Musing here about the reorg: obviously Asha has a better view of the inner workings of things, but to me… I would have moved PlayGround and inXile also under Bethesda and cement it as the RPG arm. Also reorg iD and Machine Games under Activision to round it up as the FPS arm.

Side random thought: I wish I had Asha’s ear for an hour, because I would love to make a case for integrating King games into GamePass. I love their mobile games but detest the health systems. I would love a GP (Premium?) that gave me unlimited lives (not power-ups) on King games so I never feel forced to stop playing. I would literally subscribe to GP Premium just for that perk.

I’m still quite shocked that they won’t even try to manage the current 343/Halo staff under Activision. They just being all assigned to keep the service bits of Infinite/MCC for the forseable future and that likely only means the launch of the next Halo or until Activision can take over that maintenance.

Even with the amount of talent out there hunting for jobs, it baffles me that they believed starting a brand new studio would be easier than salvaging 343’s workforce.

@fatpunkslim if I read it right, Ninja Theory is already gone from under Xbox but the deals they signed to keep themselves afloat got canceled.

Their messaging is that Xbox will enter consultations on a recommended closure but sounds more like Xbox is offering them a hand on the paperwork and legality but it’s up to them to take that or keep trying to survive.

@abe_hikura the Rare shift is very likely going to result in upper Rare management positions being eliminated. Don’t know who leads Rare but either they are in the job loss count or have been reassigned to different roles.

@IronMan30 there might be some management cuts, but I would imagine minimal. I think this is mostly about having fewer leads reporting directly to Asha. Either a redundant position is eliminated (likely at Turn 10) or a new one created (or reorganized) to be the single overseer of all things Forza/Fable.

Interesting bit that despite the layoffs in 343/Halo Studios, Activision is not leaning to simply take over Halo into one of its studios but instead to create a new team from the ground up. Edit: this new studio likely can end up rehiring people from other closed sectors, but I have a feeling 343/Halo experience will be a negative in any resume.

Shows how distrusted the 343/Halo team is right now at Xbox under new management. They are out of chances.

Also interesting is they noted Undead Labs was still under Xbox in their books, and it’s only now that they got fully divested. So, they personnel count is likely to be part of the reported number or on top.

Personally, I think most of that restructuring seems very logical. Obsidian going under Bethesda makes sense, as they had a lot of overlap and now working together on Fallout.

It also says a lot that Playground and Turn 10 are being left on their own. Seems ASHA has full trust on them continuing to self-manage despite all the reports of development hell on Fable.

As I expected, the Blizzard reports were false or extremely obsolete. Given recent profitability reports, there was no way they were in the chopping block unless some secret project was being canceled.

Rare definitively needed to get moved under real management. They seemed to be running a very disorganized with Sea of Pirates being pure luck.

@Fiendish-Beaver @Mr-Cage as a bi woman in a same sex relationship: thank you for your stances throughout these comments.

@Zenszulu 👍👍

@Vaako007 even when a character has a long history the bigots whine. Nerds been raging about Mystique being in a same sec relationship in the new game despite her being bi in the comics since the 80s. This whole “make your own characters” trope is total garbage and an attempt to simply hide representation in places that can’t be seen.

@Fiendish-Beaver @FraserG investors like workforce reductions. There is no way the divested studios positions would not be rolled into the “eliminated roles” numbers, imo.

My only confusion at the time was if those divestments were counted on the initial wave (and effectively immediately) or they stick around for longer and part of the “future 1600” count because those divestments were in progress.

Given Arkane was mentioned but not acted upon, I inclined to speculate those divestments (minus Arkane) were accounted for in the initial 1600.

@themightyant Shriner has been wrong before (he won’t ever admit to it and bend arse backwards to reframe his incorrect reporting, though), but there might be unannounced projects getting cancelled.

Lots of comments already, and I might already have been beat to this prediction: but expect the harshest hit to come to Halo Studios. All management gone and the rennants be absorbed into ABK.

Also expect the fate of Arkane to finally be revealed, be it divestment, shutdown, or gutting it.

