Normally I would be sad. The end of an era, one of the best eras in gaming. But honestly in this case I'll be glad, it's been uncomfortable watching him for 2 years be Satyas whipping post, watching him excited for plans that then mysteriously change without warning. Phil has been a great gaming leader and watching him turned into a sock puppet for Nadellas whims is difficult.
Phil had a great idea to save a sunken ship. The market just didn't react to it. But he plugged on. But ever since the man behind the curtain has been pulling the strings i cringe when they too Phil out. I think he can do more for gaming outside Xbox and I hope we don't see the last of him, whatever non Competes there are.
For those hating Phil and Sarah, this isn't their fault. They're the last things holding back the gates against Nadellas battering rams. Once they're gone we get full Microsoft Gaming 365 With Copilot. This is all Nadella. He's done what he's done with every other division. Including surface. Including windows itself. Everything but Office, the golden goose. Nadella is a gift to Microsoft competitors. Apple and Google should Send him fruit baskets. But investors love him because he cashes out the value of the company into their accounts. Booty is an ambitious climber, exactly the type that thrive at ms. He has no ideas, he's just there to support the higher up to whatever changing ends, to get recognized and promoted.
Microsoft has no strategy for anything. They change direction whenever a new executive gains power.
Keep in mind the Ally X was $800 US. In the current PC climate you expect the price to go up so this is the price or actually less than the price I expected Asus (with the Asus tax) to charge but l for the Z2 Ally without the whole Xbox involvement. Bottom line is it's an Asus product not an Xbox product at exactly the price you would expect based on the price of the current model.
Also people laughed at the $800 price of the Ally X, too which was a rediculous price for the same Z1E as every other handheld. Asus is the company charging $3400 MSRP for their ROG version of the $2000 5090. They think they're Apple. Anything with the ROG sub brand is just exorbitantly expensive because it's ROG and people buy it.
As for the next console Phil already said expect to pay more but also they didn't want to go over $1k..... But the was before tariffs and more inflation.
And as for Sony I still feel like they got away with $800 for the pro they'll do it for the 6. Nvidia and amd paved the way that new GPUs should cost 2x as much as old GPUs for a 10% uplift because a data center outbid you on the wafer 1200%.
Welcome to gaming hardware in 2025 and beyond. It's not supposed to get better it's just supposed to double in price and offer interesting form factors. This is the hardware you'll use for life. They can't figure out how to make it go faster, they just shut more current into it and add fans.
@OldGamer999 " like a PS5 or switch 2 where new games are made specifically and only to run on that console."
You mean the PS5 where games are made to run specifically on the console.... And on PC, including the next PC Xbox? 😕. Sony plays coy and will hold some exclusives maybe at least for a a period of time but don't fool yourself. Sony didn't spend half this generation "remakestering" games that happened to coincide with PC launches to train their core teams on PC development, and buy a company that specifically ports to PC for giggles. Both consoles started to become PCs last Gen and both are basically just PCs next Gen. Yes Xbox is more truly PC being Windows, but remember XSX is running Windows already. It's just a question if how much Windows interfaces they include into it vs lock down.
Stick playnite on a preconfigured PC with an Xbox theme and it's virtually indistinguishable from a series X except little issues like logging in. The same thing with an official Xbox launcher is basically the same thing series X already is.
BC for non play everywhere titles is the only actual serious issue. Physical discs, yeah that's an issue. But for digital you're overthinking it. The original Xbox dev kits were literally just off the shelf PCs running nt4. The final hardware wasn't that far off. A PC built into a console is what Xbox originally WAS and the was arguably the best Xbox. 360 was a weird, if profitable, side trek and they've been lost in the woods ever since.
Having jumped totally to PC I really don't see the purpose of consoles anymore, especially now that Nintendo went first with essentially digital only consoles. The only value of console is it's smaller, lower upfront cost, simpler interface. If Xbox can basically do what valve failed at with steam box and create PCs that meet those console benefits, unifying the gaming ecosystem, I truly don't see why anyone would care that it's running PC architecture under the hood vs marginally bespoke hardware. Unless it's in a 60lb ATX case sucking down a kilowatt for $4500.
@themightyant Yeah it's awkward because they're promoting the software like it's special to this hardware but that wouldn't make sense at all, not only just for handheld but for Windows gaming across the board. Which of course is a big windows tentpole. So of course it'll be standard windows features from old Ally to 9950x3d xx90 rigs. If it's not that's just bizarre levels of fail. Even for Microsoft 😛
So I'm assuming all those windows features are universal windows 11. MS could surprise me and bite off their own toes in broad daylight of course.
And I'm sure the AI capability is just from the upgraded SoC. Maybe MS special version added an NPU but I doubt it, the NPU thing hasn't really taken off and this is based around a strong GPU, so I'd be pretty surprised if the wasn't the same on all Z2s, again unless MS specced a separate NPU which isn't impossible because MS had been pushing heavily on that in laptops.
These all seem to be things they've been pushing on the windows side in general and I can't imagine them not standardizing it in PC.
The problem with all that AI/ML push though is how few devs can afford to abandon older hardware any time in the near future. Though on desktop any relevant RTX should be more than capable. (Except for 5050 lol....too soon?)
Definitely nice machine but the messaging is just weird. I'm picturing Phil in an apple store applying Xbox stickers to an iPhone and declaring it the new Xbox iPhone.
Hate to revisit this 2 years later with an Xbox launch but if you don't like jrgs and like FFXIV there's a reason for that: it's not a jrpg. It's not an RPG at all. It's a light combo driven action adventure game.
I like the game a lot myself for what it is, not for what the idiotic naming claims it is. It's not the 16th installment of a legendary RPG series. Is a spinoff action slasher. Which is cool. And it's a great game. But they decided to name it as a mainline series game instead of as the excellent spinoff it is. Which was silly because this could have been the start of a whole spinoff sub series of it's own.
As it is it's like naming a RTS spinoff "Fallout 5". It's a great game. But other than existing in the same universe it has less than nothing in common with the gameplay pillars that make up the rest of the series. It plays more like a Kingdom Hearts game than any FF game. Still a great game but it's a spinoff with a stupid name. They could have called it Ryse 2: Son of Rosaria it would actually be a better fitting name.
Ff7R for all it's faults at least blends action and RPG systems and straddles the line.
(Also just for Ben's benefit: each ff is a unique world so the lore is all unique to this game, it's all new to everyone in this game, ff lore never intersects with other ff lore unless it's a direct sequel like X-2 or XIII trilogy, or VII and Crisis Core.)
@Titntin I think they're probably an obvious middle ground, which is really the same middle ground Shaun Layden was thrown out on his ear for proposing, that would satisfy publisher greed while also increasing consumer value perception and get us eager to part with more money more frequently in smaller increments, which is to just turn back the scope clock. Games used to be much smaller in scope with much more frequent sequels reusing assets for lower prices.
I'm no Harvard MBA but I would think having a $40 or $50 installment every year or two both improves cash flow, consumer sentiment, hype and publicity, and generates overall better sales (people would rather spend $40 3 times a year than $80 once a year), versus having one $80 game every 5-10 years.
But for some reason the whole industry acts like they all decided to hire Molyneaux as consultant emeritus.
Except Nintendo. They issue sequels of small scope reusing assets every 5-10 years for $70 and then sell it again at a higher fps cap for $80 😛
@themightyant lol seriously. If the Xbox handheld is an off the shelf Asus PC with some logos, I'm sure the next home console will be an Alienware PC with Satya's head as the glowing alien jewel.
This whole announcement is so weird. It first I was like "oh cool, is an Asus PC collab, Xbox x PC is really happening" and then I realized, it's literally just the off the shelf Ally 2 exactly as it would have been without the Xbox logo and does nothing different from the regular model and plays only PC games... Just like the regular model.... So what exactly does it have to do with Xbox?
"Never played a FF before? Don't worry! This is not an FF game at all!"....
This video is the most fun thing I've seen all month. The t-shirts, the plush Torgal. The FF8 reference. It's wonderful. Amazed to see Square taking Xbox launch so seriously they hired the voice talent to do a promo 2 years later.
There's a certain point where games price themselves out of their value no matter what budget they assigned to them, and we've crossed it. $70 was too much. $80 is LOL. People defend it "but inflation", but it doesn't matter, that only works if incomes went up to match said inflation. If incomes stagnated long ago and cost of living skyrocketed, $60 is now less affordable than it used to be let alone $80. They're just shrinking the market at this point. Which may work for hardware companies without competitors to just make less and sell less at higher margin, but can't end well for software. It just reinforces people buy less games, buy only annual guaranteed hits that are the same as all the other ones they already know they enjoy, and dedicate to that one evergreen/live service forever and ever. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I just see all announced games as either "I'll try it because it's in GP" or "I'll look at this game in 2-3 years when pricing makes sense." I don't even consider buying new games at all now. While I was never a proponent of it I've found even myself shifting to the pattern of just sticking with a handful of big evergreens forever and ever. The value proposition of new games at new prices, no matter how interesting, just falls short. All these announced games that all want to take up an ever growing part of consumer's ever shrinking disposable income. Then the studio heads seem bewildered that sales were lower than expected. Then the studio gets closed. There's no happy ending to that. By the end of this, CoD, EA Sports, and Genshin Impact will be the only games left.
@Titntin I'm actually shocked to see you pushing back on the price hikes. I expected you'd be someone supporting them. That's good to see
@themightyant Yeah, but that's not really something that needs special hardware to fix, or needs Asus at all, that's a Windows gaming UI mode that would work on any PC including the existing Ally, and I'm certain that whatever gaming UI is on here will be standard Windows and available everywhere. It would be weird if MS introduced an Xbox "app" Windows UI mode for gaming and locked it only to one single piece of hardware. It would basically be Microsoft Playtnite (Oh gawd please don't buy Playnite, Phil!)
