As much as I enjoy these goty votes they are pretty silly on the basis I only played a handful of that list but am influencing the final result. To be fair I probably played what will be the top 10.
My order being:
1. Hades
2. It Takes 2
3. Halo Infinite
4. Psychonauts 2
5. Back 4 Blood

I usually use these lists to influence what games I need to play that I may have missed through the year

Perhaps just me but I was incredibly impressed with the step up in visuals. Perhaps I don't fully understand game engines but I would assume in general Unreal Engine is an 'out the box' game engine that is there for gaming developers to code and bespoke for their own benefit or to potentially merge with other 3rd party middleware to enhance what comes 'out of the box'.
So I saw this demo as how games could look day 1 then if a team of hundreds spend years working on it then it would massively improve what we see on this demo.
But in terms of small independent teams then if they can only really use what's 'out of the box' then they have a pretty impressive set of tools to base their game on.

But I imagine I'm about to be corrected as I really am not very technical and possibly a bit too optimistic on what the next gen games are going to get like!

@KilloWertz lol - sorry I was completely lost on the joke until I read it back again and now it makes sense! My mistake. I do remember The Medium as it was that game's exclusivity which pushed my to buy a Series X. Thought it was a Silent Hill clone and couldn't do without it so went all in on Xbox. Then it turned out to be average (only managed a few hours though), not exclusive and a very bad reason to pick up an Xbox. Oops.
To be fair it was the moment I realised Game passes pro and con. So many games to get through that unless something grips you straight away then its binned and onto the next.

Anyway, good point on the fact I haven't heard about this being on GP probably means it won't be on GP.

And this is a GamePass win for me. Without it there is no chance I would have spent money on It Takes Two, but I'm really enjoying it and pleased it won.

@KilloWertz I thought the joke was only Sony do timed exclusives? Or at least I hear a lot of complaints on this site about it?

This one has GamePass written all over it. Has potential for old school Zelda feel but a timed Xbox game feels like it means it will be on GamePass - or at least thats what I read into it. Has this been confirmed either way yet? I could be tempted to try it if it is the case.

So far its been good. Only a few hours in though. Not sure if anyone else had same experience as me but I'm finding the cutscenes are really juddery like they are on a lower fps compared to the gameplay which feels super smooth? Also noticed some screen tearing now and again and I'm playing on an LG C1 so wasn't expecting it. Nothing major just surprised to see it. That said I'm enjoying the story so far and its the first Halo that's kept my attention story wise as previous games didn't do it for me in that sense.
I've never managed to get through a full Halo campaign before but get the feeling this might be my first one as so far it feels like it'll be my favourite of the series.

@Murray But isn't that technically what they've done? I'm pretty sure MS paid them money for publishing Ori. And now they've said no to the money?

He calls out all platforms in this discussion saying the reason
MS don't play nicely is because none of them do and he's completely correct to want to have his own vision without corporate control.
In what world do 95% of comments side with the huge corporation over art? Isn't this an excellent scenario where he will make HIS game and we all get to experience it?

Isn't it like saying we're angry at Christopher Nolan for refusing to make a film for WB because they want to control his artistic direction and only show the film on WB network - and then nearly everyone on this site complaining he's a tool for doing it because now everyone will get to see his film?
Unless I have completely misunderstood what this article was about?

Gave it an F as I joined start of the year and only downloaded February games and have still to try them. All in all for me, having struggled to be motivated to try a single game this year its a 0/24 result which when I was at school would give me an F.

@Fiendish-Beaver I thin kit shows more that the 'peoples' votes are just odd not the awards themselves as I believe its all voted by the public.
My take on that result is generally xbox players preferred Psychonauts 2, PS gamers preferred REVillage and as there are much more PS players than Xbox there will be more gamers preferring REVillage. Basically an awards based on the console popularity which will probably always go to PS game of the year?

