Jenkinss

Hopefully they absorb some T10 employees before the studio is closed.

Morrowind was by far my favorite as it was a real RPG, had the best setting, and made the player play the game instead of walking to map markers. Skyrim was my (distant) 2nd fav with the best storylines. Oblivion used to be a distant 3rd caught in a middle ground, like a worse Skyrim, plus its awful enemy scaling. The remaster was terrific and gave me a new appreciation for it. I still like Skyrim more, but it closed the gap some.

I really need to play this. I played through Tides of Numenera only getting into combat I think 3 times total, and loved it. This is probably up my alley.

@themightyant just look at market share from Gen 6 to Gen 7. Ps3 is one of the biggest failures in the history of game consoles. To compare raw sales numbers without that context is asinine.

I recently learned Mattrick was at EA in the 90s and his ***** corporate meddling was a big reason Ultima VIII sucked so much. What a f***ing disaster this guy has been for the video game industry. Phil Harrison has nothing on Don Mattrick.

Live service games age doing just fine, like Marvel Rivals and Helldivers. The ones crashing and burning are the ones designed for modern audiences, like Concord and Highguard. Stop chasing the ESG funding and you'll do fine. Single player games are having the same exact problem.

This is a must play for me. I'll pick it up down the road for 2 reasons - too much to play right now, and I have a feeling that the performance on Xbox is going to be shakey at launch and will benefit from some patches.

Starfield was simultaneously over hated by fans and over rated by critics.

It was just ok. It had the worst crushed blacks I've ever seen in a video game, incredible fail for a space game, but that's not why it wasn't a great game.

Whatever they come up with, we can all be sure Aaron Greenberg and the Xbox marketing team will knock it out of the park once again. Those guys just don't miss.

@GeminiX53 Elon would care about protecting Microsoft's video game profits as much as Google cared about protecting Garmin's GPS profits. "The corporations" are not a single entity - in fact, the exact opposite.

MS is sunsetting Xbox, they're making an emulator or 2nd bootable OS that runs on PCs to try to retain the few of us still here. They'll make 1 iteration of a PC, along side OEMs who also have the emulator/OS or whatever that runs legacy Xbox games. That will be the soft launch into the new future where Xbox is just a launcher on PCs and MS no longer makes any hardware. There will be no Xbox games going forward, just PC games. The rebranded Microsoft Games Studios will continue to nonsensically use the Xbox name and a few people will continue to pretend that means Xbox still exists.

The irony here is that being able to play your old Xbox games has been catastrophically devalued by game pass. Xbox gamers don't buy games in real numbers. Leaving your Xbox library behind is so easy when you've just been renting games for the last 8 years. Xbox's biggest enemy has been Microsoft for quite some time.

Crimson desert looks actually insane. Like almost palworld level is this a real game. Need to try it at some point

Replaced looks cool but doubt I'll find the time for it.

I should give it another go. I played it at release and it was pretty rough. A good while later I watched my wife play through and that usually says my desire to play a game like this myself. But I kinda want to, and the dlc looks great.

Anyone who didn't play it at release missed out on literally every single room in the game having at least one dildo. It was something else.

I must not be going to wherever this is a problem. I'm not sure if I've ever seen outbreak. I think usually just check the store for my wishlist deals.

My wife is playing Avowed so I shelved FF7R until she's done, I didn't like two story games being played at the same time. I dusted off one of my favorite games that I've never beaten - Darkest Dungeon 2. It's a real anxiety factory, which is both incredible and exhausting. RIP Wayne June.

Best dashboard ever, but it would lose a lot of its charm without the focus on avatars anymore.

I'll grab this down the road on sale. ACG said to wait on it, and it's hard convincing 3 friends to buy a game at full price.

Xbox under Mattrick and Spencer had no idea who the core Xbox gamer was, and neither tried to appeal to him. They both were corporate stooges chasing growth, sacrificing their core audience for it (and not getting it). Every single ad campaign in these eras was a disaster. This was no exception. This didn't damage the brand any more than the others. What killed the brand was putting their games on playstation. This ad campaign just happened to be at the same time.

I liked Mexico more than the UK, those are the only 2 I've played.

The best part of the UK was the roundabouts that id constantly blast at 200mph and I'd land in a different time zone.