A built in friendly "launcher" is a must, and Phil said/hinted it a year or more ago when talking handheld, but assuming that's a standard Windows feature (and it would be madness if it weren't), it still doesn't explain what's special about this hardware? When we heard of an Xbox handheld we were thinking it's unique feature would be the BC to play your whole console library, meaning games that aren't Play Anywhere and on the PC store. But now that it's here, it's really just an existing 3rd party PC model that says Xbox on it. From what they showed, it seems like it's just a co-brand and not unique hardware. Not that it's not great hardware. It just seems like if they send me a free "This is an Xbox" sticker to put on my existing Z1 Ally, it's the same thing but with a faster chip (kind of like what Switch 2 is.....(too soon?))
Already having an Ally (non-Extreme) Z1, and a Legion (Extreme) Z1, I'm looking at this thinking "how is this different than a non-Xbox branded Z2 upgrade"? I would have said cheaper/subsidized/locked into the MS interface, but since the announcement promotes its Windows-ness "freedom" (lol) and all the stores, I don't think it's that either.
It may have a unique component that makes it special as an Xbox, but if it does, I think they forgot to tell us like Iwata presenting WiiU forgetting to show the console. Or there actually isn't one.
It's kind of funny to me especially because a year ago I debated if I should just jump to handheld PCs or wait for the Xbox handheld, and was going to be looking over my shoulder at whatever the Xbox one was like when it came out, and I bought my Ally, only to get to this year and they announce they Xbox handheld and say "surprise! It's just the Ally!"
Honestly thought this was a great show, and the only one this year to have that old E3 feeling a bit. The games were diverse yet big and interesting, there was humor. Where the Sony show was their new sterile format that bored me and was filled with loads on undies, and keighley was just souls-copies, zombies, and online shooter expansions and wannabes, this had a variety of interesting looking games presented well!
So what exactly is the Xbox ROG Ally when it's literally just a normal ROG Ally with an Xbox logo? Is this like the Xbox Quest 3 that's just a Quest 3 with an Xbox logo?
I'm not disappointed, I just don't get how it's any different than buying a non Xbox one.
The presentation was probably the best I've ever seen from Keighley, so a big upgrade to that, at moments it even almost felt like a proper E3. But the content still felt dire, tough with a few bright spots (project century etc.).
People on push are saying the sop was much better but I feel they're both the same. Upgraded presentation from the past but bland content. Though I think Sonys presentation format for me dampened a new moments I would have been more hyped by with a different presentation (Bond.) and unfortunately Xbox caved too that same format now too.
Keighleys show at this point feels like: souls, souls, souls, online shooter season pack, souls, online shooter pass, souls, zombies, something good, souls. Every game is just hideous deformed abominations imitating Fromsoft art style. I used to base my purchasing calendar on E3. These days there's either little I want to purchase or the shows don't think it's important to tell me about them . Though now I'm the $80 games ara I'm waiting 2 years for a good steam sale to buy any of them anyway. I'm the days of $50 Amazon discount releases I bought half the games at E3 before E3 ended. At $80 e3 shows me the games to add to my wishlist to consider in 2028-2030. (Or for pragmata, 2035-2077.)
At one time Nintendo would break up that monotony but no more. At least Keighleys games have Souls. Nintendos new lineup has none at all.
Xbox has had the best show for the past few years now so I have high hopes there if only because they now own half the studios that ever excited me and with game pass I'm actually look at them this year instead of 2029. I still need to actually get into Avowed.
Who could have imagined in 2019 that in 2025 we'd have a $600 Xbox One successor, an $800 PlayStation, a $450 Nintendo that doesn't feel new, $80 games, the most corporate Nintendo product ever at joke prices and $80 budget games to compete with $80 no budget whatsoever games, with no E3 or interesting release schedules, and $3000+ GPUs with missing ROPs? No wonder everyone only cares about zombie apocalypses. It's escapism dreaming of a better reality.
His take feels out of touch. "No killer app", maybe not in the blockbuster sense but when you look at pcvr, particularly sims, is hard not to say there's no killer app. Id go as far as to say msfs is easily the vr killer app, along with dcs, iracing, ams2, elite dangerous. There's killer apps. But it's not in the "pop culture smash hit" context. I like blackley but thinking of content on a context of narrative being the purpose and not freedom feels weirdly like a Sony mindset and not at all like a Microsoft one. Ms has the majority of vrs killer apps, or apps with killer vr potential. Msfs easily. Everything Bethesda including Indiana Jones which is amazing with a Luke Ross vr mod. Avowed is good in uevr but I'm holding off because I'm betting Luke releases the mod for that in a month or two and his is much better performance.
The irony is that if Ms wanted to push vr they're sitting on more vr selling software potential than any other publisher.
Though even 3rd person can be great. Playing Jedi Fallen Order via uevr it feels like a game made for VR.
@Sol4ris Nintendos scheme can only be paid for in gold coins, which can only be obtained at one of their 2 global theme parks which then have different values depending on the day of the week. You buy outdated hardware for too much money and overpriced simple games. Yet the lack of recurring monetization still makes it a better value proposition to the other options, inexplicably.
Atari also has a bright future as a hotel chain. Go, Atari!
This is almost backhanded praise, highlighting how "Xbox" has a bright future because it's found a way to exist outside its platform. Like Sega's bright future. Which is amazing. Unless you've got a library of Dreamcast games and nothing to run them on. If if you just don't want to be left with Sony's pay to play scheme which is all that will remain if you don't want to join Nvidia's pay to play scheme.
@Balaam_ lol. The only thing worse than 100 different subscriptions is when they lock the subscription you want behind bundles that include the other 99.
Started with YouTube TV in 2018. It was $40 a month. Since then they've added Oprah network and HGTV and a thousand other things I don't want, need, or tolerate and to pay for it all they upped the price to $72 last year. And now this month $82. All I want is 6 channels. By next year I'll have to pay $100 to get 150 channels and all I want is 6. And the competitors are basically the same price because it's the publishers pushing the package pricing. Imagine the future of gaming where if you want cod, uncharted, assassin's creed, dragon age, persona, monhun, and GTA, you can choose between 7 different subscription providers that all have different ways of bundling a $200/MO subscription because content consolidation means that getting assassin's creed means having to accept Gollum and Suicide Squad, and getting GTA means taking Avengers and Concord Directors Cut. And Redfall.
@Fenbops While true, I don't think that's really "Xbox". Microsoft gaming existed LONG before Xbox did. Xbox is actually the intruder that stepped on the toes of and basically destroyed Microsoft gaming. Is how we lost amazing studios like Ensemble, lost MSFS for decades, lost Mech Warrior games for decades etc. they even made hardware, the sidewinder controls that still to this day are some of the most sophisticated flight sticks ever made.
None of that is Xbox though. It existed long before Xbox and Xbox actually destroyed it for a long time as they shifted focus to Xbox, killed Microsoft gaming, and tried to force everyone into Xbox.
So I see this as more of an "undo" where they dismantle Xbox and rebuild the Microsoft gaming that Xbox destroyed as though Xbox never happened.
As someone that played me games stuff before Xbox and loathed Xbox og for ruining Ms PC gaming I actually have a certain satisfaction from this, however as I ended up liking Xbox for what it is too, it's only bittersweet revenge.
Of course they're still going to make gaming boxes for the foreseeable, I just don't know if it'll be "Xbox" or Surface Xbox Edition or what.
@OldGamer999 Nah, he's talking "AI, Cloud, Console, PC", those are internal pillars and platforms. They're definitely doing a next console. I just think they're clueless and directionless but doing it anyway.
", we can bring the best of AI innovation, cloud innovation, console innovation [and] PC innovation to build the best games that can be enjoyed by gamers everywhere"
There it is. All the buzzwords are accounted for.
All the share holders who have no idea what any of this even is must be weeping tears of gilded joy on hearing it.
FF is a given. Stellar Blade is likely (devs expected higher sales on PC than PS, I'm sure they'd like to hit every platform while they're at it.) Rise of Ronin is a weird one because there's no PC port mentioned either, but it's a Tecmo game, of course there's going to be ports.
Realistically, there's not a lot of "True" exclusives on either side of the divide these days. A lot of PS's have been purchased exclusive that aren't forever exclusive. Their internal studios haven't had a whole lot of output (and Concord was a dud, and Helldiver's largest market is PC anyway), and Xbox is obviously giving most of their big games to PS. Very different era.
I really don't care if they're redefining Xbox, I just want them to be honest with a roadmap and a strategy to get excited about even in a new direction even if it's a console-less direction. Tell people what to expect and why they should be excited rather than vague, couched "we're redefining everything but it'll all stay the same, don't worry."
Dr Evil here keeps playing games with the customers, and not the kind of games they want to subscribe to Game Pass to play.
I've been obsessed with msfs24, it's basically all I've played the past few weeks, and so much about the design is amazing. But it feels like a public beta. Bugs galore. A DISASTER of a button binding interface (I have a yoke, stick, throttle with panel, rudder. I have to bind every single button individually on each device. And the binding is a giant list of every surface on every aircraft, helicopter, jet, prp, combat all mixed together, and half the controls on the list are duplicative with other controls. Throttle and collective for helo bind to the same thing. As do other controls. Things aren't labeled in the config the same as they are in game. The "melting buildings" really is a mess. And probably not fixable. Manhattan looks like post apocalyptic Manhattan. Landing gear is embedded in the ground. The dialogue is in broken English half the time and the AI voices are a great example of why AI is a bad bet for Microsoft. Can't they use the AI those YouTube videos that "review"products by reading the marketing copy do? Weird pop in. And huge bugs in mission/training.
The early helicopter training, 2 are impassable. The instructor let's off assisting with torque, or cyclic and suddenly the craft shoots backwards and lifts altitude and becomes impossible to control. Next mission where you start with full control that doesn't happen. Then in missions I have no left torque to compensate and no translation drift at all. Did a ferry helo mission where it just stopped recognizing ATC signals, penalized me for ignoring it, and the landing marker had me land in a parking strip next to an abandoned industrial river dock with my vip, then penalized for an unauthorized landing zone, but gave me an A and called it perfect.
Super crazy buggy and that binding menu is unforgivable. And yet I'm addicted to a flight sim with an actual structure and progression to follow, something that sims other than racing always miss.
