GeeEssEff

@Skinny-Pete Well make sure you don’t have that rare. Enjoy your weekend

@Skinny-Pete lovely. Rare? Medium? Well done?

@Skinny-Pete Nah it’s not that deep just my opinion. Sorry if I’ve caused offence. Enjoy your steak dinner. ✌️

@Skinny-Pete well I’m not an Xbox shareholder so I would worry more acquisitions would result in restructures, job losses, degradation of quality and further price hikes. But on the plus side at least Ricky Spanish, sorry Globo, sorry Skinny Pete would be happy that a trillion dollar company has pointlessly acquired yet another asset they don’t need 🥳

If it ain’t broke….errr acquire it?!

@Skinny-Pete yep I’m not sure who it would be nice for exactly but you’re entitled to your opinion no matter how baseless it is. Have a great Friday!

@Skinny-Pete oh I know I’m not owed an explanation I was just interested behind the reasons because this is a comment section that breeds discussion. I just assumed there would be some underlying genius level logic behind it…my mistake. Anyway sorry if I’ve offended you, it’s not that deep, just my opinion ✌️ ✌️ ✌️ ✌️

@Skinny-Pete as always I am not offended I am just questioning your logic which was a mistake on my behalf because as usual there doesn’t seem to be any! ✌️

@Skinny-Pete ok so how does Xbox owning them benefit you as a customer, the employees of Asobo and the general quality of their work?

@Coletrain I remember it being a thing that you needed to restart on the Ally but I was hoping they had made it more of a toggle by the time they rolled it out to desktops. Ahhh well not the end of the world I will probably use it when I know I am going to be playing solidly for a few hours and turn it off for for the rest of the time. You are bang on though an option on boot up to choose between modes would be the next logical step.

Thanks for all the info!

@Coletrain Good to know thanks. One of the vids I watched earlier was making it seem like you need to restart your pc to fully switch between. How are you finding Xbox mode overall?

I’ve been pretty excited for this and looking forward to giving it a go however I was watching some videos from insiders and it looks like a faff to switch between Xbox and Desktop mode on PC. Great if you only use your PC for games but if you use it for anything else it looks like the performance gains might not be worth the trade off for ease of switching between play and work.

@Skinny-Pete If the games are already good and they already arrive on gamepass what would be the benefit of Xbox owning the IP or developer?

Standard Halo is just stale as hell and it peaked years ago. They have been recycling the same enemies, weapons and environments for 25 years. Combine MCC and Infinite as a complete package and just add maps or whatever to that then try something completely fresh with the IP like they did with Halo Wars.

@BacklogBrad If you think this is over priced with TMR, 2 track pads and gyro you must be horrified by the Elite series 2. Or worse the limited edition standard Xbox controllers, some of which have no extra features but retail at exactly the same price as the Steam controller.

@somnambulance I don’t get it either mate but some would rather hate people who are different instead of understand them. The fact that you don’t desperately look for representation in every game shows you are one of the good ones. On the plus side Eternal Life of Goldman is coming soon which offers representation for us aging gamers 😉

@somnambulance Oh it isn’t just banishers, don’t Nod has been labelled a woke studio for a while…you can imagine how they feel about life is strange. From what I can tell with banishers they don’t like that a white man is being mentored by a black woman.

@somnambulance I have googled it, searched Reddit, asked ChatGPT and scoured Don’t Nods Wikipedia. There is no evidence they were ever abusive to players….If you search “Don’t Nod Woke” though you get a slew of culture war nonsense from incels struggling to fathom a game where the protagonist isn’t a straight white male. I imagine it’s something to do with them responding to that

My points earning has dropped off significantly since GPU lapsed but I still do the bing daily nonsense. Microsoft paying me to click on some buttons a few times a day so they can track it as engagement is an excellent deal for me. I should have £60 worth of points just in time for Forza Horizon so please no nerfs before that!

@Markatron84 cheers mate. I’ve downloaded it to give it a go later!

I don’t really care about the console updates as mine hasn’t been turned on since my GPU lapsed last year. I am more interested in the much needed updates to the Xbox pc app and Xbox mode.

@Markatron84 How are you finding Pokemon Champions? I was going to download it and then saw almost unanimous negativity towards it so stuck to my Pokopia addiction.

@M20B25 Planet Coaster 1 is the better game tbh. The sequel takes away nearly as much stuff as it adds and is much glitchier so don’t regret your decision!

@Fiendish-Beaver Haha good forward planning but we will be in the same boat come season 5! I need to start showing some restraint and just wait for the season to finish so I can binge.

@Markatron84 Yeh I haven’t looked much into the game tbh. I can deal with the art style but am just automatically pessimistic about TV/Movie tie ins. An open beta shows confidence in the product though so that definitely makes me more positive. Keep chipping away and I’m sure she will cave at some point 😂

@Fiendish-Beaver Oh man you are in for a treat as it only gets better!! I am up to date and it is killing me waiting full weeks for a new episode. In the process of trying to convince my wife to watch it so I have an excuse to start it again with her.

The Invincible TV show is amazing so I am cautiously optimistic about the game. Glad there is a beta to try.

I have bought two consoles day one: Xbox One and PS5. Not entirely sure whether I will even get a next console let alone day one but we shall see.

