JumpingJackson

Does this mean new story content? I don't know if I'm in idiot-mode but I felt like it wasn't clear.

@cross717 I've stuck with them as I liked their backwards compatibility. Though I noticed that recently I've been using my shiny Series X to play games from 15 - almost 20 - years ago.

But where do we go? Nintendo are doing some dodgy things, Playstation feels like it has a dearth of first party games and have often shown their hand to be anti-consumer.

Maybe the future really is handheld PC's that operate on a TV like the Switch does and ditch the console world. But I really don't want the faff that comes with a PC.

Ha, absolutely not. Not a snowball's chance in hell. Remember though, buying Activision won't lead to price rises.

We really, absolutely need to support each other and talk sense into the corpo-apologists (e.g. "$30 is still a good deal") and stand together until this nonsense stops happening. Keep meeting their cost-demands, and they'll keep pushing them up, stop doing it, and we'll see them come back to reality.

@Ricky-Spanish Kenan be schemin’

Having a bash on Flight Simulator and reliving my holiday through Jasper National Park.

Too expensive and not really interested. Though I’ll admit that I don’t really know much about handheld gaming beyond Nintendos offerings, the Steam Deck, and my beloved GameGear if we go back far enough.

Are they PC’s? Could I buy one and play Settlers 2 on it from the comfort of my sofa rather than my desk chair? Is it just an Xbox in a handheld wrapper? Is it locked to the Xbox storefront?

All questions I need to research before I can really decide either way.

@Lup There has got to be a better way the internet can agree on to demonstrate sass than writing LiKe ThIs. Italics maybe?

@FrenchVaniIIuxe it’ll do nothing to their bottom line but I’m here for the news about Xbox which I got on the bandwagon with on launch day with the first Xbox. But I’m not giving them a penny more of my cash with this massive firing debacle.

Again, won’t affect them, but will make me feel like I’m doing something.

My plans for Thursday at 11am involve painting my hallway and then demolishing my kitchen. I’ll swing by for the updates later.

That way I get the info, some DIY done, and avoid Apple-esque words like ‘gorgeous’, ‘brilliant’, ‘game-changing’ which have invaded all product presentations.

And you guys get my clicks, so everyone’s a winner.

@Jenkinss I played it years ago on the switch and the only thing I remember about it was the reference to Curse of Monkey Island. I might give it another play through.

“You can ignore them if you want to.”

If you add to the end of that sentence:

“But people won’t, and instead bitch and moan about it”

Then you’ve got a slogan for the modern day everything.

I might give it a bash, but I turned S3 off because of the number of times I was doing something wrong, but the game wasn’t forthcoming with what I was doing wrong in order to rectify and practice.

They’re hardly going to say ‘don’t worry you can skip this one’ are they?

It’s the trudging back and forth between sofas and bosses that really irks me.

@SodaPop6548 I was playing Fallout 3 earlier today and I had a memory flashback to playing the DLC on a sunny evening, talking to my Dad. And I was also thinking that I haven’t had that much fun with an overall console since the 360. The creativity, the passion, the fun, the enjoyment of it rather than complaining about technical stats.

I miss that era.

Have we got a price yet?

@Lrapsody Right there with you.

@SmokeEmAll I'll let those 9000 people soon to be without an income let them know that 'it's no big deal, there's hundreds of thousands left'.

Empathy seems to have gone the way of the dodo. And I would be remise to point out that if we start arguing over this then they've won. This is how they do it, argue amongst us who should be poor and destitute, rather than focusing on those that are hoarding the ***** money.

@Fiendish-Beaver I said to my wife that Nadella looks like what you get when you have to give a description to someone who makes those ‘the person we’re looking for looks like this’ pictures (e-fit?), and the only description you give the artist is “they look like a c***.”

@Wizzle8899 Plenty of immersive games on the N64/Dreamcast/PS2.

And further, what's your solution?:

• AAA games are rocketing to a price most people aren't willing to pay (I'm talking about wide general public here, not our echo chamber of gamers).
• Companies saying that these are getting too expensive to make
• Big companies being taken over and then raided by shareholders

Surely the solution is smaller games, smaller companies, little to no shareholders (I would be ok with the John Lewis approach of employee's being offered shares/profits)? Smaller games are going to come from less intense graphics, less focus on the unnecessary like ray-tracing, photo-realism. People who say (I understand this isn't you) that they can't enjoy a game unless it's photorealistic are lying to themselves, they're the same close-minded people as those who say they can't enjoy theatre because it's not like a film.