@ilyn I don’t care for wow so it would not set me up for any disappointment. I just expect the controller support to eventually lead that path, even if the only version available is WoW forever (I think that version is a lot more casual friendly).

@Zenszulu it’s nowhere near as much work for game devs as you assume. Game devs already support platform exclusive features like Steam trading cards or Xbox tying achievements to wallpapers instead of only small icons.

Also only 2 out of 4 things I listed are inspired by RetroAchievements: Hardcore and Encore.

The only thing a game dev would need to make sure for New Achievement Plus would be to make sure their game is not spamming-re-awarding every earned achievement, something some games do to insure the message goes through and most common on games with cross-platform progression like Ubisoft recent games or FFXIV.

The bulk of the work would be on Xbox front to setup.

Anyways, to pretend there is no actual room for improvement or innovation is odd.

@GamingGod “need” is very subjective in this case. They technically don’t “need” a platinum either.

But achievement features that I would welcome:

• Categorized “completion” achievements: think mini-platinum for earning all story achievements, earning all multiplayer achievements, all “item hunt” achievements, etc. You can look trueachievements.com categories for more category examples.
• Encore system: Retro Achievements have a version of this, but technically make the system think you deleted all achievement progress and are now re-earning them. Actual achievement progression is not lost but you see the pop ups when you would had re-earned it. Go beyond and make the achievement track a full list of dates it was re-earnt.
• New Achievement Plus: similar to encore but it adds a +# to the achievement name and an icon overlay to denote you have fully re-qualified for that achievement X number of times. Each ++ would add to your GS with diminishing returns. This rewards players for continuing to play games they simply love, spending more time in the ecosystem even if they just love a handful of games they can’t put down.
• Hardcore achievements: this would mandate at minimum a dev patch but a flag that indicates they earned the achievement while playing the game’s hardest difficulty. It would just add a
  VFX to the icon and/or achievements art, and make that achievement grant bonus GS (perhaps
  +25%, to throw a number out there)

These are just ideas not of what achievements need to catch up, but things that can be implemented to go beyond and make the Xbox ecosystem feel more engaging than other ecosystems.

And yes, many of these would need planning to avoid spamming save/load abuse, but that’s for deeper design documents and engineering.

Voted on all question but the one about hours per week because there are weeks I might only play indies and others I might not play any indies.

It depends what got my attention that week and the only advantage publisher pushed games have is they have bigger marketing budget so I’m more likely to know they exist. If it clicks, I’m as likely to play an indie as a gigantic Triple A game.

@GamingGod they didn’t just copy it, though. They expanded it by adding these platinum achievements. And it was rather effective. I see a lot of people buy the PS version of a game just because of the satisfaction of getting a platinum achievement.

That’s why I say, it’s ok if Xbox copies it, but they should go beyond just a copy and add more. Enough that there is more bite on the Xbox version of achievements.

@themightyant I think the name is heavily inspired by Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft. In both these games, the highest tier of gear is called “Myrhic”

I think that alone tells me that WoW will land on Xbox around whenever these get added, something that is likely to happen in the next 6 months since WoW is finally getting official controller support.

@Zenszulu if they simply carbon copy PlayStation after all these years, it will be a gigantic wasted opportunity.

The fact they seem to consider “completed mythic” and “completed” two separate filters makes me think earning a Mythic won’t necessarily tie to getting every single achievement in the game.

It likely will be tied to a specific subset, or the 1.0.

I also would not be shocked (and like) if any given game can potentially have multiple Mythic achievements. Like, one per DLC and the like.

I sort of hope they go back to the age of 360 where “live arcade” titles had achievement restrictions. If you don’t have a reputable publisher (or id@xbox) then you can’t offer mythic achievements.

Jason tends to have a lot of reliable scoops, but I have never managed to stomach him because his arrogance never allows him to ever admit when he is plainly wrong. He won’t ever back down from an article regardless how much evidence is presented to prove it was at minimum inaccurate.

He seems to be doing that right now.

