GeeEssEff

Great news! That’s got the hype levels back up.

@K1LLEGAL I try and avoid the general porting discussions but I’m finding the backlash to your comment hilarious.

Microsoft buy Bethesda and immediately gain access to the companies entire financial history. They will have seen Deathloop performing well on PS and dollar signs would have formed in their eyes. It’s an excellent observation which, as you say most people probably haven’t considered. Especially with Deathloop being the first current gen only title from Bethesda, MS got their first real insight into exactly how much they could make porting games over.

I have fond memories of trading in pretty much every gaming item I owned to get a 360 with Gears, Rainbow Six Vegas and Saints Row. It was my first year of Uni, I had a ton of free time and I just loved every second of playing those games. It was the last time a generational leap actually felt like a leap.

@Weebleman It’s also interesting that the armchair accountants latch onto revenue (because it’s the only metric Xbox report on) as if it’s the be all and end all. If I start a business which sells £1mil worth of product per year but I spend £1.2mil on raw materials, salaries, production etc that is not a healthy business.

We simply don’t know what Xbox’s profit is, aside from a vague statement from the FTC trial where they said it’s single digit margin. I’m going to guess with the mass redundancies, nerfing of MS Rewards, bringing games to other consoles, increase in GPU cost with a stagnation in subscribers, it is nowhere near as healthy as their increased revenue would suggest.

I completely agree with @themightyant though….i don’t care how much money MS make off Xbox because I’m not a shareholder. I care about the games they bring out and how I can play them.

Ninja Gaiden 4 reveal and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black releasing today on GP gets an automatic A from me.

Last year was the first time since 2009 I didn’t buy FIFA day one and this year is the first time i won’t buy it at all. The changes year on year are so minimal and they never seem to address issues that have plagued it for over a decade. It needs a truly massive gameplay and mode refresh or EA need to go full F2P and just release a much cheaper yearly squad update. It has long since passed its peak and it looks like even the hardcore fanbase are acknowledging that.

I’m on Ultimate and try to get as much of it through MS Rewards as I can and anything else through CDKeys. I wouldn’t drop to standard as I tend to just unsubscribe for a few months if there’s nothing on GPU I fancy and let a backlog build up.

@BacklogBrad Yessss I can’t wait for Civ 7. Being Steamdeck verified pre release is just the icing on the already magnificent cake.

It was a lot of fun while it lasted. I would be all over it if it returned.

@Cakefish Good spot mate! Will bear this in mind thank you

Surely this is just the development code name. Wasn’t one of the previous Xbox’s called Project Scorpio or something in the run up to its actual announcement?

Like others have said ‘Prime’ already has strong connotations with other large companies and considering Amazon has started dipping its toes into gaming via their Prime subscription you’d think Xbox wouldn’t want to muddy the waters and cause confusion. Who knows with their bizarre naming conventions though. I would have liked to see them continue with 360 > 540 > 720 > 900 but that’s probably just my inner Tony Hawks/SSX fan coming out.

@Cakefish Absolutely but I only turn it on to start the game and then turn the tv off. The game still runs for fifteen minutes even with the tv off. You probably have to disable the settings where your Xbox turns on/off with your tv though.

@Cakefish The electricity costs occurred to me as I often leave a game on for 15 mins just to get the weekly bonus (Little Kitty Big city was my third most played game last year for this sole reason)

From everything I could find out, at a standard tariff and assuming a series X is running at maximum wattage it costs roughly 8p per hour to run. So if you are really strict on shutting it off after the 15 minutes and did that 5 times a week it will cost you about £5.30 a year. Without the new streak system that would have netted you between 7500-9000 points per year which is most of the way towards a month of GP which is what I tend to spend my points on. I think it works out good value but ethically it isn’t brilliant for the environment.

*Caveat: I have no real clue about electricity pricing and this is based entirely on google searching and back of a matchbox maths.

Edit: also wanted to add that I too have an LG CX (tv twinsies 🙌) so I turn my Xbox on, load a game and then turn the tv off and the Xbox switches itself off after about 20 minutes…can’t remember the exact time I got it to auto switch off

@Kieduss read the various Reddit posts on r/MicrosoftRewards and ask yourself what’s more likely: There’s a bug in the MS Rewards system OR thousands of people decide to simultaneously break the rules before logging into Reddit to lie about it?

Doom for me! It would be Fable but honestly I just can’t see it releasing this year…I would love to be wrong though.

