Questionable_Duck

@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

God I would love to play this game on Xbox, I'm a massive fan of the first Death Stranding, and I was so pleasantly surprised by the Xbox release of the original game.

Sadly, I think we might have to wait a while for an Xbox port. Worst case scenario, Death Stranding 2 doesn't come to Xbox until 2030. Best case scenario, it comes to Xbox and PC in a year or two.

If Sony publishes the PC version of Death Stranding 2 instead of 505 Games, then that will not be a promising sign, because it suggests that Xbox players will have to wait until the publishing contract for DS2 completely expires.

@Fiendish-Beaver They will probably announce Starfield for PS5 here as well. Knowing Microsoft, they will save it as a "one last thing" announcement, like they did so with Indiana Jones for PS5 last year.

@NishimuraX Dude, why are you so hostile? I never said the next Xbox will be like the ROG Xbox Ally. I said, if the next Xbox can hypothetically play all Xbox console and PC games, it would be objectively better than your current PC. That's it.

I'm not saying the next Xbox will have access to all Xbox console games and all PC games, or that Microsoft said this this will happen. However, IF it does, it will objectively have access to the most games of any other platform, more so than the average PC. A device that has access to all PC storefronts, plus one that can also natively play all Xbox console games, would be great.

Also, even current Xbox consoles have more freedom than the average console. Like I said in my previous comment, which you seem to have ignored, you can emulate thousands of PS1/2, Xbox 360, GameCube, SNES, Game Boy, 3DS, etc. games on your Xbox right now via dev mode. Obviously, it's not as convenient as on PC, but still.

Not sure why people here like to hate Jez Corden so much. He's right, this "Xbox Classics" thing almost certainly isn't happening. It makes no sense for Microsoft to partner up with Xenia when they already have a superior 360 emulator of their own.

Y'all should be doubting extas1s more than Jez, he's the one who has gotten a lot of stuff wrong lately.

@TheGameThrifter I agree with most of your comment, but Grounded definitely didn't flop. It was a massive commercial success, had tens of millions of players despite being made by a tiny team at Obsidian.

If Grounded was a flop, we wouldn't be getting a Grounded 2 next month.

@NishimuraX If the next Xbox has access to all PC storefronts like the ROG Xbox Ally does, it would have access to DRM free GoG lol.

And you do realise you can emulate thousands of games on Xbox consoles right now, right?

I don't care if it isn't happening or not. I'm saying that, if the next Xbox can play both Xbox console and PC games, it would be objectively better than your current PC. That's all.

@NishimuraX To be fair, if the next Xbox can play both all Xbox console games and all PC games, then it would be superior to the PC you own right now. In this scenario, the next Xbox would by far be the platform with the most games, more so than even PC.

However, it remains to be seen if this is what actually happens.

@Fiendish-Beaver I agree with the notion that the next Xbox is probably not gonna be affordable. However, the PS6 won't be, either.

There's pretty much a zero percent chance that the PS6 will be equal to or less than $700. It will probably be $800 minimum. Could even be $900 if Sony raises the price of its consoles due to tariffs.

When the PS6 costs that much money, a $1000 Xbox won't sound that crazy in comparison

I would like to see Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, The Great Ace Attorney, and Monster Hunter Stories 1+2 announced for Xbox. Sadly, there's a 0% chance of that happening.

On a related note, it would be nice if Capcom finally announced Ace Attorney 7.

This whole Xbox Classics thing seemed exciting for PC fans, but unless they added more games to back compat, I don't see how exciting it would be for PC fans.

@darkswabber Not really, pretty much everything he's reported on on Windows Central has turned out to be correct. It's his random Twitter posts that sometimes end up being false.