@Banjo- Not exactly. They did close Tango down and fired everyone. Krafton aquired the studio [i guess mostly the name] and the Hi-Fi Rush IP. They also hired back 50 former members of the team. All other IP they held staid in MS's graveyard, I mean vaults.

Better than nothing, at leat Hi-Fi Rush 2 is a possibility, but it was not quite them finding the studio a new home as much as them agreeing to the sale of some assets after the horrible backlash they got for that particular shutdown.

@AI-Generation You could say the same about all the game series PS just ripped out of PC users.

They are walking a very thin line. Xbox started to lose me when they shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Any studio that they plan to purge should be given some path towards existing, be it a path to independence or selling them.

Destroying studios that make unique and niche titles is precisely what soured me to near unforgivable levels with Sony.

I don’t want to sound cold, losing jobs on this economy is awful… but if anyone should be cut it indeed should be marketing. Xbox marketing is definitely too bloated for how horribly inefficient it has been, and not just recently. Outside very few highlights (most of them tied to GamePass marketing early in the Series gen) they have been straight out awful since the Xbox one launch. I often thought they didn’t even have a marketing department outside the teams managing their showcase! That’s how bad they been!

So, yes… trim marketing and hopefully reboot that whole department.

Cutting any studio in its entirety has high chances of undoing all the goodwill Sharma has managed to finally make with me in the last month. Especially niche ones like Compulsion Games.

@RentedPanda

This is the second time I've seen an interview where there is mention of becoming a platform, whereas I think of xbox being an established platform. […] Is this saying that the "this is an xbox" strategy made them no longer a platform but they are becoming one again?

Thing is that Xbox is two things: a console and a platform. For generations, we gamers have treated both as one, but there is a big difference. A platform consists of the SDKs, social communication tools, matchmaking, friend lists, achievements, all that stuff.

Many don’t realize but Steam is a platform, not just “a store”. This is not me talking, go to Valves own dev page and they call Steam a platform.

At the end of the day, a platform can be tied to specific hardware but does not have to. Even Steam for all purposes works on Windows, Linux and Mac computers.

Anyways, my point is with Helix’s introduction Xbox is trying to move from “console first” to “platform first”. The console will exist, but it will be a support more than the primary thing.

I would not be shocked if this “business models” no one seen before simply mean third party Xboxes with tiered performance levels.

Xbox > Summer Fest > Nintendo > ……. 🍃…….. > Sony

I feel the direct was rather solid, not as powerful as the Xbox show but big hits for me:

• Final Fantasy Resonance (HD2D FF?!?! Omg!!!) Hope Xbox version is play anywhere because I now only buy games on Xbox if I can bring them natively into my ROG Ally
• Kingdom Hearts IV… Hope this finally means it’s close…
• Xenoblade S2 ports (need more info, if they don’t include DLC won’t be as big a deal)
• Xenoblade Genesis is extreme hype for me!
• Zelda Ocarina of Time Remake looks mind blowing
• Oh and there was a Fire Emblem that looks rather cool… maybe I finally hop into the series?

@dePaige22 you buy it on PC, Xbox still got you to play it on a Microsoft powered device.

And a single title might not cut it, but you don’t get to do the 1000 cuts without doing a first cut somewhere.

@cragis0001 Didn't notice State of Decay 3 was coming to PS, but if so, it still makes sense under a multiplat-multiplayer focused strategy. The game can be played solo, but is ultimately a multiplayer focused title, same as Grounded.

@dePaige22 Making the first game available on a single platform and all sequels exclusive to a console does, in fact, makes it easier for a wider audience to get into the series and then be lured into the platform where all other entries are.

Nintendo/Sega's Bayonetta games are a good example of this succeeding in the past.

Just said this on push square, but I am starting to think this was a genious move. Had they released as originally scheduled, they would had given it a bit of coverage and that would be it. Game would do as poorly on PS as Reloaded.

But this? Even these mistakes? All this is going to result in more publicity from Sony facing outlets than Xbox could had ever paid for!

@IronMan30 helix hybrid nature is basically “pc full screen mode”. If things go as outlined, there won’t be any “console half” outside back compat.

I think the only reason there were PS ports at all was because of the demands for 30% profit margins. Even if it was an extra few thousand units, that could potentially bring a game into the margins upper management wanted.

With these admin changes, it seems Sharma has convinced upper management to ditch that absurd expectation, so the ports out of desperation are no longer needed.

What is extremely sad is that the PS experiment (PS fans want to call PC ports an experiment, then this is no different) did not hit hard enough to save Hi-Fi Rush. It also seems to have barely moved the needle on Gears remaster, Indi, or Starfield. It did seem to save Sea of Thieves, but that's a service game.

