RegnumSolipsi

@QuantumNinja

Agreed! Give us Riddick, Burnout 3, JSRF, and the MechAssault games and I would pretty much be content.

Been a pretty weak year for me so far. Legacy of Kain Defiance doesn't really count since it's just a remaster and High on Life 2 will be a budget buy once it drops below $25. Still got plenty on my list for the rest of the year starting with Pragmata in April, so I'm not too concerned. This year is gearing up to be the best since 2021 (which is the best since since 2007 IMO.)

Just finished up the single player achievements on Saints Row (2006) and now I'm working on cleaning up Saints Row 2. Will also probably dabble with Legacy of Kain: Defiance and just picked up MGS: Delta, so I'll probably at least get through the opening for that.

@Fiendish-Beaver Their biggest mistake was adjusting the cost of the top tier and adding a mangled middle tier. Day One 1st party games are their bread and butter on the service and it hobbles them removing that from the middle tier. Instead they should've taken external services like EA, Ubisoft, and the Fortnite Crew and added them to a more expensive 3rd tier while keeping the middle tier in line with the original vision for the service at the same cost.

I would be curious to see how many subscribers they would actually gain or lose if they made a tier exclusively for 3rd-party programs.

I onboarded a couple years after the service launched because I already owned everything they had to offer, but I bumped it down to Essential the month after they announced the recent price hike, then dropped it completely a month after that because I don't play online and don't actually need XBL Gold anymore. They haven't added anything of substantial value to justify the service going up in cost since the last price bump. Ubisoft hasn't made a good game in over a decade, nobody gives a damn about some premium Fortnite package, and just because Microsoft wanted to buy a crappy company like ABK (which nobody even wanted to happen) doesn't mean we should have to foot the bill for it.

On average I play 3-4 games on the service per year and end up only actually enjoying 1 or 2 of them. Those numbers do not justify that $30 a month.

That is the best news I've heard all week. Would've been neat if they could've pushed it into March since I have no interest in anyone coming out this month, but I'll take even a week.

@BAMozzy

A world where F2P and online multiplayer games don't exist? Sounds like a dream come true to me! Bring on the single player revolution!

@Tasuki CoD is also a very rare exception of a game who's player base lately consists of non-gamers. It's a social phenomenon that became mainstream and attracted a lot of perks to it because of its popularity with athletes, rappers, etc...

These games are trying to court CoD numbers, but they're chasing a demographic that don't visit forums, don't read gaming news, will literally never hear about any other game in existence, and will certainly never play another game that isn't the annual CoD release. CoD, Roblox, and Fortnite are impossible demographics to pursue. They don't exist in the sphere of this industry, yet studios continue to push marketing and spend on development costs like they do. They're reaching for infinite growth in a balloon that can only maintain a certain size given the current population. It's leaking and it's going to pop eventually.

To absolutely nobody's surprise. That's what happens when you try to release a F2P multiplayer game in a market that is already grossly oversaturated and has players locked in to their markets already. It's extremely rare for any game to be a breakout hit, but even more so a multiplayer title in a market competing with Fortnite, PUBG, ROBLOX, or Call of Duty levels of success.

Releasing your first game with a model that strictly depends on a large player base willing to spend copious amounts of money on content that isn't strictly necessary to play in a game that in all likelihood wouldn't have a long-term presence in the market and thus was always at risk of being shut down at any moment and making the purchasing of said content a risky gamble is a terrible idea, especially when it's your first entry as a studio.

Logically they should've started with a Premium Single Player or PvE experience at a sensible price point so they could've at least had some profit and royalties rolling in to support them during their future projects. Once you have a steady revenue stream, THEN you gamble on the risky F2P model once you have a following.

I truly don't understand the thought process behind "Let's release a console, then give people zero incentive to invest in that console." If they had dishes hardware and sold the Xbox as a brand or as software for other platforms, then I would get it, but having physical hardware with exactly zero reasons to choose it over its competitor makes absolutely no sense.

I hate exclusives as much as the next guy, but you need to have exclusives to add incentive. No exclusives only works if all of the competitors are also willing to give up their exclusives as well. You can't have a console selling A, B, & C when the other console sells A, B, C, D & E at the same or lesser cost.

Unfortunately the only way they're going to bring the Xbox back is to rewind it back to basics and offer the superior service. Free online multiplayer, dashboard with zero ads, invest in 1st party and partnered exclusives, and generally just not screw up on the consumer front. Xbox has always been at a disadvantage with Favoritism and the Xbox tax, but Sony and Nintendo constantly make mistakes. If Xbox could be steadfast and firm in it's decision making and offer strong 1st-party titles, they MIGHT be able to take advantage of those mistakes and turn things around, but it's going to take A LOT of trust building.

