Jenkinss

@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

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.