Honestly, when Elder Scrolls 6 ends up being console exclusiv, PS players will only have themselves to blame for not picking up Starfield.

@johnedwin nah, console game sales are falling fast. Ask capcom, who reported 50% of their sales came from PC alone.

PS ain’t adding as many sales as you all love to think. If anyone is going to regret anything, it’s Sony for halting their PC ports.

@Fiendish-Beaver they showered a flowchart of how Xbox pipeline will work in the future at the last GDC and if I followed correctly, smart delivery on helix will simply install/launch the same version you would if you simply are launching the Windows build from any PC via the Xbox app, likely with a custom profile.

Helix should be able to run One/Series games, but likely the same way Series can run a XBOne game: only if the newer version is not in the bundle.

@Skinny-Pete most of the time, the last 10% of a games development is 50% of the work.

That final per platform optimization and bug-fixing stage takes a lot of time and money. We as end users might feel “just release what you got”, but that’s not really viable business.

Edit: when starfield became an Xbox exclusive, we heard similar stories to this. Yet, the game finally launched for PS5 years later and STILL had tons of PS5 specific bugs and issues. That should give everyone an idea how unfinished this Gears PS5 build was.

@IronMan30 Xbox is PC. Helix is literally going to merge the two platforms and it won’t even be two builds. Making any game Xbox hardware exclusive would just be silly given the direction of the next console.

@Skinny-Pete how so? We known about the leaked PS3 build of Gears 3 for ages. This stuff happens a lot. Sony was also working on a PC port of Ghost of Yotei and canceled that.

These days a lot of development is done on PC, even PS exclusives. Hell, Wolverine alpha build leaked years ago and was quickly compiled for PC.

Besides, all we heard is Gears remaster didn’t sell well on PS5.

Personally, exclusives don’t mean much to me. I have all platforms, so I get access to anything I care to. I do like the option to play games in the device I feel fits best, though, sometimes that means I want to play an Xbox published game on a switch, but so long the play anywhere stays and I can juggle an Xbox game on pc, Xbox and pc handhelds, I’m fine with exclusivity.

As for fans whining and coping about this, if you celebrated Sonys cancelation of PC ports, go [bleep], because you literally asked for this practice to return.

@Skinny-Pete it’s an unreal game. Outside some ui elements, an “almost finished” build simply means “someone hit the Build for PlayStation” button.

What they seem to fear is already a thing. Nintendo already black lists cart serial numbers based on various factors (mostly piracy but also think I heard some cases).

Xbox, ps and Nintendo game physical media has come with these serial numbers built in for at least two gens now, maybe 3.

If I’m given a chance to turn my physical games into digital ones, I’ll jump into it immediately, especially if this applies Play Anywhere entitlements.

Play Asia is a retailer of physical media, I think what they fear most is this might result in even fewer customers buying next gen consoles with pysicsl drives if they have the option of turning their entire physical libraries into digital ones.

@themightyant I do think Smart Delivery has something to do here.

In the PS ecosystem, some games can have some awareness of them running on PS5 but cant really work differently beyond that, due to this most games that get "free upgrades" are entirely separate entities. They even have independent trophy lists.

From what I'm gathering here, the goal here was to sell this edition at a specific price point, and "do what they can" for existing owners. In Xbox, that simply means making the game Smart Delivery and done.

On PS, it means a new build, and an upgrade path.

Technically, this also means that a Xbox one owner that does not own the game must pay full price (outside sales) while a PS4 owner can get a cheaper version if they feel they don't need the PS5 features.

In theory, THQ could had just increased the price of the PS4 version and then made the upgrade free to everyone.

XBox but I always been the odd one out.

@themightyant I should check that one out. I feel I might enjoy it, but too time constrained lately and GP is now (IMO) too expensive to keep as a “just in case” subscription.

If I get time, I might just get it on steam and return if it does not click in the first hour. It’s what I been doing since I dropped GPU.

@themightyant have not been subbed to GP for a while (outside the tier necessary for online play) but I have used GP as a “demo” system for a long time. If I love a GP game, i usually end up buying it. Sometimes in multiple platforms.

If a DLC is released, I got to buy that anyways, so I’m also likely to buy complete editions of GP games I love when they get worthwhile DLC.

Most platforms have been giving every physical copy unique key for a long time. Nintendo has very visibly leveraged this to ban consoles that slot in a cart that has been caved up and redistributed on pirate sites.

