Kilamanjaro

Hopefully this means they make more games per annum

@Th3_Highlander yeah 360 really pushed the boundaries of the Xbox brand to make it more appealing. I loved being able to play my own music at anytime and while I can do it now, it's not as seamless. Windows 8 with their stupid tile system to try to crossover with their mobile and tablet divisions was a big mistake in my opinion because it led to the terrible UI on Xbox today. Blades were simple, press the bumper to get to your form of entertainment,play music seamlessly and hop online quickly. It's kind of bloated now and I hate the ads on the main dash. My Games and Apps should be the absolute first and only thing you see on boot up so we can get straight into our library rather than seeing the latest releases & game pass ads. The two months I didnt have game pass I would get popups every time I turned on my Xbox, it was aggressive and annoying but now I'll just stick to Game pass core. Xbox really needs a reboot.

I buy a lot of physical for the Switch and JRPG games. Any 2D-HD games are an instant buy on Switch since it's not going to look much better on other consoles. I prefer switch but hardly play it due to my Hunt 1896 addiction

@Th3_Highlander the avatars were cool. I created a new one on XSX but it doesn't do anything

Now Nintendo does these great 1 vs 99 or 1 vs 30 games with Battle Royale style challenges across vibes franchises like Super Mario, Pacman, F-zero and more. Pure fun.

This essentially wipes out all of their energy saving credibility

15 min each is too long, a lot of the times I'll find out if I like or dislike the game much faster than this. Just an artifact barrier to help them hit some KPI for giving out free money. MS Rewards are pretty cool though so not entirely lost.

Xbox did the right thing on supporting Xbox One longer for users but that also hurts their sales. Also their confusing naming scheme hasn't done them any favors.

@Deshalu Phil has straight said all the growth is in the PC market so think they've been pretty explicit. They'll release consoles but their games will always be on PCs and more often they'll be on any gaming system that wants their games with a sizable market. I'll keep the XSX forever, might be the last console with a disc drive they release (let's hope not)

I called it at 18 months from now, let's see. I'll keep the XSX as they'll keep supporting cross gen exclusives for a long time. With the next Nvidia Blackwell chips coming it makes a lot of sense to get into the PC scene now with the price dropping on a lot of their older highly capable products or just buying their new GPU, it'll be future proof for a long while

@OldGamer999 totally agree with this, too much dependency on multiple computers for resources a world away.

@Balaam_ Nintendo needs to add cartridge slots to TVs and then I'm in. The future is worse, less ownership and worse quality. Only a few good companies remain making high quality products you can keep anymore man.

@OldGamer999 lol a little over the top with that description. Cloud gaming is pretty terrible.

To save you the Google of the acronym: AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, FSR 4. Explicitly developed for RDNA 4, starting with the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 GPUs, FSR 4 represents a significant evolution for the upscaling technology because it marks a shift to a new ML or AI-powered approach.

Console is the only way I play

This is what everyone wants. Microsoft needs to get the Super Smash Bros concept of celebrating their IP with appropriate crossovers. Literally some of the best shooters of all time with similar themes and they out MC in R6 Siege.

This is the year I switch back to Xbox Live Gold (GP Core) and buy any new games on sale. Hoping to add a lot more physical to my collection before they announce the next Xbox in the next 18 months.

You guys rock, thanks for giving me something to read and for the news coverage on all things Xbox! Wishing you and the writers and staff a wonderful New Year Celebration! 🥳 Here's to hoping for more things Xbox in 2025!

Damn Nintendo put out more exclusives the past 18 months. I hope Xbox focuses more on their game output than their branding. Rare Replay is a great example of a ton of games they can license out to smaller developers to have a go at without doing all these multi year development releases.

@Mincey0 I think it's because they develop all their games on PCs, it's an easy business decision

@FraserG no wait I AM an Xbox reading this on an Xbox😏

Carrion is awesome

It'll launch in 2025 to mass complaints as a live service game then be playable in 2027 with Cap'n Jack Sparrow doing an in game event in 2029. Roadmap predicted!