@Raffles The Omega Apex is rock solid. I ended up buying 2, one for flight, one for racing (flight required those desk clamps with the red lever to lock it on to get it all on). I actually could do it all with the one, but the pedals don't both fit. And my Winwing rudders are wider than the Omega and the foot pedal part sticks into the fold, it's too wide, so I needed to rig them to just sit onto fixed bolts and lift them off when folding. The racing stuff fits fine.
The only thing that' I'd caution with the omega Apex is folding it is ridiculously heavy. The frame is like 28-30lb, then the 11nm DD wheel is another 10-15, then my hydraulic pedals are like 23, and a few pounds for the shifter, cables, so the whole thing is probably 50-70lb to pick up and move around! Not an easy lift to put away even if it does fold pretty compact (though the the pedals protrude straight forward even folded!) Still better than a PlaySeat for storage, but you need the forearms of a real racecar driver to move it around lol.
How much of an upgrade can get wooly. TBH the T300 is really really good for what it is. I don't think the amount of force is a huge issue, it has enough (for small diameter wheels), and honestly feels very good. DD is much better of course but I think it's possible to be happy with the T300. Where the DD comes into play is the reaction time. There's a lag and latency to the T300 because of the nature of belts and pulleys. When you're into a turn and feeling the force steadily it feels fine. It's those smaller prods, bumps, spinouts, etc where it always feels like the force is lagging slightly to the effect, and the "softness" in feel that quickly changes direction (tires losing traction then going into a spin, etc) where it feels disconnected. That's where direct drive shines, because it's instant and full force in those rapid direction changes. For me, playing in VR, it's more highlighted because the immersion is absolute, and that stuff breaks the illusion. It's also why I got the Logitech over, say, Moza, because the much maligned TrueForce, does add to immersion and in VR, immersion is king.
If you're just looking to race around with something that has some good feel and can make turns feel good etc, I think the T300 is more than great for the money and really does the job. If you're looking for either maximally competitive racing online (not me), then gear tuning just like real racing is everything on the track, and/or if you're looking for maximal immersion (me) or large diameter wheels (MPI makes a 15" full size stock car wheel for the Logitech, I have one on order!) then high force matters and DD nuisance matters.
The Logitech (or any DD) is a huge upgrade to the T300, but where the difference shines is in the nuanced quick feedback moments more than the high tension big turns, and it might not be that big a difference if you just want to feel the G's when turning.
Is this really a 100% cloud-streaming-only game that doesn't even use local rendering hardware, or does it still use the local hardware? For a game that includes VR support, cloud-streaming-only is a REALLY questionable decision. Even weirder that they partnered with Pimax for the official VR which is a very high res platform, which would make cloud streaming only with compression even more dubious.
@Sol76 You were flying Boeings weren't you? That's all part of the accurate detailed simulation, nothing is wrong with your game.
@GamingFan4Lyf It's weird, you'd think MS could offer a good fee to beat competitors (20% instead of 30% or something.) And I doubt there's a GP requirement, I think it's the other way around, GP games have to be on Windows Store because it's necessary to function, therefore the only games that end up there are the ones with GP because they have to be there for GP. You'd think if they're on Epic they'd want to be on Windows too....it's not like anybody buys anything on either, lol. I think it's just that Windows store has so few users and poor sales metrics (who BUYS games on Windows store by choice unless they have a GP save or an Xbox?) there's just no point.
I love GoG, but there's basically nothing on it. Ironically Horizon Zero Dawn, some of the Yakuza games but not all, BG3, and of course CDPR games, but the rest is all for old stuff. And I think that's the thing it was meant exclusively for retro games. A lot of people got annoyed when they tried to make it for mainstream games and it wasn't financially working great for them, meanwhile it's the best place for retro games because unlike steam they test/patch them. Most big publishers won't touch DRM-free with a 1000ft pole. Amazed Sony is one that did!
Seriously though the good era was when the One X launched and Xbox seemed to be coming back swinging. Sadly that lasted, what, 2.5 years? It was a great 2.5 years though.
@Balaam_ Is the Series era like the 3rd world bus terminal in the desert you have to go through after you got out of the valley, then?
MS finally figured out how to win the console wars. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I'm not a COD player, only time I've ever played CoD was the 2 WiiU ones, Ghosts, and I guess it was MW2? BLOPS2? Can't remember just because I was desperate for WiiU games. Tried the free one Sony gave out at Layden's last E3 and could barely be bothered with it, it bored me to tears. Trying this one just because it's "free" on GP-PC, and I'm really enjoying the campaign. I wouldn't pay $70 for this. I wouldn't pay $40 for this. I'd questionably pay $25 for this. For $13, it's a good old time. Feels like a Naughty Dog game with better shooting mechanics. You don't have to use your head much, just sit back and watch the colors popcorn fun for idle entertainment kind of fun. Although this might be the campiest thing I've ever seen, and I say that as an 80's and 90's sci-fi fan........
@LogicStrikesAgain To be fair, it's a long term thing. People aren't all going to sell their PS and buy an XB just because one game is on CoD. The strategy has to revolve around building a long term value proposition so that when people are shopping for their NEXT console...PS6, PS7, even, they stop and think of Xbox having more value for them instead.
Only problem with that strategy is MS has the attention span of a goldfish and will get tired of waiting and move onto a different one by the time any payoff could happen.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @GamingFan4Lyf You would think, you would REALLY think, they would fix their Windows Store. It's not just that the games are locked up (which is insane), but also that it's missing most games so you couldn't chose that platform for most games even if you wanted to and would have to use Steam or Epic anyway, so why not just use it always? And beyond that is the fact that it's just flat out freaking broken most of the time and ends up with all kinds of DRM issues due to some magic server error that doesn't show up on the Xbox server status page as a problem, but always fixes itself over time. It's just such a bad platform.
That's where GPPC kicks in. You start the game free on Windows store and then your save is there and you don't switch later. I think that's its secret purpose
That having been said, IMO BO6 is the perfect game to still get on GP and Windows Store, it's a short and sweet one and done campaign, modding isn't super huge on CoD anyway because the main show is MP which can't be modded much due to anticheat, and it's a game that's good for one year before the MP moves onto the next.
Having Switched to GPPC from GPU I got to play BLOPS6 for $13, seems like a perfect game for the service if you're not a hardcore CoD online player. Not keen on the 200+GB install that forces you to install MW3 and WZ and the icon for the launcher shows up as WW2 though before you can later remove them though. Windows Store is a mess.
@Raffles we have the same keyboards! The Rii is my daily login, mod/vr config driver, and I take out the Logitech if I have to do more heavy setup (Skyrim modding 😂).
I didn't get a hard seat cockpit, no room. But my couch is about the right height anyway and isn't going anywhere so I got a GT Omega Apex stand. The thing is rock solid. I originally just had at Thrustmaster T300 which was honestly great, but upgraded to a Logitech Pro (was looking at Moza R12 but people raved about Trueforce in supported games for immersion, and for VR, immersion rather than force is more important to me. Plus most reviews said that the ffb quality in the Logitech was better despite its huge profile for a direct drive. The thing weighs like a sandbag. The only negatives are it's huge compared to everything else for an 11nm and no fancy first party wheels which isn't important to me.
Ironically I talked about the pimax and they just had a presentation today with a lower cost and 2 year subscription for payment and are taking orders now. Doesn't have the OLED bundle though, looks like that'll be sold totally separate but the same price it was going to be in the bundle. I might bite lol
Yeah wukong vr even on quest strains the GPU hard. Can't get 90fps at all on quest 3. Can't imagine on>8k pimax lol. And then there's Dragons Dogma2 in VR 😂
Yeah injection is rough. Basically double rendering (two rendering cameras) also at insane resolution, and also at insane fps, and also can't use tricks like frame Gen, and the games don't let you turn all the stuff off. It's very imperfect. But being able to play aaa(a) games in VR, it's still so worth it. Doesn't work with everything but either true vr mods or "Giant simulated 3dtv" modes like vorpx still make flat screens seem dated.
@Xbox_Dashboard Yeah, the idea is great but IDK what metrics they had thinking this wasn't going to happen. A queue isn't bad given all mmos use it but it's brutal anyway.
Otoh this could be factored in. Using FFXIV as an example you just can't really get in at all and it's a mess whenever a big expansion releases and then a few weeks later it's back to normal. It's possible they expected this at launch and expect numbers to settle quickly.
Still disappointing either way. Was definitely looking forward to this one. Might as well just start downloading 2000 again.
Edit: could be worse, they have the inverse problem if most service games today, too much demand, not not enough capacity. Crystal Dynamics, Firewallk, and Rocksteady must be watching this, drooling 😂
@Raffles Lol, yeah I find it hilarious how many "tech enthusiasts" seem to have a complete lack of awareness of current computer tech, and are a decade or two out of touch. It's like people arguing over which fancy microwave makes you a top chef 😂
Yeah I have an unorthodox setup, where I'm not a desk gamer, left that behind ages ago. It's fun when you're a school kid, it's not fun when you spend all day every day at a desk. But I'm near sighted, and would rather not wear glasses just to play games, and even on the TV across the room, it's still too far/small to see proper detail and text, so I bring it up close and have a 27" 4k HDR monitor on a diy swivel mount on a microphone boom pole that just swing around in front of the couch lol. And I have one of those little controller sized wireless keyboard/track pad units that just sits with my controller. Works perfectly!
Though these days I'm using my VR more than the normal monitor. And if doing sims I have to drag the "folding" race or fight stand out (lol, folding is still bulky and weights like 65lb with all the gear on it!). Regular VR gaming I just grab my hmd and controllers and away I go. No TV/monitor needed.
Playnite is a drug. That and RGB software if you have rgb. I've spent whole nights just playing playnite 😂 I use it on my ally/legion on full screen. I intended to on the big rig, but my frequent use of vr injectors and messing with racing/flight peripheral tools, I found it was too often in the way when I needed to get to the desktop, so I'm just using desktop mode now, but full screen is so nice. Before I started using it I was going crazy with gog, steam, Xbox, ubicon ect, ea, epic, and double-buying too often!
