GeeEssEff

I predominantly play on PC having got myself a new one at the start of the year but play anywhere and the recent gamepass lineup has meant I’m using my Series X more nowadays then I have since I got it in 2021. I’d consider Steam my primary platform though.

I wouldn’t mind it so much if I thought it was anything more than a poorly disguised opportunity to force DLC adverts down our throats. The paid extras for any games that have them (which is most) are front and centre of this new hub. Just incase MTXs weren’t already obnoxious enough within the games themselves, Xbox are doing their best to ensure they find their way into our dashboard experience as well. But even without my cynical take this should have been opt in rather than opt out.

No because the ‘announcements’ have mainly been vague marketing jargon. If the absolute best case scenario happens where they release an affordable console that plays all my Xbox, PC and Gamepass games then I’ll get excited. Until then I will assume Xbox are doing what they do best which is hyping up their fanbase to eventually disappoint them

This new tactic of taking pre existing products and branding them with Xbox logos is so quintessentially Microsoft. Why create something new or contribute meaningfully to the tech landscape when you can just buy the right to take credit for it and use it to drag people into your subscription service. Leeches

“ delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device”…A lot of people have jumped to the conclusion this means multiple store fronts but it could simply mean they are fully doing away with PC vs Console for their own software. Currently Xbox PC and Xbox console are two very different stores with different games and capabilities. Xbox have been making great strides at addressing that with Play Anywhere but take the quote at the most cynical level (which is how I usually approach these vague MS marketing videos) and it could just be they are truly unifying their own store fronts into one.

As cool, and expensive 😬, as it would be having a console experience with all the PC launchers I just think there’s too many hoops for MS to jump through technically. But at the same time I have no clue what I’m talking about. I love it for the consumer but there’s no way it’s coming in under £1000 if it does what everyone hopes it’s going to do which just makes it a really weird value proposition for your average console gamer. It would show they are all in on chasing the enthusiast market rather than the general market.

@BAMozzy Nope...Doom 2016 is not available to buy on Xbox PC app or via Gamepass PC. Only available via Steam. But you know what I could do pretty easily? Play it docked on the Switch and then take it with me and play it natively in handheld mode with my saves.

@BAMozzy "Take Doom 2016 as an example as you mentioned it, I can buy that on Xbox and play it on a RoG Ally at 60fps on the SAME save"....no you cant its not even available on Xbox PC let alone Play Anywhere. Even Doom Eternal isnt Play Anywhere which is the problem a lot of people have with this...only a tiny percentage of peoples "Xbox" games will actually be available to play on PC.

@BAMozzy Ok you have really focused on the past there. I’m saying there’s absolutely no chance every future third party game is going to be play anywhere. Xbox don’t have the clout to demand it and if they try there’s a reasonable chance your Ubisofts, Capcoms, Fromsofts etc are just going to tell them to get stuffed and not publish on Xbox atall.

I have a PC and I use Play Anywhere regularly so your optimistic utopian vision would benefit me greatly but it simply ain’t happening. I haven’t bought many games this year but would have bought Monster Hunter Wilds, Shadows, KCD2, Two point museum and Planet Coaster 2 on Xbox if they were play anywhere….the last two especially seem like they would have been made for it but Steam gets my money instead.

@BAMozzy I watched the show….every game shown wasn’t every game ever created. The current and future play anywhere game list is still a drop in the ocean.

Id give it an A. Really enjoyed it but by god the World Premier, Gamepass and Play Anywhere banners after/before everything got obnoxious. Particualrly after Sarah Bond said "everything you see will be play anywhere"

@BAMozzy "Play Anywhere could be a Game Changer if 3rd Party Publishers embrace it to" They wont....why sell it once for 2 systems when they can sell it twice.

@Questionable_Duck the actual quote is “The only thing missing is the Xbox. Which somehow feels a bit wrong, but that 10GB of shared memory – without years of optimisation experience – is really hard to make work.” Which is very different to saying it’s going to take years to optimise. They are saying as a company they don’t have that optimisation background so don’t have the experience to draw from, not “from this very point in time it is going to take us years to optimise”….i mean as part of the same Weibo post your drawing from he also outright denied that there was any exclusivity deal with Sony so that really should be evidence enough.

