@NEStalgia That depends if Sony made up the difference by lowering their cut.

Given that only 20% of FFXV sales were on Xbox One it might be that Square Enix just doesn’t consider it to be financially viable to bother releasing games on the console. Octopath only got released because Microsoft licensed it for Game Pass and SE likely made more money that way than selling it directly.

Sony own a large percentage of Square Enix so will always get preferential treatment. Xbox still massively lags in Japan and that also remains a core market for SE.

The last time Japanese devs went all-in on Xbox with JRPGs (Blue Dragon, Vesperia etc on 360) they got burned.

Suck it up Microsoft. You were the ones who shuttered all your first party studios in the first place. The lack of any 1st party titles is your own damned fault.

You can use the excuse that Sony doubled down on exclusives whilst you are still fighting the damage done by the Xbox One as evidence on why you should buy AB.

It’s like a kid trying to convince his parents he should have more toys because the kid next door does.

We still don’t know the ins and outs of the fine print here. Nintendo had nothing to lose by signing up to whatever terms Microsoft wanted because they don’t even have Call of Duty on Switch. The Sony deal could have locked them out of DLC, made it clear COD was coming to Game Pass day 1 or even cut off cross-platform play.

In the long-term I wonder how much value Call of Duty has as a franchise anyway? Traditionally it sells to a more casual sort of player who tends to buy their annual COD and FIFA releases for whatever console they own. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.

But Microsoft and Sony are both losing money to these players. There is no way the 30% cut of FUT and COD DLC over a few years makes up for the loss made on selling them a console. Nintendo and Sony both make their profits from quality first party software and Microsoft have never been profitable with the Xbox at all.

Most of the COD money went to Activision but if COD becomes just another GamePass title and the casual players move over to Xbox there is no way they’re making that $70bn back any time soon.

I wonder if that picture of Colorado from FH1 is a clue? I keep dreaming about a remaster of that map using the FH5 engine.....

Less competition is never a good thing. It mind seem like altruistic decision making but Microsoft know exactly what they are doing buying up studios and starving the competition. It happened with Windows 95 and it is happening with Game Pass.

Make it a dream deal ran at a loss, destroy the competition, hike the price when they’ve all gone bust. That $12 isn’t going to stay that way forever.

Do they not know about the foreign acquisition laws in Japan?

I guarantee Sony have been watching Square Enix like a hawk and if there was even a whiff of interest they’d swoop in with the chequebook.

A Han Solo simulator, like Elite where you have to smuggle things across the galaxy and dodge the empire whilst maybe navigating a story.

I really really hope they’ve brought back Darius Flynt for the new story mode.

It’s not a problem. Perfect Dark has a much better multiplayer mode and you can play that online on Xbox.

That statement implies that the Switch version is the ropey 1997 release whereas the Xbox version is 4k60 and therefore not the same.

So much un-needed clutter when the Pop-up menu has everything you need.

The best console UI ever created was the Wii Channels interface because it required no more than 2 clicks to start up anything. Lots of animation and character but also exceptionally tidy.

We just need a 4K version of that.

@BBB Infinity is just a launcher, probably a replica of the Animus interface as much as anything. All the future AC games will be like bits of DLC within it as well as disc games (see the Eurogamer interview) It will be like the PC interface in AC4.

Its the 10th Anniversary of Forza Horizon next month and we’ve heard squat from Playground or Microsoft. It would be nice for them to do something. At the top of my wishlist is the map from FH1 brought out as DLC for FH5 with the cast of 1 brought back as NPC’s but I’d settle for the first 3 games on Gamepass.

Action Fighter on the Master System.

I have the X1 and its brilliant on Android thanks to emulator support and game streaming.

Given how well streaming actually works when you have a decent (100mb+) connection it may well end up being the future of gaming. I’d be quite happy now to pay for a streaming-only Gamepass option and play all my games via browser on my iPad; its a very convenient way of playing console games when you travel a lot.

Whilst it might be easy to think that the gaming streaming market might end up like the video one (ie everything fractured to studio platform instead of aggregated on Netflix) it is a lot harder to set up a gaming streaming service than a video one. Stadia works really well on Android via the native app but try it via a browser on iOS and it is nowhere near as good as xCloud. If Google can’t make it work there is no chance Sega etc will be.

Companies are however gearing up for this future. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision was a protectionist stance designed to make sure a company like Amazon didn’t siphon off those franchises or Activision didn’t try to start their own service. Sony will no doubt be eyeing up another potential acquisition, in all probability Square Enix.