Lol, weeeeeelll, I went just a teeeensy bit overboard and bought a 7800x3d and 4090 😂. I wasn't going to. Swore up and down I'd never buy those absurd cards, and for straight pancake games there's not a chance I ever would, the thing is ridiculous overkill for everything. But because I'm big into VR injection which is EXTREMELY punishing on a GPU, I kind of had to, and, even 4090 is insufficient there. It's all brute force.
I decimated finances and probably can't afford the next upgrade though. Technically I'd need a 5090 to go with my original intention of getting a Pimax Crystal Super (>4k x2... Something like 9k native) but having also invested in the racing and flight rig I should probably be done with spending on anything for the next half decade though! Maaay still get the Pimax because I do have the reservation already. But will have to make it sing on the 4090 for years , even though the say the super isn't really much better than light on current cards due to the display port bandwidth limit.
I probably won't upgrade the pc for quite some years!
@Raffles Absolutely loving it. So much more polished than it was in 2008 that's for sure!
Where it gets cumbersome is simply the sheer number of stores I'm using plus the mandatory ubi and ea launcher etc, but that's just the price of bargain hunting! Plus the sheer number of peripherals now (Sim wheel, pedals, shifter, flight stick, rudder pedals, throttle, yoke, and then switched brands of each, plus vr headset and multiple "vr injector" packages to run non vr games in VR, etc) plus mod managers. So a lot of software involved but that's all for optional extras you don't get on console to begin with. Remove all that is it's smooth sailing. Only crash I've had not related to forcing vr into non vr games, is blops6 lol, curse you Xbox! Plus drm being down and unable to launch things with nonsense errors..... Which is only an Xbox store thing lol. (You can now assign primary pc just like on console, though, they just added that )
I'm not using a TV specifically but I didn't use a TV for console either, I play everything on a monitor, close up, but I have it running through the home theater HDMI hookups anyway. A monitor is just a TV without all the fancy features, it's not like the old VESA days where monitors and TVs are completely different.
@Xbox_Dashboard You'd think MS could figure it out better with all their server capacity. I remember this happened to EA with Sim City ages and ages ago and they straightened it out, but it was a mess of a launch. IDK how MS managed that again.
I own MSFS2020 on Steam, and was going to play 2024 on GP, been waiting for it and for my cockpit to come together as I have my rudder pedals sitting on the couch right now, but maybe I'll end up just having to do 2020 after all with it instead of the new game.
If only they'd had a $50 Early Access release and we could have not played for more money!
@Banjo- I was waiting for it for it for years....so many years I've now switched to PC and changed from GPU to GPPC and can't use it anymore!
It's cool that they're finally adding it though. Someday I may have a use for it, though I think - might actually recommend it to people. In my case since I've now amassed a large PC library, if I wanted to stream it, even though I still have a big Xbox library forever, I think I'd probably do better with Geforce Now for steraming if it's supported. But, there could be titles supported on one and not the other, so it could still come in handy at some point.
@S1ayeR74 They've all but confirmed it's a real handheld, not a streaming device, and have talked about it in context with Ally/Legion etc, so I think that's a firm bet there. They're not going for the Portal/phone/G-Cloud market on this one, they're going for the Ally market. Which is smart, and there's a market for it for sure (the PC portables are doing particularly well in Asia.)
But late to the party is the big problem. Steam Deck into Ally was really the big push into the new handheld world, and launching today would put Xbox in a competitive place still, but launching "in a few years" after all the above have had one or more refreshes plus Switch 2, just seems like such incredibly late timing. I bet it will be an excellent product that just struggles to make it into the the market because it's too late. A classic MS problem.
@HonestHick I don't think it's easy to see MS' plan because I think they don't actually have one. They just go whatever way the winds are blowing at the moment.
Sony's long term is precarious. They're in great shape so long as they stay a monopoly platform because they can skim 30% off most of the industry by doing nothing, just like Apple. That's a good model. The problem isd they've set themselves up to be knocked out of being the default platform by a challenger who intends to try hard to do so. Right now there isn't one, so they're fine. But by the time one pops up it's too late. If they tip away from being the default place for the masses to play games their model irreparably crumbles, so they need to ensure status quo forever.
MS....I still don't think they have an actual plan. They just keep their fingers in the air always to see what seems like a good plan for this quarter.
@themightyant Tech may have slowed down but I don't buy this line that a lot of tech companies have been putting out there (Nvidia...) that we're basically at the end of tech so every advancement in tech just gets more and more and more expensive forever, where instead of a $1500 computer just getting faster and faster every few years, a $1500 PC is always the exact same spec for the next 10,000 years, and each faster one will add another $500 to the price for each increment forever. Nvidia's tried to push that narrative. I don't buy it. If we're really at the end of tech, and price to dollar baseline is now fixed forever and the only direction is to add ever more for ever higher prices until we start reaching government contractor pricing for the masses, I think that's a different way of saying the tech economy is now permanently over, the tech industry will collapse, and it's now all a big old datacenter mainframe circle jerk forever. And I'm not buying that.
That said we're also at a weird point where we have these akward products where for every practical measure shouldn't exist but they keep ending up in this "there's a market for it" place, which is awkward. That includes the absurdly priced video cards (I'm excluding xx90 because that's a different situation where, while there's a gaming market for it, a big chunk of its sales is actually commercial/video editing/streamer sales where it's a far cheaper alternative than the actual commercial parts, so some of its success lies, unfortunately, in it being a budget part for a commercial market.)
I do think the greatest threat to the console market is the console market. This idea of escalating prices - paying more and more isn't how the console market has operated or what has really built its market. Being an affordable packaged box for all is what drove the console market, and the direction prices are implied to go for successive generations, I can see console pushing out much of its own market chasing some holy grail (or at least pushing it to Nintendo), If tech really has stalled without just paying more and more, I can see all but the core market losing interest in consoles, especially each younger generation for the long term, and then I can see other avenues appealing to the core.
PS5 Pro is an...interesting experiment because one of the biggest things they've marketed it for is for how great it plays your OLD games. And so much of the coverage is about what it does for old games. And where the console business relies on razor and blades sales, where software sales is the goal, that seems like a really poor way to introduce hardware.
I also do think (and I think this is what MS wanted to avoid) the whole mid-gen cycle may seem good, at initial sales, but what they're mainly doing is re-selling to the same early adopters and then filling the used market with inventory cannibalizing new normal sales and ironically reducing price expectations over time. I suspect that will have an effect on launch sales for the next generation model too where, again it'll primarily sell only to the early adopters.
OTOH, I also think I no longer understand Sony's new market, because it seems to be an Apple-esque fomo cult of uninformed buyers with zero impulse control, who will spend anything on hardware and nothing on software.
@S1ayeR74 In theory they'd get the hardware right, and the price right so that it's still theoretically viable, but, yeah, I agree, it's a long enough wait that I think it will by then seem irrelevant in the market of existing handhelds. Unless Asus keeps driving prices up into LOLland so that they look uncompetitive. They already have an $800 handheld, if they stay there and Deck and XHeld are half the price, it will still be viable.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah but overall the first party, even with major releases totals around 10% at best. That's not to say it's insignificant sales for SOFTWARE (though it is to say it's insufficient sales of software which is why they're seeking the PC market to bolster it), however, keeping in mind a lot of the people that buy one of their first party games is likely the same market that buys multiple of their first party games, even 10% of software sales is likely at best really representing 5% of the actual install base, I.E. the games have a lot of overlap so not all of the sales represent unique customers.) Which is to say 90-95% of the actual console ecosystem customers aren't really interested in the first party offerings at all on either platform.
No doubt both companies software plans and both companies being "out of touch with fans" is based on the fact that the number crunchers realized the exclusives aren't really a factor in their overall business strategies on platform anymore.
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Re: Rumour: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Could Step Down After Next-Gen Console Launch
Normally I would be sad. The end of an era, one of the best eras in gaming. But honestly in this case I'll be glad, it's been uncomfortable watching him for 2 years be Satyas whipping post, watching him excited for plans that then mysteriously change without warning. Phil has been a great gaming leader and watching him turned into a sock puppet for Nadellas whims is difficult.
Phil had a great idea to save a sunken ship. The market just didn't react to it. But he plugged on. But ever since the man behind the curtain has been pulling the strings i cringe when they too Phil out. I think he can do more for gaming outside Xbox and I hope we don't see the last of him, whatever non Competes there are.
For those hating Phil and Sarah, this isn't their fault. They're the last things holding back the gates against Nadellas battering rams. Once they're gone we get full Microsoft Gaming 365 With Copilot. This is all Nadella. He's done what he's done with every other division. Including surface. Including windows itself. Everything but Office, the golden goose. Nadella is a gift to Microsoft competitors. Apple and Google should Send him fruit baskets. But investors love him because he cashes out the value of the company into their accounts. Booty is an ambitious climber, exactly the type that thrive at ms. He has no ideas, he's just there to support the higher up to whatever changing ends, to get recognized and promoted.
Microsoft has no strategy for anything. They change direction whenever a new executive gains power.
Re: ROG Xbox Ally Gets Price & Release Date Info In 'Exclusive' Report
Keep in mind the Ally X was $800 US. In the current PC climate you expect the price to go up so this is the price or actually less than the price I expected Asus (with the Asus tax) to charge but l for the Z2 Ally without the whole Xbox involvement. Bottom line is it's an Asus product not an Xbox product at exactly the price you would expect based on the price of the current model.
Also people laughed at the $800 price of the Ally X, too which was a rediculous price for the same Z1E as every other handheld. Asus is the company charging $3400 MSRP for their ROG version of the $2000 5090. They think they're Apple. Anything with the ROG sub brand is just exorbitantly expensive because it's ROG and people buy it.
As for the next console Phil already said expect to pay more but also they didn't want to go over $1k..... But the was before tariffs and more inflation.
And as for Sony I still feel like they got away with $800 for the pro they'll do it for the 6. Nvidia and amd paved the way that new GPUs should cost 2x as much as old GPUs for a 10% uplift because a data center outbid you on the wafer 1200%.