As mentioned on Push square and conveniently omitted here it’s a special date given the game was announced on 20th Aug 2020, released on Aug 20th 2024 and the legendary Sun Wukong’s birthday is, you guessed it, Aug 20th. Dates and numbers hold significance in Chinese culture and this is clearly a special one for Game Science. I suppose we can’t beat the “Sony is evil” drum if we apply logic, evidence and cultural nuance to a situation though.

@themightyant Yep agreed. With gamepass and quick resume I would almost certainly have more games installed on my Series X than my PS5 but I refuse to spend the current asking price for single use propriety storage. As someone who is terrified of tinkering with hardware I appreciate the plug and play aspect but installing the SSD on my PS5 was surprisingly easy and took less than 10 minutes with a YouTube video.

@Nintendo4Sonic I would like to add to @LogicStrikesAgain comment that in 2021 I picked up a 1TB WD Black SSD in a Black Friday sale for £170 (which looks like a crap deal now but I was buzzing at the time). I could get the same SSD for £120 today or the 2TB version for £180. And these are in the higher price bracket for SSDs…..a 1TB Crucial is less than £80. I reckon they have dropped about 30% in price over the last 4 years which is pretty substantial considering the prices of the consoles themselves have actually increased.

I’m playing it on Steam but Monster Train 2.

@BAMozzy ok so unlike you I actually have a Steamdeck and quite literally one of the first things I did with it is put it into desktop mode (2 button presses), surfed the web, downloaded some software off GitHub, connected it to a monitor and tinkered with the display settings, browsed the Linux store etc. I don’t understand the logic that the Steamdeck is not a handheld PC but the Rog Ally is? Well actually I know the logic it’s because you will shill for absolutely anything Microsoft related. Anyway because your not going to take my word for it here’s an article on RPS https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/how-is-the-steam-deck-as-a-desktop-pc and I encourage you to google “The best handheld PCs”….I can guarantee the Steamdeck, along with the Ally will appear on 99% of the lists. They both do the same thing but one is built on Linux and launches into a dedicated gaming OS and the other is built on windows which it launches into, for now. I assure you I can use the Steamdeck as a pretty capable PC out the box.

@BAMozzy Your first comment didn’t mention windows once, you literally just said Steamdeck isn’t a handheld pc and I was correcting you because it is. A PC with Linux rather than windows is still a PC and your specific OS preference doesn’t change that.

@BAMozzy “I’d rather have a handheld PC than a handheld switch or steamdeck”

The Steamdeck is a handheld pc. You not understanding Linux or dual booting windows doesn’t make it any less of a handheld pc. Not only that but it is the best selling handheld pc by a significant margin.

@Titntin Hope you enjoy!

@Titntin Did you play the first mate? It’s a whole lot of fun. Basically if Portal and Halo had a baby you get Splitgate. The first was a little bare bones but this one brings more progression and unlocks.

I played the alpha on steam and really enjoyed it. I did try a few games last night both on steam and Xbox but it was taking really long to find lobbies so thought I would let the dust settle a bit. So far so good though, Splitgate is absolutely awesome and the changes they have made seem really positive.

@Moby *Flacid Tlown Commitee

Perfect Dark on the N64 was incredible. So many weekends spent playing split screen with friends. I played Zero on 360 and it was good but didn’t capture the magic. I can’t see it ever being a major franchise, that ship has long since sailed but if the new one has fun multiplayer and a half decent campaign I will be very happy.

If I can get 6-9 months of Gamepass per year from doing the bing crap and playing my Xbox then I am happy. I think its a matter of time till they increase the points cost of GPU and/or nerf the rewards you get but for now I'm doing ok out of it.

I bought a series x in 2021 and out of my PS5, Steamdeck, Switch and PC it is my least used by a significant margin. The last 6 months has seen an increase in activity thanks to gamepass finally finding some consistency but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t buy it again.

Would have been big news for me if they were Play Anywhere but until that happens I will use Steam for my Ubisoft PC fix.

Definitely not. I have a great gaming PC which covers me for Xbox games.

