Jenkinss

Enjoyed it but won't be replaying it. Was good not great.

With that said, those are important things but holy ***** does their bias show. When I did listen they came off as snooty and pertinacious with little to nothing positive to say about the Xbox platform.

This is pure comedy. There has been a ton of anti Xbox sentiment in the gaming press since its launch in 2001, but it sure isn't at DF. Richard has been one of the most pro Xbox voices in all of games journalism.

Sorry but I was under the impression that everything they are claiming they did was all taken care of by Melissa McGamepass?

Disagree totally. Shipping Redfall was the wrong move. Blizzard use to axe games and it added to their reputation

Fast turnaround on a sequel, like the old days.

Xbox sales were already awful, if they stayed even or even had slight growth, that would still be terrible.

It's remarkable that they are able to continue dropping massive percentages like this.

This deal never had much to do with Xbox. There was never any plans for this acquisition for Xbox except to add a few games already on the system to game pass. This deal was 99% about mobile.

For people who think it killed Xbox, it didn't. Xbox's trajectory was already set

From what I've seen, that discourse is centered around game pass devaluing games and causing Xbox players to stop buying games. It will create a scenario where it isn't worth it for developers to port games to Xbox unless they secure a game pass deal. This is why we assume there will be no Xbox games next gen - just PC. MS knows the numbers, they can't pay every developer to be on game pass. So they will throw in the towel and have a platform that costs devs nothing to port to.

A game on game pass selling 280k copies isn't shocking to anyone with any view on the service.

The sentiment in here is comedy gold. Xbox is doing gangbusters, Microsoft would have given them the axe if they weren't profitable!! Nadella was ready to axe the entire Xbox division last gen. Phil Spencer saved it by pitching game pass. Game pass has since plateaued ar one third its subscriber goal. Nadella had game pass subscribers as one of his bonus requirements, which he removed after repeatedly failing to meet it.

6 months ago? Is that around the time they stopped making consoles and they're no longer available in many middle eastern and European countries?

Did they value a video game controller at $1500 just to troll the contest winners into having to pay more taxes on it than its worth?

Amy Hood: sets expectations for Xbox way too high because of ABK deal.

Also Amy Hood: overrides Phil Spencer and forces MS to go after ABK because she thinks mobile is where the money is at console isn't worth the trouble.

They're closing down the Xbox division. You don't have to look hard to see it. Note that when I say Xbox I'm talking about Xbox, the console. Not the rebranded MGS.

Xbox hardware is absurdly subsidized. To build a comparable PC in 2020 would have cost you more than triple. Of course I bought 2 Series X at launch.

Game Pass is (despite their vague wording somewhat denying this) absurdly subsidized. Of COURSE I jumped on it, and will stay on it. But I never felt it was sustainable unless it hit their goals (100M), and now its clear it will never even get remotely close to that.

Microsoft got annihilated last gen, and their response was to spend a ton this gen to win people back, and still failed.

Whether or not something is sustainable isn't really your concern as a consumer. In fact it's quite the opposite. If something isn't sustainable for the company, you're probably doing it wrong if you aren't taking advantage.

I don't know what the future of game pass is and I also don't care. It's a rental service, if it goes under I lose nothing, and got years of obscenely discounted gaming in my house.

@Fiendish-Beaver Cheers mate. The language would definitely not have been a problem, but yeah my window to play games is really small - after the kids are in bed and before I've gotta get some sleep myself. I know your struggle though, I also play a ton of co-op games and almost never with randoms, just my wife and a few lifelong friends.

#1 is definitely the 16 player lan parties I hosted. We were all in our 20s, drunk, and there was a lot of hilarious physical violence - I famously tackled my friend off a recliner because after he was completely missing the entire game, i was about to capture the flag and he was camping in our base with a shotgun the entire game.

#2 is getting 3 friends over and playing Halo over XBC. For those too young, it was a workaround to play Xbox online before Xbox Live, it simulated LAN play over the internet. It was sort of like Kali but for Xbox.