Definitely a better promotion than Shrwarma. I'll always trust a man named Matt.

Guys, Chat GPT was just promoted to Head of Xbox Studios!

"To the Xbox Community,

Today, I step into the role of Head of Xbox Studios with deep respect for what this brand means to millions of players around the world. Xbox was built on bold ideas, unforgettable worlds, and a simple promise: put players at the center of everything.

That promise has not always felt consistent. I want to acknowledge that directly. Trust is not a marketing campaign. It is earned through action, transparency, and delivering the experiences you were promised.

My commitment is straightforward:

1. Games First. Always.
We are aligning every studio under one clear priority: ship exceptional games that are polished, ambitious, and worthy of your time. No filler. No rushed launches. Creative freedom paired with accountability.

2. Clear Communication.
If a project changes, you will hear it from us. If something is delayed, we will explain why. Silence breeds frustration. Transparency builds trust.

3. Quality Over Quantity.
Our roadmap will focus on fewer, stronger releases rather than spreading our talent thin. Each title should feel like an event, not an obligation.

4. Empowering Our Studios.
The teams behind our worlds are our greatest strength. We are restructuring internal greenlighting and milestone reviews to reduce bottlenecks and ensure developers can build boldly without compromising stability or performance.

5. Listening With Intent.
Community feedback will not be a checkbox. We are expanding structured player councils, technical preview programs, and post launch support plans so you can see direct influence on the games you love.

Xbox succeeds when players feel proud to be part of it. My goal is not just to launch great games. It is to restore confidence in the direction of this platform.

You deserve consistency. You deserve ambition. You deserve experiences that remind you why you chose Xbox in the first place.
The work starts now.

See you online!"

@Banjo- Not even. These AI models are trained off of content on the Internet. She no doubt asked it to write a PR introduction focused on what Xbox fans want most. This and the demand for more 1st-party games are among the highest asked-for requests and are both things she's now promised. I doubt Sharma even knows what a Blade dashboard is. I give it a week and she'll name-drop Perfect Dark and Scalebound as well.

@Banjo- I considered the ROG as an opposing proof to my concern and there may be truth to it still, but I also still don't consider the ROG as an Xbox device. It's a pre-existing device from another company that Microsoft partnered with. It's not Microsoft-built, it has no access to the Xbox marketplace, and all they did was slap some Xbox branding on a PC device and design an app to determine GamePass access. It's essentially no different than buying a Steamdeck or a Samsung phone and pulling up GamePass through the browser.

I'm hopeful it won't be the case and considering Microsoft is the #1 game publisher on the PS5 I hope that's cause enough for Sony to simmer down and let it slide, but Sony has never behaved in a way that could be considered consumer-friendly. There was even a point where they fought Microsoft on releasing games for the PS5 because they didn't want Microsoft having early access to the Dev Kits, which was a huge talking point during the ABK acquisition.

@Banjo- I still have trouble envisioning Xbox adding library access to marketplaces like Steam, GOG, and Epic storefronts, but I am hopeful they will find a way to make it work. More than anything, I want a streamlined console experience to enjoy my PC games and getting PS game access is a bonus, though I wouldn't be surprised if Sony finds a way to block Xbox-brand devices from accessing their games after this happens similar to how they've blocked XCloud streaming on the PS5 browser.

If there's one thing I want to see more than anything, I want to see my full Xbox library become accessible on PC. If the new Xbox does become essentially a streamlined PC, I don't see why they couldn't run it the other way as well (along with other handheld and mobile devices.) It would be the most natural progression of the Play Anywhere program and it would give incentive to keep people buying from the Xbox marketplace as well.

@Banjo- None of their actions hurt us as gamers and I welcome features like Play Anywhere and making the games multiplatform. The problem is we've also been left with no incentive to keep using their platforms going forward. If 100% of all Xbox games come to Playstation, but only 5% of Playstation games come to Xbox, as a gamer why would you want to limit yourself to the Xbox Platform and miss out on so many experiences? Microsoft has made the best moves out of the Big 3 Console makers, but they've made moves that only make sense when the rest of the competition is onboard and cooperating with the new direction as well.

Even the few of us who stick with Xbox and continue to support them in any capacity as encouragement for moving the in the right direction are playing a risky game because most people are understandably self-serving and the loss of business will always come with that chance that Microsoft eventually pulls the plug and leaves us high and dry.