I’m so excited for a new FH. Everything Playground have teased us with so far is ticking all the boxes for me. I will gleefully be there on day four.

@Globo That is categorically not what he is saying. He is talking about the degradation of quality vs cost which exists in pretty much every single industry. The irony is you are upset with a guy who keeps game prices incredibly reasonable while defending a service that has seen several price hikes. After a 50% increase in gamepass price a mere 5 months ago it’s baffling you think Larian are trying to milk you and Xbox aren’t…and they had the tone deaf audacity to do it during a financial crisis. If Larian charged £80 for BG3 you might have a point but they went under the norm. It released same weekend as Starfield on console at £10 less for example.

On the point of sustainability…again this is a company which can put out games at a reasonable cost, make a huge profit, hold onto their work force, keep said workforce happy and reinvest sensibly into their next games. They are the definition of sustainable….you are shouting at the wrong cloud.

@Globo in this instance the guy who should ‘stfu’ works for a studio that has made no mass layoffs, released a game that is widely considered to be one of the best of all time with near endless replayability, it was £10-£20 cheaper than most AAAs on release yet still made £250mil profit in its release year on PC alone….if there’s anyone we should be listening to about the way games development should be run it is the people at Larian.

Some interesting looking games here and a nice mix of genres.

Schrodingers Xbox Tax rears its conspiratorial head again. If an Xbox studio game scores better on PS it’s because reviewers give high scores to PS games. If it scores worse it’s because reviewers are biased against Xbox. Factors such as 2+ years of updates, number of reviews and differing subjective opinions go in the bin when it comes to Xbox studios because if it doesn’t get exactly the same Metacritic score across all platforms then it proves, beyond reasonable doubt that the world has a grudge against poor old Xbox.

@Fiendish-Beaver my first thought when I saw this was if they can hammer out highly requested features within 2 weeks why have they waited 5 years to do it? Maybe she genuinely has come onboard and prioritised the console experience but like you I have a rather cynical outlook on anything the C Suite says.

I had some reward points lined up to buy this on Xbox as it’s Play Anywhere. I’m still very intrigued but I think it might be a wait for a sale type game. The good news is those reward points get to roll over to Forza Horizon 6 now!

@Globo I’m quite clearly not the one getting defensive here…If you comment on something with your opinion you are going to get people questioning that opinion and that is exactly what’s happening here. I’m not offended, affected or having my experience ruined I’m just trying to point out that a little self awareness can go along way in life both on and offline.

@Globo You not caring is fine (although I wonder why you’d bother engaging in the first place with something you have no interest in)…calling other peoples careers, interests or hobbies sad and pointless is just a bit in poor taste.

@Globo aside from him likely earning a small fortune from doing stuff like this, Ethical Hackers are extremely useful because they help keep much used apps, hardware, websites etc safe from actual hackers. They find exploits that might have been missed in production and flag them to the creators so they can be addressed which keeps people like us safe. Chances are he thinks using your time to scroll through gaming websites and commenting on them is sad and pointless but here we are.

Whatever it is called I’m sure it will be clunky, confusing and contain too many X’s or S’s. Xbox Sensation XSX or something.

@Fiendish-Beaver No worries mate! Yeh Deadzone is class. Deffo worth giving Abyssus a go for yourself when it gets on GP to see if you have a different experience to me. If you do let me know.

@Fiendish-Beaver I got it on PC and honestly its a bit disappointing. Even on Co op its ridiculously hard and the perm progression is a bit more grindy than other similar roguelikes. IMO Deadzone Rogue is better and my favourite FPS roguelike is already on gamepass in the form of Roboquest. Its a shame because out of the three I think Abyssus is the prettiest and has the most appealing setting but the other two are much less grindy and more fun solo.

I am actually quite looking forward to trying out Xbox mode on PC. I'm hoping it works in a similar way to the Ally and it drops unneeded tasks to maximise performance. If it works well I would definitely be a bit more interested in Helix.

This year might break me as a gamer. My backlog from last year is still huge but the quality of games releasing at the moment is just crazy. There is too much to play and not enough time to play it.

I’ve been playing on PC and it’s incredibly fun. Easily the best £6.50 I’ve spent in a long time

@Markatron84 our weekends are similar. I am also getting battered in Mewgenics Act 2 so will be playing some Pokopia as a break from that and Marathon when things get a bit much!

If it has zero Windows 11 associated crap, plays all my Steam games natively and is significantly more powerful than the Steam Machine I would go up to a grand. Definitely not a day one purchase though. I would be scoping out all sorts of feedback and waiting at least 6-12 months to see how it beds in.

I’m really looking forward to hearing more details because it still all sounds a bit too good to be true. I’m struggling to imagine a device that manages to deliver a console experience which plays my Xbox library and my Steam library without any PC related faff. It just feels like there is going to be a catch somewhere, whether it be the PC part is locked behind a subscription, it is cloud only or the device itself costs a million quid. But if they actually achieve what we all hope they will achieve then I will be here for it.

Yeh when I can play the Series S version handheld on a busy train I will be more impressed by the slight graphical improvement.

@ZeD The combat definitely takes some getting used to but keep at it and it will click. It also becomes much easier when you get some decent weapons, armour and you level up your perks. Stealth is also a surprisingly viable option further down the line and speech can get you out of a lot of confrontations if you never truly get onboard with the fighting.