RBRTMNZ

This tracks. GPU has been insanely good this year.

Clair Obscur, Silksong, Doom Dark Ages, Avowed, Lonely Mountains Snowriders,The Alters, Wuchang, The Eternal Die, Ghostbike, and Monster Train 2 have been amazing day one highlights for me.

Wow those sure are some games.

Good call on the mobile workaround!

I tend to finish around 95% of the games I start but I still want games to have very strong openings.

@FatGuyInLilCoat I've been thinking about this too. They're just flooding the market with games the last year and a half and I often wonder if they should be holding some of them back for an unforeseen fallow period. That's how Nintendo avoids droughts. They reportedly hold onto completed games for years sometimes.

@Nic-Noc20th-C They don't have enough games to put out two monthly. They do have enough games to put one out roughly every six weeks and I think that would be a great cadence.

This is such a weird release strategy putting all these games out in quick succession. They did it earlier in the year too with Doom, Elder Scrolls 4, and South of Midnight. I prefer Nintendo's game of the month model and think that would makes more sense for GP.

That is an absolutely amazing line up of challenging indie action games.

That sure is some technobabble.

And in the end I’ll bet this new gen feels exactly like the last fairly meh generational transition.

The problem with Wuchang is it feels frustrating rather than challenging.

I’m hoping to see a bunch of Xbox games that will be cancelled in a few years in order to juice quarterly profits.

It feels like for high paying positions the only criteria is already holding a high paying position. It's like rich people have an exclusive club and just keep hiring other members qualifications be damned.

@BacklogBrad I think tactical strategy games and the parrying in E33 both kind of do the same thing for me. Both add layer of complexity that prevented the turn based combat from becoming repetitive. I think deck builders are great for this too. I'm down for turn based combat but it has to feel dynamic. If I am just doing the exact same setups over and over, like in most JRPGs, it gets old fast.

There is a lot of fanboy coping in this comment section. I am a full blown Xbox/nintendo fanboy but I also have a PS5 and their first party games are dope AF. It feels silly to me to see people who care enough about games to be in this comment section just outright dismissing those games

@Ernie Naughty Dog and Guerrilla games both had major live service games cancelled. It’s still ***** up but it’s nowhere near as bad as what Microsoft did. Sony would have done these layoffs even if it were still possible to shame corporations. Microsoft would not have done theirs in a sane environment.

@Ernie Dude don’t console war over real life humans being laid off. People’s lives are more important than a plastic box.

And if you do want to console war your argument is bad. I’m an Xbox fanboy but this is way worse than what Sony did. Xbox is one of the most profitable companies in history laying people off from successful studios. Sony is a strugglig company that closed down studios working on failed business venture (making live service games) so there is a massive difference. Both companies should but shamed but Sony is just bad at business while Microsoft is straight up evil.

@InheritNegative Yeah you’re right. There really is no reason to engage these sociopaths. They think doing the evil thing somehow makes them smarter and more strong willed. As if we all don’t know it’s an option to get ahead via being evil and have simply chosen to be good people instead.

@ImAlreadyHipp Holding these companies accountable does indeed do something. That’s why this ***** didn’t happen everything three months before the last decade. As little as a decade ago layoffs did enough damage that their stock and public reputation would tank. The thing that changed is now there are people like you who see this as smart, necessary, acceptable that they can just get away with doing it every three months.

So yes you’re right my efforts will not change this but you have the option to continue being an awful person who excuses corporate greed and allows this to continue or you can learn a little empathy and most likely class solidarity and stop giving them enough cover to do this *****.

@GoldenPants I feel like the problem is that in the old days you didn't have an army idiots defending layoffs as necessary financial moves. I hate that so many people are willing to buy their BS nowadays.

An AI could do his job. All CEOs follow the exact same ***** script. They are pointless.

I was planning to buy this game even though I have very serious concerns about their labor practices. Now I think I will skip this game even though I also own a PS5, S2, and SD. I wanted to play it on Xbox where I play all of my third parties. I did the same for Black Myth and don't regret it.

Sifu is a top 10 game for me. The combat, level design, world building, and art are all perfect. I was really bummed out that they followed it up with a goddamn soccer game.

I don’t usually like survival games or narrative focus games but both aspects of their game hit so well. I’m really loving it.

And just like that people are talking about Game Pass rather than the real problems - Corporate greed and incompetence.

@demian Thank you for mansplaining that to me. Please see my comment currently at comment #80.

