JoyfulFire

Waiting for all the patches and the first sale. Patient gaming to save money.

The interesting thing to me is that Mark put a rough date on the PS6 - "a few years time". What could that mean? 2027? 2028?

Make a limited supply of units. It sells out. Pretend it's selling out due to popularity.

@Fiendish-Beaver you struck a chord with me. I also have ADHD and find it impossible to remember combos in action games. Thought it was just me!

@EdgarTheBug Yep it's why they've added cloud to all the main game pass tiers. Game pass is for pushing cloud on any device now, with the option of play anywhere if you have a pc too. A main strategy with their offering is to get people off their own current gen consoles, while at the same time attracting casuals that don't own any gaming hardware.

The only tier remaining without cloud is pc gamepass.

I've been on core which renews every 3 months just to pay the online tax. While the changes won't affect me I'm still miffed with Microsoft about this. Coming after hardware price rises and huge layoffs, they have no respect for their customers or their workers.
I already no longer buy new games from MS. If they raise the price of essential then I'm completely out.

@Blue_Rover I saw IGN said it does not kick in till November 4th for current subscribers.

Stoked there's a demo. Can't wait to try this over the weekend.

@Scrubchub That is my experience too. I'm taking a break after nearly 50 hours. The game has been just fine, not amazing but good enough to play that long. But I'm just burnt out on it, the run time is just too long for the repetitive battling.

I went ahead and did the age verification with Xbox today. Can't say I'm super happy about it, but there it is if I want to keep talking to people during online play. There was an option to verify by credit card which I thought was better than giving out a photo. At least there's fraud insurance on a credit card.

As soon as Xbox starts to redeem their image they shoot themselves in the foot again.

Far Cry 4 runs at 1440x1080 on all Xbox consoles, so a resolution bump would be welcome. We will have to wait and see.

From Fuzion's graphs, both series s and x 30fps modes have bad frame pacing. It's gonna feel pretty uneven unless you have an X and use the performance mode.

First time I'm not picking up anything in a seasonal sale. I feel like it's the same names again and I've already bought the ones I want in previous sales.

I have a huge backlog on my oled switch 1. By the time I'm through it the Xbox handheld will be here and that will be far more desirable.

If the Asus has an OLED screen, I'm going with that.

@Gmork you lost me at "woke game". Try growing up.

@Mincey0 I kinda get what you mean. "Good enough for gamepass" seems to be a thing lately. I'm glad there's so many releases but underwhelmed by most of them. They are mostly middling AA releases. None of them are tempting when there's so much better third party titles.

The only big games coming to GP I'm looking forward to are Gears E-day and Doom the Dark Ages, and I don't know if that's worth paying for Ultimate for two games.

@Kaloudz Spring sale is likely to be April 16th this year.

This is my last generation with Xbox and the gamepass subscription. PC is far too compelling now since Sony and Xbox release most of their games on Steam anyway.

@Fiendish-Beaver My save file is 28 hours in. Same as yourself I'm really enjoying it. I can understand not everyone is going to click with it. But I feel the majority of people casting shade have never even played it and just want it to fail for childish reasons.

@Gmork everyone? I've seen lots of people popping up in the Veilguard sub having tried it out on PS Plus and really enjoying the game.

5 hours in, I'm really enjoying it so far. Odyssey and Valhalla fell flat for me but this is much better.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is amazing. Really worth trying for free.

@Rog-X I don't think the definition matters here. We know what we hear with no official confirmation.

Playstation is in a very different position to Xbox. Their hardware brand is well established, they have just released the pro. I think on the hardware side their users are mostly satisfied and comfortable with the how the land lies.

Xbox however is in a very different place. There's a compelling need now to address the usse base about the details other than the vague promises we've had. If they want to carry that huge gamepass base on console going forward they have more work to do than Sony has to convince me to stick with it.

At this point it would be great if MS would make an announcement about future hardware plans rather than us getting everything from leaks. It'd be nice to know my current digital library on Xbox is going to transfer to whatever is coming next. As it is I'm starting to feel wary of buying games on the platform.

That RTGI in quality mode looks too good to ignore. The difference on the DF video is night and day. Series X and quality mode for me.

I'm hype for it. Don't care about the chuds and their "controversy".

Excited for this one. It's looking like it could be my favourite Creed game so far.

