SigmaTheDJ

It didn't affect me. I didn't start playing until 11PM and although there were still a number of services that were supposedly down, the Xbox Support account on X had tweeted out that things should be getting back to normal for most people about 20 minutes earlier, and thankfully that was the case for me and my friends.

I still don't know how they're going to A) sell enough consoles to make it worthwhile to keep producing them, and B) sell enough games, accessories etc. to satisfy internal sales targets and shareholders, while C) keeping Game Pass going the way it is.

I really want them to keep making consoles, cos it's not like I can switch to PlayStation and take all my games with me, and I own hundreds of games for Xbox.

TBH, I wish the console manufacturers would agree to a "ceasefire" lasting X number of years where they don't make new hardware. With the price of certain components going through the roof, I would rather just stick with what I've got than buy a new console that I know isn't good value for money in terms of price to performance. That's exactly why I'm not building a new PC any time soon, cos I'm not paying £350+ for 32GB of RAM.

As for exclusivity, personally I don't care if games are on other platforms. With multiplayer games, if they have crossplay it benefits everyone to have a bigger player base. I just want them to do whatever needs to be done to keep their console business going for more than 1 more generation.

I'm not a fan of the graphics and lighting, but the controller seems really good other than that. You can adjust the volume, game/chat balance, and mute your mic using the function button. You can map the rear buttons without using an app (although there is one for Windows, Xbox, iOS and Android).

I guess my questions would be.....

What is the mAh rating of the battery?
What are the limitations, if any, when mapping the rear buttons?
Are the sticks shafts plastic, and are there friction rings?

You have to use the D-pad to move/select stuff in Buckshot Roulette. Initially I though it was broken, and I've seen a number of 1 star reviews saying the same, but it's just because the left stick does not work in-game.

I think it's fun, but it lacks variety. There's not enough items, nor variation in the gameplay to keep things fresh for too long IMO. It's still fun though and I bought it given that it's only a couple of quid. Just don't expect it to be something you can pump 100+ hours into like Balatro.

I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, which has the potential to be fun for sure, especially as you can go 2 Vs. 2 if you want to.

Xbox 360 for me. I didn't own an OG Xbox and for a long time, you couldn't buy "full" games on 360 digitally - just XBLA games - so I own a bunch of games on disc, including some decent collectible editions.

I went all digital in the Xbox One era. I have a sealed copy of a Halo game on disc that I got for free (can't remember why), but that's it.

I don't care about physical media for games anymore. Most games require a day one patch, and possibly multiple patches, to fix bugs and glitches. Often you don't get the full game on the disc anyway. It's not like the days of carts where there was no way to patch games and your cart would always work, but the size and scope of games has grown massively since then.

I've got just under 50K currently. My lifetime points earned is 1,234,178 and I'm on a 1,688 day streak. I think it's great, but I preferred it when you could redeem points for Gold/Game Pass subscription time directly.

I'm not into COD, but I think this sucks. I remember when Phil Spencer said that only a couple of older exclusive games were going to other platforms, for example. If this is a success financially, which it's guaranteed to be, they'll be looking at what other Xbox Game Studios games they can do the same thing with.

For a lot of people, getting first party games on release day is the primary reason they pay for Game Pass, but MS seem to want the best of both worlds; for themselves of course. They know what Game Pass eats into their game sales, but they want us to still keep on paying for it AND buy their games.

@Runex2121 Yeah. Sign into your account at Xbox.com, then click your profile pic at the upper-right and choose "Xbox profile". That will open a new window and once that loads, click your gamerpic at the upper-right and choose "Offers & credits".

I didn't get anything, despite owning the premium version of Forza and the 007 game.

@Master_Cthulhu70 This update was released on the 10th.

There's another update coming out later today that fixes the Forza Horizon 6 save corruption issue. For some reason it's required an update to the console OS, rather than the game.

The Series S is obviously an issue and has been for some time. It's the same reason why the Switch 2 is still not getting most third party AAA games, despite selling around 20 million units so far.

I'm level 224 with 224 cars (no dupes). According to the console's stats, I've played for 49 hours, 28 minutes so far.

I've found all of the roads, points of interest, barn finds and treasure cars, and smashed all of the mascots and XP boards.

