RadioHedgeFund

This delay will have been calculated months ago and there will have been measures to either pull some games forward or pull out the chequebook and sign up some 3rd party timed exclusives to fill the gap.

Makes me look forward to the June showcase even more. Its nice Microsoft remembers the importance of gamer christmas (ie the E3 slot)

In many ways he is correct. Microsoft's 1st party gamepass releases are all designed around the idea of long-term engagement via service-type updates and 'seasons'. Halo Infinite's campaign was fun but you stick around for the multiplayer; Sea of Thieves continues to evolve; Forza Horizon is full of weekly playlist rotations and literal season changes. This is all to facilitate continued subscriptions.

This doesn't make them bad games. I certainly enjoy them all! But for PlayStation gamers who have been on-top for the last generation because Sony concentrated on single-player adventure games and weird curio titles it would come as a shock to see that business model changed.

@Grumblevolcano I assume we are talking about L*stprophets?

Addendum: it's the 10th anniversary this year. Maybe it's getting a rerelease for that?

Personally I've been hoping Playground plan on completely remastering the map and offering it as DLC for FH5.

@Tasuki Still my favourite in the series. Playground nailed the whole fictional festival schtick so well the first time around each entry since had watered down the concept (although 5 did resurrect the idea somewhat)

Obviously the rival NPCs are a big part of this but I find its the little details like them being name checked by the DJs, the races all having proper little outposts instead of just floating videogamey text over a track, the way the festival is going on around the garages when selecting cars and such.

And oh how beautiful Colorado is in its late summer/early fall look. FH1 is still a looker to this day and had the best sunrises and sunsets this side of Horizon Zero Dawn. In FH5 you can barely tell the night has fallen.

The Series S was a stroke of genius and its good to see Microsoft providing healthy competition again after a generation that amounted to bad publicity, cancelled projects, studio closures and the only positives really being a backwards compatibility program born of desperation.

Q: What do fans want then?

It can't be easy to maintain the purity of Halo's combat whilst trying to keep it interesting as a live service sort of title.

Fair use doesn't equate to making money off the back of someone elses work. All AJ needs to do is demonetise his video and there is no problem.

At this point an offline single player title would be groundbreaking for Xbox.

N64 Perfect Dark is still the best FPS ever made.

It's rammed full of so many ideas is hard to know where to start praising the game.

In many ways he is right. Microsoft is seeking ways to maintain engagement and that all important monthly sub and games like Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite have slid further into F2P mechanics, 'seasons', playlist rotations and a grind to keep the interest of the player over the long-term. Rare's Everwilds originally sounded great but it looks like its going for the Sea of Thieves Template and I genuinely fear for what Playground will do with Fable.

But this is the current state of play. Microsoft have been buying up studios to build specifically story-driven single player games because this was Sony's key strength during the PS4-era. On the other hand Sony want more service-style titles and have been closing the studios that built their more unique titles (eg Studio Japan)

@FullbringIchigo The OG Xbox emulator ran on the 360 hardware which is emulated properly by the Series X so this should be possible.

Making a new Perfect Dark isn’t actually that hard because the original was so far ahead of its time. They could pilfer loads of ideas from the N64, polish them for modern consoles and it would still be the most innovative FPS on the market.

As an example they could use the variable difficulty objectives where rather than making the AI harder on tougher modes it also gives you more objectives to achieve. The single player should double down on the spy schtick, perhaps taking a cue from Hitman and having larger levels where Joanna has to sneak in and achieve her objectives around some sort of event.

A 10th anniversary recreation of the original Colorado map with the same layout but better graphics, the 2012 soundtrack brought back and the Revenge of Darius Flynt.

At some point Microsoft will launch a £99 streaming stick bundled with a controller and 3 months of Gamepass. Its probably that.

@Quaali The series X doesn't play Super Monkey Ball 2, JSRF, PGR3, Rez, Vandal Hearts: The Great War, Armoured Core, Sega GT, TF: War for/Fall of Cybertron, Lego LOTR, Otogi, or Dino Crisis 3.