@Fiendish-Beaver well let me invite you to play this one with me if you game after 9ish EST. We're a bunch of old guys, you'll fit in

Buying it, one of the very few PS games I actually wanted. FFVII was another. I mainly play co-op games and I've heard great things about this one, plus I love the ultra jingoistic vibe. I unironically love the BoS and Liberty Prime, I'm one of those people.

I wouldn't have bought if it was game pass, I never understood that mentality. Hey I like subscribing to a magazine, and also buying a copy on the store! Just flush your money down the toilet, or spend it on funco pops.

Huge congrats to Ross. His Game Dungeon series on youtube is one of my favorites. If you're interested in obscure older games, there's nothing quite like it. His episode on Veil of Darkness is my personal favorite if you are interested.

This initiative is really important for game ownership, your rights as a consumer, which have evaporated since the mid 00s. Thank you Europeans who took a minute of your time to sign. Even though it is over 1m now, it needs every real signature it can get to counteract any possible fake ones that get weeded out

And thank you @FraserG !!

Perfect reminder this is a handheld, not a real home console.

This is also the reason Nintendo won't make a home console version of the Switch. I bought my Series S a while back brand new for $150. A switch home console version would have to be appropriately priced, and it would then make the handheld pricing look even worse than it does now.

Depends on your definition of fake. This was way more fake than the halo 2 e3 demo and I consider that fake. It was much more real than the killzone 2 e3 demo though.

@CaptainCluck It just so happens there's a huge movement that hit a milestone today to just do that, www.stopkillinggames.com ! If you're a European, go sign the EU petition. It looks like they've got enough signatures, but once they weed out all the fake ones, they need as many as they can get.

Did it look like real gameplay to anyone?

Wow on the same day that Ross Scott's Stop Killing Games EU petition reached 1 million signatures, the Bring Helldivers 2 to Xbox petition also forced Sony's hand into bringing the game over. What a day.

Snark aside I will 100% be buying this, and huge congrats to Ross who's Game Dungeon videos are some of my favorites on youtube. His Veil of Darkness video is an all timer for me. If anyone can get the game industry to stop killing games, it's him. @FraserG it would be cool if this site covered it since it still needs more signatures to make up for any fake ones.

I think the only three people in leadership positions in the history of Xbox that have been more incompetent than Matt Booty are Don Mattrick, Aaron Greenberg, and Phil Harrison.

QA will get cut everywhere as AI quickly learns to do it. AI is coming for us all, I should have been a plumber.

Remember that the many thousands of people laid off last year, and now this year, are only the beginning. MS has a ton more to dump before they're done gutting Xbox.

This while working for a multi trillion, obscenely profitable company. It's dystopian.

Even though I didn't play it on game pass, I feel obligated to vote for Baldur's Gate 2. It was my favorite CRPG from its release and took TWENTY TWO (!!!!) years for it to be dethroned.

I know I had longer and earlier comments/posts about this both here and on reddit, but here's one from July of last year:

https://www.purexbox.com/features/reaction-microsofts-constant-tweaking-of-xbox-game-pass-is-becoming-exhausting#comment8194872

The TLDR is Phil Spencer would remain as CEO of Xbox only as a face as the business morphs into something completely unrecognizable, and not a console business at all.

Phil Spencer has already been "fired" for at least a year and a half. He's getting paid to be a punching bag as a dying brand takes its last breaths and then has its name slapped on a mobile game company.

Things were, indeed, not ok at Xbox.

Generally positive reviews for a game on the Xbox store? There's a first for everything!

Depending on how E-Day goes, I may slide into this afterwards and then the rest of the series. I replayed all the Halo games with a friend of mine leading up to Infinite. If E-day ends going right into GoW1 I could see myself doing that. But I suspect this is going to be a reboot and not just a prequel, something like the FFVII remakes.

In terms of PVP I did love Gears 1 when it first came out and everyone was bad. I don't like what it quickly turned into and don't play Gears PVP anymore. Cliffy had the right idea with the sawed off, too bad the very loud community of wall bouncing gnasher fanatics disagreed.

