Jenkinss

I'm with Paul Tassi on this one, this isn't my genre. It's like when I played Everquest, I had no interest in the full loot PVP server. Or Sea of Thieves, as much as I wanted to like it, PVP against people 300x sweatier than me and my casual friends was a total waste of our time. But there's a market for these games and I'm glad they're getting served.

@RentedPanda They are specifically not couch co-op, if you could see the other person's screen it would defeat the purpose of the game.

The setting changes between games but for example in the first few games you are trapped in a castle, separated but have walkie talkies. You progress through the locked rooms, 1 person having a set of clues for the other person to piece together with what they have in order to escape the room. Sometimes these are timed (ie lava or water rising). The fun is desperately explaining to each other what you're seeing, figuring out what exactly the puzzle is, what clues are relevant. It's amazing fun, I play a ton of co-op games and this subgenre is really the best "bonding" you can do in a game by far. The other game I've played that's sort of similar is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, but We Were Here is better.

I would assume you are right and game pass is needed.

In case you aren't aware of the series, We Were Here are the absolute best 2 player coop games. You are trapped separately and must guide each other through a series of puzzles. It's a blast. This new entry looks like a fun shift in setting, I can't wait.

How is Aaron Greenberg still there? Of everyone who has driven this platform into the ground, he is the most obnoxious and most obvious.

Great game. Art / animation are top notch and the gameplay is much deeper than any other beat em up I've ever played.

I have tons of comments here starting in Feb 2024 saying it was over and MS was done with Xbox. We are right on track - no, actually I think this is progressing faster than I anticipated. I also said Phil Spencer would remain in his role as a powerless punching bag until all the unpopular changes were made. He's gone, I expect things to accelerate.

Note that when I say Xbox, I mean Xbox. Not the rebrand of Microsoft Game Studios.

Xbox's roots are 100% dudebro culture which has been completely abandoned for ESG money. It would be the easiest thing to return to but I guarantee they won't even do that

Perhaps they are following the PXB playbook and the new hardware they are teasing is new controller colors.

Launch a new Xbox console as soon as hardware costs permit (new gen, single sku). Fresh start. The current well is poisoned beyond saving.
Stop all development for playstation and switch except where required. Make a lot of noise about this
Sunset game pass. (To be clear, I personally have had the highest tier of game pass since 2018 and love the service. It's not good for Xbox)
Begin plans for exclusive CoD as soon as the FTC agreement expires

Half measures like timed exclusives will not save Xbox. They will not even slow its decline. I fully recognize none of this will happen as the position doesn't have the power anymore to do any of this.

@ElkinFencer10 I'm happy to talk about it because it's almost inexplicable to me for someone to have a different opinion -UNLESS- they were 13 or under in 1997 with no access to a PC. I have yet to meet anyone who played a real fps game on PC, but especially Quake, and then play Goldeneye and didn't think it was a barely playable... thing... for kids. I would happily go back another half decade and play Doom with my sh*tty 4 button joystick rather than play Goldeneye. These are opinions formed in 1997 without hindsight. Even if you were too young back then, in 2026 you can go play (1997) Goldeneye and (1996) Quake and let me know which one feels like it was from 50 years before the other.

Edit: Asha Sharma was 5 in 1997, so this checks out

That's some weak deception right there, off to a great start.

Goldeneye was total garbage for its time. It came out after Quake, the game every fps still feels like 30 years later. Thankfully nothing still feels like Goldeneye.

@FraserG this is THE quote from this interview. Especially considering Seamus has been inexplicably optimistic about Xbox's future until now.

Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren’t the core AI business, is being sunsetted. They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening. I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.

Towerborne is one of the best beat em ups I've ever played, up there with the 90s arcade games. Stoic's art department is incredible and the combat system is really deep for the genre. I hope people play it.

@FraserG please cover the gamesbeat Seamus Blackley interview. Seamus is the GOAT and he's been a holdout regarding seeing where Xbox is heading, staying optimistic. He told Gamesbeat that he thinks the new CEO is being brought in to sunset Xbox.

Edit: whoops, you guys did cover the interview, but I think you missed some of the best stuff from it.

Phil Spencer continues to eat sh*t for things he wasn't directly responsible for. Purchasing Activision is the biggest one, the entire narrative that he spearheaded that is out of control. We know from the FTC trial that was Amy Hood, wanting MS to move into mobile gaming. How is that going, Amy? How is everything is an Xbox? We know where that came from and it sure as hell wasn't from within Xbox. Anyone paying attention to interviews between Redfall and "just 4 games" could see the obvious change in Phil, now just carrying out orders.

@Brigurugi Please explain to me how I'm an enabler, I could use a laugh. Also do tell about how much Fortnite you think I play. While you're at it, let me know what ZZZ is.