MS could leverage this to grant a digital license, effectively banning that disk from ever working on a console that is not tied to an account owned by the new digital owner (so long that console goes online).

In theory, there could be an encrypted cached db on every console that has ever gone online that can be looked at even if you take your console offline, and every new Xbox requires to go online at least once at settup.

So this is not likely a ton of work to achieve, although it would require ownership of a XSX with a drive to go through the conversion process(assuming there is never an addon option for the helix.)

If it’s optional, I see no issues with this. I would love to do this with most my physical games as I find it more convenient to have digital access these days. Especially with play Anywhere.

The increments on those badges are wild… I feel like at some point the badges should get a visual increment every +x gs. As it stands, post 100k, it might take years for someone to see an increase. And after 200k, you need 2.5x and then 3x your lifetime gs???? that’s bonkers…

I do think a game completion should get more celebration, but making it full screen spam is not it!

I would not mind an auto recording and an opt-in system that shared the accomplishment directly into social media accounts of the users choice.

Also some form of categorization to divide achievements into 3 categories:

Campaign completion (on games where that applies)
Challenges (things that don’t have to do with story)
Online achievements (for games with online modes)

It sucks not being able to achieve “completion” on some old game because the user has not paid for the paywall access or because the game servers have simply been shut down.

It would be critical to somehow do this categorization retroactive. Sites like TrueAchievement already tag most games achievements in some of these ways.

I would love to dig into the methodology for this survey but not sure I have the time to. It shocks me that younger audiences are so much more likely to buy games full price when they also (anecdotally) seem to be way more likely to gravitate towards F2P games.

The age range separation there is huge, though. I highly doubt 14-20 yos have more spare disposable income.

Me, 50 yo woman, I am extremely less likely to buy a game at full price these days. 70 price point is a huge reason but not the only one. My backlog is gigantic, and too often a new game just goes to the backlog. Im no longer going to buy a game day one to "support the devs". Not only do I find that many of these devs rarely care about the players (well the publisher but still) but most of the time the game just goes into the backlog and by the time I sit down to play it, the game seen several deep discounts.

I will only buy a game day one if I'm ridiculously hype about it, and still will often regret it.

@Matthewnh Not to rain on your parade, they are bringing the console back to the forefront, but their focus is Xbox as a platform not only the console. Look carefully at the news about the new positions and you will see they very specifically are focusing on "platform" on those new position titles, not "console".

Call me old (because I am a 50 year old woman) but I actually love the current flat two tone logo and startup screen. It's simple, and at my age I love that simplicity. I do remember back in the day I loved UIs and logos full of glassy textures, Win Vista and OSX were lovely to my eye a few decades back, as were the elaborate gaming UIs consoles used to have... but I have come to prefer flat and scalable designs.

Again, thats just me being old, likely. The kids seem to still like all the glassy/textured stuff.

@themightyant Would not be shocked if they eventually give the XSX a new unique glass design to go with this. Scalability of the UI might force it to skip till the Helix, though. Think I saw some video on latest alpha insider previews where the UI allows for custom gradiants that can make things look at least give some UI elements more pop?

@Fiendish-Beaver and 5 AAA games in a year are way more than enough to justify the price of the service. For every AAA game, they NEED from 5x to 7x indies to justify a similar value proposition to people that prefer that type of games since they are also smaller and lower sticker price to begin with.

But you hit the nail in the head at the end: you dont have the time to play 25 games as it is. Offer that many would not increase your value proposition, but pursuing that increase would likely lower the appeal to others that mainly use the service for the constant flow of short but low cost indie titles that you find forgettable.

To this day, for me, the biggest hits of my time with Gamepass still are CrossCode and Vampire Survivors. Every single AAA an AA first party game I played in the service (even third party ones) were ones I feel I could had been fine never playing. My life, seriously, would be different had I never played CrossCode or Vampire Survivors. Thats not hyperbole.

Too many AI people...

@Fiendish-Beaver Asking for GP focusing only on a single segment of the market is the same as asking it to fail.

You say these smaller games are forgettable, I feel the oposite way. These smaller games are for me the highlights. Mariachi Legends is a game I had not seen before and instantly became one of the most interesting things I seen this year.

At the end of the day, when they promisse a big number of titles day one, they are doing so with the goal of expressing that there will be something in that list that appeals to any given subscriber, not that anyone will care about everything, nor even most things.

None of the things in this survey cover me but I doubt I'm in the majority.

For me, exclusives are a "perk" not an incentive. Last console I bought specifically for an exclusive might had been the PS2 and it was for a third party exclusive (Final Fantasy X).