We're now into March so the theory of it being due to Christmas seems less likely. I think they are diverting Series X hardware for use in their Xcloud server blades. It would align with how much they seem to want to be a cloud platform than a console one these days.

It's great to see they've added controller acceleration settings in this update. That was my number one issue with the game (other than my fear of spiders). Now it should feel much better to play on PC Gamepass.

Defense Grid 1

In hours and hours of play on Switch I only won one round. Now it's on gamepass I don't feel any desire to bang my head against the wall again.

At this point I'm saving up to get a decent pc sometime around the end of this gen. Even when the next Xbox comes along, I think it's too much of a risky proposition financially to buy.

Rogue Trader is a great CRPG. Highly recommend it.

In loving it so far. Glad the fomo didn't get me and I waited till Tuesday.

I only have one gripe. And that's the acceleration curve on the right stick is crazy. Especially in quality mode. It feels all or nothing and the current deadzone options can not mitigate it. It's not so brutal in performance mode but still there.

I like the gameplay I've seen on YT, and will download it later and give it a shot.
But I'm a wuss when it comes to spiders and this game has a lot, so how well I deal with that will decide whether I keep playing.

I'm going to get Doggy Up. I don't care how bad it is, that Alsation won me over.

I played in Hero mode until chapter 13. I was pretty much leaning on the Hero mode stopping me from dying when my health got low so my skills aren't there for this one.
Also the game starts so strong but gets quite tedious. Rocket launcher enemies while you're busy in melee, and especially those ghost Pirhanas get on your nerves.

@Nexozi I felt like the only one that lost all interest in GTA. It's just not for me, and that's okay.

@Isolte A few small improvements to the experience on Xcloud would go a long way. At the moment it's the Series S versions of games, at max 1080p in the H264 codec. It doesn't look pretty even when played on a good connection via wired Ethernet.
If we had:
A modern codec (H265/AV1)
Series X versions of games
Upto 4k resolution
The difference that would make to the experience would be huge. I would certainly use it a lot more than I currently do.

The problem is the way this has been communicated leaves a lot of Xbox Console owners in an uncertainty and doubt situation over the future of the hardware platform and their library. No hollow platitudes from Phil about new hardware at the moment are really going to help. Doubt like that tends to get set in stone.

I remember when we had the first podcast over this from them and they sat there saying it was just 4 games. How long ago that seems. If they had laid the strategy out honestly at that point, and communicated properly what the next hardware is going to be for Xbox owners, we would not be in this FUD situation.

I'm wondering if Microsoft has already foreseen this and their next console will be some kind of PC/Console hybrid that can play Steam games as well as Xbox PC+Console games.
This "console" would then rely on future titles coming to PC which it can support. This would cut out the worry of third party publishers abandoning the platform as Sony fully takes over that space.

Given I only play on Series X, and don't have any interest in playing on PC or mobile. This strategy only serves to make me more nervous about the future of the hardware platform, and more inclined to buy a Playstation when the next-gen comes.

Surely they must realise the health of Gamepass is tied to the console. Without the hardware Gamepass will fail. Mobile and PC will not carry it. The current strategy is baffling, like shooting yourself in both feet.

Releasing a new console next-gen will not help if third-party publishers have stopped bothering to release games on it.

Eurogamer's headline said it best: "The Outer Worlds 2 coming to PlayStation, as well as PC and Xbox, in 2025"

I guess this is the way of things now. I am considering switching to Playstation 6 when the next-gen arrives. But it's too early to say whether Microsoft's strategy is going to doom the hardware side for them or not. I'll wait and see.

All Just For You has offered me for months is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which is odd as I have no interest in it and only played a bit of Borderlands 2 before falling off it.

I feel sad because I'm one of those that enjoy the Ubisoft formula. Having a lot of fun with Star Wars Outlaws, AC Origins before that and looking forward to Shadows.

People always inevitably lose their jobs when there's a buyout too, and it's never the higher ups.

@munstahunta Digital foundry have confirmed 1800p. Definitely not 1080.

Wildfrost looks my bag, though I've read it's a lot harder than Monster Train.

I'm at the point now where the Pure Xbox review score for games is so wildly different to my own experience with them that I've lost all interest in their reviews. This one is probably going to be equally baffling.