Grumblevolcano

@themightyant 2020 prior to Series X|S launch was packed:

• February 2020 - Wasteland Remastered
• March 2020 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Bleeding Edge
• May 2020 - Minecraft Dungeons
• June 2020 - The Bard's Tale: Remastered and Resnarkled
• July 2020 - Grounded (early access)
• August 2020 - Battletoads, Tell Me Why, Wasteland 3

There were also big DLC and content updates (e.g. Outer Worlds DLC and ODST Firefight for MCC in September 2020) in that pre-launch window. Also there was a lot of PC stuff like Gears Tactics in April , Flight Sim in August and most of MCC throughout the year (Reach was December 2019, the rest was 2020).

Honestly it seems like Microsoft's approach is:
1. Big game drought to convince regulators it's fine to acquire a big publisher
2. When acquisition seems likely to pass according to Microsoft, schedule the release of a load of content from existing studios to make room for the big publisher (e.g. January - June 2023)
3. Return to step 1 while putting the big publisher's legacy content into Game Pass when the acquisition goes through

Microsoft usually announce their games extremely far in advance so I'd guess Perfect Dark, Fable, State of Decay 3, Avowed and Everwild are all 2025 games. Hellblade II had actual gameplay last year so perhaps 2nd half of 2023 for that.

@Tharsman Wasteland 3 and Minecraft Dungeons were over 2 years ago (August 2020 and May 2020 respectively). The only ones missing from the list that did release since Series X|S launch are the Bethesda ones (Deathloop PS5 and Series X|S, Ghostwire Tokyo PS5, Quake Remastered).

I'd have to go for Gears Tactics, it was somewhat close between that and FH5 but the latter's focus on Festival Playlist (i.e. the live service element) brings it down.

I miss the times of FH3 where instead of the Festival Playlist existing, the base experience was a lot more packed and permanent.

@gamer5634 I never use Quick Resume, I don't like it.

@FatalBubbles I played 2 matches yesterday and desync seemed much worse than normal. I then proceeded to collect the rest of the skulls in campaign with mission replay and the game crashed requiring a restart when going for the penultimate one.

@Tharsman Intergrade was PS5 in June 2021, Epic Game Store in December 2021 and Steam in June 2022 so I'd guess FF16 and FF7 Rebirth will be the same gap between platform releases.

The first Sonic Adventure because it had more variety than the others like it's the only one with a fishing story mode.

I think it'll be a good game but performance issues will bring it down, especially on the weaker systems. So I went with 7/10 for my prediction.

Expansion 2 in early 2023 makes me think Motorsport will be June 2023 or later. Back when Motorsport and Horizon were alternate years, Horizon DLC 2 released 5-7 months before Motorsport.

• FH1 1000 Club was April 2013 with FM5 in November 2013 (7 months)
• FH2 Fast and Furious was March 2015 with FM6 in September 2015 (6 months)
• FH3 Hot Wheels was May 2017 with FM7 in October 2017 (5 months)

There's a November MCC update so perhaps there's some Halo 4 stuff in that update? Would be really cool if they added in Spartan Ops matchmaking like they had in the 360 version of Halo 4.

@Trmn8r It's not currently on Xbox (was only PC/Switch) so this is a situation of a game coming to Game Pass same day as the game comes to Xbox in general.

Forza Horizon 5 Expansion 2, Goldeneye and Age of Empires (2 and 4) are the things I'm most excited about regarding Xbox's future 1st party lineup.

@BBB I think they're keeping quiet because of the Activision acquisition, probably is also why there's lots of CoD ad spam on the Xbox dashboard. Much like a Playstation Showcase with lots of exclusivity may strengthen Microsoft's arguments in favour of the acquisition, showcasing a strong upcoming 1st party Xbox lineup may strengthen Sony's arguments against the acquisition. So you end up with a situation where both companies are being extremely cautious with what they announce.

Hopefully this isn't a repeat of January 2021 where they tried to price hike Gold in an attempt to force people to Game Pass.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/01/22/update-on-xbox-live-gold-pricing/

This is an exciting announcement. Hopefully 1, 3 and Mythology follow after for console meanwhile PC gets more of those essential 1st party Xbox exclusives like the rest of the 360 Gears games, Rare Replay and Halo 5.

Remakes would just end up in PS exclusivity nonsense like the FFVII Remake trilogy and the Silent Hill 2 Remake given the Core Design Tomb Raider games are very much associated with Playstation.