Only bought Dragons Dogma 2 on Xbox series X. Probably about 30 PS5 games and countless Steam games (can’t resist those deep discount sales). Nothing on the Switch for the first year since I bought it though

@Rodimusprime13 other way round mate. PS Plus launched in 2010
(https://ign.com/articles/2010/06/24/first-playstation-plus-details) as an optional sub service with games, demos and discounts. Eventually Sony decided to start charging for playstwtion network so to soften the blow to players they rolled it into PS Plus and said “look at least you get some free games each month”. At that point Xbox realised if Sony charge the same for online play AND offer monthly games they are going to be at a disadvantage which is why games with gold was born in 2013.

@themcnoisy You summed it up the best really. Sony haven’t particularly set the world alight with any of their sub models but they were doing them before Xbox, hell even EA play came before gamepass! But this is pure Xbox so I guess we have to pretend Xbox paved the way to keep everyone happy. Merry Christmas bud!

@eduscxbox I know Ps plus 2010 was nothing like gamepass. But that service gave monthly games for a subscription fee while Xbox live still gave you nothing except online play until they introduced games with gold to compete.

@Sol4ris I guess innovating on other people’s ideas is still innovating. I mainly just found the line in the article about Xbox paving the way with Xbox live funny…all Xbox live was doing until Games with gold was charging Xbox players to be able to do what PC and PS (at the time) players could do for free….play with their friends online.

@markatron84 *I meant games with gold

Anyway I’m about to drive to family for Christmas so anyone else want to argue with me about history I refer you to Wikipedia. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

“Xbox paved the way for subscription gaming with Xbox Live, which led to Game Pass and companies like Sony, Nintendo and even EA and Ubisoft following with their own services - offering access to games and much more”

PS plus (2010) came before Xbox live gold (2013) offering monthly games and PS Now (2014) came before Gamepass (2017) offering a sub access to a rotating selection. Gamepass is great and all but let’s not pretend Xbox is an industry leading innovator here in anything other than charging console gamers to play online. They were literally years behind the competition in bringing their game sub services to the market.

The adverts are clever. It’s the product that is the problem. In theory, it’s great being able to access gamepass via the cloud on all my devices….in practice it is a laggy unplayable mess for every game I have tried. Yes this is not going to be the case for everyone but I have seen enough comments from people who have a similar experience to me to know that it is still a widespread issue.

If casuals sign up for a month of gamepass, try to stream COD through their phone and find it a blurry lag fest then they are going to lose confidence, unsubscribe and go back to their native mobile games whilst associating Xbox with a poor user experience. Cloud gaming just isn’t at the quality where it is ready to be pushed out to the masses in my opinion.

I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Will almost certainly never play it but you can be damned sure I’m going to claim it

Black ops 6 hands down for me. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of hours in MP considering how long it has been out. I want to get to the campaign eventually and give Zombies more time as well.

Second will be Indiana Jones. I haven’t played massive amounts but I have played enough to know it is something special. This is from someone who has next to no interest in the Indiana Jones IP and had zero hype for the game in the run up but I gave it a go based on the positive reviews. Love it so far.

I feel if Xbox is your primary console and you sub to gamepass anyway to play online it is always excellent. If Xbox is your second or third tier console and you only sub to gamepass purely for the games it has been pretty average for the last two years.

When I saw the 6/10 this morning I knew this comment section would be pure gold and it has not disappointed.

@LogicStrikesAgain Your name checks out 👌

227 hours total
1. Black ops 6 - 87 hours
2. Dragons Dogma 2 -18 hours
3. Little kitty big city - 17 hours

I knew Little kitty would be up there because I was saving up for MS reward points in time for CoD so would turn it on for 15 mins a day to get my weekly bonus. I think I actually played it for about an hour total and certainly didn’t think I’d rack up 17 hours AFK time 😂

As someone who put about 120 hours into GT7 during its launch year I was really looking forward to FM. I fell in love with it at first and then just got bored of the grind. I remember spending about an hour doing test laps with the sole purpose of upgrading a car and saying to myself “why am I wasting my time with this?”

Needing to put hours and hours into a single car just to level it up enough to make it competitive was such a weird design choice. One of my favourite aspects of GT7 was taking a random car and tinkering with it to turn it into a track beast. I appreciate Turn10 have addressed this issue in updates since but it was too late for me, I had already lost interest.

Wildfrost is worth checking out for anyone who likes Slay the Spire/Monster Train.

@RaZieLDaNtE I am exactly the same! The amount of games I have got to the final mission and then either never completed or had a long hiatus before going back is crazy…must be something in our psychology 😂

I am mainly going to be playing the many games I picked up in the Autumn steam sale with some Dragon Age Veilguard thrown in.

Monday releases can get in the bin. Call me cynical but it feels like a ploy to get people to buy the deluxe upgrade so they can play it over the weekend.

@Kezelpaso Haha don’t even get me started on that bright green fairy running around. If people want to pay £10 to be at a disadvantage I say let them!