You'd probably have been better off suggesting Forza Horizon 2 which is literally based off of the idea of the original 'grand tourer'. The series has never been better tearing italian sportscars right down the Cote De Azure.

FH4 is arguably the worst game in the series despite its rather excellent recreation of the Lake District, Mr. Whippy signs and all. The actual Horizon Festival is largely none existant and much of the content is locked away behind grinding the same races over and over or the bloody wheelspins.

FH5 is marginally better with a better focus on the actual festival side of things but its still ridden with far too many F2P mechanics and has jumped the shark somewhat.

FH3 had the best balance of Festival/Racing/Nuts side events.

The original still has the best depiction of the actual Horizon Festival and sunsets that rival Horizon Zero Dawn in beauty, all on the old Xbox 360.

Why don’t Microsoft spend a few bob porting those older games to iOS and Android? It would be fairly easy and I’m sure there are more people than me that miss the Windows Phone version of Hexic. They could still have all the achievements in them too.

Ergonomically it’s not better. It works well enough for the y-axis aiming but for the x-axis twisting your controller from side to side is uncomfortable.

Boredom.

Halo is at this point as fine tuned as a professional football match but one can only watch or play this sort of way for a finite amount of time.

It lacks the inherent chaos of having a kick around with your mates down the park where you can make up your own modified versions and its just a laugh. The closest gaming has to this is probably Fortnite.

There is no way Microsoft will get away with any more acquisitions until the Activision deal passes regulators and that will take 18 months.

This gives Sony time to react. Bungie was on the cards 6 months ago and likely not a reaction to MS/AB but then again Sony probably caught wind of Microsoft shopping for Activision 6 months ago.

Sony's hand is strengthened by Japanese competition laws preventing foreign takeovers. Square Enix would be a sure bet at this point as Final Fantasy may as well be a PlayStation exclusive and nobody ever brought and Xbox console for its JRPG's lol

Nintendo are notoriously quiet on this sort of thing but might take the opportunity to buy a few developers they work closely with. I could see them going after Platinum Games for example.

If Sammy use this as an excuse to offload Sega it would be between Sony and Nintendo unless another company like Capcom or Namco wanted to expand.

The next game needs a soft reboot IMO. 5 was a big improvement on the grind fest of 4 but still but the story mode still wasn’t as good as 1, the urban environments not a patch on 2 and the biomes not as good as 3. The seasons are frankly a complete waste of time in this game whereas they were the only thing keeping 4 interesting.

I’d like a ‘grassroots’ return of the Horizon Festival proper. No more daft stuff like parachuting out of planes but a little more realistic like 1. Instead of videogamey floating writing can we get the small outposts for races dotting the map? The first game absolutely nailed the idea of the fictional festival.

With that in mind a trip to Japan would be ace. Bring back the variable weather from number 2, ditch the seasons and make the day/night cycle longer. Japan is always associated with a cool night neon aesthetic so make that part of the game with unofficial street races happening after hours. Rather than a shrunken down version of the whole country just try to build a 1:50 replica of Hokkaido in the late summer.

Plot-wise I would make it a more rag-tag affair. Maybe the Horizon Festival went too big and jumped the shark (which 5 has done) and so a bunch of enthusiasts have rebooted the festival to make it more about the racing. Tone down the off-road sections so the map becomes learnable again, again a little like 2.

PlayStation fan over here and I think that this move has been misread. At first glance it looks like big franchise grab. But Phil’s comments suggest that this was a protectionist strategy to keep those franchises out of the hands of an outside player like Google or Amazon.

Not that I play it but PlayStation is the biggest money spinner for Call of Duty (and, as an aside other 3rd party titles like Fortnite) and Microsoft would be dumb to throw all that money away. It is likely we will continue to see Activision games continued to be released on those platforms.

Phil wants to maintain the Xbox/PlayStation/Nintendo status quo and knows the damage a company like Meta or Amazon would do to the marketplace if they just brought up a company like Activision and locked all those games behind a paywall.

