PhileasFragg

Damn it. I was geting close to the £25 voucher, and now I need to grind even more. Which they've made even harder so this combined with the nerf to points gain has made all rewards FAR more expensive.

Sad to see. I've enjoyed a couple of their shows over the years. Though that they're owned by Warner Bros Discovery shows why it's shutting down. It's a real dumpster fire of a company and an insult to its legacy.

@MaddieTian Oh yeah their current systems have always been two or three steps behind the hackers. That and hit registration issues are the two things they've never been able to address properly.

That sounds really good. The Mouse and Keyboard feature is particularly welcome as so many games support it on Xbox, but only a tiny minority of people have M&K plugged into their console, but it's NOT supported on Xcloud on PC where 99.99% of people have M&K.

This could mean I could even play games on my lunch break at work

@MaddieTian They've had anti-cheat systems in the game since the start, but are moving to a different "off the shelf" option with EAC so, ideally, they won't need to spend as much dev time on it and it could work better.

I think adding anti-cheat to the game goes against the spirit. Pirates should be allowed to cheat and steal all they want to!

I haven't played the first one, but I've played a couple of Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games, and enjoyed those ones. So maybe I'll keep an eye out for this one.

Good to see Control back on, and the Ultimate edition too with the extra stuff. Damn good game.

Spongebob may be good for a bit of fun platforming.

Double the disks means you're getting double the physicalness!

This looks funky, but I think Xbox should release these kind of things in those removable wraparound skins they brought out last year. That way you can customise your existing console, and even have a couple to swap out.

I'll definitely be giving this one a try when it comes to GP. I'm a bit hit and miss with these kind of shooters, but worth a try at least, and looks like some good fun for a weekend.

I really enjoyed Control, and it's storytelling (imagine SCP, Twin Peaks, X files, and Warehouse 13 all put in a blender) so I'm interested in seeing more of this universe. I'd rather more single player focused narrative games than a multiplayer shooter though.

I guess we'll just have to re-play "Bounty Hunter".

I'll likely get them on sale later down the line rather than day 1. I had great fun with these on PS2 and PSP, and do re-play them every now and again on PC.

I suppose that means that the Playstation division must have made a loss in 2023 then.

Ok this looks interesting. I want something to scratch the WWII shooter itch.

I tried "Hell let loose", and died ten times in a row without ever seeing an enemy or firing an effective shot. So probably a bit TOO realistic for me.

I didn't get an XbOne until late in the console's life so I didn't play TF1, but I did hear a lot of good things, and it's a shame the franchise didn't pan out (Apex Legends doesn't count). Though as I recall that's partially due to EA cannibalising TF2's launch and marketing.

As it's MP only I won't be playing it when there's TF2's awesome single player campaign to go through instead.

I bet that the "expectations" would be set so high no matter. It does seem that the longer a game is in development the expectations behind the scenes just go up and up so even if it's a success it's not good enough.

@Banjo- It has to be magic. Though I guess if there's a 30 fps limit then maybe there is the original code being emulated when you switch. It could be that it's ALWAYS being emulated in the background, and only renders when you swap.

Though this is all above my level of expertise.

@Kezelpaso Ok. I would have thought that the "Classic Mode" would actually be the same basic code as the other mode, but with different textures/geometry/lighting to ape the old versions rather than actually running the old code in emulation lockstep with the new code.

"30FPS-only for the classic graphics option is disappointing if understandable"

Why is this understandable? If the new graphics runs at 60fps why shouldn't the other mode? I don't understand how this is understandable.

Ah great. This'll be good for those really big games (and they're only going to get bigger) so you're not having to leave the Xbox idle while they download.

I know there's a whole "Ready to Play" thing where you play a game while it's still installing, but I've had several times where the game will crash or glitch out if you do that so I always wait until it's 100% finished.

I'll wait for reviews and probably a sale before considering. The original games may be good, but there could still be issues with the remake.

I wasn't in the console space at that time, but while I know it didn't have the best reputation for quality, and "Hardcore gamers" didn't like it the Kinect sold like gangbusters, and it's not surprising they kept it going for the XBone.

My uncle works at Microsoft, and he says they're going to sell their gaming division to Sony, and they'll come round your house and take your Xbox away.

So Epic laid off loads of fortnite dev team members, and then launched their most popular season ever while unprepared, and then more big expansions, and now this. I'm sure SOME of that $1.5bn and all the money they made from the OG season could have gone to keeping those jobs.

The way development works we'll be seeing the effects of these layoffs in the game quality slowly as content slows down, and reduces in quality. We've already seen a few things...

