GamingFan4Lyf

@HarmanSmith Yes, thanks

I hope Xbox players support the game.

People call it a walking simulator or mailman simulator, but, to, me it felt very much like MGS V gameplay wise; but rather than trying to plan your way through areas with enemy soldiers, you're trying to find the safest, yet, fastest route without either getting attacked by "bandits" (I honestly don't remember the name of the humans who attack porters) or dealing with BTs.

It's equal parts Zen and equal parts stealth, mixed with a little travel planning. Plus, story is pretty bonkers.

Really looking forward to this one! It looks absolutely bonkers and I am all for it.

@InterceptorAlpha Yeah, pre-Xbox 360/PS3 generation was when we had the Expansion Packs - but it was more a PC thing. Consoles games were totally "as is".

But it's not as if people expected them - nor where they planned. It was just that developer wanted to add more as a fun bonus.

Then DLC became a thing....

@InterceptorAlpha @Ryu_Niiyama Your exchange just shows just how much game expectations and habits have changed over the years.

Getting an expansion back in the day felt like a really great bonus that no one expected, but happily enjoyed. No one felt like DLC was predatory or even that a game was purposefully sold as "incomplete" in order to milk DLC.

Now if a game doesn't get DLC, it's perceived as some kind of indication things aren't going well for a game/developer.

It's like people can't even comprehend a developer making a complete experience out of the gate, anymore.

NOTE: I am not saying either of you are wrong. This is purely observational of the exchange between you two and my own commentary on modern gaming.

@gipsojo I got rid of my Series X a couple months after I got my PC. I still keep the PS5 around for now. But after I finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I shut down my PS5 for the long haul.

With Sony continuing to shorten the time between PS5 and PC releases, the PS5 may go too. I want to see how Sony handles Ghost of Yotei from a PC perspective, first, before making a decision.

But, yeah, my Series X was my primary console this whole generation (and my PS5 was for exclusives). In 2023, I played 1 game on my PS5 (God of War Ragnarok). The rest was dedicated to Xbox.

2024 has been a lot more PS5-centric just due to getting a lot of PS5 games for Christmas last year.

Makes sense since within the last few weeks I believe was reported that Xbox is like 75% digital or something?!

I can't find the article for the exact number, but it was pretty high compared to Switch and PlayStation.

This is such a niche release to begin with that the bean counters figured it would probably lose money making physical Xbox versions given the digital focus.

@shoeses In those people's defense, at the time of this initial release, there was an advantage for people on Xbox - if they already owned the game, it was already playable for them for a while. If someone didn't own the game, it was super cheap compared to the release on PS5/Switch (especially since physical copies still work).

Plus, the rerelease was 4K/30 at first - which the Xbox Series X could already accomplish.

Also, the existence of the backwards compatible version on Xbox probably factored into Rockstar's decision to not release this game again on Xbox.

But...Rockstar updated the game to have a 60 fps version on PlayStation. Then a PC release comes with 60 fps (and higher) and Xbox is still left in the cold.

I am so looking forward to this! I will be playing on PC.

"It’s not up to us but to Sony and Phil to duke out...."

Something tells me Phil wouldn't be the problem in that scenario.

Since my PS5 is essentially a paperweight for an indefinite amount of time, I should really give this game a whirl on PC using the DualSense controller - I had no idea this game even supported it on PC.

This is interesting. Is this for just Xbox or is this an Xbox and PlayStation thing?

I just don't see the PlayStation crowd paying for this because the system already lets your create a personal spatial audio profile for free.

Honestly, I don't see Xbox people paying for it either if they already paid for Dolby Atmos for Headphones - even though Xbox doesn't let you personalize your spatial audio.

Like @NeutronBomb, I also found that Movie Mode "works" better than Game Mode for Dolby Atmos for Headphones (by working I mean being able to differentiate the direction of the sound) - I use the Detailed EQ setting.

Prior to getting a PC and getting rid of my Series X, I would have told you that I got all my third-party games on Xbox (over Switch).

But, now, I everything I play is on PC - except for Nintendo exclusives. I will be holding off buying Sony exclusives to see if they make it to PC.

@tslog Gosh, you must really be bent out of shape that you don't play as Zelda in a vast majority of The Legend of Zelda titles.

@OldGamer999 Alan Wake 2 balances things out pretty well between action and exploration.

It doesn't ever reach the levels of the original Alan Wake where, like in the last few stages, you are just taking out wave after wave of enemies (except for one exception I won't spoil).

Alan Wake 2 also handles collectibles very well. Doing those Side Cases actually offer benefits to your character rather than being there for the sake of a trophy/achievement: there are actual character upgrades in this one and in order to get those upgrades you have to explore.

I thought there was a lot of good stuff there. I was so glad to get the Lake House release date - I can't wait!

Plus, my Steam Wishlist increased in size yesterday. I will even give FBC a whirl when it releases on Game Pass (I assume PC will be included in that).