I've been trying to 3 star the final trailblazer, which is the hardest thing I've encountered in the game so far. I came close once, except I drove through the end gate in a way that made it come up "Failed", which was very frustrating!

I'm loving the game so far! I'm also very happy with the way they handled winter, as I feel it's a good compromise between the harsh winters of FH4 and the basically non-existent winters of FH5.

@LtSarge The Xbox One has the equivalent of the PS5's rest mode. All that does is put the console into a low power state when you turn it off in order to keep the contents of the RAM intact, so when you turn it back on, you can carry on from where you left off.

Quick Resume saves a snapshot of the RAM to the SSD whenever you switch from one game to another, or you turn the console off. When you go to pick a game up, its snapshot is loaded back into RAM and you continue your game.

QR has a couple of big advantages. MS say it works with at least 3 games simultaneously, but I've had 7 or 8 on the go. You can then switch between any of them as fast as the PS5's rest mode works. QR snapshots are not lost if the console is unplugged, nor if the OS or a game is updated. Also, the feature works no matter which power mode you choose to use, so you can use the full "Shutdown" mode and still use QR.

The sole issue with QR is that it doesn't always play nicely with games that require a server connection and have their own in-game friends list, but you can disable it on a per-game basis now.

I wonder why they can't fix it. I've noticed the issues too, with games that have their own in-game friends list.

In Overwatch, for example, if you use QR, when you launch the game back up it will show you a message saying you were disconnected from the server, as expected, then you can reconnect just fine, but a lot of the time the in-game friends list will then be bugged out, yet if you quit the game fully and start it up from scratch, it's fine.

It's obviously something that's not trivial to fix or they'd have done it by now, but I'd love to know the technical details.

@Zandy It's because this article was originally posted in January, before being updated yesterday.

I'd like to see them switch to OneDrive for game clip storage.

At the moment if you upload a game clip to the Xbox Network, you have 10GB of space with no way to expand it, your clips are automatically deleted after 90 days, you can't download the clips to your PC via the Xbox app, but you can share them with other users on Xbox.

You also have the option of uploading your clips to OneDrive. You only get 5GB of storage for free, but it can be expanded up to 1TB for a fee (and could be included in Game Pass Ultimate), your clips are never automatically deleted, you can easily view/download them on a PC or phone, but you can't easily share them with other users on the Xbox itself.

I am currently uploading clips to both, cos I want to be able to share them with friends on Xbox, but I also don't want them to be deleted after 90 days. There's really no need to have 2 separate systems.

@RadioHedgeFund Have you tried the Sub Pop radio station? That's an indie/alternative station.

I had a couple of disconnections from the server on the official launch day, but that's to be expected.

When going into photo mode at a car meet, the game suddenly started chugging really badly and the framerate must have been about 10FPS, if that. A couple of seconds after exiting photo mode, it went back to normal. I've not had that issue taking photos anywhere else. This is on Xbox Series X.

I've definitely noticed the increased AI difficulty at the higher tiers overall, but the series 1 races were ridiculously easy IMO. I did them in co-op with randoms and most of my teammates weren't even using tuned cars, but we'd win easily regardless. I'm not sure what difficulty level is being used there.

Overall I'm really enjoying it though and there's no unwanted stuff happening that's spoiling the game for me.

How is someone who doesn't like the removal of a port they use every time they game a "grifter"? lol.

My Audio-Technica headset cost £250, so it's not some cheap tat. It has a mute switch and a volume wheel, but it's far easier to use the buttons provided by the Stereo Headset Adapter that are right at my fingertips for that stuff, plus the headset controls don't let me adjust the game sound/chat balance.

I still use a Stereo Headset Adapter with my Elite controller. It's very handy having physical buttons for volume up/down, changing voice/chat balance, and a light-up mute button within easy reach.

They can obviously detect when one is connected, so I guess hardly anybody is using one these days. I haven't seen any legit MS ones for sale brand new for years.

This isn't even new. They had this exact same set up before they ended up scrapping it and moving most Insider stuff to Reddit.

I don't mind ads if they're useful to me.

Sometimes I don't know that a new piece of DLC is available for a game I really like. Advertise that to me.

Do a better job with the "you played the hell out of X, so you'd probably like Y and Z" algorithms.