Interesting. I only really get CoD titles many years after they come out as I don't care about the multiplayer, and I'm not paying the high price for a campaign you finish in 2-3 reasonable sessions.
I doubt it'll be Far Cry levels of open world campaign, but at least they're not just going to treat the campaign as an afterthought.

I hope we see more multi platform titles and cross play for sure. This way hardware manufacturers can compete more on performance and prices rather than relying on software to shift units, and similarly allow great exclusive games to reach a wider audience.

I hear kids are really into vaping and bright colours now so I'm sure these'll sell well.

Great to see some new ones. I've been sticking to the purple space one I got with my controller, but I'll give these a try.

Awesome to see these again, but I do worry how long Fortnite Festival will be around for as while it was SUPER popular when it first released the player count has dropped significantly since then.

Considering it needs an influx of new songs (they're adding a couple a week right now), and licencing costs for the music, and specific devs for that mode I do wonder if it'll stick around.

@ironcrow86 I'm always reluctant to buy from 3rd party key selling websites as they can come from shady sources.

So are they including the ActiBlizz revenues for the time BEFORE they bought them? I don't think that should count.

Darn. Well maybe this'll be one to play over the Easter weekend.

Darn. I was hoping for a little something off Baldur's Gate 3. Guess I'll keep waiting.

I have about 10 physical games I think. All ones I got very cheap second hand. I got out of console gaming after my PS3 died, and didn't get back in until the One S, and since then I've been digital first for sure (especially with Game Pass).

I've expressed my opinions on here before that the physical releases have been rendered useless as games are tied to their servers and updates so you don't really have the game on your shelf any more. You have all the disadvantages of physical (takes up space, can be lost, need to swap discs), but almost none of the advantages besides marginal resale value, and lending to a friend.

Ok that's cool. One of the great things (in theory) about cloud and remote play on mobile is that it can be one of those things you can jump on when you find yourself with time to kill. Having to carry a bluetooth controller with you in case you fancy a game isn't particularly convenient.

Interesting. I wonder how this works when it comes to money. Usually Apple take a 30% cut of payments so does that mean they'd be looking for a cut of my GPU subscription to use the app?

@Beetlebum91 Limited Run don't always have the rights for digital release of titles. So for "Game X" they could have the digital AND physical distribution rights, but for "Game Y" they only have the physical rights so would not make money on a port to a particular platform if the physical sales aren't there.

If it is real that looks quite nice, and a subtle design.

I've been meaning to play Talos Principle for ages, and now I've got it. I've spent more than £3.50 on a Pizza slice so I'll go for it.

Now it can languish in my library, but I've taken one step closer to actually playing it

If they report "record profits" in 2024 they should be forced to give it to those people they laid off.

When there's a mid generation refresh they'll keep the disc for the highest end model, but I'm not as sure with whatever will come next.

The used and retail market is dwindling so there's not the pressure there there once was, and game discs are becoming pointless as you need to install the game to the hard drive and update from the internet to play anyway.

The only reason I'd want to get a version with drive is so I can play movies and CDs all on one device rather than buying separate devices for everything.

At least migration to PC is possible for console gamers. I play Star Trek Online which is old by MMO standards and I do worry that if they shutter the console versions I'll be left stranded as there's zero cross platform accounts in that game

@Romans12 I'm 90% going to get it anyway if I get some Xbox gift cards as a present, but I wouldn't mind saving 10-20%.

Well my birthday is around then so I hope Baldur's Gate 3 is on sale.

I'm tempted by Midnight Suns as I've heard good things, and seems interesting for an XCom style game with superheroes.

@ZYDIO So they haven't been taking away games. Just TV, music, and Movies?

That's a different matter as my point is games now are all tied into the platform and publisher's eco system so they'll shut down the game and update servers, and it doesn't matter if you have a disc version or not as it's all a digital passkey. I bought CoD WWII second hand the other week, and I still hade to download and install the 45Gb game to my hard drive despite the disc.

If they remove a game it wouldn't matter what medium you have. Unlike movies, TV, and Music which don't have all that, and so can be kept in physical form independent of an online requirement.

@ZYDIO I've looked it up, but can't see anything about digital games being removed, but the disc version still working.

I just see recent articles about them removing TV shows, but can't see what you were talking about where they removed digital games.

Good to see more work to squash some bugs

I had fun with Starfield, but haven't played in about two months now I think, and I was looking at that 100Gb+ install the other day when I needed to make space on my hard drive. It's staying for now, but it was close.