Cronos: The New Dawn, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Mouse P.I., and Eternal Strands were all standout titles for me to keep an eye out for.

I always love how advertising people make it seem like any game with voice communications is so orderly and precise.

No one talks like that in multiplayer games - even co-op!

This one has my interest piqued.

@Ricky-Spanish This was a Partner Showcase.

While I agree it's taking forever for ABK Games to hit Game Pass, this presentation focused entirely on third-party games.

@Medic_alert Remedy said a while ago that a multi-player game based in the Control setting was in the works.

On topic: I really enjoyed this presentation. Lots of great games coming down the line. I'll definitely Wishlist some games on Steam.

Can't wait!

I am on my third playthrough of the game - only this time on PC with all the bells & whistles enabled.

@Dangerdude From my understanding of this game, the cities and towns are only issue and that the game runs very well outside of town.

I guess those couple hundred Mhz difference between the Series S and Series X in the CPU is enough to cause a 10fps difference in the Performance Mode.

Interesting that Capcom didn't choose to lower the render resolution for Performance Mode on Series S to like 1080p or something.

Unless it looked really bad upscaled from 1080p.

I hope these "gamers" didn't make a dime.

I hope the "settlement" was basically, "We [Microsoft] will bury you in millions of dollars in litigation unless you drop it."

While I was initially supportive of the acquisition (albeit from a selfish angle hoping that a lot of Blizzard IP - especially the older Diablo games - would drop on Game Pass PC), I think it ended up being a terrible decision.

People would worry that it would completely decimate the games industry. But, in the end, it seems to be the downfall of the Xbox console market.

Xbox Division seemed to have a certain level of autonomy. Now that "Big Daddy Corporate" has its eyes on the Division, it's solely become a Corporate Machine rather than something that was more fun.

I mean...sure...all these game divisions are part of a corporation to make money...but Xbox feels hollow now.

And I am still waiting for all Blizzard IP on Game Pass PC.

@FatGuyInLilCoat I am not exactly sure “Well, we’ll skip Xbox because even people who have both consoles would just prefer to buy it on PlayStation” is a sound business consideration.

There are too many assumptions there with a considerably high margin of error.

@16BitHero People act like the probably 30+ million Series consoles out there are "nothing". Sure, it's not selling like PlayStation, but it's still a considerable amount of players to appeal to.

This isn't a Wii U situation where it barely broke 13 million sales.

My all-digital "Xbox Series X" is also white...with a glass side panel...and has liquid cooling...and 6TB of storage. 😂

I do like the looks of that Elite Controller. May have to look into upgrading from my last-gen Cyberpunk 2077 Controller.

Fans really, really, really want a new game engine.

@SodaPop6548 Fortnite runs on UE5 and it's fast, but 60fps was probably the focus right out of the gate.

Part of the reason AAA UE5 games haven't been running at 60fps is because developers aren't targeting 60fps on console. Developers are pushing visual fidelity and effects for 30fps and then shoehorning 60fps modes.

Plus, we haven't seen a UE 5.4 game release yet.

Digital Foundry did a test-case analysis a while back on UE 5.4 using the Matrix Demo on PC and found that lower-spec CPUs got like a 50% boost in performance over the previous versions of the engine due to the multi-threaded rendering pipeline that was added to that particular version. That bodes well for consoles.

UE 5.5 does some even more impressive things with Lumen and was recently shown off running on a PS5 - and running pretty well for a tech demo (the person doing the presentation only said "PlayStation 5" and made no mention if it was a PlayStation 5 Pro).

I preordered through Green Man Gaming for $54 and I can't wait to play this on Steam!

I sold off my Xbox Series X and all the games and, after I finish Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, will be done with PS5 for the foreseeable future (perhaps permanently depending on how much more aggressive Sony becomes regarding its PC strategy).

It's a shame Xbox owners will miss out on Sient Hill 2 for at least a year because the reviews are very positive for the remake.

“Age hasn’t slowed you down one bit”

@GuyinPA75 I must have ideal hand size or something because I have only been bothered once by a controller in over 36 years of gaming across consoles:

The Switch Joy-Con cramp my hand if I play too long with it. Dark Souls Remastered was a nightmare on the Joy-Con when I didn’t have access to my Pro Controller.

I have switched to PC where I use the Xbox Controller to play Sony games. 👍

But, to me, a controller is a controller.

@Secryt I mean, I have seen Nintendo stuff, sure - and generic "I'm a gamer" type clothes, but I have never seen PlayStation-specific clothes or Xbox-specific clothes.

It's basically all Nintendo-specific or generic "gaming".

@OldGamer999 I don't disagree. I have no idea why Microsoft has such a low advertising budget.

@Coletrain I talked to a few of my "PlayStation" acquaintances about Series X|S and about the ecosystem vs Sony's approach.

They disagreed with what was Sony was doing and were impressed with how Microsoft was handling things.