Don't advertise games or DLC to me that I already own.

Get rid of the tacky non-gaming advertising altogether, which only cheapens the brand.

Ideally, anyone paying for any form of Game Pass should be able to opt out of all ads, but if you want to opt into personalised ads, they have to be really good and make you feel like "hey, these ads have recommended me a bunch of stuff that I've bought/liked".

Hopefully those scroll wheels can also be clicked in to work as buttons, cos ideally I'd want mic mute on one and lock on the other.

Personally I love the Stereo Headset Adapter, cos having tactile controls at your fingertips is far better than having to go into a menu to adjust stuff, but if they're doing away with the accessories port and replacing that functionality with those scroll wheels, I really hope it's well thought-out.

Titanfall Remastered or Titanfall 3. The Forza Horizon Collection (games 1-3 remastered in 4K at 60FPS). Dark Sector 2. Sleeping Dogs 2.

I'm still waiting for my commemorative Xbox Live Gold badge to appear!

I find it kinda amusing that a ton of people who haven't played it are implying that the journalists who rated it highly are part of some "hive mind".

I don't think the game is "woke" at all. I don't think you can bring "DEI" into it either, given that all 3 of the main characters are white. It's just people clutching at straws.

The criticisms I do partially understand are the ones saying there's not much gameplay in what's meant to be a video game. That said, I think you have to look at the experience as a whole. If there was a game that was like a movie, and all you did is choose A or B for the main hero, which led you off on branching paths and the game had multiple endings, with decent writing, voice acting, and directing, I think that could make for an awesome experience, even if, game-play wise, all you're doing is occasionally making a binary choice.

I also agree that "it's not for me" shouldn't equate to a low review score. I remember when IGN gave a Football Manager game a 2/10 because the reviewer was clearly expecting it to be like FIFA, and due to a backlash they pulled the review. Elden Ring is not for me, but I wouldn't say it's 1/10 trash. It's clearly a great game.

4 for me, even though 5 is my most-played.

I don't like how online works in 5. In 4, you're put into a server instance with up to 72 players in it and you can see the whole list of who was in there and where every player is on the map. In 5, they tried to "surface" players that were near to you so that the game feels more alive, but it really doesn't work in my experience. Often I'd drive around in the same place for ages and not see anyone. Sometimes people would randomly appear/disappear out of nowhere.

It was the same with the Forzathon Live vs. Horizon Arcade events. Often I'd just end up doing a HA event by myself, but there were always plays doing FL. I realise that the HA events are every 15 minutes instead of every hour for FL, but if the game is supposed to "surface" players who are congregated in the same area and interested in the same event, it just did not work.

I also preferred the map in FH4, cos while the one in FH5 is bigger, a lot of it is desert/scrubland. Also, while many would disagree, I liked the seasonal changes in FH4 more, even if it made it harder to do certain things in winter.

Ultimately though, I think both games are fantastic. Also, as I haven't played FH4 since FH5 came out, it's possible I'm looking at 4 with rose-tinted spectacles on. Either way, I'm super-hyped for FH6! I can't believe it's only a few days away!!

I finished off the last few achievements. My sole gripe is with the "Front To Back" achievement, which has the following requirements: - "Find everything in the bedrooms and all unique conversations."

But to unlock it, you have to examine everything that's examinable, not just in the bedrooms, as well as going through all of the unique conversations. It's the only achievement that's a pain if you miss it first time, cos you can't just go back to a particular chapter as you don't know what you've missed.

It's a 9/10 for me. My favourite game released in 2026 so far.

I finished it on the day it came out. I've got 3 achievements left to unlock.

I loved it. It's basically a series of mini-games, but the characters, story, writing, presentation, and of course, the music, really make it special IMO.

I was surprised by the soundtrack, given that I was a teenager in the 80s and in my 20s in the 90s, so I expected to know all of the songs in the game, but nope; there were several that I'd never heard before.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I think a lot of people will really love it.

I'm very close to the end of the game and I have really enjoyed it. It's one of those games where, if I didn't have other things I had to do, I could have played through it in one sitting.

One thing that surprised me was the music selection, as I expected it all to be 80s and 90s stuff that I knew, given that I was a teenager in the 80s, but there's songs in there from the 60s to the 90s and several that I'd never heard before.

