Pabpictu

I think it is most likely that we will see the arrival of new games on Gamepass, specifically Japanese games.

Whether we like it or not deep down we all know the truth and how dark this industry is, while franchises like Fornite, Call of Duty or GTA generate millions of profits, games like Hi-Fi Rush barely generate enough to pay the studio's salaries.

If Hi-Fi Rush 2 exists someday, I will certainly support it by buying it, and surely many users of websites like this and social networks will make noise, but let's not fool ourselves, no matter how much noise we make, very few of us will play it, and most will continue playing Call of Duty or GTA.

It's a Sony-owned IP, and we've already seen that Sony is very afraid of Xbox as a business and the changes it's promoting in the industry.

Here the surprising (or not so surprising) news is that it's coming out on Nintendo Switch.

I think that the interesting thing about devices like Rog Ally is not that they are portable, but that they are PCs that work like a console.

I believe that the key to the existence of game consoles in 10 years is this concept, to unify PC and console in an open device that allows the use of any store, but with a user-friendly interface focused on playing.

It has no achievements, a shame, I would have gladly played it again to unlock them.

Double Fine is one of the most talented studios in the world, but I don't think Banjo Kazooie or Conker fit their style.

I'd rather Double Fine keep making Double Fine games, and Banjo and Conker fall into the hands of other studios.

Consoles are going to disappear, but not because we users don't want them, it seems that the companies themselves want to destroy them.

PS5 Pro is a terrible product no matter how you look at it, I'm afraid of how the next Xbox is going to be.

I have dirty thinking, but I think these people had a game that no one was talking about and they asked themselves, “how can we get people talking about our game? well what the press likes the most is sensationalist news, especially Xbox news, here we go”.

I don't know how the bureaucracy of publishing games on Xbox works, but all the indies publish their games without problems, so I doubt it's especially problematic, I think they wanted to get some media to talk about their game and that's what they have achieved.

@Balaam_ They are two different things, here Apple wants to charge for a subscription for streaming, not for the direct sale of games in its store.

This is something quite tricky, as it creates a context where third parties can not compete equally with Apple, for example if Apple creates its own video game streaming service would suffocate the competition, while its service would have a huge competitive advantage, this has happened for example to Spotify on Apple devices.

This in the long run is something they probably won't be able to do, Microsoft (and other companies like Epic) would be looking to accelerate this, it is in their interest.

On the other hand, and although it is something different, Europe is also putting the focus on the commissions charged by digital stores for selling video games. Not because the 30% commissions are wrong, it is the way these stores have to monetize, but because devices like Xbox or Playstation force you to buy in only one store available, the manufacturer's own store. It is possible that this is one of the reasons why the next Xbox may have to include third party stores.

I think companies like Ubisoft or Sony should ask themselves if they make a clone of a successful game, what do they offer players to switch to their game?

If the market is saturated and already spread out, COD players will keep playing COD, Overwatch players will keep playing Overwatch, Valorant players will keep playing Valorant, Fornite players will keep playing Fornite... until someone offers something different.

Concord or XDefiant seem to have focused on offering more of the same, without enough novelty to rub shoulders with the already established IPs.

All stores take a similar percentage of each sale. Here the problem is that Apple wants to continue taking that percentage for future transactions made in that app after the sale, for example, if the user pays a subscription as Gamepass using the app Apple wants 30%, which makes it unfeasible to have a native Gamepass app.

These types of policies are starting to be seen as abusive in some legislatures, the European Union doesn't like them too much and Apple will probably have to change this in the future.

Honestly the games from this studio seem pretty bad to me, however I have to admit that I have a really good time playing them at night with my girlfriend, she doesn't usually like playing video games very much, but these games for some reason amuse her, and I laugh a lot watching the terrible characters and dialogues.

I'll try it, although I'll wait for a sale to buy it, or see if with any luck it comes to Gamepass.