@DennisReynolds Very strongly disagree, Rare made their best 2 games, Viva Pinata and Trouble in Paradise, after MS "gobbled them up." I loved RC Pro Am and Battletoads but I think their SNES stuff, particularly the shooters, are wildly overrated.

Destin Legerie just posted a video

"The Future of Xbox Looks Bright In The Face of Turmoil"

I'm speechless. I have no speech.

I mourn with her.

Looks like it's coming back down to earth.

@Fiendish-Beaver gta isn't in my wheelhouse in terms of... tone? But I always play them and it's always worth it because Rockstar games are so absurdly ahead of everything else in existence when it comes to tech. They always feel at minimum an entire generation ahead of the very best. All star devs like cdpr and the coalition look bush league by comparison.

@Ricky-Spanish almost the same for me, e33 and Nightreign, but I've got Oblivion in 3rd.

Is monster hunter running well yet?

alright, that's pure gold. I laughed hard.

Not a fan of ESO but that's neat. Absence of mods is the #1 argument I see against ever bringing WoW to consoles. Well, scratch that off the list.

WoW has also been planning on eliminating support for the more mandatory mods/weakauras from what I've heard, it's caused quite a stir from what I've seen.

These 2 things taken together could look like more evidence of WoW coming to consoles.

@DaveTheRave for the 69 billionth time, the $69B they spent was to break into mobile. We know this from the FTC trial. Phil didn't even want ABK, it was Amy Hood as she and Satya were ready to dump Xbox.

ABK has literally almost nothing to do with Xbox. It's about Candy Crush, CoD Mobile, Diablo Immortal, Hearthstone, etc. CoD Mobile has more users than all other platforms combined, and yet gamers act as if they bought ABK for console/PC CoD.

@Fiendish-Beaver it's for something like an Xbox interface or steam big picture mode. Where you don't want to involve a mouse and or go alt tabbing around.

I always agree with your posts but this is just a little off. Sometime before the end of 2023, Microsoft decided to shut down Xbox as we know it and transition to just running Microsoft Game Studios (and rebrand it Xbox Game Studios as a comical distraction). This isn't a lightswitch, it's a transition. Their end game is every game everywhere including Playstation day 1, and dump having their own hardware. They were not going to put Halo or Gears on PS on day 1. They put stuff like Pentiment and Sea of Thieves.

• Side note - when they said it was 4 games, everyone with half a brain had a good laugh and knew it was over.

Microsoft didn't close down Xbox to put Sea of Thieves on Playstation. They put Sea of Thieves on playstation to begin the conditioning of their ~30M remaining users to get them used to this idea, and not abandon ship. When they intimated it was a "test," it was actual laugh out loud comedy. Pentiment, a game selling in the tens of thousands at best, is the test that they are basing the end of Xbox on? Come on, Phil lmao.

So no, they didn't kill their brand for 4 million. They killed the brand because after a decade of mismanagement, half of it on borrowed time (Nadella was going to close down Xbox years ago), they decided to close up shop (Nov 2023ish). We are still in the closing up shop transition. We still haven't even gotten to a Gears or Halo on PS day 1, which still isn't the end, that's still just transitioning to the end game.

1000-2000 people being laid off

Oh in that case this isn't a big deal, that was important to start an argument over thanks. Those ~1500 families trying to survive now appreciate it.

Purexbox, why even append that irrelevant bulls***?

Surely they could fit more ads?

I’m just super worried about the moat you’ve built, that the winds will change and we have a bloodbath a few years down the road.

I will never stop quoting this internal email to Phil Spencer that was leaked during the ABK trial. People knew he was building a house of cards, and many thousands would pay the price. Bloodbath indeed.

It's going to sell out any minute...

I liked when developers actually had stat tracking in games (for example how many potions you drank in Skyrim, that may or may not be a real one but most games had lists of things like that). If they were still doing that, these hubs would be neat. As is it's not really worth it

A buddy of mine lost his many hundreds of hours FH5 save because of this, glad they're making it clearer. They should keep an additional save that you can revert to in case of catastrophe, IMO.