For achievement hunters, it has chapter select, so you can easily replay chapters to get any missed achievements.

@ZeD It's 2PM, not 1. I tried to launch it after seeing your comment, but it just asked if I owned the game, so I checked X and the devs just tweeted to say "One. HOUR. UNTIL MIXTAPE.".

I remember when they first tried to add Cortana to the console. One of the plus points was that you could, for example, say "start a party and invite person X and person Y", but, as an insider, when I asked how it would work with gamertags like "xxF1NALxx", I got no answer and even though the implementation of Cortana on Xbox sucked, they rolled it out to the masses anyway, only to remove it later on.

I think Asha possibly sees Copilot on Xbox as being the next Cortana, i.e. a lot of work for something that kinda sucks and isn't what gamers want, which is good.

I'm not anti-AI by any means, but it has to work REALLY well before it's any use IMO.

I'm an hour in and I'm really enjoying it so far. I totally disagree with that COG review about parrying having a harsh timing window. You get a clear visual cue of when to parry and it's not like you have to have insanely fast reflexes to do it.

The controls can be a little janky at times, but the checkpoints are forgiving, so it's never hugely frustrating when you die.

It's kind of an indie game cross between Prince of Persia and Shadow of the Colossus.

The one I'm most interested in is the 8BitDo Ultimate 3E Controller for Xbox. On paper it has everything I want from a controller, but it'll be interesting to see what reviews are like. It's supposed to be out in Q2 of this year.

I'm downloading it now. It's 134.86GB on Xbox Series X.

I went for 80-89, cos I think it's basically gonna be the same as the last game but on a new map and that might hold back its review scores this time.

It's one of my favourite franchises so I have no doubt I'll love it, but it would be nice to see some new multiplayer modes that are fun to play, rather than just having the eliminator and the same old PG modes.

It depends on the game(s) of course.

I would LOVE it if MS released a remastered collection of Forza Horizons 1-3. I just can't play racing games at 30FPS anymore.

My dream remaster would be the first Titanfall, as long as it was released on multiple platforms with cross-play.

@GamingGod There's no input lag, nor slowdown. When you hit the last few percent of battery life, controller vibration is turned off automatically so you can keep playing for a little while, but eventually the controller will just turn off.

@Fishysensei

Settings - General - Personalisation - Games & apps, then scroll to the right and it's the last option there.

Also, if you don't like the new gradient that appears in the guide to match your colour, you can turn that off too: -

Settings - General - Personalisation - Customise the guide, and the option is in there.

They have a weekly feature request thread on the Xbox Insiders sub-Reddit, plus they keep an archive of the top 3 most-upvoted ideas per week here: -

https://old.reddit.com/r/xboxinsiders/wiki/xboxrequests/archive

That said, not many people take part in these threads, as the most-upvoted idea on any given week might only have 10 or so upvotes. But yeah, that's one place you can go to suggest stuff.

The insider program needs to return to how it used to be, rather than MS just using insiders as unpaid QA staff and completely ignoring all negative feedback.

Also, there should be a way to look at existing bug reports and click to say "me too" or whatever, rather than every single bug report having to be submitted in isolation.

Make some new controllers that feature the latest tech and focus on quality and longevity. MS should be showing third parties how it should be done, not the other way around.

MS have talked a fair bit about game preservation and commitment to gamers' libraries, so I think it will be an option.

I haven't bought a single Xbox One/Series game on disc, but plenty of people have. There are also a handful of games that are backwards compatible, but only on disc, e.g. the racing game, Pure.

I like the way Sony went about it, where it attaches to the console and looks like it was always there, rather than being a totally separate drive that plugs in via a USB cable.

I like the simplicity of the system and 99% of the time it just works, but it can be confusing if the system detects that your saves for a particular game are out of sync and it asks you which one you want to use.

This is what the support page for Forza Horizon 5 says about this issue, for example: -

"If you are given a message asking to choose between two saves usually you’ll want to pick the older date."

If you pick the newer one, which I think seems like common sense, you can end up losing all of your progress as your save gets overwritten, then all support can do is gift you the cars you lost; they can't restore your actual in-game progress. Also, note how the advice from the devs themselves has "usually" in it, so even that's not really clear.