Also, much to my dismay, Squeenix will put absolutely anything on Xbox except the remaster of Xbox 360 exclusive The Last Remnant.

Very good but not great game.
Totally agree with @TrollOfWar that last third or whatever it was was painful. But the battle system was cool and the music was great. The story was also good but not great, maybe a little better than the Tales series IMO. I never played the sequels.

F*** my life every time I see Outbound on this website I think it's news about Outward 2 coming to Xbox.

@carlos82 that has been the assumption for quite a while now. No one would develop for a hypothetical next Gen Xbox console likely projected to sell under 10 million units. By just making it run PC games, they avoid that death sentence. A few people were (still are?) in denial.

@AthleticGravy I'm not even sure if I missed it or if the early Alzheimer's is getting me.

Wow sin, haven't thought about that one in a minute. How about rise of the triad next?

My wife and I really liked Dome Keeper. I wish the multiplayer was out when we played it. Maybe I'll return to it.

Might try the 40fps mode. It's great in Valheim and Monster Hunter Wilds. Need more devs to support 120 hz displays.

Construction Sim might be a fun night of goofing off with some buddies.

Tldr I will never believe a word out of you or Amy Hood.

It's a shame for me personally that Vampire Crawlers is a card game. I love dungeon crawlers and blobbers, very underserved genres, but I really do not enjoy card games at all.

@Fiendish-Beaver I see your point but I also kind of like reading them, like a time capsule. Last time I even quoted myself from the time before 😂

@UnlimitedSevens also, plans do actually change. One example of a lie is "we bought Bethesda to bring high quality exclusives to Xbox.". But I actually do believe he was telling the truth at that time, and things changed after Starfield "bombed." There's also all the half truths, like pretty much everything said in the "just 4 games" special podcast. A lot of us saw right through it, but certainly not everyone.

I'm not convinced Phil knew when he'd be retiring. I think he's been in the passenger seat since Starfield. But I'm not saying he didn't lie, a lot.

@fizban3332 I've still got my Cudcept Saga disc, that was a pretty neat game. I understand it's a series but never played any of the others.

Not a big fan of Simpsons Hit and Run but seeing the spiritual sequels to the X-Men and Turtles arcade beat em ups recently I sure would love to see a new Simpsons one. That game ruled.

Love playing Golf with Friends, this looks like a nice change of pace for a night where we would play it

GPU prepaid through the summer, then I have another year Phil Spencer sent me for Christmas. I have no clue if I'll keep up my sub after that, entirely dependant on Helix.

I did see someone speculate a GPU sub would be required to access other PC storefronts on Helix. That would make a lot of sense and answers a ton of questions people have about its financial viability.

Without a total 180 on their direction since 2023, it will be niche regardless of price.

@Tasuki the steam machine is less powerful than the 6 year old Series X. Easy money says you're gonna pay a LOT less for a steam machine than helix.

I would gladly bet that the outcome is much more favorable to consumers than this. You haven't been paying attention to what's going on.

The rest is you parroting EULA nonsense which has already been addressed.

@BAMozzy Why are you arguing for the industry? It's so f**king bizarre. I understand what a EULA is. Do you understand that an EULA is not the law? Do you understand that EULA's aren't only not the law, that they can break the law? We are clawing back rights as consumers.

Everything you're saying I completely understand and I've heard before - they're sleazy industry talking points. Why spout them at me? What's the goal? The only country I know of that actually has what you're saying somewhat codified into law is the US, which has some of the worst consumer protections in the world. If you're actually curious, I can look up the law tomorrow. Thankfully no serious effort is being made to change anything in the US because it would be a losing battle. The EU, however, does protect its citizens from the scumbag practices that you seem to be defending in earnest? At first I thought you were playing devil's advocate but inexplicably that doesn't seem to be the case.

How do you know how much it would cost to build in some way to keep the game 'alive' in some meaningful capacity that entitled gamers would consider acceptable and why you think Devs/Publishers should even pay anything? But as I said, its their game, their code, their assets, their trademarks/IP's and Copywrited content and you 'paid' for a Licence to play it, not paid for the rights to it, not paid for them to hand it over to the 'Public' or those that maybe paid for a Licence key.