Welcome to gaming hardware in 2025 and beyond. It's not supposed to get better it's just supposed to double in price and offer interesting form factors. This is the hardware you'll use for life. They can't figure out how to make it go faster, they just shut more current into it and add fans.
Re: Xbox First-Party Handheld Plans 'Essentially Cancelled', Claims Report
@OldGamer999 " like a PS5 or switch 2 where new games are made specifically and only to run on that console."
You mean the PS5 where games are made to run specifically on the console.... And on PC, including the next PC Xbox? 😕. Sony plays coy and will hold some exclusives maybe at least for a a period of time but don't fool yourself. Sony didn't spend half this generation "remakestering" games that happened to coincide with PC launches to train their core teams on PC development, and buy a company that specifically ports to PC for giggles. Both consoles started to become PCs last Gen and both are basically just PCs next Gen. Yes Xbox is more truly PC being Windows, but remember XSX is running Windows already. It's just a question if how much Windows interfaces they include into it vs lock down.
Stick playnite on a preconfigured PC with an Xbox theme and it's virtually indistinguishable from a series X except little issues like logging in. The same thing with an official Xbox launcher is basically the same thing series X already is.
BC for non play everywhere titles is the only actual serious issue. Physical discs, yeah that's an issue. But for digital you're overthinking it. The original Xbox dev kits were literally just off the shelf PCs running nt4. The final hardware wasn't that far off. A PC built into a console is what Xbox originally WAS and the was arguably the best Xbox. 360 was a weird, if profitable, side trek and they've been lost in the woods ever since.
Having jumped totally to PC I really don't see the purpose of consoles anymore, especially now that Nintendo went first with essentially digital only consoles. The only value of console is it's smaller, lower upfront cost, simpler interface. If Xbox can basically do what valve failed at with steam box and create PCs that meet those console benefits, unifying the gaming ecosystem, I truly don't see why anyone would care that it's running PC architecture under the hood vs marginally bespoke hardware. Unless it's in a 60lb ATX case sucking down a kilowatt for $4500.
Re: No, The ROG Xbox Ally Handheld Doesn't Play Native Console Games
@themightyant Yeah it's awkward because they're promoting the software like it's special to this hardware but that wouldn't make sense at all, not only just for handheld but for Windows gaming across the board. Which of course is a big windows tentpole. So of course it'll be standard windows features from old Ally to 9950x3d xx90 rigs. If it's not that's just bizarre levels of fail. Even for Microsoft 😛
So I'm assuming all those windows features are universal windows 11. MS could surprise me and bite off their own toes in broad daylight of course.
And I'm sure the AI capability is just from the upgraded SoC. Maybe MS special version added an NPU but I doubt it, the NPU thing hasn't really taken off and this is based around a strong GPU, so I'd be pretty surprised if the wasn't the same on all Z2s, again unless MS specced a separate NPU which isn't impossible because MS had been pushing heavily on that in laptops.
These all seem to be things they've been pushing on the windows side in general and I can't imagine them not standardizing it in PC.
The problem with all that AI/ML push though is how few devs can afford to abandon older hardware any time in the near future. Though on desktop any relevant RTX should be more than capable. (Except for 5050 lol....too soon?)
Definitely nice machine but the messaging is just weird. I'm picturing Phil in an apple store applying Xbox stickers to an iPhone and declaring it the new Xbox iPhone.
Re: Opinion: I've Never Liked JRPGs, But Xbox's New FF16 Demo Has Me Hooked
Hate to revisit this 2 years later with an Xbox launch but if you don't like jrgs and like FFXIV there's a reason for that: it's not a jrpg. It's not an RPG at all. It's a light combo driven action adventure game.
I like the game a lot myself for what it is, not for what the idiotic naming claims it is. It's not the 16th installment of a legendary RPG series. Is a spinoff action slasher. Which is cool. And it's a great game. But they decided to name it as a mainline series game instead of as the excellent spinoff it is. Which was silly because this could have been the start of a whole spinoff sub series of it's own.
As it is it's like naming a RTS spinoff "Fallout 5". It's a great game. But other than existing in the same universe it has less than nothing in common with the gameplay pillars that make up the rest of the series. It plays more like a Kingdom Hearts game than any FF game. Still a great game but it's a spinoff with a stupid name. They could have called it Ryse 2: Son of Rosaria it would actually be a better fitting name.
Ff7R for all it's faults at least blends action and RPG systems and straddles the line.
(Also just for Ben's benefit: each ff is a unique world so the lore is all unique to this game, it's all new to everyone in this game, ff lore never intersects with other ff lore unless it's a direct sequel like X-2 or XIII trilogy, or VII and Crisis Core.)
Re: Xbox Officially Has Its First $80 Game, And It Won't Be The Last
@Titntin I think they're probably an obvious middle ground, which is really the same middle ground Shaun Layden was thrown out on his ear for proposing, that would satisfy publisher greed while also increasing consumer value perception and get us eager to part with more money more frequently in smaller increments, which is to just turn back the scope clock. Games used to be much smaller in scope with much more frequent sequels reusing assets for lower prices.
I'm no Harvard MBA but I would think having a $40 or $50 installment every year or two both improves cash flow, consumer sentiment, hype and publicity, and generates overall better sales (people would rather spend $40 3 times a year than $80 once a year), versus having one $80 game every 5-10 years.
But for some reason the whole industry acts like they all decided to hire Molyneaux as consultant emeritus.
Except Nintendo. They issue sequels of small scope reusing assets every 5-10 years for $70 and then sell it again at a higher fps cap for $80 😛
Re: No, The ROG Xbox Ally Handheld Doesn't Play Native Console Games
@themightyant lol seriously. If the Xbox handheld is an off the shelf Asus PC with some logos, I'm sure the next home console will be an Alienware PC with Satya's head as the glowing alien jewel.
This whole announcement is so weird. It first I was like "oh cool, is an Asus PC collab, Xbox x PC is really happening" and then I realized, it's literally just the off the shelf Ally 2 exactly as it would have been without the Xbox logo and does nothing different from the regular model and plays only PC games... Just like the regular model.... So what exactly does it have to do with Xbox?
Re: Square Enix Unveils 'Possibly' The Largest Xbox Series X Ever Made
OMG It's almost as big as a PS5!
"Never played a FF before? Don't worry! This is not an FF game at all!"....
This video is the most fun thing I've seen all month. The t-shirts, the plush Torgal. The FF8 reference. It's wonderful. Amazed to see Square taking Xbox launch so seriously they hired the voice talent to do a promo 2 years later.
Re: Xbox Officially Has Its First $80 Game, And It Won't Be The Last
There's a certain point where games price themselves out of their value no matter what budget they assigned to them, and we've crossed it. $70 was too much. $80 is LOL. People defend it "but inflation", but it doesn't matter, that only works if incomes went up to match said inflation. If incomes stagnated long ago and cost of living skyrocketed, $60 is now less affordable than it used to be let alone $80. They're just shrinking the market at this point. Which may work for hardware companies without competitors to just make less and sell less at higher margin, but can't end well for software. It just reinforces people buy less games, buy only annual guaranteed hits that are the same as all the other ones they already know they enjoy, and dedicate to that one evergreen/live service forever and ever. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I just see all announced games as either "I'll try it because it's in GP" or "I'll look at this game in 2-3 years when pricing makes sense." I don't even consider buying new games at all now. While I was never a proponent of it I've found even myself shifting to the pattern of just sticking with a handful of big evergreens forever and ever. The value proposition of new games at new prices, no matter how interesting, just falls short. All these announced games that all want to take up an ever growing part of consumer's ever shrinking disposable income. Then the studio heads seem bewildered that sales were lower than expected. Then the studio gets closed. There's no happy ending to that. By the end of this, CoD, EA Sports, and Genshin Impact will be the only games left.
@Titntin I'm actually shocked to see you pushing back on the price hikes. I expected you'd be someone supporting them. That's good to see
Re: No, The ROG Xbox Ally Handheld Doesn't Play Native Console Games
@themightyant Yeah, but that's not really something that needs special hardware to fix, or needs Asus at all, that's a Windows gaming UI mode that would work on any PC including the existing Ally, and I'm certain that whatever gaming UI is on here will be standard Windows and available everywhere. It would be weird if MS introduced an Xbox "app" Windows UI mode for gaming and locked it only to one single piece of hardware. It would basically be Microsoft Playtnite (Oh gawd please don't buy Playnite, Phil!)
A built in friendly "launcher" is a must, and Phil said/hinted it a year or more ago when talking handheld, but assuming that's a standard Windows feature (and it would be madness if it weren't), it still doesn't explain what's special about this hardware? When we heard of an Xbox handheld we were thinking it's unique feature would be the BC to play your whole console library, meaning games that aren't Play Anywhere and on the PC store. But now that it's here, it's really just an existing 3rd party PC model that says Xbox on it. From what they showed, it seems like it's just a co-brand and not unique hardware. Not that it's not great hardware. It just seems like if they send me a free "This is an Xbox" sticker to put on my existing Z1 Ally, it's the same thing but with a faster chip (kind of like what Switch 2 is.....(too soon?))
Already having an Ally (non-Extreme) Z1, and a Legion (Extreme) Z1, I'm looking at this thinking "how is this different than a non-Xbox branded Z2 upgrade"? I would have said cheaper/subsidized/locked into the MS interface, but since the announcement promotes its Windows-ness "freedom" (lol) and all the stores, I don't think it's that either.
It may have a unique component that makes it special as an Xbox, but if it does, I think they forgot to tell us like Iwata presenting WiiU forgetting to show the console. Or there actually isn't one.
It's kind of funny to me especially because a year ago I debated if I should just jump to handheld PCs or wait for the Xbox handheld, and was going to be looking over my shoulder at whatever the Xbox one was like when it came out, and I bought my Ally, only to get to this year and they announce they Xbox handheld and say "surprise! It's just the Ally!"
