Markatron84

In the Xbox Spring Sale? Nothing.

HOWEVER, I did buy South of Midnight today on Steam and have just finished chapter 6. Man, I wish I'd taken the plunge on it sooner because it's special.

It feels like there's no clear right path for Xbox going forward. Exclusives are meant to drive console sales, but weren't. Going multi-platform means the potential for more game sales, but doesn't always pan out and opens up the "well, why buy an Xbox?" arguement.

Honestly, if the Xbox console was to go away and Microsoft went to purely third-party publishing on Nintendo, PlayStation and PC, I don't think that would be the worst decision Microsoft's ever made. Even with the amount of money the company has, how long do you keep throwing good money after bad before deciding enough is enough? Xbox has been on the back foot since Xbox One was announced. Maybe it's time to give it up? Imagine the billions they'll probably save in console manufacturing, R&D and marketing.

They could take Fortnite Club or whatever it's called out of GPU for a start. I doubt that came cheap.

Publishers and developers the world over will breathe a gargantuan sigh of relief when GTA VI finally comes out.

"Look sharp, lads! We can release games again!"

@VeganH It boggles the mind that there are still people on Earth who don't own GTA V yet.

@GeeEssEff Coolio, no worries. I'm at work at the moment but I'll drop my friend code somewhere, if anyone wants to add me.

@GeeEssEff I've put 12 hours into it so far and I'm enjoying it for what it is: a way to train Pokémon and battle them. It's not Pokémon Stadium. I wouldn't even really call it a game. It's an app/platform for competitive Pokémon battles; it only having 3v3 singles and 4v4 doubles and not including every Pokémon or held item is testament to this. Competitive Pokémon/VGC has restrictions and it has a meta. I think that a lot of the negativity seems to be stemming from people's pre-conceived notions of what Champions was going to be.

I will be struggling to crack Ultra Ball rank in Pokémon Champions - I'm still experimenting with team compositions and strategies - and also finishing up Hi-Fi Rush.

Forza Horizon (4 or 5)
Master Chief Collection
Psychonauts (1 and 2)
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Tell Me Why
The Gunk

@Tasuki though do bear in mind that some games do override this setting.

I like Invincible, but I'm not liking the art style of the game. Then again, I've only watched a trailer or two and seen a handful of screenshots. Maybe it'll gel more with me when actually playing.

@Fiendish-Beaver @GeeEssEff I've tried to talk my wife into watching Invincible but alas...

I liked the game part of Quantum Break a lot. I don't feel like the TV part really added much but it did give us more Lance Reddick, so it had something going for it.

Probably shouldn't have announced it then, huh?

@Simu001 yeah, Xbox does have a habit of doing that. To be honest, given that Microsoft purchased Undead Labs in 2018 and they've yet to ship a game (State of Decay 2 came out less than a month before the acquisition was announced) and given the current climate, I'm surprised UL hasn't been on the chopping block.

@Simu001 from what I understand, developers label a game as "in alpha" when it's content and feature complete, so the rest of development will be spent finalising art assets, QA testing and other such polishing. This might even mean that the game's not too far off, with any luck; maybe even, dare I say it, as early as next year?

@InterceptorAlpha yeah, if I'm in a play test then I'll fill out whatever feedback forms in the most detail I can, but I don't want to have to fart around in Discord.

@FraserG SOD community 🤣

@Balaam_ I agree. Momentum would be what Xbox has if all the things mentioned in that tweet happen and/or come out and go down well.

Besides, how many times has Xbox had "momentum" only to bork it all up? Bigging up a list of future things as "look guys, Xbox is doing great!" is irresponsible and potentially damaging. Celebrate what Xbox is doing well in the moment, not what might happen.

@ZeD GTA V is Game Pass' on-again off-again boyfriend who's afraid of commitment.

The skin for Forza Horizon 6 seems pointless. Someone will have made a similar or better one and uploaded it within days of the game's release. I have some cool branded user-made liveries I downloaded in Forza games; my favourite being a Tampax branded 2017 Ford Focus RS.

The theme, the tone, the style, it all still comes across as authentically Super Meat Boy, but the gameplay has a slightly uncomfortable edge where it doesn't quite feel right for one reason or another.

This is exactly how I felt after playing the demo. That, and the 3D view makes it difficult to gauge jumps, while some of the camera angles mean scenery obscures the player's view. Super Meat Boy is supposed to be hard but with a 2D side-scroller, you at least always have a clear view of what's going on.

@awp69

Roughly 8/10 is a nice score.

No, 69/100 is a nice score 😏

Show me all the E-Day! Gears 5 feels like it was released a lifetime ago.

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.