I'll be playing it as long as they support it. For me Starfield is one of the best RPGs of all time, the concept of an Elder Scrolls in space is something I've always dreamed of.

@armondo36 Redfall is not a bad game, it has major flaws and is far from the quality of games produced by other Arkane studios, but it is still a remarkable title, I quite enjoyed it at launch and hope to replay it at some point with the latest patches.

Hopefully we'll have Guitar Hero back soon, it's missed.

Regarding the news, it's normal, it's not possible to guess the future and you never know what game is going to break the market, the same thing has happened to other companies.

Fortunately it also works in the other direction, sometimes you bet on something you don't expect much and it's a great success, for example Palworld.

@FatGuyInLilCoat If you like strategy games, these are great weeks. Although it is true that there have been a few weeks in which the quality seemed to be reduced.

Keep in mind that the service seems to have reached a kind of limit and is already growing very slowly. And Gamepass has no competition at the moment, services like PSN+, either because they don't want to or can't, are a long way from what MS's service offers.

@PressR2 Halo Infinite multiplayer is really good, one of the best games of its kind, too bad 343 hasn't kept up with the pace of updates.

I played it for a week and I didn't have much fun, I think the difference between veteran players and newbies is excessive, the games I played were basically revive and die every few seconds.

Many users are still there, playing on old consoles with no intention of buying new ones.

I'm waiting for the Elite 3 to be announced, but the truth is that this one looks very good.

@Fiendish-Beaver The rule is that you can play at the fps that can be divided by the Hz of your panel.

If you have a 120Hz panel you can play at 120fps, 60fps or 40fps (this is because 40x3 = 120).

But if you have a 60Hz panel it is not recommended to play at 40fps, because although it is possible, it can be unstable since mathematically you cannot represent 40 images on a screen that displays 60 every second.

Another case are panels with VRR, here there is no problem as they adapt the Hz dynamically to the frames delivered by the GPU.

With your TV, being a 120Hz panel with VRR you won't have any problem, you will be able to try all the modes and choose the one you like

It seems that something went wrong with this collaboration between Namco and Amazon. If you want to try it before they close it just change the console region to Japan, the game is available for free download.

It is inevitable, nowadays games need more than ever not to be limited by devices. The exclusivity of these games, along with other bad decisions, are responsible for Square-Enix being in such a bad situation.

These games will be released on Xbox, on PC, on the various cloud services and on Nintendo consoles, the only thing that could prevent it is that Square goes bankrupt before.

I played it on Wii more than 10 years ago, and well, I didn't find it particularly good, so I don't think playing it today would be a particularly interesting experience.

But it's true that it has its audience, so I hope they enjoy it.

For me the best of the series, I spent hundreds of hours with my friends on the Nintendo 64 with 4 controllers.

Interesting that Tales of Grace if it is released at the right price.

Keep in mind that this is a game with a small audience. If Gamepass is known for something, it is for making these games reach a lot of players.

In my case for example, I am curious to try it, but it is far from being a game for which I would pay the full price. If it reaches Gamepass I will surely play it, if not I will wait for a discount.

My girlfriend played hours of the one they put on Gamepass a while back, she was playing it with a Switch drum with an adapter since there was no native Xbox accessory.

I already have a gift for this Christmas

@JON22 I've played it on Series X, I guess it's a problem with the Series S version of Borderlands 3. In fact on Series X the game runs at 60fps in quality mode, and at 120fps in performance mode, it's pretty smooth on this machine.

@JON22 I've played about 141 hours of Borderlands 3 on Xbox and I don't remember any crashes

In theory Series X has a significantly more powerful GPU than PS5, they should get slightly better performance than the horrible PS5 port, assuming they do a good job porting the game to Xbox, and maybe that's assuming too much.

I think the "exciting" version here is going to be the Series S version, which I wouldn't be surprised if it's the one causing these memory issues.

Anyway, I've already assumed that this game is a game to be played on PC, and not just any PC.