Sack him now and oust Nadella.

Impacted me in that there is absolutely no way I'm buying into this ecosystem any further after this layoff chaos. F-'em.

Also, while not actually wanting to insight violence, I really wish they wouldn't make these statements. Speaking so full of sorrow about the ends to the income that allows the people working there to live, while remaining employed and with that apologetic but happy smile they have makes me want to punch them in the face.

Other thoughts:

1) I thought PD was quite far along now?

2) Hopefully, these 8-to-10 year gaming cycles can be seen for what they are - far too long. And if they need to lay people off, and the costs are too high, then perhaps finally they'll come to the realisation that N64 / PS2 / Dreamcast era games were the right size and scope to feel grand, memorable, and most of all fun. And we don't need photo realism either.

@BaldB3lper78 I am absolutely with you. While not going so far as to cancel / get rid of my current Microsoft stuff (which, in fairness, is the free OneNote account and whatever games I've bought). I have no active subscriptions with them.

I'm, like you, tired of this repeated ad nauseam nonsense. Buy. Realise they don't know what they're doing or why they bought them in the first place. Layoff and let IP's that people liked die.

It's not just Microsoft, and it's not just gaming, but it's a sickness. And while me not spending any money is likely to not even be a blip on their radar I have to support (or rather not support) in line with my moral compass so I can feel at ease in the quiet moments.

Honestly I don't know what else we can do but hope others decide that enough is enough too, and that these companies hoarding the money and the software just isn't the right thing to allow.

I also hope, anyone reading this that is at the beginning of their own business, that you don't rush to sell as soon as someone comes knocking, and you see the value (for yourself, your employees, your fans) of remaining independent from this distasteful chaos.

@BAMozzy Thanks for this. Having not owned a screen that has VRR I’ve never really looked into what it does. Pretty impressive.

@TapeLoader Swings and roundabouts I guess. I’ve never really cared for it, but then I’ve also always rolled my eyes when Tom Cruise comes around every Christmas to tell us all to turn this mode and that mode off on our TV’s.

I remember gaming on my Amiga, MegaDrive etc, and finding it fun when there was so much happening on the screen that the game went into slowdown. Never irritated me like it seems to others, for me it magnified the chaos going off on the screen.

I think ‘no one really cares’ would have been better worded as ‘storm in a teacup’ from those that refuse to buy anything if it’s not minimum 60fps. Or raytracing - I’m busy plains, not staring at how the reflection looks in the glass I’m zooming past.

@Gabrie Because people have no self control, or can’t see the wood for the trees.

Maybe it’s because I’m an older gamer, but I value the image / colour quality over frame rate, which seems to have become this thing people want to moan about, but know deep down that they don’t really care.

I had a whale of a time playing OG Ocarina of Time back at release. I’m happy with a non-60 frame rate.

@NEStalgia What I find difficult to understand (beyond the usual excuses of greed etc) is that the people that are working in the games industry, especially at leadership level, must be about my age.

I remember the absolute joy I had with Vice City, with San Andreas, and I didn’t mind one bit that while there was some new polish here and there, the core underlying thing was the same thing from the previous game. See also: Sonic 1-K. Banjo Kazooie, relatively small in scope (and absolutely better than its sprawl-affected sequel) but brilliant. I just had a recent playthrough of Links Awakening. While I remembered a lot of it so it went pretty quickly, what a wonderfully sized game for a fun adventure that didn’t suck up hours upon hours.

Have they all forgot this? Bring the scope down, bring the price down, bring the risk down, and watch as people enjoy the games anyway.

@darkswabber I hadn’t heard that. Oh well, either a deep sale or no more buying for me. It’s been a good run, I’ve got other hobbies that take this increasingly-greedy one over.

Maybe this is how I unlock my hidden carpenter.

I’ll buy second hand or not at all. £70/£80 is not a value I see returned in any game, so I’ll not bother.

I liked the first game in spite of the same annoyances leading to my dislike of Rick & Morty, so I’m excited for a new game with new voices.

The gameplay looks interesting and certainly piqued my interest which has been hard to do as of late.

But holy moly I thought the trailer was poorly edited. Felt like they built to a punch line three different times and each time there was then more stuff, building to another punchline. Felt messy. Felt like it was a ‘throw everything at the wall and keep everything whether it sticks or not’.

Still, gameplay is the important bit and that could be fun, but as someone else has suggested I wonder if they are stretching themselves thin.