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.

Hopefully near the end of the story it'll all get burned down to show that even cosy idyllic rural backwaters aren't spared the terrors of war.

Festival is a fun mode, and it's great to see there's new controllers for it, but I hope that they'll keep supporting the mode. It's sort of an "add on" along with Rocket Racing and LEGO rather than a stand alone thing. Still they just released a Billie Eilish themed "Festival Pass" so that's good.

I didn't play all of it, but I had good fun for sure. They've really refined the formula over the years. I can totally see why when someone wants to play a LEGO Star Wars game then this would be the one they pick up.

Not going to vote as I've only played it a bit yesterday, and it's only getting going so I can't comment overall. though I've liked what I've played so far with some interesting characters and a great setting. Looking forward to putting more time in this week.

As much as I'd like to hear talking about old games I'm more interested in preservation of current and future games.

I'd like to know what measures are going to be taken to preserve games that rely on online services and downloads going forward; so if I buy a game now how are they going to ensure that I can enjoy it in 20-30 years time.

I'd hope that this team will be working with publishers as well to help ensure thought is given to preservation and continuity during development. Perhaps have a set of guidelines publishers have to follow before they can release a game on Xbox? It's much easier to preserve games when you keep that in mind from the start.

Little Kitty, Big City looks like good fun.

Those are quite some special editions! I played it back in the day and didn't really rate it. I started right after FC3, and just didn't like it. It was dark and dull, and the neon gimmick was too much of a gimmick from the pretty grounded FC3. Maybe if I try it again it'll be better?

Maybe Microsoft should look at cloud solutions for PC games to be playable on consoles like how the reverse is true?

This is cool. It's a shame these Hallmark ornaments aren't as easy to get in the UK as they make some really fun stuff, and some high quality Star Trek ones too.

I'm looking forward to playing Harold Halibut. I tried Grounded a while back, but I was too creeped out by the giant bugs I didn't play much.

Interested to try out Harold Halibut. Sounds like a very interesting game that'll be a good novelty at the very least.

Sad news. There was a push to ban these kind of contracts years back, but sadly they're still about. I hope these people can find new jobs elsewhere.

@CutchuSlow You can't start a storefront, and just sell digital games from there. There needs to be a distribution agreement in place to allow you to sell them. So now MS has bought Activision they have the distribution rights to sell ActiBlizz games on the Xbox store.

I'm not a horror fan so not too worried about these for the most part. I tried B4B when it came out, and it was decent, but my friends just still prefer to play L4D2.

I'll wait for the massive price drop in a year or so.

@BleedingDreamer I use it all the time as I'll be playing a game on my Xbox, and others will be using PC, Playstation, etc. and this way you can use the same voice chat platform without needing to deal with any in-game chat functionality.

@BBB Reading the original source interview I see that I got the wrong impression. When he says he doesn't want to sell the game for $70, but worries the audience will see that as an indication of lower quality I took that to mean that they were going to sell it at $70 so it doesn't get those comparisons.

So the CEO of the developer and publisher doesn't think that the game should be sold at $70, but they are anyway? Then why should anyone buy it at that price then?

This seems to come up regularly where someone will say a certain price, or microtransactions, or a season pass is too much EXCEPT for our games where it's totally worth it and justified.

Indies are my favourite part of GP. It means you can try out smaller titles with nothing to lose but a little bit of your time.

I agree with the sentiment that the indie scene needs only a fraction of the money AAA productions need to keep going, but with a much better return on investment for the industry as a whole to develop the industry as a whole and the talent. It's like Art grants; you're not going to end up with 1000 Picassos (or even one), but there needs to be an art industry and community there to allow those special people to get a start.

Probably Black Ops (the first one), or World at War. I had WaW back on PS3 which was fun (though not as groundbreaking as MW), but I've never played any of the Black Ops series.

These both sound interesting. Glad that Game Pass is serving up a steady stream of stuff to play.

@Greenbasilisk I suppose Pure Xbox's crystal ball must be in the shop for a service then. Why else would they describe these as the lowest prices they've ever been when they know for a fact that in the future they will cost less.

If you're a Star Trek fan then Resurgence is a great buy for this price. It's a narrative adventure game made by former Telltale Games staff in the style of those games. It's like you're playing an episode of the shows.

Well considering some of the historical leaps we've seen I think this is a bit of hyperbole. There's been very little noticeable difference from this generation from the past one really. Particularly when so many games are on previous gen consoles too. Unless you put them side by side it's hard for the untrained eye to tell the difference.

I'm glad they're considering this. All big publishers should be pretty much required to have teams dedicated to archiving their work. So much of the work is done, basically illegally, by fans with less and less access to the data. Unless some employee saves some code at home when the company shuts down loads of games will/have been lost forever.

Suicide Squad is 50% off barely 2 months from release? Oof.

I like short games. Big games often overstay their welcome and end up dragging things out to pad the runtime. I'd rather play a 2-5hr indie game than a 20-50hr one.

Hellblade is a good example where it's based strongly on a story and moving through different environments. If it goes on for too long then there's definitely the risk of the player losing interest in the story if it's too dragged out.

Also for the poll is missing the option that you think 8hr is too long.

So does "Next Gen" mean the generation we've had for 3 years now, or is this the generation after that? Because I've not really seen much that's made this gen stand out as anything but the smallest increase over what we've had before.

I suppose that's what happens when the industry focusses on the "Live service" model. You get a stagnation of big hitters, and anything new (including new live services) are starved out. All those games except for Starfield (and Minecraft to a lesser degree) focus on providing continuous new content and microtransactions.

So basically you end up stuck in a cycle of companies spending ungodly sums on making the next big service, failing, and putting developers out of jobs when they could all be making new fun games you play for a bit and then play something new.

Looking forward to Mind Control Delete, and Harold Halibut. Hopefully get some time this month to give them a good go.