@TheSimulator The truth is that Nintendo is a very difficult company to predict, they always go in completely different directions than the rest of the industry, who knows what they will do.

But Playstation is clearly following the path of Xbox, PS5 is already completely dispensable as hardware, and it must be so for Sony to be able to present decent quarterly results, almost everything is already available on PC, and in fact games like Helldivers 2 have their user base mainly on PC. I would bet without too much fear of being wrong that in the next Xbox we will see Playstation games massively, either because they are released by Sony itself or because Steam, Nvidia and / or Epic libraries are integrated into it.

I think the company that has started this direction of what the future of gaming hardware may look like is Valve with Steam Deck (and then Asus with ROG Ally). We don't talk about them much, but they are consoles, and they have virtually every game out there, Xbox, Playstation, and PC games, they have the best library, far above traditional consoles. I think that in the future if we continue to call anything consoles, it will be machines like these, whether portable or desktop.

It really has been a good, and Xbox has shown a huge amount of material, they are far above Playstation and Nintendo in games and projects, after all the acquisitions made they have huge dimensions as a company and the amount of games coming to Xbox and Gamepass in the coming months is spectacular.

However, I think it's inevitable that Xbox fans will have a bad memory of Gamescom, Microsoft's business model (and the industry) is changing, and not to everyone's liking.

Downloaded, thanks!

I think this is already too much, it's creating controversy without any sense.

Xbox Series has a problem, of course it does, the same as PS5, and PS4 and XOne had, and the same as all consoles have, they are cheap hardware that becomes obsolete over the years.

As these machines get older and the graphics engines get heavier and heavier it gets harder and harder to get the same performance without sacrifices and a lot of time and work.

It is possible that a patch with a 60fps mode will come out later, or maybe not because they consider that too many cuts have to be made, in any case, whoever buys a console already knows what to expect in terms of performance throughout its life cycle.

This is nothing, pure sensationalism and empty news to generate clicks....

Today's consoles are low-end gaming PCs with a very tight price, they have their advantages and disadvantages, but being a closed and inexpensive hardware that must remain unchanged for several years, power is not one of the advantages. Series X may be the most powerful console on the market, but it does not escape this reality either.

Whoever wants to play at high fps rates needs a PC and to be willing to invest in hardware upgrades over the years.

It is true that we users are confused with this direction, but well, they are the most valuable company in the world, they did not get there by luck, I understand that they know what they are doing, and they seem to be sure of this path.

What is clear is that if they are right and the industry is going to move in this direction, the rest will too. Some time ago we used to worry about launching all Xbox games on PC, today Playstation launches everything on PC, in fact games like Helldivers 2 work almost exclusively on PC.

They have a vision from a business point of view, we have a vision from a user point of view, and they don't coincide, time will tell which one is the right one.

It is difficult to imagine what the industry will be like in a few years, but I think it is clear that it will be very different from what it has been until now.

In any case, I think they are running too fast, being the first is not always good.

The visuals look spectacular, it will be interesting to see how it performs on S Series.

The strategy is fine, in fact Sony and Nintendo will be forced to do the same at some point in the future if they don't want to disappear.

The problem I see is that Microsoft being the first to open their platform in this way, communication and clarity should be a priority, but it seems that they don't care about the fan base, there is almost no communication, the messages are contradictory... this is hurting the brand and its most loyal users.

Maybe the loyal users are very few, they won't notice us in the global numbers, and maybe the next Xbox, or the ecosystem in general, will be a great success thanks to the masses that are not even aware of the news and only care about COD, but I still think they should take much more care of the communication with their fan base, they are the ones that have kept the platform alive in its worst years.

@NeoRatt You are right, Xbox is (or should be) in one of its best moments right now, the amount of firts party games is incredible, far superior to the competition, all day 1 on Gamepass, what we are going to play this year and next year in Series S|X is something that we could not even imagine in the worst moments of Xbox One.

