Markatron84

In between battering Mewgenics and the odd bit of Mario Tennis Fever, I've been on a PlayStation Studios kick as of late.

In the week I finally went back to and finished God of War, a game I started way back in 2023 but just wasn't feeling. That game is special and I'm glad I went back to it. I'm now playing Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered.

I empathise with Ben's dilemma of where to start with Yakuza/Like a Dragon. The problem with that series is that there's so much of it and if you want to dig into the side-content - arguably some of the best stuff in those games - they're not short plays, by any means. I've played through Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami and played some of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and the idea of committing enough time to get through the rest of the series just doesn't appeal to me.

@abe_hikura

But we must never underestimate MS' ability to find a rake to step on

I heard someone say recently that whenever PlayStation shoots itself in the foot, Xbox somehow finds a way to shoot itself in the head.

@Balaam_ This will all be cleared up when Microsoft unveils its new ad campaigns: "This isn't an Xbox", and "But this is".

Anyone who's into 2D platformers and/or metroidvanias, check out the demo for The Eternal Life of Goldman. I can't wait for that game.

My fans are going to go into overdrive.

They say don't put all your eggs in one basket, and Fortnite is one honking big basket.

If I were Epic, I would have kept Fortnite to the core battle royale mode(s), not put the racing and rhythm and Lego fluff into it. Just had a steady stream of content for BR - not too much but just enough - and funnelled money made from that into other games, games that different people want to play. In my opinion, trying to cram as many different games and experiences solely into Fortnite is the mistake here, because if that starts going tits up the whole ship sinks.

@RegnumSolipsi they're a studio that specialises in "adaptations" (their words, not mine; essentially ports and remasters) and assisting other studios with their games. They're one of those studios that are sort of the unsung heroes of games; you rarely hear of them but they low-key touch a hell of a lot of stuff and help get it shipped.

I assume it'll have some way to play physical games, or else years of backwards compatibility will go out the window for some users, which I don't see going over well. At the very least it should follow the PS5 and have somewhere to slot in a disc drive that you can purchase separately.

Milestone does great work. I loved both Hot Wheels Unleashed games, plus "a racer that feels like the result of locking Blur in a room for 12 months with nothing but a Crunchyroll subscription" sounds like heaven to me.

I wondered how long it'd be before we saw more executives go. A shake-up like Spencer and Bond both leaving at the same time was bound to have ripple effects.

My next step will be at Netflix, where I’ll be joining the team to help empower their journey in gaming.

Best of luck, Zhang. You'll need it 😂

I know it's not an Xbox Game Studios game, but Xbox console exclusive The Gunk is down to 99p on Steam right now, which is the stupidest most ridiculously good deal on God's green Earth.

I wonder how exactly Xbox One would hold Forza Horizon 6 back in terms of live-service implementation.

@FraserG Good on you for not trying to spread hyperbolic misinformation by outright calling the Metacritic score for Crimson Desert a "major disappointment". Seriously, the way you addressed the Metacritic rating was the right way to do it.

This is why I prefer Opencritic. It takes every score across all platforms into account.

Cool, I hate it.

I personally don't think that catering to Xbox fans means a return to exclusives and a pivot away from third-party publishing on other systems/marketplaces, and I find it ludicrous that people think doing this would somehow reverse Xbox's fortunes, as if it hadn't been floundering for a decade prior.

Xbox catering to its fans - so, existing customers - wasn't cutting it with Microsoft, hence the pivot. They need to reach new customers, and those potential new customers weren't buying Xboxes. If Xbox needs to third-party publish to stay afloat, then they should do it.

@UnlimitedSevens I miss the old days, when Microsoft would constantly say "Microsoft does not comment on rumours or speculation". We knew where we stood.

I'm still neck deep in Mewgenics; grinding out Act I while breeding cats, because Act II is kicking my arse.

I bought my wife Pokémon Pokopia, and I played around two hours after she went to bed last night. It's slow going at the moment and the state the area is in is giving me anxiety, but I think I'm going to stick with it.

@FraserG Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. And if you say anything bad about it, then we (and by "we", I mean "I") riot.

@Tasuki I heard you can only play as Brock Lesnar two dates a year.

I think it makes sense to hold off on reviews at least a little bit. Marathon's balancing around things such as loot drops and classes might not become evident until someone's spent a good chunk of time with it.

