RadioHedgeFund

@JayJ Even more incredibly was managing to squash it onto the PSP!

@Dezzy70 I don’t think it ever mattered. Dorky peripherals add to the whimsy of a console. I had so much fun at uni playing Eyetoy with my housemates. With the PSVR2 its sheer presence just serves to implant the idea in the mind of the consumer that the PS5 is more futuristic than the Xbox and that’s a gained sale.

What Microsoft are missing is any appeal to families. The last time Microsoft bothered with anything aimed at a family audience was the Kinect (which was a lot of fun!). I watch the E3 streams and all I see are more shooters and more zombies. Yay.

What Sony gets is that whilst the average age of a gamer might be 30, consoles sit in the living room and are played on by people of all ages. The PS5 launched with Sackboy’s Adventure, a game I can play with my youngest son and my nephew, aged 10 and 4 respectively. What does Xbox have for those moments?

If Microsoft want to bump sales they should bring back the old style Avatars, remove the need for every user to have a Microsoft account with local user accounts (like the 360 had), maybe get some quick updates of some top older titles out the door like Motorcross Mayhem and Dorito’s Crash Course and bundle them with the Series S with 2 controllers.

The Xbox 360 was earlier to the party and had a great lineup of Japanese exclusives, from Blue Dragon to Tales of Vesperia and it still didn't help. Would FFXVI coming to the Series X really make much difference?

The software and hardware charts for the last 5 years have been entirely dominated by Nintendo because in the densely populated commuter jungle of Japan, a small home console you can take with you on public transport is a miracle.

@JayJ I can’t agree with that. The 360 pad had easier to nudge the bumpers whilst you grip the triggers and you could tell which player was which with the segmented lights.

The newer pads only have a better d-pad IMO.

I’ve a feeling Microsoft would put Infinity Ward in charge of the next Halo rather than serve up another Call of Duty

It has been apparent for 4 and 5 that Microsoft have been keen to turn it into a live service game for a while now. It was obvious that some IAP for Wheelspins was stripped from 4 at the last minute in response to the backlash against Battlefront 2. The game's constant updates are to keep people paying for Gamepass.

Thus why not do a World Tour? They could do a weekly rotation of maps from previous titles and some new ones with a remaster of the FH1-3 maps. They could also roll in the DLC ones (Storm Island, Blizzard Mountain etc) as part of this too.

The retail release would be a new campaign set on Hokkaido but the online side would be that rotational gameplay.

I wonder if for the sequel they might do a live service world tour sort of thing where they remaster the old maps, add in a Japanese one (that would be the basis of a separate offline single player mode) and have them on weekly rotation.

@Somebody The difference is Nintendo and Nvidia have nothing to lose. They didn't have COD before and it isn't a system seller for Nintendo.

Sony on the other hand will want a clause in place that prevents Call of Duty launching on Gamepass at the same time as the retail release. Microsoft didn't buy Activision to sell more units; they brought it to sell more subs. It doesn't matter if Sony get a bigger cut over the next decade because they know a lot of people buy a PlayStation just to play COD and FIFA.

There is nothing wrong with this but will people buy a PlayStation to play it when they can instead buy an Xbox (possibly a cheaper S model) and just fork out for one month of sub for the campaign?

Thus if COD launches on Gamepass day one (or even within a few months) Sony know they will lose console sales and unit sales because of it.

I doubt Microsoft are willing to capitulate and offer Sony a deal that gives both platforms parity and stops new COD titles launching on Gamepass within 12 months of launch.

It is this imbalance that the regulators will be looking at.

A full remaster of the original Colorado map please.

The likely explanation is sales of the original were so poor on Xbox platforms that they didn’t bother to even think about releasing it.

It’s a shame but this has been going on since the 360 where titles like Vesperia eventually went multi platform because exclusivity damaged Japanese sales of the game.

The lions share of OT sales were obviously on Switch but to maximise the Japanese market it makes business sense to build OT2 for PlayStation platforms too.

“We really want the big up front wodge for the Gamepass inclusion because we are worried our game won’t sell.”

I do wonder if we’ve become a little entitled as gamers. Perfect Dark, Halo 2 and Call of Duty 4 didn’t have much by way of ongoing post-launch content bar some DLC and are are still very playable. N64 PD launched with so many options you’d struggle to ever get bored of it.

And yet we now demand these constant updates to keep things fresh when actually maybe the problem isn’t the game but us.

@Gloki_junior To be fair videogame prices have largely remained immune to inflation for the last 20 years. I'm not saying every game is worth $70 but I do know that I paid £60 each for Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask on the N64 in 2000.

The danger is escalation. Sony have their finger hovering over the 'buy Square Enix' button as we speak. If the AB deal goes through then nobody can complain about anything costing less.

This is precisely the problem: Xbox needs more original titles or franchise reimagining and not just more of the same. Look at the response to HiFi Rush!

There is nothing wrong with franchises but the difference from, say Twilight Princess to Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild is startling.

There is literally an intern at Sony whose entire job is to sit over a big red button marked ‘buy Square Enix’ and press it as soon as it does.

Another shooter. Yay.

“We need all the spare cash to buy a company for $40bn so someone had to go”

More of the new campaign structure. The ‘enclosed conflict’ gameplay of Halo works really well in a semi-open world scenario. I wouldn’t mind seeing more options added to think laterally about a conflict.

@Cyberpsycho Despite buying it from a 2nd hand retailer wiped and reset my X1 is still registered to its previous owner for Gamepass purposes. I think they still have it set as their ’home’ console despite their account being nowhere to be seen.

What this had meant is that for the last few years I’ve had Gamepass and Live completely for free! At first I thought it was an error so I rang up MS customer service and they said it was legit.

@Tharsman That I did not know. Still, the companies do have a good working relationship.

@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.