Questionable_Duck

Microsoft execs are so obsessed with AI that they can't stop using AI in even the most basic situations

That Shawn Layden article at the bottom makes me wonder what he would have to say about Sony putting Helldivers 2 on Xbox.

I distinctly recall Layden saying that Sony has no incentive to port games to Xbox. Turns out he was wrong lol.

@Medic_alert I think it's clear that Forza Motorsport will be Xbox's Gran Turismo 7. In that, in spite of the multiplatform pivots of both Xbox and PlayStation, these games will conspicuously remain exclusive to their respective consoles forever and will never get ported.

Gran Turismo 7 should be on PC by now, but it seems like the port has been cancelled for unknown reasons.

Likewise, Forza Motorsport should be on PlayStation by now, but since the game wasn't that well-received and it probably won't sell that well on PlayStation, Microsoft probably isn't going to invest in a PS5 port for the game.

@WildConcept6 it's because Microsoft was going hard on exclusivity at the time and they wanted to ensure that the Xbox Series X was the best place to play Psychonauts 2. Hence why they didn't make a PS5 version. They did the same thing with Hellblade 1, up until recently.

The only reason Microsoft released the game on PS4 is because a PlayStation 4 version of the game was partially crowdfunded. It would kind of be a jerk move to cancel a port of a game that people paid money for, so they didn't do that. Otherwise, Psychonauts 2 would have been Xbox exclusive.

@Tasuki Fortunately, Helldivers 1 is completely unrelated to Helldivers 2 story-wise, so you won't be missing out on anything when it comes to the series' plot. It's also a pretty different game, too. Helldivers 1 is more of an indie game.

@Fiendish-Beaver I see, sorry for not fully understanding your point. In that sense, I do agree with you. I don't think we will see God of War, Intergalactic, or The Last of Us hit Xbox soon.

@Fiendish-Beaver I may have said this in a previous comment, so sorry if I'm repeating myself, but Arrowhead already confirmed that their next game will not be published by Sony. So unless Sony signs a timed exclusivity deal for it, which I doubt, there isn't really much of a reason for Sony to concede to Arrowhead.

I think this is a strategic shift in the sense that you will see all of Sony's successful live service games come to Xbox eventually. And maybe the Bandai Namco-published Sony games will come to Xbox someday, too.

But I don't expect Sony to release all of their games on Xbox day-one or something like that. And, I'm not expecting to wake up one day to see God of War on my Xbox.

@Ricky-Spanish You're right, the Microsoft employees still lost their jobs, so that definitely still sucks. But from a Xbox player standpoint, we may have lost Perfect Dark and Everwild, but at least we're getting Helldivers 2 on Xbox.

And yes, I prefer being called a duck, thank you very much lol.

@IOI I agree with you in a sense, since I don't expect Sony to start porting God of War to Xbox next year or something.

However, I still think this is a strategic shift from Sony since going forward, I expect all of Sony's live service games to come to Xbox eventually, unless they flop on PlayStation.

But yeah, this is definitely great news. Thank you for being respectful, sorry if I was being too confrontational.

@IOI Also, this is nothing like MLB: The Show because Sony doesn't own the MLB IP and they were forced into putting it on other consoles.

Helldivers 2, on the other hand, is entirely a Sony decision. Sony owns the Helldivers 2 IP and they have complete say over what platforms they can port it to.

@Fiendish-Beaver Arrowhead actually confirmed a few weeks ago that Sony is not involved with their next game at all

@IOI If I told you yesterday that Helldivers 2 would come to Xbox, you would call me insane.

The people who claim that this isn't indicative of a strategic shift from Sony are also probably the people who claimed that Xbox was gonna stop at "just four games."

It's worth noting that, last year, Sony rebranded its PlayStation publishing brand on PC to "PlayStation PC" to "PlayStation Publishing LLC." Interestingly, this is the exact same brand name used for Helldivers 2 and Lego Horizon on Xbox.

Sony is clearly going to port some of their games to more platforms, and Helldivers 2 definitely will not be the last game Sony will publish on Xbox.

After what was a disastrous day for Xbox, Sony literally swooped in to save the day for Xbox fans lol

@dskatter Right lol!

@Balaam_ Bro, if I told you literally yesterday that Helldivers 2 would come to Xbox, you would call me delusional.

I trust you won't act the same way when more Sony first-party games come to Xbox?

Sony putting other titles on Xbox is a matter of when, not if. If you seriously think that multiplatform ISN'T the way that the industry is headed, then I assume you believed Phil Spencer when he said "it's just four games."