The thing is we are talking about a franchise that has been waning in popularity for years and isn’t the best shooter on the market. Sony will have, as part of their deal buying Bungie no doubt have them beavering away on a PS exclusive franchise to fill that hole. PlayStation has always lacked what the industry called a ‘Halo beater’ but who better to craft one than its former creators? Say what you like about the impenetrable meta game mechanics of Destiny but it’s gameplay is slicker than any other shooter on the market.

And do a cloud only tier for £7

@Would_you_kindly It was actually Roger Craig Smith who voices Sonic in all his games. Most definitely not Italian though!

@Would_you_kindly Whether they use English as part of the animus or subtitle Arabic it should still be an ethnically appropriate actor. Ubisoft have mixed history on this: Connor was voiced by a Native American actor and even Edward Kenway the Welsh-born pirate was voiced by Matt Ryan, a welsh-born actor. But the posh English dub of Unity was a mis-step (especially given the Napoleonic background of the title) and in the original AC rather than use a Middle Eastern actor he kept the voice of Desmond throughout the whole game. This was rectified in the flashback sections of Revelations and PSP title Bloodlines.

The original game came out when the war on terror was still fresh in memory and Ubisoft were worried about how to market a game which is essentially about a Muslim-themed Assassin (even if Altair isn’t strictly Muslim) going around murdering Christian-themed Knights. Remember this game started out as a Prince of Persia spin-off. Historically correct but difficult to market in an American market. They managed to sidestep any religious parallels with the whole Assassins vs Templars Apples of Eden secret war but the star of the game was still a Middle Eastern man when Bush was still in power. This the Animus framing device: you’re not really a Middle Eastern man but the ancestor of a white American: problem solved.

Future instalments were a lot more faithful to their historical backdrops or made them a lot more palatable in America by making us British the villains in most of them 😂

A remake of AC1 is the news I’ve been waiting for. That game really needs a massive overhaul including an actual Middle Eastern actor to voice Altair (instead of Nolan North doing the Desmond voice) and some modern tidying up.

Phil says this but a big selling point for Windows Phone 7 back in the day was Xbox integration and having achievements in mobile ports of titles like Hexic (which was REALLY GOOD)

Howabout bringing that back for a start? I still play Halo Spartan Strike on my iPhone; why not redo those titles as a start?

I still think the Activision acquisition was a protectionist stance from Microsoft to stop a non-industry entity like some Chinese company coming in and buying them instead thereby ensuring franchises like Call of Duty remain console-first rather than mobile-first.

Just look at the rumours today Apple and Amazon both allegedly tried to buy EA. I’m not convinced either of those players would make EA franchises exclusives to Luna or Apple Arcade (could you imagine the fallout if they did? 😂) but it’s still possible.

2 words: Smash Bros.

Microsoft need to do the opposite and get a big marketing push going for the Series SX as we move towards Christmas. Whilst not everyone wants it, Sony's bundle of Horizon Forbidden West at the very least gives you a game you can play that illustrates just how powerful the console is. Microsoft should be selling the Series X with Forza Horizon 5 as a minumum. If split-screen co-op is coming soon then a Series S bundle with Halo and 2 controllers should also exist: never underestimate the value of a sub £249 console with multiplayer to the family market.

Given most of their profits are from Gamepass they need to start selling people on the idea of streaming which works incredibly well.

“Hold my beer”

• Nintendo

@Sol4ris Touché! It comes off as a bit rich though of Microsoft complaining about business practices that have existed in the games industry since the 1980’s.

Isn’t this just like Disney complaining Netflix paid Warner Bros. a ton of money for exclusive streaming rights to ‘Friends’ and this somehow stopped their business from growing?

3rd party exclusives have been around since old days. Nintendo made sure loads of 8-bit titles stayed away from the Master System.

Suck it up, Microsoft.

I wonder if they will announce anything to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Forza Horizon this October?

I’d like to see a fully remastered Colorado map added as the 2nd DLC to FH5 together with all the cheesy dialogue and drivers from the first game.

@Would_you_kindly This really. I really liked the 360 dashboard. Everything had its place, it was quick to browse and the game store was baked right in and a LOT faster then the PS3 store.

On the most part it’s really good. I wish Sony had more retro titles though.

It’s chalk and cheese for first party titles though. Forza and Halo have become service level games with weekly updates and seasons designed to keep the subs rolling in whereas the likes of God of War and Horizon are big slices of single player stories and add nothing to a sub beyond a cheaper way to play them.