I actually really liked the vibe this game gave off, hope it's similar to Gris or Ori in terms of the feeling you get playing it. It'll stylistically be different of course but let's hope it's fun more than anything else!

@Balaam_ hopefully they get rid of owning cars and homes too! I'd really enjoy the added benefits of businesses finding innovative and creative ways to add more value to the quality of my life. Can't wait until they start charging for the bathroom and kitchen. Like flights, now you can pay to reserve an overhead bin! Groundbreaking!

Star Wars Battlefront Classic could've really been a home run. If the online was stable I would have bought it at full price despite owning the originals.

Thanks for making the community such an active place! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

@Prestige-worldwide always a fan of more in the pipeline. I'm a big fan of games made quickly that focus on fun & simplicity. A 4-8 hour experience is a sweet spot for me for those indie type games.

@Prestige-worldwide I hope they throw in some de-makes of their games & give some smaller studios the chance to create indie hits from spinoffs of their franchises. Something to keep us occupied between big releases. I'd still love a Metroidvania style game with the Master Chief, 343 uses a lot of lore and short stories nobody reads on their website so a 16-32 bit game that is text heavy between action platforming segments would be great.

@Prestige-worldwide I think ES6 will sell gangbusters astronomical amounts of copies even if launched alongside Witcher 4 or COD 8. It's one of those evergreen franchises for massive sales.

@Balaam_ man they took away my Hunt Showdown disc from me. I own a lot of physical but the devs can indeed update it so your disc no longer provides you anything on it. They at least gave me free Blood Bonds to use in the next gen update Hunt 1896 that was the equivalent price of the game. You need to buy a second Xbox that's never online to make sure your games don't get offlined via an update. I still buy physical only for Nintendo Switch since they always shutdown their eShops although have a lot of digital for small games.

@Tasuki they're only available for 24 hours, they're mixing it each day.

There's a list online of all the games and days they're giving stuff away.. it'll be daily for the next few days.

@OldGamer999 they should release Xbox console versions of the S or X for some of those big releases. A custom Fable theme or DOOM theme would sell like hotcakes

@Peete oh yeah dude, forgot they pulled out of a bunch of European countries. RIP indeed 😢

@Steel76 I think the Xbox team honestly don't work closely with their partners to optimize games. Halo Infinite, despite being a bad launch had 4k at 120FPS & DOOM Eternal's Ray tracing and performance was spectacular. I get what you're saying and it's true they're pushing performance but I don't think they're really optimizing for the XSX architecture. Look at how Nintendo push a mobile gaming chip from 2016 to churn out beautiful looking games, that despite not being 4K 60 FPS Look pretty dang smooth for 2024.

Can we at least get games to take full advantage of the XSX right now? It's not even pushing the hardware yet. They need to focus on game output for the current Gen and not next gen. Always good to have people planning it but c'mon, we don't even have 8K gaming let alone 120fps 4K with Ray tracing. Let's get a lawsuit going for false advertising lol

@Cakefish I think there was an article from Phil Spencer somewhere where he recently said all the growth is on PC and they want to be there more. MS really just want us to move over to PC which to be fair, is a slight hassle and more expensive but it'll be where a lot of stuff is getting released first. We are getting abandoned slowly but surely & I love my Xbox so here's hoping they double down on console and this is just a bad phase. Time will tell.

Instant Day 7 buy after all the reviews are out, maybe instant year 1 buy if full of bugs. I LOVED Oblivion, never got into Skyrim much wasn't a fan of the theme. But I probably would love it if I dropped 20 hours in..

They got straight Luke Skywalkered for turning out a gem

@Banjo- I think even with a cheaper tier it's not going to be moving millions of people over from gatcha - style mobile games taking in big cash. It's my hope MSFT lets ABK do their thing on mobile because Microsoft never cracked the code on its own & I hope they don't hob let those studios like so many other they've acquired. Don't see a need for them to bring all games under game pass but once they can get their own store on mobile they have a ton of opportunity for growth. Just think it's not gonna be what they think it is. Families and younger people are not clamoring for the Xbox brand.

