Do people still use all the Xbox Live features like messaging and parties? I imagine most multiplayer is cross platform these days so these features, even their continued existence might not be needed.

What I'm suggesting is that Microsoft offer a bare bones £2 a month multiplayer only sub the same price as Nintendos. If you're only playing with friends you can easily set up a WhatsApp or whatever.

At this rate they'll probably announce the buyer they've been courting.

Apple and Microsoft missed an obvious crossover where they should finally bring a native xCloud app to the Apple TV and they sell a £349 bundle with this controller.

More bring it to Switch 2

The entitlement of some sections of the community astounds me. The fact they put it any updates at all, for free should be enough.

Glad I sold my Xbox now. The one thing I was looking forward to was being able to digitise FH2 and 3.

It wouldn't if they got rid of the ads

That's not a no

There seems to be a lot of denial from many of the posts above. This all makes a lot of business sense. For a start they will have looked at the revenue PS5 bought in and wondered why they’re throwing it away on subscription fees.

Making things more flexible might be the key: offer a core service for $X per month, pay extra to remove ads, extra to play online, extra for family etc. Lets you customise it to how /you/ want it.

Of course it will work out as more expensive and people might just drop it without day-one access. I was willing to drop $70 on Forza Horizon 6 at launch but then they cut the cost of game pass so I wondered why I would bother.

@Balaam_ The Series S is a lovely bit of kit but still a bit big for my tastes.

The Series S, available at one point at an everyday price point is just so adorably dinky, yet also a really clean design. It reminds me a lot of the One S and even the Wii, also a deceptively well designed console.

X is a feat of engineering; S is a feat of design.

The Series S is the single greatest product Microsoft have made since Windows Phone 7. It (was) the exact size, price and shape I expect from a games console with performance to match. In all the years I've been using it I can honestly say it has never felt like a second rate device.

My hope is that having it around has only served to ground developers into realistic expectations rather than over-producing and having teething problems for years.

It largely depends on whether my son has nicked my Series S. If so I fall back on OneCast and play xCloud on my Apple TV, a pretty good experience.

But what about all those data centres not being used?!

@asdfghjklz The DMCA actually makes it illegal to circumvent the DRM on games but not to make backups. You can legally rip anything up to the GBA and the PS1. The arguments in favour of not letting customers make backups are the same exact ones that were bandied around 25 years ago when the iPod came out.

Napster and Kazaa use was rife its true. But then the sheer convenience of ripping CDs and the iTunes Store essentially killed music piracy. The same is true of movies once Netflix came on the scene.

Videogames were treated differently because a video game is an interactive piece of software rather than a raw piece of media, yet it still needs intermediary hardware or an emulator to function.

In the age of RAMageddon, companies need to diversify revenue streams. If Sony (for example) licensed PPSSPP and linked it directly to the PSN so that gamers could legally play their PSP purchases on mobile devices and also buy new ones they’d make a fortune.

But they won’t do this. So we need the law to change to allow the extraction of files from defunct storefronts for personal use. Nobody is losing any money because there is no way of executing a sale. Piracy of these titles is already rife and trivially easy. Better to modernise the law rather than continue to criminalise people for wanting to enjoy games they have already exchanged money for on the devices they currently own.

As technically accomplished as GTA is I really cannot stomach any games that glamorise a criminal lifestyle, even if it's not that of the protags. Those games moved beyond satire after Vice City.

Give me Fable any day of the week. At least in that I have the option of being the hero.

There would be nothing wrong with an all digital future if the laws on digital copyright were changed. We either allow the DRM-free extraction of movie and game files on all current storefronts to make them up to par with MP3s or, perhaps more likely we allow the extraction of said files when storefronts close and licences expire.

We the consumers should not be getting 'nothing' for our purchase. You can copy, burn and backup MP3 files as much as you like; what is the problem with games and music?

I'll tell you what: it doesn't suit Apple. They sued for software to have the same limitations as physical products in the 1980s and Jobs only nudged the RIAA to remove DRM from music because it suited them again.

Interesting that Cassette Beasts 2 is set in an old Red Dwarf episode.

Are they attached to a console or account? Can I use a friend's Xbox One to transfer Forza Horizon 2 and 3 to my Series S?

Rockstar: 'Nearly there!'

Translation: "We look forward to you being able to play it in 2028"

I assume the 'own an Xbox' is the rarest amongst gamers? 😉

I appreciate people want to keep things as unspoilt as possible, but a game that has been in development this long needs to be seen before it should be bought because there is still a chance, however remote that it turns out to be crap.

Ah man, I thought that first screenshot meant they had brought back the NXE

I feel like this is another ‘childhood goggles’ wish list. I mean, Ultimate Spider-Man was ok I suppose and Simpsons Hit and Run is a laugh but X-Men Origins? Really?!

I’m old enough to know that games I adored as a kid are best left in the past where they can be a fond memory rather than the poor review score they actually were at the time.

Buy an Xbox One S to use as a Blu ray player and stream everything else.

@BIG3 Id quite like Hexic Rush ported over myself.

If they're expanding the availability of 360 games to PC then the changes make aot.of sense.

What I find most curious is the update to Windows Phone game records. Might we see them relaunched on iOS and Android?

Eagle eyed players will have noted that we don't know the download size yet. My guess is that the game is at least 200gb and won't even fit on a disc to begin with.

Beginning of the end then. Microsoft are repeating all the same mistakes they made back in 2013: over-extension, closing talented developers, cancelling games people are excited about and going for a brand reset.

None of this will work because the Microsoft that launched the Xbox 360, Kinect and Windows Phone 7 no longer exists. The people at the top are only interested in KPIs and revenue. Xbox isn't even part of their plan anymore. When was the last time you saw an Xbox sponsorship or even a TV advert that wasn't Fanta or Doritos?