Still bought PlayStation 5. 🤷‍♂️

PS: those people don't play Sony exclusives - they are the annual COD/Madden/etc. crowd. So, it's not as if they would be missing out on anything by switching.

@OldGamer999 Interesting.

Other than Nintendo character clothing in the kids section, the only place to find "gamer wear" in the US is GameStop or online.

If the majority of developers simply say "the sales of products on your console compare to the competition isn't enough to justify the cost of porting," I am not quite sure there is anything Microsoft can do about that.

Despite how things have turned on for the Xbox brand, MIcrosoft really did try hard this generation and it just didn't work.

Microsoft handled cross-gen way better than Sony
Microsoft provided a much better feature set for Series X|S over PlayStation
Microsoft released actual new games. Microsoft couldn't predict the reception of said games, but not one first-party game Microsoft released said "Remastered" or "Director's Cut" on the box nor did Microsoft charge $10 more for Series X|S upgrades.

People call the Series S a mistake, but Microsoft was trying to give people economic options. I am sure the thought was in the right place.

It certainly wasn't perfect, but it wasn't as if Microsoft didn't try to overcome the woes of last generation.

People just stuck to their PlayStations - just like people stick with their iPhones with every generation because it's too much hassle to change over to Android.

@smoreon Oh, I totally get the games locked behind exclusivity. But, looking at that video, whoever is working on this, isn't focusing on the games locked in those shackles.

I would think the first batch of games would be things like Halo 5 and not Sonic Mania, Limbo, and Minecraft.

Maybe it's a complexity thing?

That screenshot is amazing!

After Bethesda fixes this, they need to create an official "Lookup Failed" planet that is programmed to fail in random ways (but not crash the game).

Would be a nice way to own up to and having fun with having such shaky Quality Control.

I feel emulating newer consoles starts to become a waste as probably 95% of the X1 library has a PC version.

I guess with PC basically being digital-only, this helps should a PC game get removed forever - you can at least access the X1 version by either dumping your own copy (assuming you still have one) or getting it through more questionable avenues.

But otherwise, I don't see the point.

@NEStalgia Agreed. FSR, itself, isn't bad. How developers have been using it is the bad part!

This one certainly wears its influence on its sleeve doesn't it?

It almost seems like this was a Chrono Trigger remake someone worked on, proposed to Square Enix, got rejected, and was turned into its own game!

@bicbuck While it is annoying that part of the reason console Game Pass is more expensive than PC is down to paid multiplayer, another reason PC is cheaper is because the console library of Game Pass games is significantly larger than PC Game Pass - especially when you consider that some games on console Game Pass never released on PC plus there are developers/publisher who simply don't release their games to the Microsoft Store.

Heck, even DOOM (2016) isn't on PC Game Pass - and Microsoft owns it!

It's a good game.

I am off and on playing it. For me, I have to be in the right mood for this game. It's not that's necessarily hard, it's just that I sometimes don't want to fight multiple bosses in such a short amount of time during my gaming time.

There are just so many games at my fingertips on PC at the moment that I am all over the place with my playing habits - some are new to me, some I have played before on console but now seeing through an entirely different lens on PC (e.g. Alan Wake 2, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Lords of the Fallen, etc.), others are just stone-cold classics from my Steam library that have been sitting dormant for the last 12 years when I got off my PC (e.g. Half-Life 2, Portal - but now with RTX, Batman Arkham Asylum, etc.).

I really need to dial it in at some point or I will never finish anything!

"Kept you waiting, huh?"

@NEStalgia I read this in Barret's voice. 😂

NOTE: I am currently playing through Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

@Lrapsody Oh I won't play online - as lame as it sounds, I have zero interest in playing with people who sit around all day and play COD. It's just not fun dying every 2 seconds when I only have about an hour of game time per day.

I'd rather just play the campaign. If it stinks, I'll uninstall it with zero loss to my bank account.

My "git gud" tolerance really only extends to Souls-likes.

I may give this a whirl simply because I already have Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

Doesn't hurt to try - even though I know nothing of the backstory of this particular story arch.

I really wouldn't worry about this too much.

I mean, even some of those "native Series X|S" cross-gen titles are nothing more than last-gen code with a metadata change for the frontend to mark as "native" (and perhaps a small patch).

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the X1 codebase using Series X|S enhancements but is now marked as "Series X|S". I think the Quality/Performance display options were removed, but that was it. Like, one day it was marked as a X1 title and the next day it was a Series X|S title - no new game download needed.

The thing is, Sony treats releases and SDKs very differently than Microsoft does for Xbox. Plus, Microsoft can do significantly more with backwards compatibility patches than Sony as well. It's PC-like in that regards.

Mojang probably had no choice but to release a PS5 native version in order for it to match the enhancements that the game has running on Series X.

I mean, I guess Mojang could just update the games metadata to give it a "Series X|S" label just to say it's now "native", but they certainly aren't making a whole new build because they don't have to on Xbox.