Halo was iconic, but those days are long gone.

A lot of the text is way too small for me and there's no way to change it, so I gave up pretty quickly.

@sixrings true, those games came back. But there's every likelihood they'll go away again. In the case of this collection, I'd bet money on it. They're called Limited Run Games, not In Perpetuity Games 😁

@sixrings it's not that simple, unfortunately.

Step 1: steal underpants
Step 2:
Step 3: profit

Her chair isn't even warm yet and the Internet is already lining up to bully or discredit her over nothing at every opportunity.

Judge her on the decisions she makes, the direction she takes Xbox in and the success of the brand in general. It'll be a few months at the absolute bare minimum before any of that becomes evident, so people need to step back, wait to see how things shake out and - most importantly of all - stop being impulsive childish cretins.

What were the people running Xbox supposed to do though? Shareholders want growth year on year, and catering to existing customers wasn't delivering that growth, so they went where that growth might be. And going back to how things were before might not be so easy, and I very much doubt it'll result in more success than their current multi-platform strategy. It's not like people are - or were ever - tripping over themselves to buy an Xbox.

Oh yeah, Microsoft should definitely buy Bluepoint. That way the studio might end up being shut down twice 🙄

He tried his best, and he was probably the last obstacle standing between Nadella and the Xbox brand imploding.

I maintain that Microsoft/Activision should scrap Call of Duty campaigns entirely and put the resources essentially wasted on something hardly ever plays into the multiplayer, or knock the game back down to $60.

Makes sense to me. Why port it to Series X and S if the next Xbox can play Steam games?

Thomas the Tank Engine of Skyrim fame? Cool!

I will be taking the fight to Cyberstan in Helldivers 2, solving splodgy puzzles in Picross S8 and breeding weird gross cats in Mewgenics. I've been binge watching Superman & Lois most of the week so I haven't done much gaming.

Helldivers 2 in three of the four categories? Nice. Managed democracy reigns supreme.

I've played around 7 hours so far and Mewgenics has already joined my small batch of forever games, alongside The Binding of Isaac, Vampire Survivors and Helldivers 2. God help me when I get it installed on Steam Deck.

@AccessibleDaydream my absolute favourite error message ever was back on Xbox 360, sometimes you'd put a disc in and it would pop up with "please insert this disc into an Xbox 360".

@FraserG is that your setup? If so: Pepsi Max, you're a man after my own heart.

@Royalduder yeah, it's quite sad. If someone doesn't like the look of the gameplay loop or the mechanics of the game, then whatever; that's their perogative. But the comments here have been quite an eye-opener.

If it's at least as good as Horizon 4 and 5, I'll be happy. The new features, cars, etc, are all good points and I'm personally not looking for a seismic leap forward in innovation with this game (although I suspect that I might be in the minority?).

This looks cool. I'll check out that demo, for sure.

I predict The Last of Us: Part I Remastered (a remaster of the game they already made, remastered and remade) and The Last of Us: Part Deux (a remake of the game they already made and remastered). They'll be released on PlayStation 5, PC and Playdate.

@FatGuyInLilCoat @Elbow Ricky-Spanish was my guy. I also miss him.

@Daffy-Duck Operation: Valid Pretext must succeed!

@themightyant do you have any food or potions?

I had a lot of fun with the last Captain Tsubasa game so I'm in.

@eduscxbox almost every news story about Epic over the past however many years has been about their ongoing battle to not give platform holders a cut.

The article mentions how Steam has a Big Picture mode and Xbox has a Full-Screen Experience mode that can be used to make their storefronts more intuitive on Windows 11 devices, but Epic doesn't have anything comparable yet, and the company is "investigating these new opportunities as well".

Epic itself has been saying for years that its store "sucks" (their words, not mine) and has done nigh on bugger all to improve it. Maybe learn to walk before you can run, and get the core user experience to not be so sh*t (my words, not theirs) first?

@Weebleman among other things 🙄

@Trmn8r yes

@Trmn8r it was pretty clear in my comment that I was referring to the goals of Microsoft as a whole - and its moving of goalposts - and not Urquhart specifically.

The hope, Urquhart says, is that Xbox continues to fund riskier projects and values achievements besides strong sales

But I thought Microsoft only valued strong engagement? I can't keep track of how many times those goalposts move.