PhileasFragg

@Arcticpandapopz If you have a PC and Amazon Prime it’s free for a couple of days on Prime Gaming.

Ah damn. I've got Venba downloaded, but not played it yet. I'll be super busy this weekend, so I hope I can manage next weekend instead.

I've not tried it on the Fire stick, but I did have a good session of Sea of Thieves on my iPad last weekend when I was travelling. There were a few drops in image quality, but was still very playable and fun.

it's not as good or reliable as a dedicated console, but I like being able to play my games away from home without downloads, etc.

I've bought an Xbox Pride pin, and that was really good quality, but I sadly lost it (which is rare for me)

Besides that I've got a T shirt that was ok, and I also got a couple of the Xbox donuts which were very tasty (though not top tier).

"For the price of a two-week rental". Ah those were the good old days of game rentals. I do miss being able to pick up something fun for a weekend.

I've never played an NFL game, but maybe I will one day, and learn what the rules are.

It does suck that there were features on the Xbox One that were dropped for the Series X. I used the cable box pass through to watch TV through the special TV guide, and they cut out the kinect and voice control stuff over the life of the console.

Plus it may just be my specific setup, but the Series X doesn't work as well with the official remote and won't control my TV (turn off/on, volume, etc.).

I'll see what the reviews of this are like, but will likely play it when it comes down to half price as most Ubisoft games do not long after launch.

Ah good. These are three I've not played (though I did play some of the originals back in the day), but have been looking forward to. I've held off on buying Spyro for years waiting for a GP release.

I bought the "Ultimate Add On" bundle, but not the base game as I used GP so I hope I get the token for the base game as it's really good, and while FH5 is good too there's still unique cars, and the different map. I feel that FH5 was an incremental improvement over 4 rather than a Next-gen leap.

This sounds like a good plan. We'll wait to see how well it runs in the real world, but I've played just fine on my Phone and iPad on WiFi so I'm sure it'll work all right with a good internet connection.

I don't have any use for it personally as my Xbox is plugged into my TV so I'd just stream games on that, but I can see this being a popular choice for people with multiple TVs, are PC gamers, or even break into people who don't have a gaming system at all.

I had good times with this back in the day so it's on my radar. Though with all games I'll wait for reviews until I make a choice.

This is so frustrating that a fairly recent AAA first party game is being removed from sale. Games are getting more and more disposable every day. Xbox has made a lot of fuss about preservation of games, and then go and do this. >

I played it through GP so I never bought it, but I did get some of the DLC so I'm glad I'll have a token to buy it now.

I've not heard of this before. Is it a horror game? It looks interesting, but I don't enjoy scary horror games. Spooky thrills is ok, but if it's a horror game I'll give it a miss.

Darn. This was the one game that I would actually be interested in

$10 is pretty steep, but not crazy given how much games seem to charge for cosmetics, etc. It'd be much better if these were available as challenge rewards as they've done that in the past (including for the DeLorian that's been in the game before).

I might consider this though as these are some cars I'd really like to have in game, but it should have been cheaper considering the Bond pack for the previous game had more cars in for the same price.

So sad to see. Embracer are some of the worst investment types solely out to get a quick buck, and they're failing bad after overextending themselves so hard working devs are the ones who feel the brunt.

It's not even about if a studio is good any more as we've seen talented and successful studios get shuttered or face massive cuts as well as failing ones.

I'll wait until we know a lot more about the game before I start having any real interest. I'm glad we've seen a little of what looks like could be the actual game, but before that was all CGI teasers which mean nothing at all. I only played the original fable at a friend's house so I don't have much nostalgia for the franchise.

That sounds fairly decent to me. Perhaps a bit long, but of course it comes down to quality vs quantity.

I'll be busy gaming when it's on so I'll just come here and read the articles the following day to get the news I'm interested in.

I have so many fond memories of GAME, and they were a big part of the UK gaming scene, but after going into one the other week the place is 75% gaming adjacent merchandise, and one wall of new games.

It makes sense to stop selling All Access as it's a long term commitment, and also now inflation is raising prices it's more of a risky thing to give people 2 years to pay off something that could go up in price rather than down. I got my Xbox through All Access, and thought it was a good deal.

It's an enjoyable game if you like this style of narrative adventures. You can't beat a price of "Free"!

Good to hear that there's more organisation in the industry as they desperately need it. This whole Activision acquisition thing was kicked off when the industry was in a stronger position, but now things are starting to break down due to the short term fixes to keep pandemic level revenues. The industry needs strong unions now more than ever.

Ok it's good that it is on day one as if it wasn't then that'd undermine a main selling point of GP as it wasn't supposed to be a "Second Tier" of service where you'd have to wait to get first party titles. This means I might try out a CoD game released this decade

I'll also take this opportunity, however, to give a middle finger to the marketing department at Activision for putting, literal, fake news on the cover of newspapers all over the world. They're sensationalist hacks, and the newspaper publishers are just as bad for going along with it.

Crazy how Skull & Bones was a "AAAA" game, and so NEEDED a higher price at launch, and then immediately got the price slashed, and is half off a few months later. One of the many reasons you don't buy games at launch.

So another horror franchise turned into an asymmetrical multiplayer survival game? We've had Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and all the DLC franchises added to Dead by Daylight. Are there no new ideas on what to do with horror games any more?

So this AI will probably work by scraping data from guides like are posted on this site and thus stealing views, and thus revenue and exposure, from independently run sites, or fan made guides.

I don't really get "hyped" for games any more as even if it's the next in a series of great games made by the same great developers there's always multiple things that can result in a real stinker.