@IOI Yes, but you should very much expect to see other live service Sony games like Marvel Tokon on Xbox eventually.

@WildConcept6 The only publisher that isn't pursuing a multiplatform strategy is Nintendo and that's it.

@RagnarLothbrok It's so strange because Sony refuses to let even Everybody's Golf, Lego Horizon, or Patapon come to Xbox, even though they're multiplatform. Also the Ape Escape mode in MGS Delta is not on Xbox.

And yet in spite of that, they do this.

@Ribbitsneed So weird that Sony is bringing Helldivers 2 to Xbox but refuses to let Patapon or Everybody's Golf come to the platform

@dskatter Fortunately, this aged poorly

@NishimuraX I've definitely never said that. I think the claim that the Series S holds games back is nonsense. Only two games in the last five years have ever been delayed because of the Series S. Granted, they're notable games, but still.

It's perfectly fine if you prefer playing games on a beefy PC, though. If I wasn't broke and had a bunch of money to spend, I would probably buy a $1000 gaming PC, too. But right now, I'm perfectly fine sticking with the budget options, like the Series S. There's no way I'd be able to get a gaming rig for $250, which is what I got my Series S for.

@NishimuraX $1300 for a PC is still way more than a $300 Xbox Series S lol. I don't care about power, I'd rather take the competent but more affordable option.

@BacklogBrad Actually, Sony isn't giving up on live service games despite the apparent failure of Concord, The Last of Us Online, Fairgames, and Marathon. They're still doubling down on it, with Marvel Tokon and other games in the wings. They also just made two new studios that are working on live service games.

And while I agree in the sense that companies should pivot from a business plan if it's not working, the problem is Microsoft has failed spectacularly at employing the traditional console business plan properly. In the last decade, Microsoft has released a bunch of good games, but not a single blockbuster AAA system-selling Xbox exclusive. Unlike Sony and Nintendo, they've also done a terrible job at marketing their consoles across Europe and Asia, and to a lesser extent the entire world. They also haven't done a good job at explaining what Game Pass is to consumers.

You can't claim that a business plan doesn't work if you don't try it properly.

@Deshalu Phil did say something along the lines of putting Game Pass on PlayStation during the ABK deal, but I don't think he said that in 2013 lol. Game Pass didn't exist back then.

I also don't think Phil said exclusives shouldn't exist in 2013. There was a tweet from Phil back then where he said that exclusives are a fundamental part of the console business and that they are necessary for success.

I agree in a sense, the Rog Xbox Ally is completely pointless. It does nothing that no other PC handheld can do, and even its custom Xbox UI will be added to other PC handhelds in the future. Microsoft is afraid of making anything exclusive.

@Dimey But Jez got the entire thing about the ROG Xbox Ally right, he was the first to report on its existence. Not sure why you think he's never gotten anything right before.

Pretty much everything he writes a report on for Windows Central has turned out true. It's the stuff he posts on Twitter or says during the Xbox Two podcast that can be more up in the air, as he admitted himself.

@IronCrow86 Wolfenstein 2009 got a bad rap and received mostly mixed reviews from critics, but it was actually pretty good. It doesn't feel like a traditional Wolfenstein game, but I still want it on modern platforms.

@kmtrain83 That's exactly what I was thinking lol. At this rate, The Elder Scrolls 6 might be a PlayStation exclusive.

@VoidPunk I agree with some of the stuff here, like "cancel all ports to PS/Nintendo," "focus on creating smaller AA games," "put all Blizzard games on Game Pass ASAP," etc., but (and I mean no offense by this), some of the things you listed here are kind of baffling.

Like, Microsoft is legally obligated to release CoD Black Ops 7 for PS4/5, they can't cancel the PlayStation ports and make CoD an Xbox exclusive.

And it makes literally no sense to stop all cloud services (that would include cloud saves and cloud gaming) or cancel the next Xbox. Cloud gaming is not being treated by Microsoft as a replacement (at the moment) for native gaming, it's an addendum. Xbox players shouldn't have less choice on how to play their games.

Also, cancelling the next Xbox would be devastating for the Xbox brand, and would tank their console division even more than it already has been. If Microsoft were to axe the Xbox Series X/S successor right now, they would have nothing to compete with the PS6 against. The PS6 would crush the Series X/S in sales, and since the Series X/S would be far more underpowered, some developers may skip Xbox entirely to focus only on PS6 and PC. It would be a repeat of what happened during the 360 generation, where Xbox got a head start over the PS3 and got a lot of defacto Xbox exclusives as a result.

And, for the record, these consoles take nearly a decade to make. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc. usually start working on their next-gen consoles almost immediately after releasing their current-gen systems.

