@Llamageddon Metacritic is inherently nonsensical. For years I've been telling people that quantitative scores don't mean anything as a whole for a process that has no metric or standardisation. One person's 8/10 could be equivalent to another's 10/10, 3/5 or whatever else. What happens when trying to aggregate scores whose INTRINSIC values are different from each other? You get an average that is literal nonsense.

In order for an aggregate to actually mean something, my 8/10 must convey THE EXACT SAME NUANCE as your 8/10. That is just not the case anywhere.

This was much worse fifteen or more years ago — people seem to be converging into some sort of accidental collective now.

@TheSimulator greater tier

I'm just mad that I missed the deadline to spend my gift card balance, which I was gonna use on a re-sub to GP. Misread the date and missed by a few days

Ah well, I made the points back well before the recent deadline. Guess I could just convert another batch again....

You can't be unofficially up for a formal award, so the official designation is inefficient use of headline space.

There were no vibes that were solely contained to the "2000s," so demarcating trends into "neat" decades is ultimately futile.

@strzelec And I told you before that doesn't mean anything. Sea of Thieves is THEIR GAME. Battlenet is THEIR launcher. These two factors align.

@strzelec Did you ever consider that MS went ahead with a Play Anywhere deal for CPDR's pc launcher app? You're pigeonholing your inferences.

@strzelec Microsoft owns and publishes Sea of Thieves. They are at liberty to republish it on Battlenet, which they also now own.

It's the same game, as in, I don't think there's gonna be two separate store pages for the og and remastered versions — especially on PC.

And what exactly is getting improved that the AI & raytracing enhancements from 2020-2024 didn't do already? Lol

No it's just under three months, and well over two months. If something is far closer to three then you can't really say "just over two," as that implies it can be rounded down.

Seriously folks, if you take one thing away from STEM in your schooling days, it's rounding rules.

I had a brain fart and forgot what "devout" meant, thinking it was a typo for "devour." So, for a split second I wondered if this game actually had a "Devour Edition" — tbh I think that upsells it even better!

Btw "Cancel" button should be to the left of "Save," not the other way around....

@Romans12 much more

@FraserG you pretty much have to update the story or follow-up all the time now, due to the "must print now" nature of online journalism. Twenty years ago, you'd have to wait until the story was straight before putting it into the press.

@Weebleman the producer roll ends when the production ends. As the Halo leadership has been in trouble for some time — since before Infinite launched — they were probably lined up for the axe would swing for when the CEmake launched. Wouldn't make sense to kick them out mid-development.

Did any of the original reporters clarify whether these supposed layoffs were for TEMP jobs and subcontractor teams? People who weren't expected to stay on and whose positions have ballooned the Halo development teams at least one other time in the past?

@MrStark introspection is self-reflection; analyzing oneself, which has essentially nothing to do with anything here.

Ah, the news about og Xbox achievements make more sense now.

@betterthings how did you manage to bring over a previous post (ostensibly on another webpage) for quotation here?

@MrStark they shouldn't need Xbox to grow, yet. They need it to stabilize and achieve profitability, first. Corporate growth has just been the coarse-grained solution to dress up the books and make them look like they're in the green. I'd daresay that growing Xbox right now would be not too dissimilar from opening up another franchised restaurant when the current one is barely afloat.

Wait, some of these XBOX titles are playable on PC?

@themightyant That's a copout reasoning that doesn't provide much defense. Quite frankly, I would find your response offensive as an atheist AND a zealot.

Nothing has anything to do with intellectual depth. This is about respect for a concept, no matter how fictional it is, and proper veneration of mortal entities (i.e. refrain from doing that at all outside of established idolatry).

When y'all ***** around with words in the now, there are social consequences for their underlying concepts years hence. People do not respect each others' mortality these days, and they are quick to put meatheads up on pedestals and also to demean others to the point of dehumanization. That ain't deep at all. It's broad and took about 10 minutes of outro-spection to figure out. Get with the program.

@themightyant hey friend... I appreciate the wordplay as much as anyone, but the g-word shouldn't be used lightly. Ever, by zealot or atheist alike.

Premise: anniversaries and birthdays mark the COMPLETION of something's accumulated years up until that time. If you, the reader, disagree with this premise, then feel free to ignore what follows.