I have not subscribed for Ultimate (nor Premium) for a long time so it does not affect me either way. Still curious how GamePass would look after such a change. Does it mean only indie games are day 1? Does it mean Ultimate game additions take 3-6 months and Premium 6-12 months? Or is Ultimate entirely scrapped, only retaining Premium?

EA seems to be doing rather well with their subscription even on PS despite all games coming in 12 months later.

Either way, the way they worded that clarification tells me first party day one is going to halt next year and Fable might be the last day 1 addition. I do hope they are ready for the backlash because GPU will lose a significant amount of subscribers.

That list looks very sus, price hike on MP only tier when they likely have to get rid of it during Helix? Because there is no way a gen that can run Steam games can get away with charging for MP…

Also ads in non-streaming GP? Sounds absurd.

I would not be shocked if Ultimate simply went away, potentially grandfathering current subscribers for a grace period. But there is no way they increase Premium back u after the recent price reduction on top of removing streaming entirely.

Anyways, I don’t subscribe to GP outside the MP tier and that only because I want to play FFXIV on Xbox and earn achievements. I would not pay 10 a month for that.

@badboidre because D2D means play anywhere titles can be played on pc or handheld after buying an xbox disk. It also means sineine can have a secondary console (maybe a cheap Series S) that can suddenly play games we bought on disk.

And disks will also now benefit from game share, won’t go into the details here but game share is intentionally set up to let a friend play your digital library even if across the world.

@Fiendish-Beaver there is a site that has a long list of compatible title. For the most part, the compatibility seems to be alongside publisher lines and I think its mostly missing publishers that opted out.
https://xct.live/disc2digital

It wont be a sure bet, but you can always check the site and see how many of the publisher games are in the program.

Exodus seems to be published by Wizards of the Coast and for what I seen they only have one game listed in that website: Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance. There are two variants listed with only one working.

It's a hard guess but I would say it's a 51/49 chance of it supporting d2d, with slightly higher odds because I assume the only reason one version is not supported is legacy/unsupported pressing schemes. I doubt Xbox will allow any future games to be pressed that way anymore, but will still likely give publisher's freedom to opt out.

Edit:
So far (quick check) Square Enix, Sega and Bandai-Namco don't seem to support it. Ubisoft seems to be mostly no, with very few disks somehow working. Anyways go through the Publisher dropdown to see if a title you are looking forward for is published by someone that is not mostly opting out.

I have heard some country consumer protection laws mandate that any negative change to a subscription service results in automatic unsubscribing all affected users and then hope they opt in by resubscribing.

Would not be shocked if they are trying to avoid that because they know they would lose a ton of people that subscribed and don’t even use the service but forgot it’s being billed every month.

I’m not giving GTA6 $80, much less $100… but I am spending about $800 between a new Zelda themed Switch 2, the Pro Controller, the game, and the two amiibo… for whatever any of that is worth.

I only subscribe to Essential for the online play (only for FFXIV I play nothing else online at this time on Xbox) but I never stream anything. In great part because it never worked well for me when I was subscribed to Ultimate years back (I dropped off when they killed Arkane in disapproval).

Looking right now at the closest competitor, NVIDIA’s streaming service, the $10 tier allows for 6 hour sessions and 100 hours a month. In comparison, the proposed GamePass limits are a joke even if you also consider the access to “free games”.

I would propose lowering the price of GP tiers and launching a Streaming addon that is competitive with NVIDIA’s pricing and limits. At least that way GP subscribers that don’t stream and those that only care for streaming their owned titles could see it as a net gain.

I just commented on another article but giving this thought: I think they should break off Game Pass from Game Streaming. Lower the cost of GP, and make streaming its own XCloud service with its own cost tiers. Maybe then they can offer a “unlimited tier” (or high enough it feels unlimited) for the few that seriously paid GPU to stream games they own and other F2P games.

I honestly don’t care for cloud gaming. It never worked well for me anyways. But if it’s so expensive to support, I would rather it be phased out or the GP tiers reviewed to have no-streaming options at lower prices. I might actually upgrade back to premium from essential of a version was cheaper.

For now, only on essential to be able to play some games online.

