GeeEssEff

@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.

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.