So thoughtful of Sony to cover huge portion of game's budget...

@Alucard1337 Yes. Because Ubisoft is company that tends not to restrict access to their games. They were basically one of the few publishers that heavily supported Stadia, their games supports "Stream Your Own Games" on Xbox. So there was little reason to believe they would suddenly start to be stingy.

Now SEGA, Square and From Soft? I can see them blocking this.

It's hilarious that Xbox from the start said that more games will be coming and yet, people were loosing their minds because "UBISOFT OPTED-OUT!"

I find it hilarious that under Xbox they wanted to make niche stuff like Keeper and Kiln, but now when they are independent and are tight in terms of money, they suddenly want to go big with Brutal Legend 2 lol.

Regardless. They are not getting 100 mil.

Also, article is wrong about Xbox "not wanting DF to make Brutal Legend 2." Double Fine said it themselves in documentary that they knew that Xbox would be happier if DF chose BL2 as their next game. But Double Fine didn't want to make Brutal Legend 2 and Xbox just gave them the freedom.

@NishimaruX I think Jez's pov is more about people already doomposting that Asha just took over and people are already leaving.

Because it's quite different is person is leaving because of dissatisfaction with higher-up and leaving because company B offered you truckload of money because of AI bubble. That was his point. At least I think...

@CallMeDuraSouka I think State of Decay 3 has highest chance of being commercial success outside of traditional Gears-Halo-Forza-Fable.
Especially on PC. Game is currently sitting higher in "Wishlist" ranking than Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War E-Day and Clockwork Revolution.
So if Xbox will part ways with Undead Labs, it's sign to me that they literally have no clue what they are doing.

@BacklogBrad Not surprising. Like, Asha was obviously chosen instead of Sarah, because previous management ***** things up. Even people who worked with her said that she was always willing to make tough decisions that other people would struggle with.

So she came and during first months evaluated what needs to be done. And now she will do that. Changes to exclusivity, branding etc. weren't about blinding people so they would not see layoffs. They were easiest things that can be done to improve relationships with customers.

But it's her vision. We can ask ourself after 1-2 years if her decisions were correct. Because now we know that way Phil/Sarah were heading was absolutely not correct.

@TrollOfWar It's because of Microsoft.
Microsoft mandated 30% margins from Phil and Sarah and one of the ways they tried to achieve that was to lower the production of Series X/S consoles, since they are usually sold at loss, so they are dragging your margins down.

Which by no way means that Phil and Sarah didn't do a ***** job in last few years. Because things got over their heads pretty quickly after ABK.

I would fear for my future if I was at Double Fine (especially after both Kiln and Keeper bombed hard) and Compulsion (South of Midnight wasn't that successful). Also, small studios like that doesn't make sense for Xbox anymore, because it's pretty clear that Asha wants to focus on big hits, not "Game Pass fodder"

If I was in Asha's shoes, one of the first thing I would ask would be "Why the ***** we have such a popular IP as Fallout with great TV show and we are doing ***** all with it?"

It's hilarious. When Xbox was announcing projects way to early, people bitched. Now when they are showing games for next several months, they bitch again.

From first-party they only announced games for 2026 and first half of 2027 (Spyro is confirmed for spring and Hellblade (Senua) is usually may-ish kind of game).
Marvel's Blade is at best late 2027 game per financial statement of Arkane.

If game won't be shown during TGA, Developer Direct or Game Showcase 2027, then it's maybe time to start asking "what's happening"

"We don't want it AT ALL. The threat this poses to physical games as a whole is not worth the "convenience."

Speak for yourself lol. I would welcome system like this with open arms to get rid of those few physical games that I still have.

I think real reason for Sony to abandon their PC ports isn't Helix but fact that they haven't been very successful lately.
Outside of Helldivers 2 (which is live service game and Sony will still bring those to PC), every big AAA port has been lowkey disappointing in terms of commercial performance. Novelty just ran off.

While God of War reached 73k CCU, Ragnarok reached just 35k
While Spider-Man reached 66k CCU, Spider-Man 2 hit just 28k and Miles Morales only 13k
Horizon Zero Dawn hit 56k CCU, sequel hit 40k

Meanwhile Helldivers 2 is best selling PS Studios game thanks to PC and it's live service game with 458k CCU.

It's crazy considering they increased price for Ultimate (now Premium) edition of game to 120€ which is pretty steep.

Better than DOOM 2016, worse than Eternal.
That's pretty much sums it up

@themightyant Well, they make reference chips that other vendors would use and only change things like SSD capacity/RAM amount (with strict guidelines about minimum RAM amount), cooling and potentially stupid stuff like RGB.

Basically in my mind this works only if there is reference APU chip that is supplied to vendors. If it will be only one (Magnus APU aka Series X successor) or more (Series S successor), that's different conversation.