If Starfield released in the fall of 2023, thereby marking its two-year anniversary by autumn 2025, then it entered Year 3 back then. That is as much as eight or nearly nine months ago, even. Consequently, in November 2026 the game will enter Year 4.

Perhaps they meant to say "as we EXIT Year 3," but perhaps relative to them I understand and communicate English backwards (and vice versa).

@HonestHick socials

Nobody pointing out that when this article was published three days ago (meaning the source information is older), that accruing 255 hours after roughly two weeks is minimum 12 hours per day on average?

@Fiendish-Beaver people aren't fizzled out for games that are less than a few years old. I'd say no more than two.

Great... Another public FAN FORUM. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? LOL

I apologize for the all caps, I had caps lock on and was too lazy to change it mid-sentence, but I realize as I write this that this apology is actually more work. Lmao

Never played "FM8" and a bunch of other first/second-party titles from 2022-25, even when I was fully subscribed to GP Ultimate. But I got the Forza Horizon games in the bag!

Points are MORE or LESS/FEWER than each other

An ecosystem consists of one environment by default. Nothing to do with whether it's closed or not.

MS being a PC and console software proprietor means they haven't been an ecosystem in years, even before the buyouts.

I mean, I guess we could do mental gymnastics and sugarcoat the bad analogizing, saying: "we're not making a metaphor using this portmanteau from biology, which fully stands for 'ecological system,' but inventing a new one from economics with its own rules, the 'economic system.' "

I take offense to anything that suggests 2018 was a long time ago... Why am I so old now

Good, this gives everyone a fair shot to get their ideas out at the same time, rather than a large selection of outlets and tubers beating little folks and general user reviews to the punch.

Y'all got enough work and backlog to do anyway, that getting things ahead of a launch probably won't make a difference if you shift accordingly. It's not like interest dies down after 24 hours post launch anyway.

Games aren't content. That is what they convey and are made up of.

@tho_mi more chances

All I hear is hearsay.

@RegnumSolipsi while we're on the subject of projects, I would've liked to see what Hellblade's developer Ninja Theory was up to with Project Mara. Heard that got scrapped recently.

Ah, Scalebound, Perfect Dark, Project Mara... Rough decade of what-ifs and never-was.

@Darylb88 especially since they would want to stretch out their offerings to entice Game Pass subscribers to keep coming back or renewing subs. That's part of how their spending is converted into long-term revenue.

Nothin is fact about any of this, either way. Makes no difference to you (plural), I guess.

@FraserG Make that three for disc owners... Not sure why we're getting shafted, here. It's not like people just give each other disc copies en masse to circumvent getting their own copies, so that they can take advantage of a free upgrade.

Anyway, I don't own current-gen consoles so I guess I got no skin in the game, lol.

@Lup I tried to but my issue was that I was playing it via Cloud and only non-committing bc of obligations to Destiny 2 and FF14. Subs ruin free time lol

At least two of these games were offered on the service before. Take heed, fellow Xboxers.

Much more love

@ILuvGames Overwatch won in 2016 and then won Best Recurring Game in 2017 (or something named similarly). For the applicability of my statements about something"nearly a decade ago" (I don't round up 8 or 9 years to a whole ten, as even just one year is a long time), I purposely do not consider whether it is relevant, worthy, pertinent or even eligible for winning something now.

@ILuvGames Overwatch 1 won two years in a row. Exception to the rule, I guess.

I guess we live in Bizarro World

Terminull Brigade is just mindless eye candy — boring. Look elsewhere for fun.

@Questionable_Duck Can't know where you're going if you don't know where you are or where you came from!

@Kezelpaso we don't count early access as proper releases.

Remember when Blade's director, over at Arkane Lyons, lambasted Microsoft for dissolving the Arkane studio in the US? Think it was the Texas studio, probably Houston.

Can't imagine why. I tried the og ROG Ally, and it's quite fine, but I'm not paying an extra premium price for something that's roughly equivalent to the Steam Deck.

I might've considered the deluxe X models, but I also never buy hardware in its first year of existence (it'll always be inferior to iterated versions).

I could probably repurpose that thousand-plus Canadian bucks towards a few desktop PC repairs/upgrades too.