@Millionski I agree with you. Microsoft fundamentally misunderstand the mobile video game player. They don't want to pay for anything, $5 like Star few Valley might appear too much. They love F2P games that have like pseudo-gambling mechanics that get them to spend $20-100 to speed up artificial timers to progress their gameplay. Console and PC games offer a near complete experience for a fixed price + DLC and of course have loads of F2P games that mostly require physical hardware peripherals like controllers or M&K because they demand precision. Microsoft ain't gonna be able to exploit the mobile gamer in the way they think with their traditional game experiences. I think the Nintendo Switch sold like hotcakes with their Fortnite bundle early in its lifecycle. They understood younger players wanted a mobile experience but better control & also have it "free" even though it came with $20 of in game currency to encourage the gambling mechanic of unlocking skins. Needless to say, I totally agree with you. Microsoft is pushing half baked experiences. If they can work with their Surface division and put out a great handle, they'll shift more people over but honestly the PC handheld market is saturated already with a couple of contenders already on Gen 3-4 of their hardware.

The first 2 minutes of the video are enough. You can come to the same conclusions watching the actual ad yourself as well. I still think this ad campaign will do very little for them. They need to rebrand their gaming division and ditch the green & name Xbox

@Medic_alert man if Sony gets Star Field and use their SSD architecture to get minimal loading screens I'm sure it'll be a much better experience. I had a great time out in space & would've liked to be able to actually fly to places like in No Man's Sky.

I had a great time in Star Field, loved the ship building. I wish leveling up skills was slightly faster & I hope they add big epic boss fight missions that required usage of your powers (don't wanna spoil) a la Mega Man style weaknesses. Beautiful game.

I saw the comparisons of Cyberpunk to Star Field after I beat the game and yeah, Bethesda needs to make their NPCs move more naturally like in Cyberpunk because those movements of characters look like they're straight out of Morrowind on the OG Xbox.

Give away the system sellers to Sony and keep the other niche ones on Xbox. It's all an Xbox. At least Sony and Nintendo genuinely care about creating rich, unique experiences and take full advantage of their hardware's unique capabilities. Xbox really could make games more immersive through physical products and peripherals but they just gave up after the Kinect. They make more variants of their Xbox controllers than games. I want Hall joysticks and a new controller from Xbox. The Stellar and Lunar shift controllers I bought have irreversible drift 😭 so mad about that because now they're $65 paperweights. Have them saved in case I want break them open & try a last ditch effort to repair. MS won't even take them back for a paid repair, smh. Anyway, Hellblade 2 will come to PS5 and probably Switch via the cloud. It's a slow game so could work on cloud pretty well compared to faster paced games.

@Rog-X yeah it's an industry thing to get it to a "good enough stuff" state so they can start generating revenue to see if it's even worth it to invest more money into it. Always a big risk launching games for the big players.

@Millionski I'm pretty sure they'll raise Gamepass up to $20/mo and at that point I'll just buy my games on sale or physical (of that even exists next gen, prob not). $240/yr can get you a ton of games on sale, Day One games are all buggy and MS has delayed a lot each year making my GP sub feel like it doesn't matter. Also considering a PS5 pro let me know how you like it!

Good lol Idk why Microsoft made me become cynical of their Xbox brand. I was and am an Xbox die hard but man! I am dying hard with their decisions! I'll keep buying their games but not on Xbox anymore 😭 stop breaking our hearts Microsoft

@Ricky-Spanish with a PC we can just emulate all those games hehe or get them for cheap on Steam. I have a big Epic library from them giving away so many games for free a year or two ago

@Ricky-Spanish I would love if Nintendo did full re-releases of every variant of their consoles but with newer screens, re-releases of their top hits on carts and an online eShop. I would literally spend thousands of dollars on this, no price would be too high to pay.