Say what you will about Phil, but the man was a gamer and he can no doubt see the writing on the wall. There is a push to corrupt an already-struggling industry with the use of AI in the worst ways possible (There is a place for AI in game development, but automation of development and the elimination of jobs is not that way) and I doubt Phil wanted to be a part of that corruption. With Microsoft (and every major company) pushing for more and more AI every day I have no doubt it was being pushed on Xbox harder and harder every day. This much is apparent by their promotion of the AI CEO and Phil was no doubt either discreetly removed from his position or threw in the towel knowing it was a losing battle to resist Microsoft's demands. For better or worse, Phil's departure is no doubt a sign of the beginning of the end for our favorite hobby.

Xbox needs a "man of the people" head who will actually give gamers what they want and need. Unfortunately, instead we've ended up with a Corporate Yes Man who doesn't have the slightest idea about the gaming world. I can safely say we've reached the end of the Xbox era. Maybe the Playstation era, as well, if Sony keeps dropping the ball like they have been (Then again, people seem to have endless patience and unlimited forgiveness for Sony when they screw up unlike Microsoft who makes a mistake and people turn their noses up to any attempt at making amends and force them into a decade-long spiral of desperation.)

Depends on my backlog by time it launches. 2026 is a pretty busy year for me so far and I have at least 13 games coming out this year on my watchlist so far (High on Life 2, Styx: Blades of Greed, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Fatal Frame 2, Dead or Alive 6: Last Round, Life is Strange: Reunion, Directive 8020, Death Stranding 2, Fable, Pragmata, Halo: CE, Metal Gear Solid 4, and GTAVI) which is about 11 more than I usually get in a year, so depending on how far behind I am it may end up being a discount purchase or a wait for PC.

Considering GTAV got zero post-launch support, they'll probably do the same to GTAVI and the base game alone is NOT worth the $80 they'll likely charge for it.

How about an Xbox controller for the PS5 instead? The controller design is the main reason why I stick with Xbox and could never switch to the Playstation in a future where Xbox throws in the towel. I can only hope Microsoft continues to produce controllers as a 3rd-party if they ever back out of the console industry.

@Brigurugi Oh damn. You've got me beat. I'm probably about 350,000. I pushed the first 250K and broke that wall pretty quickly, somewhere around 2012, but I stopped pursuing achievements for all but my favorite games and the last 100K happened more slowly and organically. It's been at all all time trickle the last few years since none of the main series I play to completion have been putting out any game.

So happy to have another Halo game this year since I ran out of achievements to unlock in that series after Infinite dropped.

These are still a thing? I thought they eliminated them years ago. Pretty sure I blocked and disabled them along with the Series X/S capture button, Friend Following, and all of that social media BS that was introduced back on the XB1. Honestly hard to tell because my Xbox Live Friends list has had zero people on it since I signed up in 2002.

I'm mostly just disappointed that Death Stranding 2 didn't get an Xbox reveal alongside the Steam version. Hopefully it's just a contractual silence and it will be shadow dropped after the (hopefully) 1-year exclusivity deal I assume was added when Kojima reclaimed the publishing rights from Sony. Alongside Fable, Halo, GTAVI, and a few small surprises like Pragmata and Legacy of Skin, DS2 on Xbox would make this one of my best years in gaming in nearly a decade.

Psyched to finally play MGS4 proper! Shame they're drawing the line with these 3 titles though. Really thought we would at least get Revengeance and Portable Ops running, though I was really hoping to get Twin Snakes and both of the Ac!d games.

I want it to be good. I need it to be good. The premise is sound... but those last few gameplay clips gave me a lot of Strangehold vibes. Now Strangehold was a fun game and a John Wick game that plays like that would still be fun, but it's probably not something you would expect going into a John Wick game and certainly not what fans have been hoping for out of it.

Honestly, this may be the only time anybody ever says this, but I wish the game was being made by the team behind Splinter Cell: Conviction. While Conviction was a mediocre Splinter Cell game at best, it was a fantastic game on its own and honestly probably the closest we've ever come to a functional John Wick game. Take the gameplay of Conviction, cut back the amount of stealth, and add a bit more emphasis to physical combat and we would have the perfect John Wick game. The Mark & Execute mechanic with its plethora of kill and takedown animations lends itself perfectly to this concept and we're kidding ourselves if we actually allow ourselves to believe John Wick wasn't a sneaky and stealthy merchant of death rather than the the patriarch of getting his ass beat every time he encounters a threat.

Meanwhile I'm STILL waiting for Until Dawn to make its way over to the Xbox (along with Quantic Dream's series of games...)

@Shinato2024 The same game selection that Microsoft is now blaming for the loss of revenue in 2025 even despite releasing on more platforms and to the largest audience they've ever had (and being the #1 Publisher in PS5)? All of those games that ended up being overwhelmingly lukewarm piles of meh?

@somnambulance It's absolutely criminal that their best franchise didn't even get a name-drop. It didn't deserve this level of snubbing.