I love the skins….they make people stick out like a sore thumb. The amber faced cyborg thing from the thumbnail is just asking for headshots.

Does anyone know if the code only box still has the circle shaped slot for the disk? That would hit me straight in the OCD.

I have definitely bought more digital games over physical in the last decade but with the cost of everything going up I have got back into physical more and more this year. Games can be up to 30% cheaper day one and they drop in price much faster. Not to mention the option to trade in, resell or gift to a friend when I’m done with it, none of which can be done with a redemption code.

I’ve been wanting to try Aliens Dark Descent so really happy with this. Nine Sols is excellent for anyone who hasn’t played it! Good week.

@Ilyn I love the “Sony has abandoned VR” narrative. By the end of this year, PSVR2 will have over 250 games supporting it which equates to more than 10 games releasing per month. While they haven’t been developing many themselves they have been bringing in more than enough third party deals to ensure that VR players always have something to play. It’s an insane amount of choice and variety for a niche peripheral with a high barrier to entry but I guess people will continue to consider it abandoned unless Sony starts knocking out 3-5 first party VR titles a year.

I managed to get in and play yesterday and it’s a bit of a jank fest. I tried a free flight which worked fine but the textures were just ugly. I then tried the first mission in the campaign and the quality was all over the place. Regular stutters and frame rate drops and what the hell is going on with the dialogue? I understand this isn’t a story driven RPG so it’s very low priority but the NPC at the flight school sounds like he was both written and voiced by an AI. Quality wise 2024 feels like a downgrade to 2020 at the moment.

I have tried on four separate occasions since release and still haven’t even seen the main menu. Truly disappointing launch of a flagship title and an insightful peek into what Microsoft’s cloud future is going to look like.

That’s a shame I think everyone was rooting for this to be a success. I haven’t tried it myself yet. I was planning on diving in over Christmas after a few patches and some backlog clearing. If Stalker is a 4 I wonder what Microsoft Loading Screen Simulator 2024 will get 😬

Compulsion seem to be really good at making games that have captivating art styles and concepts but don’t play particularly well. South of Midnight looks interesting (just like Contrast and We happy few did before it) but I don’t have much confidence in it.

I don’t regret my Series X purchase but if I could go back in time I would put the money I have spent on the console and gamepass towards a decent gaming PC instead.

I am looking forward to giving flight sim and Indiana Jones a go but I doubt I will get into either of them. Stalker 2 on the other hand looks fantastic

@Steel76 Not boomerish at all. I base a lot of my decisions on things like phone and broadband contracts based on my experiences with their customer service teams. The whole reason I switched from Xbox One to PS4 as my main console was due to a series of really bad customer service experiences with Xbox.

@Rog-X No it’s Windows, Azure, 365 and countless business acquisitions over the last 4 decades which have turned Microsoft into a trillion dollar company.

Thanks for the update on Sony though Sifi, I understood the “one exclusive a year” comment the first 20 times you made it on here. I look forward to reading it a further 500 times in the future…..absolute broken record.

@K1LLEGAL For me the silly take part was that just because a Multi trillion dollar company can afford to do something their infinitely poorer competitor should follow suit. You are right though, anything can happen but I think hell will freeze over before we see Sony put a game like Spiderman 3 day one on plus. There’s no sustainable profit generation from their single player games so nothing stopping users buying a month of PS plus, completing it and unsubscribing. Xbox might be able to absorb that hit, particularly now they own a cash cow like ABK but Sony cannot.

@Wisegamer When did the tried and tested model of making a product and selling it become “milking their fanbase”?

It’s hardly a secret that this gamepass day one thing isnt particularly profitable for MS which is why they are releasing on other platforms, adding pay to play early gimmicks and splitting up GP tiers more aggressively. Sony don’t have the backing of a three trillion dollar parent company to bail them out or spend 80bil on publishers when it doesn’t go to plan. Comparing Sony and MS from a financial perspective is like comparing Me to Ed Sheeran. Silly take from a “wise gamer”

Definitely the best COD in a while. I’m really loving the multiplayer and the small amount of zombies I have played has been a blast. The respawns are a bit all over the place at the moment and a couple of the maps are terrible but it’s a huge return to form.

Best COD in years. I only really play Multiplayer and I have been glued to it since it came out.

PlayStation for third party and exclusives
Steamdeck for Indies and early access
Switch for exclusives and games to play with the wife
Xbox for gamepass

If MS plan to pump at least some of the extra ABK money back into their extensive list of studios then I’m hoping we see more positive results over the next 5-10 years. As it stands though it’s looking increasingly likely that the only ones to truly benefit from this acquisition are the shareholders.

Happy to have everything in one place. Makes more sense than two apps.