Re: Reaction: Xbox Games Showcase 2025 Was Just OK, But Next Year Should Be Amazing
Honestly thought this was a great show, and the only one this year to have that old E3 feeling a bit. The games were diverse yet big and interesting, there was humor. Where the Sony show was their new sterile format that bored me and was filled with loads on undies, and keighley was just souls-copies, zombies, and online shooter expansions and wannabes, this had a variety of interesting looking games presented well!
Re: No, The ROG Xbox Ally Handheld Doesn't Play Native Console Games
So what exactly is the Xbox ROG Ally when it's literally just a normal ROG Ally with an Xbox logo? Is this like the Xbox Quest 3 that's just a Quest 3 with an Xbox logo?
I'm not disappointed, I just don't get how it's any different than buying a non Xbox one.
Re: Poll: How Would You Grade The Summer Game Fest 2025 Showcase?
The presentation was probably the best I've ever seen from Keighley, so a big upgrade to that, at moments it even almost felt like a proper E3. But the content still felt dire, tough with a few bright spots (project century etc.).
People on push are saying the sop was much better but I feel they're both the same. Upgraded presentation from the past but bland content. Though I think Sonys presentation format for me dampened a new moments I would have been more hyped by with a different presentation (Bond.) and unfortunately Xbox caved too that same format now too.
Keighleys show at this point feels like: souls, souls, souls, online shooter season pack, souls, online shooter pass, souls, zombies, something good, souls. Every game is just hideous deformed abominations imitating Fromsoft art style. I used to base my purchasing calendar on E3. These days there's either little I want to purchase or the shows don't think it's important to tell me about them . Though now I'm the $80 games ara I'm waiting 2 years for a good steam sale to buy any of them anyway. I'm the days of $50 Amazon discount releases I bought half the games at E3 before E3 ended. At $80 e3 shows me the games to add to my wishlist to consider in 2028-2030. (Or for pragmata, 2035-2077.)
At one time Nintendo would break up that monotony but no more. At least Keighleys games have Souls. Nintendos new lineup has none at all.
Xbox has had the best show for the past few years now so I have high hopes there if only because they now own half the studios that ever excited me and with game pass I'm actually look at them this year instead of 2029. I still need to actually get into Avowed.
Who could have imagined in 2019 that in 2025 we'd have a $600 Xbox One successor, an $800 PlayStation, a $450 Nintendo that doesn't feel new, $80 games, the most corporate Nintendo product ever at joke prices and $80 budget games to compete with $80 no budget whatsoever games, with no E3 or interesting release schedules, and $3000+ GPUs with missing ROPs? No wonder everyone only cares about zombie apocalypses. It's escapism dreaming of a better reality.
Re: Xbox Co-Creator Calls VR 'Disappointing' As Sony Slashes Price Of PSVR2
His take feels out of touch. "No killer app", maybe not in the blockbuster sense but when you look at pcvr, particularly sims, is hard not to say there's no killer app. Id go as far as to say msfs is easily the vr killer app, along with dcs, iracing, ams2, elite dangerous. There's killer apps. But it's not in the "pop culture smash hit" context. I like blackley but thinking of content on a context of narrative being the purpose and not freedom feels weirdly like a Sony mindset and not at all like a Microsoft one. Ms has the majority of vrs killer apps, or apps with killer vr potential. Msfs easily. Everything Bethesda including Indiana Jones which is amazing with a Luke Ross vr mod. Avowed is good in uevr but I'm holding off because I'm betting Luke releases the mod for that in a month or two and his is much better performance.
The irony is that if Ms wanted to push vr they're sitting on more vr selling software potential than any other publisher.
Though even 3rd person can be great. Playing Jedi Fallen Order via uevr it feels like a game made for VR.
Re: Xbox Is Getting A New 'Gibson Les Paul' Guitar Controller This Year
Well, at least now you can Play Authentic(TM)!
Waiting for the inevitable Gibson x Nvidia crossover. 33590, only one MILLION dollars.
Re: Xbox Is Set Up For A 'Bright' Future, Suggests Industry Analyst
@Sol4ris Nintendos scheme can only be paid for in gold coins, which can only be obtained at one of their 2 global theme parks which then have different values depending on the day of the week. You buy outdated hardware for too much money and overpriced simple games. Yet the lack of recurring monetization still makes it a better value proposition to the other options, inexplicably.
Re: Xbox Is Set Up For A 'Bright' Future, Suggests Industry Analyst
Atari also has a bright future as a hotel chain. Go, Atari!
This is almost backhanded praise, highlighting how "Xbox" has a bright future because it's found a way to exist outside its platform. Like Sega's bright future. Which is amazing. Unless you've got a library of Dreamcast games and nothing to run them on. If if you just don't want to be left with Sony's pay to play scheme which is all that will remain if you don't want to join Nvidia's pay to play scheme.
Re: Pure Xbox's Game Of The Year 2024: The Results You Didn't See
Wow a jrpg beat star wars and dragon age on Xbox. It's a new day.
Playing Indy now and am shocked how good it is.
Re: SEGA Is Reportedly Considering Its Own Gaming Subscription Service
@Balaam_ lol. The only thing worse than 100 different subscriptions is when they lock the subscription you want behind bundles that include the other 99.
Started with YouTube TV in 2018. It was $40 a month. Since then they've added Oprah network and HGTV and a thousand other things I don't want, need, or tolerate and to pay for it all they upped the price to $72 last year. And now this month $82. All I want is 6 channels. By next year I'll have to pay $100 to get 150 channels and all I want is 6. And the competitors are basically the same price because it's the publishers pushing the package pricing. Imagine the future of gaming where if you want cod, uncharted, assassin's creed, dragon age, persona, monhun, and GTA, you can choose between 7 different subscription providers that all have different ways of bundling a $200/MO subscription because content consolidation means that getting assassin's creed means having to accept Gollum and Suicide Squad, and getting GTA means taking Avengers and Concord Directors Cut. And Redfall.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down Almost 30% In The US Compared To 2023
@Fenbops While true, I don't think that's really "Xbox". Microsoft gaming existed LONG before Xbox did. Xbox is actually the intruder that stepped on the toes of and basically destroyed Microsoft gaming. Is how we lost amazing studios like Ensemble, lost MSFS for decades, lost Mech Warrior games for decades etc. they even made hardware, the sidewinder controls that still to this day are some of the most sophisticated flight sticks ever made.
None of that is Xbox though. It existed long before Xbox and Xbox actually destroyed it for a long time as they shifted focus to Xbox, killed Microsoft gaming, and tried to force everyone into Xbox.
So I see this as more of an "undo" where they dismantle Xbox and rebuild the Microsoft gaming that Xbox destroyed as though Xbox never happened.
As someone that played me games stuff before Xbox and loathed Xbox og for ruining Ms PC gaming I actually have a certain satisfaction from this, however as I ended up liking Xbox for what it is too, it's only bittersweet revenge.
Of course they're still going to make gaming boxes for the foreseeable, I just don't know if it'll be "Xbox" or Surface Xbox Edition or what.
Sent from my Google Xbox Phone
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down Almost 30% In The US Compared To 2023
@Fenbops @Lrapsody
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down Almost 30% In The US Compared To 2023
Clearly Xbox is doing better than ever. Across PC, (other) console, and mobile. All of which are an Xbox.
Re: Microsoft Boss Highlights Why He's Feeling 'Very, Very Good' About Xbox Right Now
@OldGamer999 Nah, he's talking "AI, Cloud, Console, PC", those are internal pillars and platforms. They're definitely doing a next console. I just think they're clueless and directionless but doing it anyway.
Re: Microsoft Boss Highlights Why He's Feeling 'Very, Very Good' About Xbox Right Now
", we can bring the best of AI innovation, cloud innovation, console innovation [and] PC innovation to build the best games that can be enjoyed by gamers everywhere"
There it is. All the buzzwords are accounted for.
All the share holders who have no idea what any of this even is must be weeping tears of gilded joy on hearing it.
Re: Xbox Appears To Be Getting More Ex-PlayStation Exclusives In 2025
FF is a given. Stellar Blade is likely (devs expected higher sales on PC than PS, I'm sure they'd like to hit every platform while they're at it.) Rise of Ronin is a weird one because there's no PC port mentioned either, but it's a Tecmo game, of course there's going to be ports.
Realistically, there's not a lot of "True" exclusives on either side of the divide these days. A lot of PS's have been purchased exclusive that aren't forever exclusive. Their internal studios haven't had a whole lot of output (and Concord was a dud, and Helldiver's largest market is PC anyway), and Xbox is obviously giving most of their big games to PS. Very different era.
Re: Microsoft CEO: 'We Are Redefining What It Means To Be An Xbox Fan'
I really don't care if they're redefining Xbox, I just want them to be honest with a roadmap and a strategy to get excited about even in a new direction even if it's a console-less direction. Tell people what to expect and why they should be excited rather than vague, couched "we're redefining everything but it'll all stay the same, don't worry."
Dr Evil here keeps playing games with the customers, and not the kind of games they want to subscribe to Game Pass to play.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Gets Its Biggest Update Yet, But Problems Persist On Xbox
I've been obsessed with msfs24, it's basically all I've played the past few weeks, and so much about the design is amazing. But it feels like a public beta. Bugs galore. A DISASTER of a button binding interface (I have a yoke, stick, throttle with panel, rudder. I have to bind every single button individually on each device. And the binding is a giant list of every surface on every aircraft, helicopter, jet, prp, combat all mixed together, and half the controls on the list are duplicative with other controls. Throttle and collective for helo bind to the same thing. As do other controls. Things aren't labeled in the config the same as they are in game. The "melting buildings" really is a mess. And probably not fixable. Manhattan looks like post apocalyptic Manhattan. Landing gear is embedded in the ground. The dialogue is in broken English half the time and the AI voices are a great example of why AI is a bad bet for Microsoft. Can't they use the AI those YouTube videos that "review"products by reading the marketing copy do? Weird pop in. And huge bugs in mission/training.