@Toot1st A quick google list of media companies who covered the PS price rise: Guardian, Engadget, The verge, Financial Times, CNBC, Euronews, Polygon, BBC, GamingBible, London Evening Standard, Metro, Gameinformer, Forbes, Radio Times, What Hi-Fi, Gamespot, Eurogamer, IGN, GB News, Yahoo, Vice, Reuters, Techradar, VGchartz, MSN and there’s plenty more but I got bored. Not to mention you yourself have several scathing comments on the Push Square article.

Stop projecting your own biases on the media.

Expedition 33 for me and I love it so far.

@themightyant I feel the same! I’m usually a pure gameplay guy and a serial cutscene skipper but the premise of this hooked me instantly. I think it’s going to be the first game to actually disrupt my KCD2 playthrough.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 by a long shot. Truly exceptional game.

I do still need to play Monster Hunter Wilds and AC Shadows at some point but can’t see my choice changing

I am in the camp of it being an interesting experiment and tech demo. This is essentially the game version of Will Smith wolfing down spaghetti.

I was enjoying Avowed until I picked up KCD2 and barely played it since. It’s going to take something extremely special to beat Henry’s Bohemiam adventures to GOTY for me although I can see why Split Fiction is top spot as it’s a genius, brilliant game. One of the surprises up there is Two Point Museum. I put hours and hours into hospital and campus but have been really struggling to gel with Museum. Maybe I’m missing something.

It’s still my favourite Series X game and I jump in for a few hours every now and then but stopped playing it regularly a while ago.

@IOI I believe the quote was taken from 2019 when they assumed spending 80 billion on publishers would drag more gamers to Xbox and Gamepass…the failure of that vision has resulted in the multi platform landscape they have found themselves in today.

I have no doubt in my mind that internally, Sony would love it if Xbox went bust but never heard of them even alluding to it publicly, let alone outright saying it. You got any quotes/articles?

@IOI “Sony themselves have said as much, their goal is to get rid of Xbox as a competitor entirely”

You’re mixing up your companies mate. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23774547/microsoft-sony-xbox-internal-emails-ftc-out-of-business

@themightyant I enjoyed my old backbone until I upgraded my iPhone to one of the newer USB C models and could no longer use it. The Steamdeck I got last year has meant I never needed to replace it as I can do all my streaming and more from that. The annual subscription is a shameless money grab though, especially when the backbone itself is pretty pricey for what it does.

My favourite game I’ve played on Xbox is Forza Horizon 5.
My favourite game of this generation (and all time) is Elden Ring.

I’m going to give it a go. I have been intrigued by it for a while and I’m a sucker for a good rogue.

Nope I have a decent PC which sorts me for Gamepass and my digital library is almost entirely on PS5/Switch/Steam. I won’t get rid of my Series X but it hasnt had all that much use in the 4 years I’ve owned it so I have very little intention of getting the nextbox unless it offers something ridiculously unique and enticing.

Mullet Madjack has been on my steam wishlist for a while but I’m not entirely sure it’s for me so I’m looking forward to trying it on Gamepass. I also really like the concept of 33 immortals so hope it delivers. I’d rather have good Indies than average AAAs tbh.

@IronCrow86 Wow you really don’t know anything about the game do you. Enjoy your pack of cards!

@Medic_alert Pistol Whip is one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had and a great example of the pure joy VR can bring when done right. I love seeing my gamer friends play it for the first time, especially when they have no prior VR experience. It blows their minds.

I just wish I had more space in my gamer den to play proper room scale games without the fear of punching a hole in my tv.

I’m enjoying Avowed as a less intense RPG when I need a break from KCD2. But for the love of God could you please add at least one custom waypoint marker for the map Obsidian.

Please please please be the 3 + 4 remakes activision! You know it’s what everyone wants. I’m hoping the date format of 03/04 is the giveaway here…maybe new parks is just a hint at some new levels which are not in the originals.

Way too early for scoring for me. I have spent most of the 22 hours since it released either sleeping or working. The few hours I played of it last night were fun though and I’m looking forward to giving it a longer stint over the weekend.

I’m getting myself ready for Avowed with some Pillars of Eternity 2. I finally got the new gaming PC I have spent years saving up for and can’t wait to flex its muscles with a big old RPG next week.

I’d rate Blind Forest higher mostly out of nostalgia and how original it felt but Will of Wisps was still exceptional. 10/10 for the OG and 9 for the sequel in my humble opinion.