I want to know a lot more about what it'll be like and how much of the cash cow microtransactions in GTA Online will be bleeding through into the single player campaign. GTA V came out at the very end of the PS3/360 era, and the art of squeezing cash out of players has come a long way. My biggest fear is that we won't get a big, complete, single player experience, but more of a "live service" content drip. I know that RDR2 thankfully delivered, but RD Online wasn't as big as they'd have liked, and I'm worried that spooked them.

I anticipate this will be the biggest hit since Crossfire X!

The One S was my first Xbox console. I had a PS3 5-6 years before I got that, and played games on PC in that period. The PC was showing its age, and a new one was so much so I went for a console.
What convinced me to go for an Xbox One S was the 4K blu ray player (as I have a lot of physical media) and Game Pass as getting a console is all well and good, but then you'd need to spend a big chunk of money on games too.

I didn't' have much time to play last weekend, but I did try an hour or so of Chants of Sennaar which has just been added to Game Pass. So far it's been pretty good, and the language based puzzles (and regular puzzles) are interesting. I'm sure it'll be getting harder shortly though.

That looks pretty cool. A really neat idea being so modifiable.

As always it's a real shame about the price. I get that it looks like a complicated bit of kit, and won't get the economies of scale of the regular controllers that are made in the millions, but it's not like people with disabilities have $300 burning a hole in their pockets :/

This sounds cool. I'm probably too dumb for it, but at least I can give it a shot with GP.

I've not played it as I don't want to get into a new MMO. With so many games these days being ongoing "live service" titles they all are vying to take a chunk of my limited gaming time of just a couple hours a week.

With all these pre-downloads and stuff they should just let you play it "early". If I'm pre-downloading a game I've bought don't make me wait.

Sounds like good fun. May be worth a shot

They gave tens of millions to Activision Execs in the buy out and are going to fire the people that actually make them money.

So they have 34 million GP subscribers against sales of around 21 million Series X and S consoles, and they're worried they're not getting more subscribers on a console focused service?

This whole "line goes up" brain rot is staggering sometimes. They could have sold a GP subscription for every person on earth, and not be happy everyone didn't buy two.

Maybe shutting down four or five more studios will fix it?

Studios are getting shut down no matter the quality of their output so why should developers give a crap to work hard and make good games? They're going to get fired no matter how many awards they win.
The industry is a joke.

I rented this a few times, and really enjoyed it back in the day. The place where this beats out the later instalments (though they're sequels in name only) is the soundtrack. Revolver has some awesome licensed western movie songs in it, and makes the game seem so much cooler.

Sure the other games have good music, but I regularly listen to the Revolver soundtrack even twenty years later.

Some deals are too good to be true sadly. Though I'm shocked at how much that bundle costs!

£220 when you can get the better quality Blu Ray box set for around £50 which has better sound and picture quantity as well as all the included extras.

Is it all that surprising that people skipped digital movie buying for streaming when prices are like that?

Will any of the journalists who'll be involved in face to face interviews and press junkets seriously call Bethesda out on their pre-release BS that not having 60fps and land vehicles were creative choices to give players the best experience? Or has the games industry got outlets so under their heels, and the zero job security and editorial backing got journalists (who can see all the BS clearer than anyone) afraid to ruffle any feathers?

Having a robust professional press is so important for the industry as big companies will tune out whiny trolls like me, but if there were big respected press outlets who had some clout, and would hear some of this stuff, and push back. Sadly the big publishers have too much control, the media companies who own outlets don't take any of this seriously, and poor journalists stuck in the middle.

Sorry for the rant, but I do feel that Starfield is such a great example in so many areas of how massive publishers are bad for the gaming business. Just waiting for the massive layoffs as one of the best selling games of the year wasn't successful enough to complete the bingo card.

@JoakimZ If you'd played at 60fps it'd only have taken you 100 hours too.

@fbnaulin Yeah it's all transparent BS. The reason for not having vehicles was they wanted to have people see things at a specific pace and enjoy the details, but all the planets are the same barren procedurally generated terrain with copy pasted ruins and outposts miles apart. It's clearly BEGGING for some kind of vehicle.

In Elder Scrolls and Fallout you'd enjoy walking around as the scenery would change as you go with paths and roads carefully placed to take you to interesting and unique points of interest and encounters that made exploration rewarding. Starfield is nothing like that, and players guessed this would be the case when they bragged pre-release about how big the galaxy would be.

So they said earlier they’d made a specific decision NOT to include ground vehicles in the game (https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/09/todd-howard-explains-why-there-arent-any-land-vehicles-in-starfield), and everyone said “this is stupid, and it’ll be the first DLC they add”, and we were right.

I'm interested to see what the DLC is like. Could be a good time to get back into the game.

Quality is the priority for me. As long as the game is hitting about 30fps and isn't choppy then I'd rather have it look nicer than have a higher frame rate. I only seem to notice FPS if it's fluctuating.

@NEStalgia Putting my greedy capitalist (Top) hat on I can see them having the base controller that's bundled with the console having the cheapest sticks as 99% of players won't care about fancier ones as a selling point, and if they break or wear out then that's another controller sold.

Though they SHOULD install them on their "premium" controllers though.

@Kooky_Geezer Nintendo has their own theme park for heaven's sake. They churn out mountains of branded merchandise of every conceivable type and quality every day of the week.

@Kooky_Geezer Yeah. I don't know why they had to assign all those game developers away from their usual jobs to go work at different companies build toasters, mini fridges, cakes, and Christmas tree decorations.

It would have made much more sense for Microsoft just to have given existing companies that make these novelty items a license to use their IP in return for a cut of the profits and get a bit of fun publicity for the brand.

They released those "console wraps" last year, and I thought they'd be used to release stuff like this for people to swap out for their favourite franchise and games, but I haven't really seen them release a game based one other than Starfield. I thought they'd be on that like how there were hundreds of those 360 face plates back in the day.