GeeEssEff

@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.

@ZeD KCD2 is an incredible game which instantly shot up to one of my favourite of all time last year. I would say don’t start it until you know you can devote an afternoon at least. A couple of hours won’t even get you out of the tutorial/intro section which is a bit slow but once it opens up you will fall in love with the world. I have 90 hours on my playthrough so far with at least a third of the story to go and countless side quests, activities and POIs to explore. If you like a deep RPG it doesn’t get much better than this game!

@IOI I read an interesting article awhile ago (which unfortunately I can’t find now) about the relationship Xbox has with influencers. It suggested that the relationships aren’t entirely parasocial because a key part of the Xbox marketing campaign for the last decade has been purposely courting big social media personalities with freebies, interviews and exclusive info which gained them an almost cult like status and a group of very vocal defenders. It’s been an interesting tactic that has made Phil Spencer/Sarah Bond seem super accessible when they sit down to do a podcast with XboxEra or something but at the same time it all just feels heavily manufactured.

Like you said the proof is in the pudding. It’s fine making a vague statement which Destin can analyse on YouTube for a hour but if nothing changes it just becomes another vapid soundbyte which will haunt her 12 months down the line.

I think it’s at least two years to late to be calling it a massive addition but great for people who haven’t played it yet

I think the sooner they actually release some concrete details about the next Xbox the better. I understand the ever changing component crisis is making it difficult to nail down a plan but even if they just told us “This is what it is and we are aiming to release in 202X” it might settle people down and give them the confidence to keep investing in Xbox.

We know PS6 is going to happen and you could bet your life savings it will be a traditional gen refresh with some new bells and whistles. The future of Xbox hardware however comes with so many questions, caveats and rumours that no one really knows what it will be and how it will work to the point it’s very existence is regularly questioned no matter how many times Xbox confirm it.

I think if you believe everything that the Xbox execs say there is good reason to be optimistic.....I however believe next to nothing they say and think they are better off shutting up for a change and letting the results do the talking for them.

@AverageGamer I saw it on Reddit so don’t know if it’s true (I don’t use X) but apparently she has put something out saying it was a shared family account so wasn’t just her.

Lol absolutely no way this is all her. You can see the time played for each game in her stats and she has got nearly 7 full days worth of gaming in. Even if she created her account on 1st Jan that's 11% of her total time so far in 2026 spent gaming. I never believed Phil Spencer was the sole user of his account with the hours he put in but it was certainly more believable than these shenanigans.

@Anony25 The fact that Nadella is a Hindu really cements your stupidity with this comment.

@ilyn Shhhh don’t draw attention….Im getting away with literal murder here.

The new head of Xbox is a potato!

@GamerScore200K “Another box tick employee”….explain please

I personally don’t like the guy. He has always struck me as a used car salesman type who won people over because “look he’s a gamer like us.” I do however massively respect how he worked his way to the top and think a lot of recent decisions have been out of his hands. He’s much less of a knob than Mattrick and I would put money on him being better than the AI puppet taking over. On the plus side the cult of Phil Spencer is over and there wont be 500 different articles across gaming media dissecting his every vapid word everytime he does an interview.

I have been playing this regularly on Steamdeck since it released and it is fantastic. Not sure I would play it solely on console all that much but it is great for handheld in front of the TV, especially when you start getting more staff members and can automate parts of the business. I love that stinky customers is actually a game system you have to manage 😅

@fatpunkslim Aside from not being able to buy any Forza games before Horizon 5 or Motorsport 8 they did this EXACT thing with Halo. You can’t buy any of the 360 editions because the Master Chief Collection exists. It is genuinely hilarious/pathetic how often you get called out on your nonsense and you still continue to spout it.

@Llamageddon Finally someone gets it. This is late stage capitalism and the real customer of the PLCs is the shareholder not the end user. Sony are chasing console sales to get people into the ecosystem, MS are chasing software and service sales while the consumers are wasting their time arguing over which one is a bigger piece of Sh%t. If people want an actual decent service that has pretty much everything they need to get a PC and start building up their Steam or GoG libraries. Both are still (and hopefully forever) private companies who don’t need to chase endless growth to appease their shareholders so can offer value to the consumer. I still shudder at the rumours of MS buying Steam.

I love a good “Sony bad 😭” meltdown in a Pure Xbox comment section and there’s like three going on at once. What a treat.

My body is ready. Horizon is hands down my favourite Xbox IP so I am v excited even if it is more of the same in a new location.

@fatpunkslim link me to where you can buy third party keys for this game. It’s sold 900 copies on Xbox…let’s not pretend it’s setting the world on fire.

I liked the humour and premise of the first game but the gameplay was very generic so didn’t get too far before putting it down. It’s safe to say I have very low expectations of the sequel but if it turns out to be good I will pick it up in a sale further down the line.

Nioh 3 and it’s going to be that way for a while!

Merging premium and PC just sounds like the enshitification of PC gamepass which is currently the best value tier by a long shot.