Since, every console I bought has gained me due to intricate control and ecosystems more than anything else. I played Sony first party games because I happened to own Sony consoles, not the other way around. I didn't buy my Switch 2 to buy DK Bananza, I bought it because I bought the Switch 2 due to features that appealed to me (sleeker thin design pc handhelds cant replicate yet and running most my switch library at better performance to name a couple).

I play in consoles (genral, not specific one) because the experience is more gaming focused. 100% full screen experience is a big perk that Microsoft and Valve are slowly attempting to replicate. Its close but every time a game insist on running in window mode or launches behind the launcher, forcing me to grab a controller just to alt-tab, it makes me wish I was playing the game on one of my consoles.

I literally have two friends on almost all ecosystems, since I mostly play single player games and the few online games I play are MMOs that have their own internal friend lists. Not to mention, crossplay is the rule, not the exception, these days.

I'm really looking forward to this and plan to preorder one monday provided it does not sell out immediately.

I prefer offset sticks but I can see why they would do it this way. The addition of those touch pads really shift things. Offset sticks would mean the dpad is too close to a sensitive area your thumb would rest on, and generate lots of false inputs. Having the left stick paralel to the right is likely the best choice for the functionality they were aiming to here.

I been doing more and more of my gaming on PC, mostly on Steam but also on the xbox app. I do hope the standard features of this controller work with the xbox app, and that the notes mentioned above be restricted to additional functionality. If I can still use the touch pads for mouse movement when needed, I will be a very happy gamer.

Damn... this is so sad to hear!

@Kezelpaso @FraserG relatively off topic but there been a lot of FFXIV news this weekend about the next big expansion as well as the next patch (landed today) that finalizes this expansion main story arch (not final patch for the expansion but story and Alliance raids themed around FFXI are both culminating today).

Not sure if that’s something you are planning to cover but it’s always nice to hear updates about Square Enix games, especially Final Fantasy stuff, in Xbox focused spaces.

Highlights worth highlighting is a whole new combat system next expansion, inclusion of Shadowbringers expansion to the free tier (best expansion on an MMO ever) and a whole new progression system m, plus the usual 2 new jobs (unspecified but confirmed to be a tank and a physical ranged dps).

The biggest advantage of using Discord is that it's cross platform. These days it's integrated with Xbox and PS5 in addition of working on PC. It's a one-stop solution for cross-platform communication on anything but Nintendo. Even on Nintendo, you can always run it on your phone while playing on the Switch.

Discord also is a social media of sorts, allowing many gaming communities to form, be it official or player driven ones. Many online games tend to host their own discord servers and so do many indie studios. It has really become a better alternative for gaming communities than forums, IMO.

@Coletrain technically this makes you the old man yelling at clouds 😅

I would welcome this if it includes online play on console. Else, means nothing to me.

I already subscribe to Nitro for a few perks, I doubt those 50 titles will ever be used but really would love it if that sub also ended up removing the multiplayer paywall from my Xbox.

Worth noting: you can subscribe for yearly Nitro packages for a discounted price, but we cant do that with Game Pass Essentials. It's not a huge discount, but $100 compared to $120 a year is something, if you can take advantage of it as a means to access online play on Xbox, that is.

@YungCizzle24
BO6: best CoD launch until that point despite being in GP.
BO7: nearly universal negative reception. The game was just not only poorly received, but it also was a back to back entry in the same series, something that they admit hurt sales.

BO7s lackluster sales had nothing to do with GP.

My take coming into this is that I can play AC4 right now on any platform I want. I can even play the thing on the Wii U! Prettier graphics would not sell me on this. So I was hoping for a lot of changes. This falls a bit short, but not short enough for me to pass on it.

My expectations:

Whole new combat system. Combat system seems significantly different, even if not as much as I was hoping. Not because I didn't have fun in AC4's combat, but because I want the game to FEEL like a new game since, again, I can alwas play AC4 anywhere. Naval combat also seems expanded uppon. Do look forward to see how these changes feel.

Expanded story content with lots more story. There seems to be new story content, but at least based on the reveal it seems limited to the new crew NPCs and some new content for Black Beard. That, IMO, was direly needed because Black Beard was criminally underused in AC4.

Things I was hoping that are seemingly not being touched are expanded hideout development features, more legendary ship encounters and doubling down on the fantasy that was introduced in the post-Origins era.

Before Origins, all games treated the precursor race and artifacts as an expansion of Judeo-Christian religious cultures. Post Origins, they expanded the precursor race to have factions that all represented multiple religious pantheons.