Also, I’m not greedy. I contribute to a lot of causes despite having sacrificed my earnings potential to do non-profit work. A lot of people are not greedy. It’s *****.

@bazchillin I fully understand the full picture. My issue is with the blood sucking shareholders who are never satisfied with obscene profits and demand unsustainable growth. It is destroying literally every industry. It only works so long as there are more industries to ruin but once they run out of industries to "maximize profits" it's going to be a global economic meltdown on a level never seen before.

@DennisReynolds On the one hand I agree with you that Phil is a snake and sucks ass but on the other hand this is not a Phil problem. This is a shareholders problem. Even if Phil wanted to deploy a long term strategy that put workers and consumers first he would not be able to because the shareholders demand more and more profits every quarter. I think society would improve overnight if we could somehow end the practice of quarterly reporting.

@bazchillin We can totally complain about both price increases and layoffs. Microsoft is obscenely profitable. These layoffs are happening because profits are not enough. The blood suckers require exponential growth.

@demian “Improve financials” is an overly kind way to say commit unrepentant greed. Their financials are already spectacular. It’s just never enough for these ghouls.

This is all corporate speak for we’re making a lot of money but we would like to be making more money and are okay ruining the lives of dedicated employees to do so.

Remember last week when purexbox asked if the XBox showcase renewed our excitement for XBox? I answered no because I knew at some point the other shoe would drop. It always does. Microsoft is a truly ***** corporation.

@Lup I'm very annoyed by Game Hubs popping up every time. Anything that adds inputs to the simple act of playing a game is a bad design choice.

I can only get so hyped considering that XBox tends to over promise every June.

The fact that it has now taken almost two years to add these titles has significantly damaged my view of the Xbox brand especially as it pertains to consumer friendliness.

I don't even want to play any of the AB games, none of them appeal to my tastes, but all the same this is some anti-consumer BS that does not sit well with me.

I would like to see them drop the festival vibe. It gets grating fast.

I disagree with this. I don’t buy less full price launch games because of game pass. If game pass didn’t exist the money I spend on it would go towards deep discount games not full price new games.

@Kraven The big thing is the game play. The character movement looks like it prioritizes animation over movement which always feels janky to me. Every shoot out they show the player is just standing in the open shooting so it looks kind of mindless like Far Cry combat. They show a lot of driving combat and that always sucks. Beyond the game play the world just seems incredibly generic.

@Kraven I give a lot of games a chance, usually 60+ each year, but I still took one look at the trailers for the game and thought it looked like *****. We only have so much time on this earth and so much money to spend on games so you need to curate what you play and this game has given so many reasons to skip it.

If it has steam I will definitely consider selling my steam deck to buy this. The deck is great for streaming Game Pass but I want a native option for playing GP handheld.

On the one hand I don't care, I never spend more than a second on the home screen, but even then I can still appreciate that this update looks dumb AF.

I’m lucky enough that I can afford $80 games but also disciplined enough to wait for sales so there are not many.

Xbox: RE, Control 2, anything FromSoft, Jedi 3, anything CD Projekt
PS: GoW, anything Naughty Dog or Housemarque
Nintendo: Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Pikmin, DK

GP has been on fire for like 7 months at this point. It's crazy.

I think it has edged Split Fiction for my GOTY so far. I don’t like it as much at Eternal (a top 10 game for me) but I do think it’s amazing in its own way.

I have owned my Series X since 2020 and I think I have recouped the cost every single year thanks to Game Pass. The games I have played this year on GP cost $430 and I spent $96 on GP for the year so I am up $334 on the year already.

I’ll play whatever as long as it’s good but i prefer the wide linear concept where a linear game will have a few small open sections with exploration and side quests. The Last of Us 2 and RE4 remake examples.

The next Xbox could cost $1000 and it would still be a great value for me thanks to all the value I derive from Game Pass. I will definitely continue to buy Xbox even without exclusives.

@fatpunkslim Dungeons of H was such a pleasant surprise. For me it’s the perfect game pass game. I don’t think I would have paid for it so I’m so glad I was able to try it through GP as I ended up loving it.

@CallMeDuraSouka During this console generation, the last five years, Xbox has released more games than Sony and their games have a higher average score on open critic. They had one bad year in 2023 but did really well in other years including being named the best developer by Metacritic in 2021 and probably again in 2025.

I think the narrative that Xbox does not have games is due to having the smallest install base so they have less console warriors supporting their games.