It’s not like there has been a popular game out for the last 3 years with a Battle Pass mechanic they could have just copied wholesale from.

Counterpoint: Microsoft's acquisition of Activision was a protectionist move.

In recent interviews Phil Spencer has become wary of outside companies like Amazon, Google and Netflix moving in on the games industry.

Microsoft brought Activision with the goal of continuing to support Nintendo and Sony so it can maintain the current status quo. In effect it sees itself as the keeper of the Games Industry's integrity to outside companies that might see videogames as a 'feature' rather than a whole thing by itself.

Microsoft have been making lateral moves of late, publishing its own games on Nintendo and Sony platforms as well as pushing companies like Epic and Bungie to support cross-play between console platforms.

This may be the larger play to make sure nobody outside Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo tries to upend things or devalue gaming.

@ralphdibny MECHWARRIOR!

Why continue to pump resources into MCC when they could just port all the old maps to Infinite and call it a day?

@Banjo- Were there no chip shortage and they found a way around scalpers it is likely shops would still be struggling to keep the PS5 in stock alongside the Xbox consoles.

And make no mistake Sony will have their engineers working around the clock looking at how to slim down the PS5 or maybe offer a 1080p version but the chip shortage will be putting them from putting it to market.

Gamepass is great value of you play a lot of games but for people like me who only play 2-3 games a year due to time commitments it is a liability to perpetually rent a title for £11 a month when it is likely I can get it in a sale for £30 (and if it's a title you really like you end up buying it anyway when it's gamepass time ends)

I do wonder with FH5. Is it popular because it is really good or because the Xbox is so starved of exclusives?

FH5 is better than 4 but not a patch on the first 3. At 8/10 game at best which is certainly fun but does lack a certain something.

It was only over when Microsoft backtracked. I wanted theat all-singing, all-dancing media centre Xbox One together with a raft of 1st party exclusives.

What I eventually got was a VCR that played 360 games supported by a company that had shut down all its good studios.

@Kienda I appreciate it when Ubisoft put in the ability to turn off the blood in Assassin's Creed!

Family games have long been neglected by the industry at large and it is telling that most of the games on this list are oooold.

Family titles have always been a weak point for Microsoft, particularly when Sony gets it so right. They launched the PS5 with Sackboy and Astrobot and followed it up with titles like Bugsnax. The Series X? Not so many.

The PS4 has a great selection of family titles too as well as the forgotten genre of party games. Playlink (using phones as controllers) was a genius idea for solving the issue of never having enough joypads knocking around.

If you don't have Hexic downloaded them what are you doing?

After many years as an Xbox gamer I got a PS4 😅

1. It's a bit of a laugh. Some people need to lighten their mood.

2. It's difficult for a lot of gamers to hear but most people play Fortnite because it's a really a fun game with a nice adventuring aspect and an utterly chaotic gameplay loop.

3. Seriously, it's a laugh.

Deserved. It is more of the same but its still a bloody good same! The return of more of a story over the 'videogame map' of FH4 was most refreshing. My only real concern is the seasons don't really add anything to the game compared to 4.

However FH5 does ultimately feel tiresome by the end and it is probably the 4th best in the series. Whatever form 6 takes needs a rebuild from the ground up.

I do wonder if this is another classic example of a minority of fans thinking they speak for everyone. Microsoft will have done their market research to see what people actually used the Xbox 360 for and it may have been that 50% of that was watching video content.

By 2012 I was watching ALL my TV in the UK via the Xbox 360 Sky TV app supported by DVD, Netflix and Amazon. I used the Kinect voice commands all the time: "Xbox, Pause" was a lot faster than fishing the remote out when I needed to make a cup of tea.

I was sold on the Xbox One was soon as I watched the original presentation but it took a few years until I could afford it. By then Microsoft had torn out all the cool features like Skype and Snap, killed Kinect with slooooow server-side Cortana interactions and burned their 1st party studios to the ground.