I’ve years worth of digital games to play and I’m a sucker for dinky consoles. This is half the reason I brought a GameCube and a Wii! Honestly if there is a game that doesn’t run on the thing I’ll just stream it and not notice the difference.

Protip: If you have space in your luggage it’s also great to take to hotels to play on.

A problem with them both is the attempt to portray an entire country in such a small space which is both immersion breaking and ludicrous. Attempting to make us believe that the map in FH4 somehow stretched from Edinburgh to the Cotswolds via the M1 was absurd.

They should have shrank both of them down to an area in both countries, in the case of FH4 this should have either done the Lake District between the M6 and the Irish Sea or the Peak District between Chesterfield (which is ironically about the size of the much-shrunken Edinburgh) and Bakewell. Either of these would have been great facsimiles in the same way we had a facsimile of Colorado in the original and the Cote de Azure in number 2.

As for FH5 they should have just done the Jalisco area of Mexico between Guadalajara and the Pacific.

This is why we keep telling them Hokkaido would make such a great location: it’s an island and a smaller part of a larger country. They don’t need to recreate a terrible facsimile of Japan for the whole game; just a portion of it.

@Rockboy247 I do wonder if we will ever see a streaming-only tier?

If Microsoft had any brains they would offer this as a freebie for signing up to a years’ Gamepass in one go rather than selling it separately.

I argue the opposite. Biggest selling console of the current market? Switch. Call of Duty games available? Zero.

People buy Nintendo consoles for their franchises and games parents can trust their kids to play. Sony have just as many franchises and just as many family oriented titles as Nintendo.

Arguably Microsoft has the opposite problem: they shuttered half of their best 360 franchises and the Xbox One has always had a huge gaping hole when it comes to first party family oriented titles. Call of Duty isn’t much help here.

Horizon Rally in FH1. It genuinely felt like both a logical addition to the game and a whole new event type to master as you weren’t against other drivers directly.

The others all just took a portion of the game (or a biome) and ran with that, effectively being more of the same.

I really wanted to like The Crew 2 but the map is too big, there is no rewind (which is a must in a post-forza horizon world) and the choice of player avatars is full of bearded hipsters.

4/10.

Because of the damned Sonic 3 licencing issues they had to change the music to most of the game and Sonic 3 without Ice Cap Zone just isn't worth any money.

It's as Xbox has been for the last decade: nothing earthshattering but plenty to keep a variety of gamers happy.

@alex123 I must admit I do miss the old AC games. I recently went back to finish Unity and it has aged remarkably well. The Paris backdrop is gorgeous and the combat and free running are well executed. I also didn't find any bugs!

I think my favourite AC combat system is AC3. Although you have regenerating health there is no way to upgrade it meaning you have no choice but to get better as a player. The endless guards if you set off an alarm encourages stealth-based gameplay. Hiding in the trees and ambushing patrols of British soldiers never gets old.

@XxEvilAshxX Yes, because if you are in combat with anyone other than a forced boss in an AC game you have already failed. Valhall brought back the 1-hit-kills allowing you to, if you were good enough, go exploring the high-level areas without fear of being unable to actually kill anything.

Origins, whilst a great game, introduced the terrible level gating that plagued Odyssey after it meaning you had to grind away at sidequests to progress in the story. This is something that should always be optional in any RPG.

Valhalla's instant kills alleviated this issue somewhat and let you do high-level quests.

Something that seems to have passed everyone by is this year (2022) is the 10th anniversary of the first Forza Horizon title. Surely something has to be on the cards for that beyond some donuts?

I'd put money on the 1st DLC map for FH5 being the Colorado Map from FH1 completely rebuilt with 4K testures and more off-road sections (like the golf course, but expanded) together with a bunch of anniversary events. To go with this would be a return of the cast of racers from the original as well.

@Dezzy70 Right? Perfect Dark did the exact same thing by having the extra objectives on harder difficulties.

@Dezzy70 I'd be amazed if it wasn't at least on the level of Perfect Dark which is a great update.

He's not wrong. Halo Infinite and Horizon 5 were both great titles but they have both been created as a grind to keep the subs rolling in. Come for the fresh meat, stay for the old favourites.

I'd imagine Sony are racing to get a smaller digital PS5 to market, however.

Microsoft can continue to support the Xbox One via game streaming. I can play Fortnite on a ping between 0-10 on my WiFi in a web browser and other games with no perceptible lag.