Btw, why the hate for Starfield and Avowed, when Avowed in particular got mostly positive reviews on Steam?

And lastly, what do you mean by "de-politicize everything?" and "cut all ties with SBI?"

@IronCrow86 How about Wolfenstein 2009, as well?

@Balaam_ To be fair, Nightdive doesn't make new games, so they're not gonna announce anything that isn't a remake or a remaster.

Assuming it doesn't get cancelled, Ark 2 will be released in 2032.

@RegnumSolipsi I agree, people like to trash on 343 a lot, but they have never released an objectively bad game, like Mindseye or something. They've all been competent to some extent. Not as good as the Bungie games, but competent.

@Ribbitsneed 343 has never released a game with bad gunplay. Even Halo Infinite's biggest haters will admit that the game's gunplay is great.

So, no, them helping Obsidian out to add better gunplay to The Outer Worlds 2 is not a bad thing.

@Kraven I highly doubt Sandfall Interactive would have ever been shut down if Clair Obscur was an Xbox exclusive. In fact, I can't think of a single third-party developer who made an Xbox exclusive Game Pass game that got shut down because their game didn't sell well enough.

There are multiple examples of Xbox exclusive Game Pass games that do just fine without PlayStation. Just look at Palworld, for example. That game sold millions upon millions of copies without ever gracing Game Pass.

Around 30% of Clair Obscur's players came from PlayStation. If you took that 30% out (and don't factor in the possibility that those PS players would have got the game on Xbox or PC instead), the game would have likely sold at least 2 million or so copies. There's no way that would have been a failure for such a small studio.

@TheGameThrifter I 100% agree. Microsoft thinks that their games will somehow be "saved" by putting them all on PlayStation day-one, but the reality is the majority of Microsoft's games won't sell well outside of Xbox. Games like Doom The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2, Perfect Dark, Pentiment, etc. are better as Game Pass exclusives than they are as multiplatform titles.

Doom: The Dark Ages was originally going to be an Xbox exclusive, but Microsoft decided to put it on PlayStation, and guess what happened? It became the worst-selling Doom game on PlayStation out of the modern trilogy. This game would have done more for Xbox as an exclusive than as a multiplatform title.

Even, after the novelty period, Halo and Gears games will not sell well on PlayStation since they're so divisive.

@Elbow Ironically, Microsoft and Bethesda are perfectly fine with fan games, but Activision still isn't. They sent a cease-and-desist letter to a mod for an old CoD game. It seems Activision still operates independently of Microsoft in some regards.

@VeganHerpes The parity clause doesn't require devs to add the exact same performance/graphical settings across Xbox Series X and S. It just requires devs to release the Xbox Series X version of their game at the same time as the Xbox Series S version, with gameplay feature parity.

By gameplay feature, I mean stuff like split-screen mode (like what happened with BG3), not stuff like a 60 FPS setting. Basically, the Series X version of a game can't normally have exclusive content that the Series S version doesn't have.

This is awesome, you would never see a fan made God of War game on PlayStation consoles or a fan made Mario game on Nintendo consoles.

It's kinda cool that MS is letting fan-made Halo content release on their own storefront. Most companies wouldn't allow that.

@hbkay Desperate? More like it's nice that they're not sueing fan games into oblivion.

@Trmn8r yes, it's free

@awp69 That's awesome news! Thanks for the info.

There's no upgrade path for existing owners of Little Nightmares 1? That's kinda lame

@SMJ Microsoft keeps advertising Game Pass, but most casuals don't even know what Game Pass is. Saying "play it day one with Game Pass" means nothing to those people because they need to learn more about Game Pass itself. It's baffling that Microsoft has never bothered to make a massive "what is Game Pass" ad campaign.

If only they put more resources into advertising Game Pass and consoles instead of spending money on that confusing "This is an Xbox" campaign.

Microsoft keeps complaining about how they aren't able to grow Xbox and yet they refuse to put in actual effort to make the Xbox brand more relevant in (non English speaking) European countries.

It's like Microsoft thinks the entire world is U.S., Canada, Japan, and the U.K., and that's it.

@TheGameThrifter Japanese companies don't lay off employees as much due to laws in Japan that make the process difficult.

Microsoft is among the top 5 biggest Western tech companies, so like Google, Amazon, and Meta, they lay off employees by the thousands each and every year.

@VoidPunk Not at all true. Xbox is making more money than ever before this generation, which makes these layoffs and bad business strategies even more inexcusable.

@Fiendish-Beaver Mindseye would have needed a three year delay in order to be good