2 multiplatform collections (PC, Xbox, PS, Switch) would be a lot better. 1 being the Core Design Tomb Raider games and the other being the 7th gen Tomb Raider games. Jim Ryan pretty much said years ago that he doesn't care about old games, it's the remakes of old games he cares about.

I could see Series S going the cloud route, the Xbox streaming device even looks like a tiny Series S.

We're probably going to see a lot more of this where current gen only games are 30fps on PS5/Series X|S and 60+fps is only for the PC version.

@MattT3142 My prediction is similar:

• February - Redfall
• March - Ghostwire Tokyo
• April - Minecraft Legends
• May - Forza Motorsport
• June - Starfield
• July - Goldeneye
• August - Hellblade II

@CunningPig @S1ayeR74 The CMA are using official Nintendo comments, Nintendo's been saying for a long time that they're not competing with Sony or Microsoft.

@SplooshDmg Live service is the biggest thing to blame for the problems with Babylon's Fall and you can see the same damage with a lot of other live service games, even flagship franchise games like Halo Infinite.

With even Sony extremely eager for live service to be their focus, it feels like live service will eventually cause a gaming crash similar to the one in 1983.

Do note that 4 of these songs are unlocked via winning the weekly limited time Seasonal Championships.

• Week 1: Language - Porter Robinson
• Week 2: Nocturne - Keeno
• Week 3: Ingrid is a Hybrid - Dusky
• Week 4: A Moment Apart - ODESZA

I don't like the concept of limited time song unlocks and the overall setlist is too heavy on Horizon Bass Arena but it's nice having songs like Bored to Death back.

I hope Goldeneye drops next week as part of the Bond 60th anniversary celebrations. NSO Expansion Pack didn't get a N64 game in September which is a promising sign for Goldeneye.

If 2TB was at this price back at launch I would've considered getting it but 2 years later it feels like the Xbox lineup isn't interesting enough to justify any expansion card.

Games With Gold started in July 2013 after Don Mattrick nosedived the Xbox brand into oblivion with the XB1 reveal and E3 2013 making things worse with the infamous "buy a 360" answer to those who don't have internet access 24/7.

Given the state of Games With Gold now, I wouldn't be surprised if June 2023 is the last batch of games.

Will replay the missions I didn't get the skulls in but that's about it in terms of achievements I'll get associated with mission replay.

The stream showing off campaign co-op showed that mission replay is part of how campaign co-op works so if co-op is on time then so is mission replay. Both could be delayed, just not mission replay by itself.

Reach for sure. Pretty much perfected gameplay mechanics, the newer modes (Invasion debuting in Reach and Firefight which had recently debuted in ODST) were absolutely fantastic and the campaign is the best in the franchise (ODST is a close 2nd).

I would say Halo 5's multiplayer is slightly better in terms of gameplay as I really liked the addition of Warzone, spartan abilities and what promethean weapons add to the sandbox but the campaign is bad and microtransactions are microtransactions (though Halo 5's microtransactions are nowhere near as bad as Infinite''s microtransactions) so overall Reach is a much better game.

I think ODST would've been the strategy that would've worked best for Infinite. Instead of FTP multiplayer, the multiplayer being the continued support for MCC and Halo 5 (the ODST physical copy came with Halo 3 multiplayer) meanwhile Infinite's focus being on campaign and PvE.

It's nice that the update fixed the bug of delisted games not appearing in the library like Forza Motorsport 5.

Given what we already know about 2023 for XGS and that Starfield will probably be delayed to avoid clashing with TotK, I only think 1 or 2 of these will release in 2023. Probably Hellblade given it got actual gameplay last year.

I think looking at the NSO Expansion Pack timing, we can deduce that this releases in 2022. NSO Expansion Pack gets 1 N64 game per month, September's game hasn't been announced yet but we know the following games are coming later in 2022:

• Pilotwings 64
• Mario Party
• Mario Party 2

4 months, 3 games so from that it's pretty clear than Goldeneye is also a 2022 release.

I wouldn't be surprised if Deathloop doesn't appear this year given if the game isn't mentioned at all, the PS+ Extra/Premium presence next week would give the impression Sony had timed exclusivity for subscription presence on top of the 1 year normal timed exclusivity.