It would be good if there was some way of recovering a save if one is corrupted or overwritten. Some kind of backup system.

Tonight on my home screen there were 2 "sponsored" tiles, both pushing Fortnite. I've never seen that before. There was always only 1 with "sponsored" actually written underneath it.

BTW, "Eden Marie" had not posted on Twitter for over a year before tweeting out about being energised, then attributing that to her new boss.

It just reeks of ***** to me, given how MS execs are usually the biggest peddlers of "corporate speak".

I wish Asha the best, cos as an Xbox fan, of course I want the brand to succeed and continue on, but my trust in MS is pretty much zero at this point.

Xbox 6 (they skipped Windows 9, so why not do it here?)
Xbox Nexus

I do wonder just how much names confuse consumers, cos I suspect it's not a major issue. That said, I do prefer how Sony have just kept it simple.

I would love for them to add OutRun Online Arcade, but I doubt it will happen because of the Ferrari licensing.

I'd love to see Poker Smash too, which was backwards compatible at one point, only for it to be removed again without explanation.

I think whoever they put in charge of Xbox is being put in an impossible position.

There are several reasons why I wouldn't want to switch to another platform, but the primary one is that I can't take all of my games with me. I own nearly 800 digital games across multiple generations of Xbox that can be played on my Series X.

How do you convince people to switch to an Xbox from another platform now that digital lock-in is such a huge factor? If you can't do that in considerable numbers, how do you grow Game Pass?

A hybrid that can play both Xbox and PC games while also working as a PC would be awesome for me, but it's not going to make a dent in the mass market.

IMO, irreversible damage was done to the brand before Phil Spencer took over and them having to put their games on other platforms is the result of that, as is the rise in the price of Game Pass.

Spencer was handed an impossible task IMO.

It was under Don Mattrick's leadership that the Xbox brand was doomed. Bundling in Kinect, so the Xbox One was weaker than the PS4, yet $100 more. The always-online stuff and the infamous "we have a console for you; the Xbox 360" comment. Their plans to limit consumer rights when it came to physical media that allowed Sony to make a laughing stock out of them at E3. All the talk of TV, TV, TV.

Digital lock-in was such a huge factor going into the Xbox One/PS4 era and they totally screwed it up. Unbundling Kinect, refocussing on the power of the hardware, creating the Elite controller etc. were all good things, but it was too late.

I agree with Josh Sobel in that there are content creators who thrive on drama and negativity, but at the end of the day, you can't blame them for the game's failure. Sobel did, cos in his final tweet before deleting his X account, he said that everyone connected to the game was convinced it was gonna be a huge hit and go mainstream.

I think they should have done an open beta to get some player feedback. People don't abandon a game cos of what some content creator said. They abandon it cos they're not enjoying playing it. They paid a bunch of high profile Twitch/YouTube streamers to play it at launch, but none of them carried on playing it. There's 287 viewers watching a handful of tiny channels playing it right now.

I wanted the game to be good, cos it looked like something that I could play with friends, but I just found it kinda dull in the end.

Microsoft is such a garbage company these days. To think, in the past, people used to actually queue around the block for things they made, lol. It seems unimaginable now.

I run a club and am a member of several clubs, but come April, all of that will be gone. But hey, at least we get to keep the publisher clubs that are essentially used to push ads. Yay!

I played it for an hour or two and I thought it was alright.

I hate how some people feel like they have to take sides about a video game based on what their "side" thinks. There's people slating this game in the reviews on Xbox who haven't even played it. Then there's sites that are promoting it, when they obviously wouldn't do that if it was the same game minus the "let's steal back stolen artifacts" element.

I found it fun. It's light puzzling mixed with parkour. You have to make your way into a building, set up your escape, then grab the loot and get out of there. If you can play this via Game Pass, I'd recommend it for sure.

Also, the artifacts in the game all exist in real life, so you get to learn about them, as well as other lesser objects you can scan.

Given that Xbox can already track your play time on a game, I would rather people not be able to leave reviews unless they've played at least X number of minutes. So many reviews on Xbox - particularly with Game Pass games - are just people who are salty that an indie game got added to the service rather than some AAAA blockbuster, even if the indie game is actually awesome.