Existing MMORPGs answer all this. It would be infinitely easier for devs to plan for this than for for people to reverse engineer these games, and it happens all the time. Infinitely easier. And you know what man? What you've said several times (devs will stop making online games) will never happen over such a trivial change. But in some make believe world where that actually happened? So be it, stop making those games, and make one that complies with the law instead. Nothing of value will be lost.

I got a Series S 3 years ago for $150 new at a retail store.

Switch 2 is a good handheld for those that need that but it's a dogwater home console.

For all the people who kept saying Sony will be able to "block" their games from being on the next Xbox while still putting them on Steam, here you go. I told you you were wrong, and you were wrong.

I do think it's funny Sony will forgo the entire PC market simply because they refuse to take their boot off Xbox's throat. He's already dead, Sony!

Anyway, this is going to be less and less important as single player exclusives are less of a priority for Playstation. They don't need a costly differentiator when they don't have a real direct competitor.

Who needs to understand "economics and business" when you don't even understand what is being asked for? We know they wouldn't have to "spend a LOT of money," that's already been covered with examples. These handoffs would be dirt cheap to implement. Pennies.

No one is asking anyone to replace the social aspect. You're either imprinting your own wrongheaded opinions on this, or you're getting your takes from people who have been proven wrong repeatedly and laughed out of the public space over it like pirate software. Go check his view counts now, and it's all because he kept saying the laughable crap you're saying now.

As I said, if Devs/Publishers feel 'forced' to keep games alive,

Once again, no one has asked devs to keep games alive, they are being asked to turn the games over and allow the people who paid for them to keep them alive. You can stop parroting that incorrect talking point now.

Thankfully, the laws of various countries don't only protect businesses, they also protect consumers. EULAs are not law, and EULAs often break the law.

@themightyant That in itself would be a huge win. There are beautiful worlds that have been created that no one has legal access to "just walk around in" even if they paid for the game. For MMORPGs like Otherland, this may be the best we get. For games in other genres like Highguard or Concord, it's obvious the game should have private server hosting or LAN play switched on when support is pulled.

Also note that the initiative does not ask for these changes in current or past games, so it wouldn't apply to the above examples or current games like World of Warcraft or Overwatch. It would require this change be made for all future games - which I'll say again, is trivial. MMORPGs with zero help from developers (in fact, quite the opposite) are reverse engineered all the time and private servers put up.

@BAMozzy You don't understand the proposed law and are parroting industry talking points. Nothing changes for the live games. You will continue to see online slop games released and before they are killed off, nothing will change. The difference is those games will have to be designed with an end of life plan for when they are no longer supported, the exact thing you are worried about. Games will be able to be sunset, no one is forcing anyone to "support" the game. However when you end support, the game needs to have a switch that allows people to be able to continue to play the game in some fashion offline or with user hosted servers. In the current state with no consumer protection at all, the hardest genre to do this with is MMORPGs - and yet with active threats from the industry, people are still able to reverse engineer these games and run their own servers. This is not difficult at all for the industry to support.

TLDR:

Chances are, Devs/Publishers would just choose not to make online games if they are expected to keep them 'alive'

Absolutely no one has proposed this and has nothing to do with the SKG movement.

Stop Killing Games made a ton of progress recently, Ross Scott had a press conference at the EU commission just a few days ago. Theres a large possibility this will be illegal in the future, games will have to be developed with an EoL plan so consumers can continue to use what they purchased.

Series X is a 10/10 piece of hardware. You can't return to hardware without fixing what made Series X fail, which is lack of exclusives. They're not going to do that. I think they're just making noise to keep the remaining base buying games on Xbox for a few more years.

By far my least favorite Bethesda game, but still a good game. Everyone talks about the loading it the story when complaining about Starfield, but to me rhe worst part of the game was the hideous HDR implementation. Those crushed blacks haunt my dreams

Seamus was talking about Xbox, which is absolutely being sunset. Peter is talking about the gaming division, which is not being sunset. MS was wide to rebrand MGS to XGS, purposely causing this confusion. "Xbox is doing great!". No, Xbox is bleeding out. MGS is doing "great."

@FraserG reason to keep it exclusive: you are still fighting for Xbox's survival

Reason to put it on PS: you are sunsetting Xbox

It's really that simple. It's been that simple since they announced Pentiment to PS. If you're putting any games there, Xbox is done. There's no nuance.

Good, welcome changes