InvaderFromSpace

@GamingFan4Lyf Ryan McCaffery is the Xbox correspondent at IGN, so it isn't really just some random person. But, the Inxile twitter account is pretty random all the time anyway, so I wouldn't think much of this.

@gunnerwolf You can get away with using B List characters if you lean into their unique abilities. But they aren't, the shark guy and the boomerang guy run just use guns like everyone else.

For as mediocre as Avengers was, at least the heroes each played differently.

I guess the bigger question here is how well do these games sell on PS/Switch? I'm guessing they are barely selling enough there to make it worth it, and Xbox will obviously be less than that. This is a pretty fringe case. If Xbox consoles continue to sell worse and worse, this could be the beginning of larger issues, but I doubt it will get that bad this generation.

They need to put dates on three of the four games. And Indy (assuming that is the farthest out and doesn't get a date) needs to still be a 2024 release. The direct show last year was great because all the games were so close to release. I'm assuming Ara comes out in the next couple months, Hellblade is around May, and Avowed is in August/September. It's better to put a date on Avowed now and push it back by month later if it needs it. Delays like that happen all the time and no one really cares.

@Tharsman I replayed Asylum, City, and Origins this year, and I think the biggest hit against Origins is how pretty much everything in the game in clearly copied from Arkham City. I don't think it deserves the hate it got, but Arkham City was a 10/10 when it came out, and Origins was more like a 7.5/10. I also had quite a few bugs with Origins, while City worked perfectly.

This could be incredible. But I'm worried that we won't get the most important thing, release dates. Last year's show had 4 of the 5 games coming out within 6 months. And then Forza, which came out in October. All of these games better be coming this year, and I don't want to see a bunch of '2024' windows. We need dates for 3 of the 4 games here.

A couple years back I decided to replay all the games in the series and finally start the new RPG ones. It took me about a year and a half to get through 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Black Flag, Rouge, Unity, and Syndicate. I took a couple small breaks between games for other things, but mostly had no problem playing these one after another. I played Origins and had to take a 1 year break before I felt like I could even attempt Odyssey. Having just finished that, I can say it will probably be at least another year before I feel like I can play Valhalla. The RPGs are not as good as the older games.

Origins didn't have great combat, and the story ended up not being that interesting. Odyssey was better, but it was too long. And the gear system was awful. Every enemy drops a piece of gear that affects 3 competing damage systems differently, so you are constantly weighing them against each other. I also didn't like that there wasn't really much side quest content, it was mostly procedurally generated garbage tasks. Both games ended up being too long for their own good.

I'm kinda dreading playing Valhalla, but looking forward to Mirage after that.

The traction this is being given is crazy. Look at those tweets, 19, 2, 5, and 66 likes. This didn't take off on its own, it's being manufactured. Game websites are trying to make this a thing. It's like when a handful of people get mad about a movie being 'woke' and that gets blown up by a bunch of liberal people 'fighting back.'

As for AI art, it's technology. No one cared when technological advancements put tons of people out of work in manufacturing, so spare me the outrage now that it's "creatives" jobs that are at risk.

The idea of this being 2025 or even 2026 feels like the people who thought Insomniac was going to release Wolverine in 2024 after just putting Spiderman out. There is no way Playground is working on a Fable game that comes out in 2025 and turns around a Forza game the next year. At least 2 full years between the two game releases, possibly more.

I'm hitting the road this afternoon to visit family for the holidays, so very little time for gaming the next couple days. I'll have my laptop with me, so I'll probably try to get in a couple late night sessions on Batman: Arkham Origins.

I also started playing High on Life this week, and I gotta say the comedy in that is right up my alley. Looking forward to playing more of that after I get back.

Merry Christmas everybody

@BacklogBrad I worked at a company that had a ransomware attack a few years ago. The idea of paying was never considered. The bigger issue is that the hack locks all of the files that are taken. We lost about a month of work finding a stable backup and it took about another month to get all of the computers and systems back up and running. And this hack seems much more extensive, this could push them back even longer than that.

From a video game perspective, I've seen several things showing a roadmap that says Wolverine isn't coming out until 2026. That puts their reveal in Xbox-level early announcement territory.

I feel like people overhype the usefulness of this feature, it isn't the earth-shattering thing it's made out to be.