The early helicopter training, 2 are impassable. The instructor let's off assisting with torque, or cyclic and suddenly the craft shoots backwards and lifts altitude and becomes impossible to control. Next mission where you start with full control that doesn't happen. Then in missions I have no left torque to compensate and no translation drift at all. Did a ferry helo mission where it just stopped recognizing ATC signals, penalized me for ignoring it, and the landing marker had me land in a parking strip next to an abandoned industrial river dock with my vip, then penalized for an unauthorized landing zone, but gave me an A and called it perfect.
Super crazy buggy and that binding menu is unforgivable. And yet I'm addicted to a flight sim with an actual structure and progression to follow, something that sims other than racing always miss.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles The Omega Apex is rock solid. I ended up buying 2, one for flight, one for racing (flight required those desk clamps with the red lever to lock it on to get it all on). I actually could do it all with the one, but the pedals don't both fit. And my Winwing rudders are wider than the Omega and the foot pedal part sticks into the fold, it's too wide, so I needed to rig them to just sit onto fixed bolts and lift them off when folding. The racing stuff fits fine.
The only thing that' I'd caution with the omega Apex is folding it is ridiculously heavy. The frame is like 28-30lb, then the 11nm DD wheel is another 10-15, then my hydraulic pedals are like 23, and a few pounds for the shifter, cables, so the whole thing is probably 50-70lb to pick up and move around! Not an easy lift to put away even if it does fold pretty compact (though the the pedals protrude straight forward even folded!) Still better than a PlaySeat for storage, but you need the forearms of a real racecar driver to move it around lol.
How much of an upgrade can get wooly. TBH the T300 is really really good for what it is. I don't think the amount of force is a huge issue, it has enough (for small diameter wheels), and honestly feels very good. DD is much better of course but I think it's possible to be happy with the T300. Where the DD comes into play is the reaction time. There's a lag and latency to the T300 because of the nature of belts and pulleys. When you're into a turn and feeling the force steadily it feels fine. It's those smaller prods, bumps, spinouts, etc where it always feels like the force is lagging slightly to the effect, and the "softness" in feel that quickly changes direction (tires losing traction then going into a spin, etc) where it feels disconnected. That's where direct drive shines, because it's instant and full force in those rapid direction changes. For me, playing in VR, it's more highlighted because the immersion is absolute, and that stuff breaks the illusion. It's also why I got the Logitech over, say, Moza, because the much maligned TrueForce, does add to immersion and in VR, immersion is king.
If you're just looking to race around with something that has some good feel and can make turns feel good etc, I think the T300 is more than great for the money and really does the job. If you're looking for either maximally competitive racing online (not me), then gear tuning just like real racing is everything on the track, and/or if you're looking for maximal immersion (me) or large diameter wheels (MPI makes a 15" full size stock car wheel for the Logitech, I have one on order!) then high force matters and DD nuisance matters.
The Logitech (or any DD) is a huge upgrade to the T300, but where the difference shines is in the nuanced quick feedback moments more than the high tension big turns, and it might not be that big a difference if you just want to feel the G's when turning.
Re: Talking Point: How Are You Getting On With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?
Is this really a 100% cloud-streaming-only game that doesn't even use local rendering hardware, or does it still use the local hardware? For a game that includes VR support, cloud-streaming-only is a REALLY questionable decision. Even weirder that they partnered with Pimax for the official VR which is a very high res platform, which would make cloud streaming only with compression even more dubious.
@Sol76 You were flying Boeings weren't you? That's all part of the accurate detailed simulation, nothing is wrong with your game.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Isn't On Xbox Yet, But The Director Clearly Wants To See It Happen
It's about time, and I'm sure it'll be a while, but, hey, nobody bought the game on PS yet either, so everyone's waiting for a trilogy together.
I'm still waiting for that PC port that's more inevitable than the Xbox one and still not anywhere near announcement...
Re: Xbox Is Making Big Changes To Avatars In January 2025
@somnambulance Me too, I thought the 360 ones were the only ones! No wonder it has low engagement, lots of customers don't even know it exists!
Re: Xbox Game Pass Didn't Hurt Overall Black Ops 6 Sales, Says Analyst
@GamingFan4Lyf It's weird, you'd think MS could offer a good fee to beat competitors (20% instead of 30% or something.) And I doubt there's a GP requirement, I think it's the other way around, GP games have to be on Windows Store because it's necessary to function, therefore the only games that end up there are the ones with GP because they have to be there for GP. You'd think if they're on Epic they'd want to be on Windows too....it's not like anybody buys anything on either, lol. I think it's just that Windows store has so few users and poor sales metrics (who BUYS games on Windows store by choice unless they have a GP save or an Xbox?) there's just no point.
I love GoG, but there's basically nothing on it. Ironically Horizon Zero Dawn, some of the Yakuza games but not all, BG3, and of course CDPR games, but the rest is all for old stuff. And I think that's the thing it was meant exclusively for retro games. A lot of people got annoyed when they tried to make it for mainstream games and it wasn't financially working great for them, meanwhile it's the best place for retro games because unlike steam they test/patch them. Most big publishers won't touch DRM-free with a 1000ft pole. Amazed Sony is one that did!
Re: Talking Point: Looking Back, What Are Your Fondest Memories Of The Xbox One Era?
Seriously though the good era was when the One X launched and Xbox seemed to be coming back swinging. Sadly that lasted, what, 2.5 years? It was a great 2.5 years though.
@Balaam_ Is the Series era like the 3rd world bus terminal in the desert you have to go through after you got out of the valley, then?
Re: Talking Point: Looking Back, What Are Your Fondest Memories Of The Xbox One Era?
All I can ever think of is this:
Re: Xbox Game Pass Didn't Hurt Overall Black Ops 6 Sales, Says Analyst
MS finally figured out how to win the console wars. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I'm not a COD player, only time I've ever played CoD was the 2 WiiU ones, Ghosts, and I guess it was MW2? BLOPS2? Can't remember just because I was desperate for WiiU games. Tried the free one Sony gave out at Layden's last E3 and could barely be bothered with it, it bored me to tears. Trying this one just because it's "free" on GP-PC, and I'm really enjoying the campaign. I wouldn't pay $70 for this. I wouldn't pay $40 for this. I'd questionably pay $25 for this. For $13, it's a good old time. Feels like a Naughty Dog game with better shooting mechanics. You don't have to use your head much, just sit back and watch the colors popcorn fun for idle entertainment kind of fun. Although this might be the campiest thing I've ever seen, and I say that as an 80's and 90's sci-fi fan........
@LogicStrikesAgain To be fair, it's a long term thing. People aren't all going to sell their PS and buy an XB just because one game is on CoD. The strategy has to revolve around building a long term value proposition so that when people are shopping for their NEXT console...PS6, PS7, even, they stop and think of Xbox having more value for them instead.
Only problem with that strategy is MS has the attention span of a goldfish and will get tired of waiting and move onto a different one by the time any payoff could happen.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @GamingFan4Lyf You would think, you would REALLY think, they would fix their Windows Store. It's not just that the games are locked up (which is insane), but also that it's missing most games so you couldn't chose that platform for most games even if you wanted to and would have to use Steam or Epic anyway, so why not just use it always? And beyond that is the fact that it's just flat out freaking broken most of the time and ends up with all kinds of DRM issues due to some magic server error that doesn't show up on the Xbox server status page as a problem, but always fixes itself over time. It's just such a bad platform.
That's where GPPC kicks in. You start the game free on Windows store and then your save is there and you don't switch later. I think that's its secret purpose
That having been said, IMO BO6 is the perfect game to still get on GP and Windows Store, it's a short and sweet one and done campaign, modding isn't super huge on CoD anyway because the main show is MP which can't be modded much due to anticheat, and it's a game that's good for one year before the MP moves onto the next.
Having Switched to GPPC from GPU I got to play BLOPS6 for $13, seems like a perfect game for the service if you're not a hardcore CoD online player. Not keen on the 200+GB install that forces you to install MW3 and WZ and the icon for the launcher shows up as WW2 though before you can later remove them though. Windows Store is a mess.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles we have the same keyboards! The Rii is my daily login, mod/vr config driver, and I take out the Logitech if I have to do more heavy setup (Skyrim modding 😂).
I didn't get a hard seat cockpit, no room. But my couch is about the right height anyway and isn't going anywhere so I got a GT Omega Apex stand. The thing is rock solid. I originally just had at Thrustmaster T300 which was honestly great, but upgraded to a Logitech Pro (was looking at Moza R12 but people raved about Trueforce in supported games for immersion, and for VR, immersion rather than force is more important to me. Plus most reviews said that the ffb quality in the Logitech was better despite its huge profile for a direct drive. The thing weighs like a sandbag. The only negatives are it's huge compared to everything else for an 11nm and no fancy first party wheels which isn't important to me.
Ironically I talked about the pimax and they just had a presentation today with a lower cost and 2 year subscription for payment and are taking orders now. Doesn't have the OLED bundle though, looks like that'll be sold totally separate but the same price it was going to be in the bundle. I might bite lol
Yeah wukong vr even on quest strains the GPU hard. Can't get 90fps at all on quest 3. Can't imagine on>8k pimax lol. And then there's Dragons Dogma2 in VR 😂
Yeah injection is rough. Basically double rendering (two rendering cameras) also at insane resolution, and also at insane fps, and also can't use tricks like frame Gen, and the games don't let you turn all the stuff off. It's very imperfect. But being able to play aaa(a) games in VR, it's still so worth it. Doesn't work with everything but either true vr mods or "Giant simulated 3dtv" modes like vorpx still make flat screens seem dated.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
Boeing 2024 Simulator
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
@Xbox_Dashboard Yeah, the idea is great but IDK what metrics they had thinking this wasn't going to happen. A queue isn't bad given all mmos use it but it's brutal anyway.
Otoh this could be factored in. Using FFXIV as an example you just can't really get in at all and it's a mess whenever a big expansion releases and then a few weeks later it's back to normal. It's possible they expected this at launch and expect numbers to settle quickly.
Still disappointing either way. Was definitely looking forward to this one. Might as well just start downloading 2000 again.