There was a rumor earlier this month that a new spin-off was in the world for the franchise and we know they've attempted it before with Ghost, Ares, Xel'naga, and a few others, so hopefully they finally get something off the ground.

@Jark

From what I've read with that one, it was more of a tech demo than an actual game. Not sure how much of it was actually intended to be a game anyway. It was sort of like that old Project Milo for the Kinect. Proof of concept that would've never actually worked with the hardware at the time.

@Cakefish I don't think Everwild was even in a playable form. They basically scrapped it and started over on it a few years ago. What you're thinking of is Project Blackbird, the "amazing" new MMO from the Elder Scrolls Online team. Which honestly, based on the concept art that came out looking like Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077 had a baby, it had a lot of potential to be amazing.

There aren't nearly enough sci-fi games in the MMO space and I'm sick of Sword and Magic Fantasy dominating the market right now. It's worse than the 2000's Military Shooter and 2010's Zombie tropes ever were.

Lost me at PvP. I was onboard for a Single Player narrative, but online-only means it'll be dead within a month of release.

@kanedase7en

This one is definitely on my radar. Just disappointed there was finally a Sci-Fi MMO. If anything could've broken me into the MMO genre, it probably would've been this one.

I completely forgot Unreal Championship 2 was BC. I usually just play it on my original Xbox anyway, but I might have to fire it up on the XSX and see how it handles someday.

Definitely the first game. While I'm not normally a fan of medieval-era fantasy, Fable had a quaint charm to it that I found enjoyable. I loved having the Guild with all of the distinct Heroes you could interact with. Fable 2 was a good game, but its jump to the Industrial Era was too far removed and it lost a lot of the charm that I enjoyed in the first game. I'm looking forward to the Reboot going back to basics with the fairytale styling that early trailers implied.

This is one of the few games I've ever played that I would genuinely give a 10/10 review. Everything about it was surreal and and I had a blast from beginning to end. I was so disappointed that I wouldn't be able to try it out on my new Laptop when I learned about this bug, but I'm excited to finally be able to play it and hopefully load up some entertaining mods to throw in a little more flavor.

Didn't know this was a DD game. I've seen it played on Youtube and it looks fun. Kind of reminds me of Papers, Please.

Been bored with nothing to play for the last few months, so I've been replaying KOTOR 1 & 2. I finished the first one during Christmas break and I'll probably be done with the 2nd game later today, so I'm probably going to start Jade Empire next and will work on the Mass Effect series after that.

Damn. There goes my hope for a February Fable launch. Lol. Maybe this summer...

A little sad the new content is only skin deep. New races are nice and I'm glad we're getting a new weapon that will add a little variety, but I actually really enjoyed Avowed and was hoping we were going to get a big story expansion soon. Hopefully they still have something big in the works for later this year. I'm not ready to bury Avowed just yet.

Curious what the "And much more!" will amount to.

Ooh. Color me curious on BoR. I completely forgot about that one and my curiosity is piqued.

Hopefully Fable being in the show means it's locked in and safe from cancellation. It was supposedly delayed from 2025 fue to their overloaded slate last year, so maybe we'll get lucky and see an early release this year. Avowed was February, so maybe Fable will be, too

@Scrubchub Only way they're gonna learn. Blindly throwing money and praise at something that's a problem is only going to make it worse.

Cancelled my GamePass 3 months ago and definitely not regretting it so far. This service has no value left.

Considering consoles are only getting more expensive with time rather than dropping in price like they used to, $500 is my ceiling. I will never pay more than that for a gaming device.

God I hope so.

Would love to see something similar to Kameo's transformation mechanic to build on the powerups concept from the earlier games. Kameo is probably the closest game I can think of in terms of visual style and gameplay similarity and I wouldn't be against them taking some cues from the Rare classic. Would also love to see an overworld with an ocean of Gnorcs to wage war against between the more traditional levels that would play more like the original trilogy.

Mark my words, this game will get cancelled. Xbox is on a slashing spree and Blade is a license that struggled to get a simple reboot off the ground. I don't believe this game is long for this world and will likely be cut sometime next year alongside Fable and State of Decay 3.

It's a F2P competitive PvP shooter. What is there to be excited about? I'm much more interested in No Law being a Cyberpunk side serving.

Exodus, Pragmata, No Law, and Fate of the Old Republic definitely won the evening for me. No interest in anything else they showed of.

I'm really hopeful they have footage for the new Perfect Dark as that's my most anticipated game in the XGS lineup... Oh wait. Nevermind...

Neat. Like Syndicate and Dying Light had a baby. I'll keep an eye out for this one.

Pragmata, Fate of the Old Republic and Exodus all shown at the same time? Stahp!!! I can only handle so much excitement!