I do like it though, I agree that Xbox has put a lot of work into adding conveniences onto the console. And the rare time there is an issue with it, the solution is to just restart the game, which is what you would have to do without it anyway.

@rustyduck For the last several months, I've only been able to get the points for Bing searches in the afternoon. If I do it in the morning before I go to work, it doesn't register. No clue why.

I used the Xbox year review thing to see that I've earned about 100,000 points this year(covered my Gamepass from January). But so far in December I've only gotten 2,000 points. This change will remove about another 100 points a day for me, so I'll only be able to get about 2,000 points a month going forward. This program is essentially dead for me now.

I get it, most other reward programs only give you points as a small return on an actual purchase, so this was way too good. But, it's still a bummer to lose it

The only reason we know the Indiana Jones game is exclusive is because it was revealed in the FTC case. That wasn't announced by either Xbox or Disney. They are talking about it now because it's already out there. Xbox will confirm Blade to be exclusive later when it is closer to release.

@Lup I've never seen the second movie, but the first one does have a pretty standard(bland) story. It's popularity definitely came from the visuals being shown in 3D in theaters.

I'm currently playing through Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and I will very much agree that a similar style game that is in the 15-30 hour range to beat sounds much better than the 100+ hours this needed.

I finished the Assassin's Creed Odyssey main game this week, and am planning to start the DLCs this weekend. They seem to have taken after the main game in being overly long (apparently around 40 hours for both), so this is still going to take a while. I also started replaying Arkham Origins after buying it on Steam with the DLC, so I'm looking forward to spending some more time on that.

@Skedaddle Yeah, and it seems that multiple other Marvel games have been announced very early (Wolverine). So this is probably more of a Marvel thing than an Xbox decision.

The January Developer Direct was the best this year. It was an appropriate length, tightly focused, and 4 of the 5 games had release dates that they stuck to.

The summer showcase was good, and I enjoyed what was shown at the Game Awards too. But I prefer shows that focus on things that are closer to coming out. Hoping for a January/February direct with some new release information.

@GuyinPA75 I'll believe the Skull and Bones date the day after it releases and not a minute before.

Anyone else starting to think that Hellblade 2 is going to come out next fall? I'm starting to think that we get Towerborne and Ara in the first half of the year and Hellblade and Avowed in the fall. Which would be a bit of a disappointment...

Remember when Xbox said they learned their lesson about announcing games too early? This having just started development makes me think they haven't...feels like they didn't list what systems it will be on because it might not even come out this gen

I've got 26,000 points right now, and with all the reductions I can't see making it to 28k before this deal ends...
I haven't been getting points for achievements for the past several days, and now I'm not getting points for Bing searches. So at this point it might take me months to get 2k more points

Do people not realize that Gamepass on Playstation would bankrupt Sony? Think about it. Sony sells their console at a loss, and their first party games make (relatively) little money in the grand scheme of things. Sony makes their money on third party game sales and whatever their online service is called now (PS+?, PS Now?). Gamepass would eat into sales as their players pay Xbox subscription fees instead. And Gamepass Ultimate includes online (Xbox live), if CoD starts showing up there, PS is essentially left with only the unprofitable parts of their business.
If Xbox could put gamepass on other consoles, then they absolutely should bail on their own console. It makes incredible business sense. I wouldn't like it, as I prefer Xbox, but it's hard to argue with the logic behind it.

Probably not, I own the original 2 games on Steam and haven't gotten around to playing them yet, so I'm more interested in those. I also own the Divinity games and haven't played them yet either...Maybe in 2040 when I'm caught up I'll be able to get around to this.

@Grumblevolcano And after looking it up, it's also not being made by a first party studio. So now I'm even more confused about what their releases will be next year.

@OrfeasDourvas Towerborne also isn't an Xbox first party game. It's being made by Stoic. I'm very interested in it, but I can't believe that it would count as a big game.

I'm thinking more likely Ara is Q1, Hellblade is Q2, Avowed is Q3, and Q4 is...CoD? I'm not sure what else has seemed like it could be ready next year. Fable? Clockwork Revolution?

I think the most interesting thing is going to be exactly how GTA Online is effected. That has been around for 10 years and is still very popular. But GTA 6 is going to be (presumably) built using much more modern tech that can't just be added to Online.