However the communication with the fans is a disaster, the messages are contradictory and the uncertainty is huge, regardless of whether they are doing well or not (I think they are) the damage to the brand is being excessive and the lack of trust to launch the next Xbox I think it's starting to be dangerous.

Playstation is objectively doing much worse, they have almost no firts party games on the horizon, they have a less powerful console, their services don't even come close to what Gamepass offers... however they know how to maintain trust. They may have been abusive with the user and not have such a powerful product, but the message is stable and they invest in marketing as necessary.

So yes, I think Microsoft have an urgent issue to discuss, maybe not so much at the product strategy level, but at the communication and marketing level.

We live in a curious moment, Playstation is in one of its most complicated years, with difficulties to obtain profits and with almost no firts party games announced.

Xbox is in a moment of huge profits and with the best list of firts party games announced in years, maybe the best it has ever had.

However, 2024 will most likely be remembered as one of the worst years in Xbox's history, with a huge lack of excitement and confidence.

I hope at Microsoft they are discussing this urgently, because the situation among fans is dramatic. And I understand what they're doing, and I think I understand that there may be no alternative for Xbox to be there in the future, but the way they're doing it and the way they're communicating it, they're destroying the brand image along the way.

If it's free to play I'll at least try it, but honestly I've always thought it's a pretty bad game that stands out mainly because of the fan service.

Free to play? That sounds a little strange...

@abe_hikura All companies will do it, the difference is timing.

I think Xbox needs to open its platform as soon as possible and is doing it in a big way, Playstation is in an intermediate point where it is releasing games on PC (and some on Xbox or Switch) and Nintendo, well, it's going for a long time.

Each company has its own context and Xbox has one here where they need changes as soon as possible, so they are ahead of the rest as much as they can. But going first is not always good, we saw it at the launch of Xbox One with the always connected to the internet, they were right, today it is the norm, but that was not yet the time.

Time will tell if making Xbox an open platform in 2024 is a good decision or not, but what I am sure is that every company that makes consoles will eventually do it.

I don't think that was the reason to buy Activision, focusing on selling only a specific and closed hardware doesn't seem to be a great business for the future, probably having paid so much to simply increase the sales of a console, so that in 1 or 2 generations the consoles disappear or evolve to open hardware, would have been throwing money away.

I think Microsoft thinks that the companies that will manage to survive whatever happens in the industry in the next few years will be the ones with great established IPs, if we look at the most profitable games every year they are always the same: Fornite, Call of Duty, GTA, Minecraft, FIFA.... I think the purchase of Activision was intended, among others, to ensure Microsoft a place there.

@MjJmediablogger Keep in mind that the video game industry is in a time of transition, not unlike music or film.

Does it make sense for them to keep making hardware? I don't know, I think hardware is something that will always be needed, but at the same time I think it will change to define itself in a completely different way.

But this question makes sense for the whole industry, not just Microsoft, for example I don't think we'll ever see a PlayStation 8, and I'm not sure there will be a Nintendo Switch 3.

Microsoft is the first one that is trying to adapt to this future, although for this reason I think in a rather confusing way for its users. And Sony and Nintendo will have to go behind, looking for their own evolutions or they will disappear, and at the same time I think that other companies, such as Valve, Epic, Nvidia or Amazon, are trying to take advantage of these disruptions in the industry to put their own proposals.

In other words, I have no idea what video games are going to be in 20 years, something very different from what they have been so far, but I think Xbox is doing what they think they have to do to continue to exist by then, we will see if they get it right or not.

@Murray Completely agree, the reason why I keep playing some games on console is because on PC some games have another achievement system, or no achievements at all.

However, most people don't care if the saves are synchronized in the cloud or if the games don't have achievements.

Actually, if you think about it, the concept of console has already disappeared, consoles were to put a cartridge and play, now they have an OS, they have downloads, installations, patches, configurations... actually consoles are already low end gaming PCs with a fairly well adjusted price.