Both Halo Waypoint and the games' servers are down. I tried to play some of the Yappening event but server error messages kept appearing.

I think the surprise Game Pass reveals would be more Japan focused rather than Deathloop appearing. So stuff like MH Rise for PC Game Pass, Bravely Default II, Shin Megami Tensei V, etc.

I'd prefer a MCC style collection, the multiplayer experience of the 360 games are either only finding bots or you come across a load of cheaters that warp all over the place with infinite ammo and much faster than usual fire rate. A MCC style collection would allow PC players to experience the campaigns and allow Xbox players to relive the multiplayer.

Judging by other things like tank gun and flyable Pelican, this'll probably be patched out in the next update.

I really liked how there was only a small gap between announcement and release for Forza Horizon games (it was always announce at E3, release in Fall/Holiday the same year). While Fable has been announced for over 2 years at this point, it would be cool if the re-reveal to launch cycle was close to the FH cycle.

@EvilSilentFrame Not exactly lie but they did use smoke and mirrors on the whole "legacy" thing. The way it was worded strongly suggested that games like Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 would be coming to PS because the franchises have a legacy there but that's not the case.

That's what Phil Spencer is doing regarding these acquisition statements, where the most common interpretation of the statements are something that benefits all platforms but you look a lot deeper and the actual meaning is something which only benefits Xbox. For example, what he means regarding still releasing CoD on Playstation is likely that the FTP multiplayer experience releases on Playstation but the single player campaigns are only on platforms which have Game Pass.

It's good that a regulatory body is finally calling Microsoft out on these smoke and mirror attempts.

It further seems like Microsoft sacrificed Halo to acquire CoD, what a huge shame. As for split-screen cancelled, it looks like another situation where ditching the XB1 would've gone a long way to resolving problems.

I enjoyed the Yappening events of Halo Wars 2 and MCC so I'm sure the Infinite event will be more crazy modes like on those 2.

I do wonder to what extent the late August content (e.g. mission replay, online co-op) has been delayed though as today is the last day of August.

I think it'll just be 2 XB1 games similar to how ditching PS3/Vita games on PS+ back in 2019 didn't improve the PS4 output.

A strong sendoff for pre-XB1 games being part of Games With Gold.

I'd honestly go for Forza Horizon 5 Expansion 2 to be honest, that is technically TBA meanwhile all the games listed here at the moment I'm not interested in.

The presence of Minecraft Legends but absence of Forza Motorsport, Redfall and Starfield makes me think that if there aren't delays out of the 12 month window that the timing is something like:

• March - Minecraft Legends
• April - Redfall
• May - Forza Motorsport
• June - Starfield

@Dezzy70 It was meant to be late August but that seems unlikely given how a specific release date hasn't been set yet and it's late August now.

@Richnj I agree it didn't need to compete with CoD, I was looking more that from 2015 onwards CoD was the shooter franchise for Playstation but if Killzone/Resistance/SOCOM stayed CoD would've been a shooter franchise for Playstation (still the biggest but just an option).

It's like how there'd still be plenty of people who would buy Nintendo hardware for JRPGs like Xenoblade and Fire Emblem even if the Pokemon franchise ended with Scarlet/Violet.

@Richnj CoD is easily to blame for the end of Killzone, Resistance and SOCOM. Sony got the CoD marketing and timed exclusivity deal in 2015 then following that they released 0 FPS/TPS games.

Sony's right when they say CoD is in a league of its own but they are to blame for that. What Sony did was the equivalent of if Microsoft killed off franchises like Halo and Gears in 2009.

Some of these games came to OG Xbox/Xbox 360 but weren't added to backwards compatibility. How is this fair?

I've only bought FF Origin and Sonic Origins this year so far on Xbox so I'll go for FF Origin. If DLC expansions counts then FH5 Hot Wheels for sure.

Across all platforms, top 3 so far would probably be:
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
2. Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes
3. Portal Companion Collection

Switch this year is insanely good.

I don't think it'll be shadow drop, September has Grounded and Microsoft seems to want to aim for that 1 1st party release a month release setup. I'm leaning towards early December.

July - As Dusk Falls + Hot Wheels DLC
August - ?
September - Grounded
October - ?
November - Pentiment + Halo Infinite Season 3
December - ?

It can't be August because of the exclusivity deal and October would be rather busy for Xbox if the acquisition passes by then so they'd probably save Deathloop for December along with FH5 expansion 2.