Are they going to launch a completely new Online that uses GTA 6 tech/graphics? There is no way they want to operate 2 competing online games, with the resources they demand. Are they going to shut down the original and replace it? Is GTA 6 just going to be its own thing and they expect people to go back to the older Online after playing?

Are there any similar examples from other companies out there to compare to?

Man, everybody's playing such recent games...I just finished playing Costume Quest and started Costume Quest 2. After that, I need to get back to Assassin's Creed Odyssey(which will never end).

@Gonzo_Me Great to see someone else who liked Submerged. I've been thinking about replaying it and finally getting to Hidden Depths too.

What are we even talking about anymore? They put up a 1-time screen for each of their first party games. You'll see 4 or 5 of these a year. It takes less time to exit out of it then the Xbox start-up splash screen.

Looking at how far from this the hypotheticals that people are making up are really tells you how this isn't actually anything. It like saying people shouldn't be allowed to have cats because they will eventually get lions.

So what is the price of the new 1TB Series S? The source article says that price won't be affected. If the price of the newer version is near where the original price was at, then this kind of becomes much ado about nothing. It still seems dumb, since you would think they would want to sell off whatever stock is still around of the original.

@somnambulance I know that no one wants to hear this, but crunch was a HUGE part of Rockstar's output back in the day. Games being bigger and more complicated to make now are both factors in taking longer, as is the amount of resources going into GTA Online.
But both GTA5 and Skyrim were big, complicated games that were made in a fraction of the time that their sequels will be, and the big industry difference is that crunch culture has been largely phased out (at least hopefully). I just think that people tend to not realize how big of an impact it had on speeding up game development.

I tried buying a used 360 from Gamestop in maybe 2009 that had it right when I tried starting it up. Bought a new one in 2010 that never had an issue. Used it regularly until about 2018 when I finally upgraded.

@IronMan30 It's weird the narratives that get picked up sometimes. Everyone talks about how horribly received this game was on launch, but it had a 78% positive rating on Steam in its first month with 290,000 reviews. So yeah, it was the console version driving the hate.
The inverse happens too. Review sites raved about how great Jedi: Survivor was, and that has like a 60% approval rate on Steam. It was at like 50% at launch.

Is this stuff limited time content, or will it always be available in the game? I've never played this type of game, so I don't totally understand all these 'chapter' and 'season' terms

@Tyrant_T103 Politics required Ada to be voiced by a Chinese woman(or at least Asian, I guess). There was no chance they would have brought the old actress back. Twitter would have been furious (or more furious than usual)

I...am going to need someone to draw me a chart explaining how all the Like a Dragon/Yakuza games fit together 🤣 I'll have to set aside 1000 hours to get through the whole series on GP now

The typical top selling game on Steam is the Steam deck. The Switch sold way more than the PS4 or the XB1. If you want an older example, the PS2 was weaker than the original XBox and the GameCube. There are tons of examples of cheaper or weaker systems outselling more powerful ones. It's harder to find an example of people choosing the more powerful option.

I kept meaning to get around to Aragami 2, since I thought the first one was enjoyable enough. The only other game on here that I am interested in is Civ VI, but I own that on PC so I'm covered there.

@InterceptorAlpha
It'd be nice to see a 60fps option added because more choice is always nice, but it still takes time to test and make sure an extra setting mode works on console. I also don't think that the demand for 60fps is as big as it seems on things like twitter. The people you see posting about games online are really outliers in terms of the total number of gamers. I know a ton of people with a Switch that have played the new Zelda game, and none of them have any issues with performance. And that isn't because it's a Switch, they just don't care about higher fps and resolutions.

I played both A Short Hike and Limbo for the first time this month. They were both very solid games. The only other game on this list that I have played is Firewatch, which I played a couple years ago on PC(still chose it as my favorite). I'm still hoping to get to Celeste and Sea of Stars at some point in the future.

@Kaloudz It seems that any indie game that gets added to Game Pass gets a bunch of 1-star reviews now. I've noticed it on several games that have been added in the last couple months

Black Flag and Brotherhood are probably my 2 favorite AC games, but I haven't played Valhalla (or Odyssey) yet. The length seems pretty daunting to me, Origins was hard enough to get through.

The only way this makes any sense is if this is actually about getting the game ready for the new Nintendo system that is supposed to come out next year, since it is rumored to have specs that are about the same as XB1/PS4