It was actually backwards compatibility that sold me as I looked at losing all my PS3 games or keeping my 360 ones.

I think a lot of it reeks of entitlement.

Is it fun to play? Yes, yes it is.
Is it the best Halo multiplayer since H3? Yes, yes it is.
Does the fast pace and sheer sense of fun make a refreshing change to po-faced shooters like CoD? Yes, yes it does.

What more do you want? Who cares about Battlepasses and progression? If I wanted that I'd play Destiny. How is it not enough for a game just to be fun to play just for the heck of playing it?

The cover to Generation Zero always makes me laugh. I always imagine the 2 rednecks talking to each other like Cleetus from The Simpsons.

"Hey Brandine, looky here at this funny walkin' tin can thing."

"I've sat down and played the game constantly for the last 2 weeks and now I'm bored." - Some gamers (probably streamers)

"Did you think about playing it for only a few hours a week in between other titles like most gamers do with racing games?" - Commentary

"Er...... No."

I've spent the last 2 weeks driving on every road to unlock that achievement. I've still got every event to do!

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that actually playing multiplayer Halo for 2-3 hours at a time just isn't that much fun compared to the random chaos that you might get in Fortnite.

That's not to say that the gameplay is rubbish because it's bloody good; it's just better in small hour-long bursts than a constant stream.

In Destiny if I get bored of PVP I can at least go do some quests or join a raid or something. In Halo, once you have finished the campaign your options once you are bored of multiplayer is to play another game.

They are aware that purchases are optional and 343 aren't holding a gun to their heads?

@F1at8mot0 Its definitely the law of diminishing returns but I still think FH5 is an amazing game, its just they knocked it out of the park with the original.

FH2 made obvious improvements to the open world like weather, better graphics and the awsome bucket list challenges but 3-5 haven't really added anything to the series.

The first game is still the best. Going off road is overrated, the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal (and reduces in quality with each release) and the fiction festival schtick right on the nose. Opponents had proper names instead of 4th wall breaking random gamertags. You felt like a competitor in a real life event rather than a player on a videogame map.

But for me the absolute star of FH is Colorado in the fall. The map is massive by Xbox 360 standards and yet I could draw the whole thing out for you, such is my knowledge of it. The environment and foliage is stunning to look at but it really comes alive in golden hour when the sun sets over the mountains and you get all sorts of bloom effects in the camera. Compare this to the barely noticeable sunset in FH5 and pardon the pun but they are night and day.

The online was better in FH. You just picked a track and raced opponents. The festival was yours and yours alone. No convoys or eliminator gimmicks; just the track and opponents.

I enjoy the whole series and 5 is still a great game, and if nothing else a return to the quality of the 2nd game (which had that beautiful rain effects with the storm coming in and then going leaving reflections over the track).

It's a FPS and therefore all cosmetics are largely for the benefit of your opponents. I. Reality you quickly forget what your character looks like during gameplay so it really doesn't matter.

The banter, the radio station DJ's and all the other cheery nonsense is BLOODY BRILLIANT. They not only finally decided to bring back the festival schtick from FH1 but they improved it as well. I for one love it.

@Artois What hype? They announced ahead of time that there wouldn't be anything new. I'd call added value to games you already own, the ability to play more classics from the Xbox/PS2/GameCube generation and the shadow launch of the Halo Multiplayer pretty exciting stuff.

For OG Xbox games this is a shame but not unexpected. The only real game left to release is JSRF and that's stuck in so much licencing hell I'd be amazed if Sega don't just make a 3rd game first. SSX3 is a much better game than Tricky so that's not a big loss.

There isn't much left from the 360 that isn't out. It would have been nice to see Transformers on the lost but the disks still work. Rez still isn't BC and there is no sign of a non VR port of Rez Infinite on Xbox.

@Damjam Yeah, Nintendo lol!

@Magabro I remember. But I am first and foremost a blue-blooded Sega kid from that era. It will be a cold day in hell before I admit Nintendo made a better 16 bit console than Sega did!