I’m going to give them credit for literally telling users in the email how they can cancel if they are unhappy with the change. With literal direct links to the cancelation form. That’s a big change from their previous handling of negative GP changes.

@Broosh would love to see that but doubt it would happen. In its current form, this relies on a unique key stored on each disk and highly doubt DVD games had that.

Technically all BluRay disk have one regardless of manufacturer, but not sure if that’s what Xbox is leveraging for this or some additional proprietary key.

@Cherip-the-Ripper only one I can think of the top of my head was Lego Dimensions as it requires special USB attached hardware to work at all. Certain it still does, but it’s still nice not having to fetch the disk to play it.

Funny enough: I’m not surprised about the delisted games working, but it’s nice to get the confirmation. I was seriously expecting this. Looking forward to redeem my Transformers Devastation and Deadpool copies.

I now am curious what delisted games I should go on a hunt for…

More than anything I would like to see examples of games that don’t work, outside the Sega/SE/Forza games.

I wonder what’s going on with Forza… somehow doubt it’s about licensing since Deadpool would technically be on the same boat… unless… they got the rights to republish the Transformers and Marvel ABK games and might actually see them come back…

It also surprises me that EA is participating but Sega, one of the closest Xbox partners of late, isn’t. SE opting out is extremely predictable.

I have been playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows for a while now. First my goal was to do all
DLC, since I only played the launch version. I done with that (and the extended ending to the campaign with the black cross templars fantastic) and now aiming to 100% my achievements. Only MODrunner left now. Hope to get that one today, with some grinding.
After that, not sure what I’ll hop on next. Debating if to finish Valhalla DLC I never played or pick something different.

Called it in the other article. I said “minutes” and seems I was right

@FraserG I feel this article can now be retitled “The Xbox Series X25 Is Now Available To Pre-Order, And Here's Where You [Can’t] Buy It [anymore]”

@TDHorizon there are ways to get the product exact URL early (wario64 tends to get them that way) and aim their bots to refresh until they get the thing it’s aimed at.

@TDHorizon if it has any potential to be scalped, this happens every time. You will see 1.5k-2k eBay listings within minutes.

Should it nearly instantly. Almost managed to check out at Microsoft Store but having multiple payment options made me choose one and that delayed me enough for it to go out of stock. Better this way. I really should not spend that much this month

@Mr-Cage they revealed it as a free upgrade for anyone that already own it.

I remember ages ago when the first teaser clip preview of this someone insisted it was a cinematic due to the zoom-in effect on tossing a fireball.

Glad to finally see a proper combat preview and see combat is indeed that dynamic with zooms that add a cinematic effect without getting in the way of the action. Not going to watch more on this game, though. I’m already sold.

I appreciate the free update but a minor preservation concern: is this remaster somehow going to be optional? A separate install? I likely would just play this version, but notes about redesigned combat likely make old fans concerned about losing access to reliving THAT experience.

@FraserG thank you!!! 💗💗💗

@MTR54 Best Buy seems to still have it on their website. I’m sure this will be stocked by a few retailers online.

@FraserG any word if 8bitdo or Razer will by chance sell an official companion charger for this controller?

@Sindayl not basing Xbox, it’s my preferred platform right now, but keep in mind Xbox controllers are the gold standard for PC gaming. Xbox sells a TON of these things to PC gamers.

@Millionski Amazon and big box stores online are the safest bet. eBay for used copies, I guess.

Damn… P4R and Fable are landing way too close to one another!!!

@VisitingComet1 https://www.amazon.com/Fable-Standard-XBOX-X/dp/B0H42LQ817

Image in the store listing says it’s a game disk, note that’s the base edition.

Premium edition is likely digital only. Even if it’s not, the upgrade is likely redeemed via a code in the box and not part of the disk.

Huh... interesting thing... I just went to Amazon to preorder Fable physically and noticed that most Xbox game box art now very clearly say "Game Disk" in a gray line at the bottom. Not sure how new this is... but this might be a big "this will work with transferable entitlement" flag and help clearly distinguish what is a code in a box.