With that expanded freedom, I was really hoping this resynced entry would add some endgame side content that dug into David Jone's Locker and other Caribbean pirate era superstitious believes like mermaids, the kraken, etc. A naval fight against the Kraken would had been amazing end game content once all legendary ships are tackled. Sadly, this is just, for the most part, a one-to-one remake. It seems even buildings and fauna haver 100% placement, just with assets replaced.

Still, I'll very likely be playing this. Day one? Not sure. Maybe, depends what else is going on that week.

@Nakatomi_Uk If your passion is making games, you wont stop unless it's no longer financially viable. What shocks me is that he still gets press for these promisses that never deliver.

My biggest issue with this pricing is that I feel this actively discourages me from even booting my Xbox.

For me, logically, PC Gamepass is the no-brainer best option. My PCs are either already a much more powerful device than the xbox or have the benefit of being a handheld. PC Gamepass being cheaper than premium... feels odd.

PC might be missing EA Play, Fortnite whateveryacallit and UB+ Mini... but I don't care for those anyways?

Of course, all of this will have to be rerworked when Helix launches, since Helix would otherwise just make Premium obsolete. Will have to see how things look at that point.

Just merge PC/Premium already.

@GeminiX53 We have had plenty of devs telling us that GP has been good for them.

Game Pass was a thing during the most financially year of gaming: during the pandemic. So obviously GP didn't hurt.

Also: Game Pass as a concept is nothing new. Rentals were a mainstream thing until Blockbuster went out of business in 2010. Even then Redbox was still a thing until a couple years ago.

The time window where Game Pass nor rentals were a thing was a relatively small period and it was not exactly a bursting era.

People that were not going to buy games, where not going to buy games. They would rent, borrow, or buy used.

@themightyant

I've mostly forgotten about it. I think it was an error, and we all make those, but it was on something pretty insignificant.

An error is to give us the wrong date or number or giving us the wrong Live account name. This was a fabricated lie to try to look her look as much of a gamer as Phil was. That was not an "error". I don't care as much about the incident itself as much as what it tells us: that they were ready to lie and that they thought we were dumb enough to not notice.

I don't know if it was her idea, though. Someone else at MS might had been the one planning that before her eventual promotion. That's as much as I'm willing to give her on that topic.

Molyneux never stops overhyping, does he? I don't think he has ever delivered on any of his promises. Are his games good? Sure. But they are never the revolutions he pitches.

Don't care about CoD, but one thing I hate about this is that it proves Kotick was right about CoD, its development cost, and it not being profitable for THAT game to be in a subscription service.

I detest giving Kotick a single point because he is a horrible person.

When I was subscribed to GP, I only cared for single player games anyways. I'm not even sure I ever got much value off GP. I mostly kept it going as a way to keep full access to play any xbox first party games I wanted regardless if it was old or new. I might had gotten more out of the special sales for members than the lineup itself. Anyways I'm derrailing, I dont care about CoD so dont actually care about this change outside it making GPU cheaper. I still wont be likely to re-sub to GPU and instead just subsribe to the PC tier and play all first party games on my monster PCs or Rog Ally X.

Almost wish the yellow bits were white. If you get it it, you get it.

@themightyant The boosted gamerscore was one move that will keep me skeptical for years. It was a level of dishonesty that will be hard to forget, even if I'm sure most people wont ever even hear of it.

I still have a huge collection of digital xbox games, and Hylix will likely eventually bring my pc and xbox experiences closer together with fallbacks to go PC only if they really ruin things... but I can't stop wondering how long will it take for this perceived freedom to be taken away from her be it because she fixes things or because they feel she is not fixing things fast enough. Sooner or later parent MS might once more decide to force an illogical corporate direction.

@themightyant My annoyance with the whole thing is that at their prime, Phil and Sarah were doing great precisely when they had freedom. The ship started going through rough waters because the freedom was very obviously taken away from them.

Yea, Asha is being given the freedom now, but how long will it last? And would we also be seing these same improvements had Phil and Sarah had just been given the freedom instead? I like to see some of these changes but not sure creating so much division in the community was the way to get here.

I know I'm not the only one that feels Asha has a lot more work to do to earn trust from scratch than Phil had to given he already had delivered in the past.

Side note, I feel the PC tier is in an odd spot. Not a bad one, but it entirely devaluates all the xbox tiers. I know it's not the case for everyone but both my PCs heavily outclass my Xbox. Why should I even turn my xbox on if I can subscribe to PC GP and get day one on all first party games on PC? The odd third party game that is only on console day one IF I pay for the ultimate tier? Until Helix comes around and they are forced to rework these tiers again, I feel actively discouraged from using my Xbox.