Edit: could be worse, they have the inverse problem if most service games today, too much demand, not not enough capacity. Crystal Dynamics,
Firewallk, and Rocksteady must be watching this, drooling 😂Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles Lol, yeah I find it hilarious how many "tech enthusiasts" seem to have a complete lack of awareness of current computer tech, and are a decade or two out of touch. It's like people arguing over which fancy microwave makes you a top chef 😂
Yeah I have an unorthodox setup, where I'm not a desk gamer, left that behind ages ago. It's fun when you're a school kid, it's not fun when you spend all day every day at a desk. But I'm near sighted, and would rather not wear glasses just to play games, and even on the TV across the room, it's still too far/small to see proper detail and text, so I bring it up close and have a 27" 4k HDR monitor on a diy swivel mount on a microphone boom pole that just swing around in front of the couch lol. And I have one of those little controller sized wireless keyboard/track pad units that just sits with my controller. Works perfectly!
Though these days I'm using my VR more than the normal monitor. And if doing sims I have to drag the "folding" race or fight stand out (lol, folding is still bulky and weights like 65lb with all the gear on it!). Regular VR gaming I just grab my hmd and controllers and away I go. No TV/monitor needed.
Playnite is a drug. That and RGB software if you have rgb. I've spent whole nights just playing playnite 😂 I use it on my ally/legion on full screen. I intended to on the big rig, but my frequent use of vr injectors and messing with racing/flight peripheral tools, I found it was too often in the way when I needed to get to the desktop, so I'm just using desktop mode now, but full screen is so nice. Before I started using it I was going crazy with gog, steam, Xbox, ubicon ect, ea, epic, and double-buying too often!
Lol, weeeeeelll, I went just a teeeensy bit overboard and bought a 7800x3d and 4090 😂. I wasn't going to. Swore up and down I'd never buy those absurd cards, and for straight pancake games there's not a chance I ever would, the thing is ridiculous overkill for everything. But because I'm big into VR injection which is EXTREMELY punishing on a GPU, I kind of had to, and, even 4090 is insufficient there. It's all brute force.
I decimated finances and probably can't afford the next upgrade though. Technically I'd need a 5090 to go with my original intention of getting a Pimax Crystal Super (>4k x2... Something like 9k native) but having also invested in the racing and flight rig I should probably be done with spending on anything for the next half decade though! Maaay still get the Pimax because I do have the reservation already. But will have to make it sing on the 4090 for years , even though the say the super isn't really much better than light on current cards due to the display port bandwidth limit.
I probably won't upgrade the pc for quite some years!
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles Absolutely loving it. So much more polished than it was in 2008 that's for sure!
Where it gets cumbersome is simply the sheer number of stores I'm using plus the mandatory ubi and ea launcher etc, but that's just the price of bargain hunting! Plus the sheer number of peripherals now (Sim wheel, pedals, shifter, flight stick, rudder pedals, throttle, yoke, and then switched brands of each, plus vr headset and multiple "vr injector" packages to run non vr games in VR, etc) plus mod managers. So a lot of software involved but that's all for optional extras you don't get on console to begin with. Remove all that is it's smooth sailing. Only crash I've had not related to forcing vr into non vr games, is blops6 lol, curse you Xbox! Plus drm being down and unable to launch things with nonsense errors..... Which is only an Xbox store thing lol. (You can now assign primary pc just like on console, though, they just added that )
I'm not using a TV specifically but I didn't use a TV for console either, I play everything on a monitor, close up, but I have it running through the home theater HDMI hookups anyway. A monitor is just a TV without all the fancy features, it's not like the old VESA days where monitors and TVs are completely different.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
@Xbox_Dashboard You'd think MS could figure it out better with all their server capacity. I remember this happened to EA with Sim City ages and ages ago and they straightened it out, but it was a mess of a launch. IDK how MS managed that again.
I own MSFS2020 on Steam, and was going to play 2024 on GP, been waiting for it and for my cockpit to come together as I have my rudder pedals sitting on the couch right now, but maybe I'll end up just having to do 2020 after all with it instead of the new game.
If only they'd had a $50 Early Access release and we could have not played for more money!
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
I'm almost glad my cockpit mount got delayed in shipping and my yoke doesn't arrive till the weekend, lol.
@Xbox_Dashboard To be fair, for this game, an offline mode would probably be a 2TB install.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Banjo- I was waiting for it for it for years....so many years I've now switched to PC and changed from GPU to GPPC and can't use it anymore!
It's cool that they're finally adding it though. Someday I may have a use for it, though I think - might actually recommend it to people. In my case since I've now amassed a large PC library, if I wanted to stream it, even though I still have a big Xbox library forever, I think I'd probably do better with Geforce Now for steraming if it's supported. But, there could be titles supported on one and not the other, so it could still come in handy at some point.
Re: Xbox Fails To Make GOTY List, But Still Gets 11 Nominations For The Game Awards 2024
Really should be renamed to TGCSA.
The Geoff Corporate Sponsor Awards.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@S1ayeR74 They've all but confirmed it's a real handheld, not a streaming device, and have talked about it in context with Ally/Legion etc, so I think that's a firm bet there. They're not going for the Portal/phone/G-Cloud market on this one, they're going for the Ally market. Which is smart, and there's a market for it for sure (the PC portables are doing particularly well in Asia.)
But late to the party is the big problem. Steam Deck into Ally was really the big push into the new handheld world, and launching today would put Xbox in a competitive place still, but launching "in a few years" after all the above have had one or more refreshes plus Switch 2, just seems like such incredibly late timing. I bet it will be an excellent product that just struggles to make it into the the market because it's too late. A classic MS problem.
Re: Xbox Boss Says Everything Is On The Table When It Comes To PS5 Ports
@HonestHick I don't think it's easy to see MS' plan because I think they don't actually have one. They just go whatever way the winds are blowing at the moment.
Sony's long term is precarious. They're in great shape so long as they stay a monopoly platform because they can skim 30% off most of the industry by doing nothing, just like Apple. That's a good model. The problem isd they've set themselves up to be knocked out of being the default platform by a challenger who intends to try hard to do so. Right now there isn't one, so they're fine. But by the time one pops up it's too late. If they tip away from being the default place for the masses to play games their model irreparably crumbles, so they need to ensure status quo forever.
MS....I still don't think they have an actual plan. They just keep their fingers in the air always to see what seems like a good plan for this quarter.
Re: No Man's Sky Developer Explains Why The Xbox One X Is Still 'Very Capable' In 2024
@themightyant Tech may have slowed down but I don't buy this line that a lot of tech companies have been putting out there (Nvidia...) that we're basically at the end of tech so every advancement in tech just gets more and more and more expensive forever, where instead of a $1500 computer just getting faster and faster every few years, a $1500 PC is always the exact same spec for the next 10,000 years, and each faster one will add another $500 to the price for each increment forever. Nvidia's tried to push that narrative. I don't buy it. If we're really at the end of tech, and price to dollar baseline is now fixed forever and the only direction is to add ever more for ever higher prices until we start reaching government contractor pricing for the masses, I think that's a different way of saying the tech economy is now permanently over, the tech industry will collapse, and it's now all a big old datacenter mainframe circle jerk forever. And I'm not buying that.
That said we're also at a weird point where we have these akward products where for every practical measure shouldn't exist but they keep ending up in this "there's a market for it" place, which is awkward. That includes the absurdly priced video cards (I'm excluding xx90 because that's a different situation where, while there's a gaming market for it, a big chunk of its sales is actually commercial/video editing/streamer sales where it's a far cheaper alternative than the actual commercial parts, so some of its success lies, unfortunately, in it being a budget part for a commercial market.)
I do think the greatest threat to the console market is the console market. This idea of escalating prices - paying more and more isn't how the console market has operated or what has really built its market. Being an affordable packaged box for all is what drove the console market, and the direction prices are implied to go for successive generations, I can see console pushing out much of its own market chasing some holy grail (or at least pushing it to Nintendo), If tech really has stalled without just paying more and more, I can see all but the core market losing interest in consoles, especially each younger generation for the long term, and then I can see other avenues appealing to the core.
PS5 Pro is an...interesting experiment because one of the biggest things they've marketed it for is for how great it plays your OLD games. And so much of the coverage is about what it does for old games. And where the console business relies on razor and blades sales, where software sales is the goal, that seems like a really poor way to introduce hardware.
I also do think (and I think this is what MS wanted to avoid) the whole mid-gen cycle may seem good, at initial sales, but what they're mainly doing is re-selling to the same early adopters and then filling the used market with inventory cannibalizing new normal sales and ironically reducing price expectations over time. I suspect that will have an effect on launch sales for the next generation model too where, again it'll primarily sell only to the early adopters.
OTOH, I also think I no longer understand Sony's new market, because it seems to be an Apple-esque fomo cult of uninformed buyers with zero impulse control, who will spend anything on hardware and nothing on software.
Re: Phil Spencer: I Can't Talk About Black Myth: Wukong's Xbox Status
Weird question, we all know, the devs already said it's coming to Xbox.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@S1ayeR74 In theory they'd get the hardware right, and the price right so that it's still theoretically viable, but, yeah, I agree, it's a long enough wait that I think it will by then seem irrelevant in the market of existing handhelds. Unless Asus keeps driving prices up into LOLland so that they look uncompetitive. They already have an $800 handheld, if they stay there and Deck and XHeld are half the price, it will still be viable.
Re: Xbox Boss Says Everything Is On The Table When It Comes To PS5 Ports
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah but overall the first party, even with major releases totals around 10% at best. That's not to say it's insignificant sales for SOFTWARE (though it is to say it's insufficient sales of software which is why they're seeking the PC market to bolster it), however, keeping in mind a lot of the people that buy one of their first party games is likely the same market that buys multiple of their first party games, even 10% of software sales is likely at best really representing 5% of the actual install base, I.E. the games have a lot of overlap so not all of the sales represent unique customers.) Which is to say 90-95% of the actual console ecosystem customers aren't really interested in the first party offerings at all on either platform.
No doubt both companies software plans and both companies being "out of touch with fans" is based on the fact that the number crunchers realized the exclusives aren't really a factor in their overall business strategies on platform anymore.