There won't be another Xbox generation. It's too expensive to sell the ones they have now. They'll just be looking at how to transition Xbox to a cloud platform because the impending AI crash will leave them with a lot of data centres to fill.

I played the first one and remained rather unimpressed at having to sit behind cover for ages shooting bullet sponge enemies. If I tried to flank them I died rather quickly. Not for me.

@GeeEssEff Those are some good shouts but still amount to just shooting things. You could argue that the destructible cover is yet another thing borrowed from Space Invaders.

Superhot is probably the best example because that genuinely goes out of its way to try something stylish and new. I mean I live Titanfall as well but it just borrowed a popular mechanic from Assassin's Creed.

It still does little to move the shooter genre along though, itself caught in something of a time hole, essentially being the gameplay of Space Invaders (strafe from behind cover to shoot enemies) with a third dimension.

The last game that actually tried anything new was Perfect Dark back in 2000 with its plethora of multiplayer options. The way is increased objective complexity with difficulty rather than just adjust the stats of everything has only ever been touched upon by Timesplitters in the time since and that still wasn’t great.

Bungie since tried to merge the shooter with Diablo but it became buried under its own lore and mistook complexity for depth. Will anyone ever bother?

Then again the pure fun of a title like Doom: The Dark Ages might mean I’m barking up the wrong tree and all people want from the genre is, ostensibly Space Invaders with a third dimension.

The industry is driving itself into an early grave by pursuing technological progress at the expense of common sense. The Gameboy didn’t dominate the industry for an entire decade by being hi tech and the Wii decimated the competition by being low powered and cheap.

Gamers will generally play whatever you put in front of them. The success of titles like Balatro and Stardew shows that technology isn’t everything.

FH6 is at best a 7/10 game: a gorgeous map marred by another tired remaster of Forza Horizon 2. The formula is wearing thin now.

The fact that no non rare-affiliated developer in the last 26 years has even attempted to steal any of the ideas from Perfect Dark suggests that nobody can really do it justice. Counter ops, the multitude of multiplayer options, increasing objective complexity with difficulty level etc etc. The game is stuffed with more ideas in its little finger than most game series manage in a lifetime.

I’m amazed inXile survived given that Clockwork Revolution is one of the worst games I’ve ever seen. It looked terrible.

It was the 360 at one point, but I tend to trade in old games or buy digital when there is a sale. I’d probably have more if the Series S had an optional disc drive as there are loads of delisted titles only available on disc.

The whole point of a disc is to have physical ownership but what good is that when you need a download to go with it? Those servers won’t be around forever and you’re leaving your collection in the hands of a corporation.

I assume ‘Independence Day Festive Finds’ is not a lost object game where you play as Bill Pullman trying to locate his lost plane during the Christmas of an alien invasion?

As good as the final product will be, I still get a feeling of overhype here. We’ve seen precious little of gameplay with Take-Two happy to trade on the brand alone.

It will probably be another Forza Horizon 6 scenario where it’s essentially the same game from years ago (in this case GTA3) but on a shiny new map.

I was wowed by the map on FH6 like everyone else but a month later the ennui has set in and it’s more of the same. Will the media call out Rockstar for failing to move the genre on is my question

@Trmn8r Up until about 2 years ago we were still trailing the PS4 and Xbox One. There are only a handful of games that really feel like this gen. The best looking game is still Forbidden West and that was built on a PS4 title. We still have plenty of headroom left.

We also live in a market where a game like Balatro (which looks like a SNES game) can outsell titles with 10x the budget. Pure power doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I’d probably argue we never need another generation of consoles ever again.

It hopefully means they’ll do the sensible thing and hold off until 2030 to release it. Nobody needs a new console right now. The market isn’t ready for Xbox 5 or PS6. We’re nowhere near the performance ceiling of the current gen.

@BacklogBrad I’m just saying if I was Microsoft, I’d get rid of the rental model because I’m losing money on it.

Xbox should take the Ps+ strategy of having a revolving catalogue of lesser titles and charging full price for new releases. I was about to happily drop £60 on Forza 6 but when I saw they’d dropped the price of game pass I realised it was a lot cheaper to rent it for a month at launch and grab it on sale a few years down the line.

I don’t know which makes them more money but I can’t be the only one doing this.

@ValentineMeikin It’s 100% intended as a way for people with accessibility issues to enjoy certain aspects of the game or for when you can’t fast travel but your fingers are getting cramped from holding the triggers for so long.

Anyone exploiting this to play the game for them should have just done something better with their time.

Microsoft should lead the way and offer potential studio closures the option to be span off and ran independently instead. This would at least give the developers a job and a chance to go it alone.

FIFA World Cup ‘98 will always be the 3rd greatest football game of all time right behind ISS Pro Evolution in 2nd place and Sensible World of Soccer at No. 1.

Perhaps we need to stop pushing for higher technical benchmarks? The two most popular games on the planet are Minecraft and Roblox. One looks like a PS1 game and the other a knock off Temu Lego set. There is clearly a technical level people expect but pushing past that is diminishing returns.

I think most people would be happy with PS4-era graphics running at a constant 60fps with no vegetation pop in. Developers keep spending billions on AAA titles but nobody asked them to.

Ask gamers and they’re happy with something fun. The best game of the last decade is a toss up between Stardew Valley and Balatro and both of them look like SNES games.

@J_Mo_Money @themightyant @abe_hikura GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-resonance-we-played-the-first-turn-based-hd-2d-ff-game-ign-exclusive-preview

@J_Mo_Money I hope it’s a premium experience self-contained single player

The new Final Fantasy looked sick… until they mentioned summoning characters from old games. Now I have a sinking feeling it’s another F2P gacha title.