@Kezelpaso does it have hall effect sticks? Really not interested in pads this expensive that can get drift anymore. Really like the nostalgic 360 aesthetic. I just got another elite v2 last year with a 3 year warranty so I'm not in the market for this at the moment. I do often create new profiles though, so the app would definitely be a negative for me, but sounds like an annoyance that might be worth dealing with.

Of course Matt Booty is looking forward to what's to come. No matter what he does, he moves up in the company.

@Daffy-Duck did you get a chance to take part in the attack on Cyberstan? Total madness. We couldn't take the capital but took down a lot of mega factory cities on the way there. The new enemies are rough, and the capital had them all plus incineration corp AND jet brigade.

@Millionski

@Kaloudz no offence but because of loyalists like you, this company do whatever they want.

this is one of the most wrongheaded comments I've read on this site and I've seen some doozies. Xbox has so few loyalists that the entire brand is not much longer for this world. They can't make another console, they can't keep games exclusive to their platform, they can't keep subsidizing game pass or future hardware. What is it that you think these few "loyalists" are enabling?

I'm in a weird phase where I'm playing a bunch of things which isn't normal for me.

FF7R, Pathalogic 3, and some Dungeon of the Endless. Doing Sworn with the coop crew and always sneaking in some Helldivers 2.

"they don't really scale, as we say in the business, to what we want to do".

Just say ads, Major. What MS wants to do is ads.

My favorite hidden gem is Celeste. I might play it tomorrow.

Ok now fire Aaron Greenberg and Matt Booty.

Once again, RIP Xbox. I like Phil, he was given a Herculean task of reviving Xbox after the Xbox One debacle. He failed. Game pass was such a stupid good deal and he still couldn't claw back market share, which makes me believe it just wasn't possible.

@Gemini53 Do you feel attacked for some reason? There's no way you could interpret what i said as being pointed at people talking about the release date of the game.

Did they fix the awful HDR?

With Xbox out of the picture, Sony has zero reason to produce first party games that don't make a ton of money. Traditionally these companies wanted to build out a stable of first party games to entice consumers into their ecosystem. Now Sony has no competitor. They don't even need to compete on price, as long as they don't get too close to gaming PC prices.

I guess this is the year I pretty much just play KCD and FF7. Need to block off a good 6 months conservatively just for the 2 KCD games.

I had over 500k points intending to use them on the next Xbox (lol). I was caught in an accidental ban wave a couple years ago. It was reversed quickly but the damage was done. I realized I had over $500 sitting in an account that a pretty sh**y corporation could just steal any time they chose, it's the TOS after all, read the fine print! I stopped completely and cashed out over the last 2 years.

Tempted to buy Dragons Lair. Don Bluth masterpiece at 99.9% off from what I paid for it in quarters at the arcade

@FredBiletnikoff Sega guy here, A is left of B. Yes Nintendo did letters a generation before Sega, so then I'll fall back on the English alphabet which I believe predates NES and also has A left of B.

It has that millennial/marvel stink on it that people just want no part of. I have no interest in these games but you can just look at 10 second of this or Concord, looking at the art and character designs, then arc raiders, and it's just immediately obvious. Stop it with this stuff. We voted with our wallets, please respect the results of the election.

Eldest Souls has to be the most shameless game title I've seen since Stumble Guys.

I loved Out of this World back in 1991 but kinda moved past the genre a long time ago. Game pass loves putting these clones on the service though, here comes 2 in a single month.

Looked like a PlayStation game to me, 3rd person run forward through some braindead gameplay to watch something that should have been a TV show.

Jesus Christ be praised, my time to play KCD has finally come

@Elbow let me start by saying I never used this feature. But the reason it's underutilized is because it's been left to rot.

The easiest way for me to try to explain how I feel about this is, let me compare it to a feature I loved on Xbox 360 - avatars. I loved seeing them on my friends list and loved using them in various XBLA games. Then Microsoft left them to die, and updated them in the most off-putting way for Xbox one while simultaneously abandoning them. So when Xbox got rid of avatars last year, you could have the same reaction - this feature is dead, so the move they are making is logical. The problem is the reason the feature is dead is that they murdered it through neglect.

When MS makes it official that they are no longer making consoles at all, we will have the same reaction, hey it's logical. The rub is that MS's incompetence is the reason it's logical to put it down.

KCD for me of it gets a frame rate boost.

2 of these categories only exist in the dystopian hellscape that is modern gaming.

That said, go Helldivers.

Melissa McGamepass really has her finger on the pulse of the average Xbox fan.

Ok, what game were you playing? 👀

@GeeEssEff I think I agree! Sorry, Gears.

What's better than the rush of the last round of the eliminator, getting the perfect jump and out in the lead but knowing there's a couple guys in way better cars coming up fast? Or gathering up a big group of friends and doing a marathon downhill off-road race in Peels? It's really a near perfect game.

Predator was a great movie but a very stupid franchise.

When this first leaked years ago in the infamous discord leak, Jez said it was false. Guy is the biggest clown on the planet.