This was expected.
Microsoft will provide Magnus APU chips as a power baseline and will also bring Xbox OS as a software layer and will let manufacturers make their own devices.

I can see only upside in this approach, because HW companies like ASUS or MSI would have incentives around competing price points and even discounts to fight for consumers.

Can we finally get Xbox rewards in more countries?

I don't personally care. But judging by metrics it's pretty clear that outside of FH5 (and maybe Sea of Thieves), going multiplatform did more harm than good. It damaged brand and it brought little in return.

So scaling back would be probably best way forward. Yank COD from Game Pass to keep service sustainable and go hard with ecosystem talk. Because Xbox nowadays isn't just console. It's also great streaming service.

It make sense.

If you named new CEO, you did that with idea that she has a plan for division to execute. Requesting huge margins at the beginning would be a death sentence. She needs to develop a plant and execute it. After that you can go and put more pressure on profitability.

That's what broke Spencer/Bond neck. They promised Microsoft execs plan (If we got Bethesda/ABK we will get this and that), but they couldn't deliver. But since Spencer was lifelong Microsoft employee he was allowed to leave with dignity. Bond not so much.

@Cakefish I'm not sure PS5 is up YoY in terms of console sales...Wasn't PS5 in november 2025 40% down YoY? (if I remember Circana numbers correctly) And also down YoY in december?

For Xbox it's pretty clear. They didn't offer any deals during Black Friday/Christmas to protect their margins, so they are way down. Not remotely surprising.

Not surprising since BLOPS 7 kinda blew in their face.
Content & Services revenue fell 300 million YoY, which is kinda what happens when you go from record setting Call of Duty game (BO6) to sequel that barely scraped into TOP 5 (BO7).

But I wouldn't make big thing out of this. This year's slate is way stronger from commercial standpoint. So while next quarter won't be anything to write poems about (because Xbox has no new games coming), then thing should get better.

I mean, I would take Forza Horizon 6 + Halo CE Remake + COD MW4 + Fable + Gears of War E-Day vs. DOOM TDA, South of Midnight, Avowed, BLOPS 7 and The Outer Worlds 2 any day of week. From terms of revenue potential.

@abe_hikura Obviously. Digital Upgrade is going up with price because Premium Edition cost more. Hence expansions will be probably more expensive

I guess this is Xbox's way to increase price of games without increasing price of games.

Let base version stay at usual price, but jack up price of Premium versions of games.

I bought vouchers immediately after price hike, so I'm good until 2028.
It's a great service for me and in current time (and sheer amount of games I'm playing from service) I would even be able to justify paying 26,99€ per month for it. Although I would be glad if they made additional tier without Fortnite Crew (and maybe without COD) but with day one games for like 21,99€ or something like that.

I remember outrage when Microsoft announced FH5 for PS5. How dare they charge full price for 4 years old game...

...seems like it was right choice lol.

@Fiendish-Beaver I think that trying to release two AAA game from one studio in short span of time could lead to catastrophe. Like, I know that PG have separate teams for both project, but they are still one studio.

It's like Obsidian with Avowed and TOW2. I would argue that pressure is even higher because to me FH6/Fable combo is more high profile than Avowed/TOW2 (I'm not counting Grounded 2, because that was Eidos Montreal game and Early Access game). You had to give them at least half a year of flexibility to respond to potential hiccups or unforeseen stuff.

I'm not particularly worried about Fable. It required huge amount of time because PG had to build entire team for a game, convert "racing engine" (Forza Tech) to support RPG and then pandemic also happened. If project was in bad shaped, they would have canned it with Everwild and PD.

To me fact that they even found time to make PS5 port alongside Xbox and PC suggest that game is in final stretch of development. To me, only reason for delay would be to space out games like Microsoft did in late 2024 with Avowed.

@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think it's necessary to show exact date for Fable during D_D. Especially when you have summer showcase where you can pinpoint that date. I expect something like "fall 2026" or something like that.

To me fact that they are showing Fable during D_D means that they are pretty confident that they are hitting this year. Otherwise I would expect E-Day instead of Fable during presentation.

@ILuvGames You still need to put Call of Duty somewhere. Also there is GTA VI you need to avoid in november (if game won't be delayed into 2027 obviously).
So I would not be surprised if Gears, for example, was late august game, while Fable would be in september. That could give you space for COD in October and then Halo remake in november.

DD with Forza, Fable and Gears E-Day would be awesome

Putting TOW 2 ahead of Kingdom Come is certainly a choice...

It's good-to-great. I get that many people with shake their hands because of direction of campaign, but I found it genuinely fun, especially endgame.
Of course there are few gripes like story that isn't coherent and some design constraints (teammates talking to you even if they are not there, because two players disconnected or lack of in-mission saves).

