitor does it more. Thanks for the clarification; I’ll keep that in mind for the future!

@Jenkinss Must be. I thought timed exclusives was a bad thing around here

But everyone here said they hated Stray!

I’m glad to see the game get a second life on Xbox (and more people enjoying it). I loved my time with it last year on PS5 and the more people get to play games, the better.

8-player splitscreen sounds cool until I realize I don’t have 8 friends, let alone 8 friends nearby with Xbox controllers.

Maybe it’s me, but this story doesn’t paint Phil Spencer/Xbox in the best light.

So long, GwG.

It’s been real, it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

So much for the conspiracy theories that Sony was paying them to stay away.

As others noted this happened before. Hopefully this time around the people complaining actually put their money with their mouth is and buy the Xbox versions (not just hold out for Gamepass).

Otherwise Square will once again get the message that it just isn’t worth it.

Holy *****, they're outright handing out 15-day bans? Maybe I missed this, but did MS warn anybody ahead of time that just using it would result in one?

I haven't used emulators on my Xbox or have the time for setting it up, so I don't have a horse in this race. Just surprised if such a drastic measure was taken without a warning.

Was there on day one. Before then, even. I had the EGM with the announcement rolled up in my back pack, often pulled out to evangelize to classmates why this big black box was going to be the next big thing.

I was working at Toys “R” Us during the launch — worked my shift, came home, and stayed up all night playing Halo, Cel Damage, Amped, and more.

The original Xbox stands alongside the Dreamcast as my favorite console launch.

There was a special punk-rock attitude behind Team Green back then; seeing it was something really special.