MP is way better than BO6 at launch with better maps and few interesting ideas (Overclocks on scorestreaks and equipment).

I played only one Zombies round so I can't give my opinion on that just yet.

So while it isn't the best COD, it's miles away from MW3 for example.

I would be more glad if they would finally expand number of countries where Rewards are available.
I truly don't understand why Microsoft Rewards ARE available, but Xbox Rewards are not...

Campaign looks plain bad. I don't know why they are even bothering with it tbh. I would rather them pour resources to make more MP maps than this...

@themightyant Also, what he can blame Microsoft for? They literally gave him everything. Exciting location where huge amount of big studios are to poach devs from...
...when things went south, they gave them Certain Affinity as co-dev...
...when that went south they gave them Crystal Dynamics as co-dev...
Despite that nothing. After 8 years of funding.

So my Rog ally will probably get this sooner. Nice.

@Questionable_Duck Yeah. I'm sure they do that to appease Arrowhead. Especially since they own the IP and Arrowhead already told that they are making their next game without Sony

/s

And some people still think that Helldivers 2 is an exception and not standard moving forward lol...

Only "downside" is when you are achievement hunter. Because when you have Sony's approach, you can technically earn trophies for one game twice (one for PS5 and second for PS4 version) while on Xbox, Series X/S and One SKU are treated as one game. So only one achievement list.

Otherwise it's awesome.

That's not happening. Microsoft is not giving up ads on dashboard

@Kaloudz Vertical slice is like a preview of a final game. So for example you will take one planned level and make it complete - as if you was planning to ship it as a full game. Everything from visuals to gameplay systems and VO. It's like a proof of concept for your game and it then serve as a blueprint for rest of a production.

@Kaloudz Basically full production means that you know the game you are building (thanks to vertical slice) and you have stuff like script and all required info (number of levels etc) and you are actually building all that stuff.

It's also most intensive part of dev proces in terms of size of team.

@Fiendish-Beaver No, it doesn't mean anything like that

It just mean that Everwild was in dev hell. Which is obvious since it was in some form of development for decade. So Microsoft axed it...

Lol. EA that did 4 layoffs in last 7 months has an audacity to lecture...

@Kaloudz They went in full production in late 2024. Exact month is unknown.

From public information from Remedy and Naughty Dog, full AAA game production tend to last 2-3 years. Same as that cancelled Blackbird MMO from ZOS that was ready to enter full production with goal of shipping a game in 2028. Witcher 4 also entered full production late last year with shipping goal for 2027.

Of course that is when production is relatively smooth.

So, Grubb was right on money when he said that Blade is targeting 2027 as a release year...

Not surprising and not necessary to have this game ready for 2026. Especially since Xbox already have plenty of games for 2026. If that Fable/Forza Horizon 6/Gears of War E-Day/Halo CE Remaster tease will come to fruition. Plus obligatory COD (MW4)

Xbox had over 20k employees last year. So I truly don't know where Brussard took that 10k number from.

I think Microsoft will axe huge chunks in COD mobile development since Warzone Mobile flopped hard.

From what I read, 2018 Xbox studios (Undead, Obsidian, inXile, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Playground and I guess also Double Fine) have a wording in their buyout contracts that should prevent them from shutting down. Instead it would be Toys for Bob type of situation - going independent. Although PG obviously isn't under threat. And I guess Undead, Obsidian and inXile are also safe.

Unfortunately, this is all because of ABK merger that left Xbox division in 70 billion deep hole and more importantly left them at forefront of financial oversight of Microsoft, since Xbox is literally third biggest moneymaker for Microsoft.

Not surprising considering Ubisoft will have weak 2025 in terms of releases.
They can spread stuff like PoP Remake into other shows during this week.

lol. 5 people on X is not "huge"

People need to realise that this is "niche within the niche" situation. Number of people who buy physical version of games is already dropping. People who will refuse to buy a physical game when full game is small percentage of already small percentage of people who are buying physical

@themightyant With Nintendo introducing "Game key" cartridges, it's just pretty obvious which way wind is blowing.

@themightyant I didn't say he/she was id dev. i just said "game dev." If I remember correctly he/she was DICE dev in the past.

So it was more of a general statement, no directly tied do DOOM: TDA.

@themightyant Well, I'm not gonna argue. I just posted this straight from game dev's mouth to shed some light.

Because when you look at this, you can counter-argue "just delay the game 6 weeks"

At the end of the day, this issue covers "niche within niche." If people are so angry about it, then they just won't buy a game. But it's pretty clear that they are not that many, because publishers would not be doing that.

COD games are best sellers almost every year despite them pulling this stuff.