@Nightcrawler71 my thoughts exactly. I'll top up my PS subs but my GP runs out end of the year and could do with adding to it in advance as unlikely to pay full price. In people's experience here does GP have subscription sales often? And if so would be awesome if Pure Xbox had articles to tell us 😜

@SpaceSamurai not really sure I follow you or how my job relates to Series S currently outselling Series X? I don't mean to sound like an expert but I was basically saying that Amazon, Argos, Very, Smyths, Game, Xbox and John Lewis have S but not X stock suggests selling 1 console tomorrow means it will outsell the X for tomorrow. It just seems to make logical sense to me that it will screw up the statistics somewhat. Sorry if your original comment wasn't meant for me though I just thought it was amusing to use statistics to paint a particular picture which I assumed most people would see the way I did.

And in the way statistics could be construed saying that the S and X split is 50/50 you could argue that making the X was a mistake seeing how well the S was selling - but we all know that X would have sold so much more had they made more of them so its difficult to come to any real conclusion.

In fact for all we know there could be millions of unsold S's out in the world that would have sold as an X putting the Xbox closer to the PS sales figures?

Out of interest what job do you think I do? It would freak me out if you guessed correctly based on my opinion on the sales statistics of X versus S!!

Personally think if FH5 won it would be a big disappointment. It certainly looks nice but it does feel very much the same as the last one to me - and going on the ratings hasn't worked in any previous years, and if going on popularity then COD or FIFA should win every year.
Feels like a lot of Xbox owners are disgruntled because its supposed to be one of the flagship titles but it isn't really anything stand out (in terms of interesting innovation) - but saying that I am absolutely loving R&C but really don't think it should be in there for GOTY for the same reason. I didn't enjoy Psychonauts 2 as much as others did and felt it wasn't as good as R&C gameplay wise however the story felt a lot more interesting to the throw away story in R&C so happy if that won GOTY.
Haven't played Deathloop but sounds like that will be the most worthy of the title going by the general consensus.

Hilarious. Series S only outsells because selling 1 would be a victory versus 0 series X's! I can walk into my local store and buy a Series S but X's are like gold dust. That's more telling than any headline here! Nothing against the series S but there are lies, damned lies and statistics!!

Never really enjoyed the Halo MP historically but am excited to give this a go, especially after this level of praise. I will admit that if it's a case of dying ever 3 seconds it won't last long 😂

Going to be a complete buzzkill here and wonder why anyone would buy this? Looks like it can only fit 1 beer in and isn't big enough to act as a clothes dryer once the novelty has worn off? Would this be better as a storage option for games, charge cables, spare batteries etc. Would be potentially interested then.

Top 5 for me:
1) Zelda 2
2) Ragnarok
3) Forbidden West
4) Elden Ring
5) Starfield

Now that looks like a year to get excited for! Good shout for Deathloop on GP next year. Not to be sniffed at either!

MW2 by a long way for me. Just hasn't been as good since way back in the day although not played them all so can't say definitely

@Dezzy70 Agree with you. Have a mate who's a casual gamer and is desperate for PS5 for xmas for his kids but obviously can't get one. I recommended the Series S as a quick check shows everyone has them in stock but he wasn't interested even though it sounded perfect for him. He's thinking of going to CEX where they are still £720 to buy! Can't believe we're still at that point a year later!

@Dusk_Actual was about 15 hours in from GP but (blasphemous I know) bought on PS for same price as I had left over change on there (amazing I can buy a game of this quality for left over change!!) And can't really remember where I was up to or how the controls worked so may as well start again.
Will finally get me to stop playing Hades at least!!

Witcher 3 it is then. Been waiting for a decent sale since it dropped off Game Pass and £5 I'll be biting. Especially with the next gen upgrade releasing soonish as well.

Comparing the PS5 options to the 500GB you get twice the storage for same price (512g here at $140 while found £130 for 1TB PS5 on amazon) but did notice a 4TB drive for £780!!! That's just crazy but can only imagine what the Xbox 4TB storage will cost! Like others have said it reminds me of the Vita days when those storage cards were rediculously priced and never really came down in price.

I'd never buy a streaming only device because my experience with xCloud just doesn't cut it - but the potential is there. Maybe in 10/20 years I'll change my mind. Used to think the same about TV then Netflix changed it for me.

Very interested in RE village - but then again should probably wait until it ends up on GP in the future. Or at least that's what the sensible part of me is saying.

@NEStalgia I'm not sure that exactly true. I understand its a typical view on this site that people only buy Playstations because everyone else has one and only true gamers buy Xbox's, however the 360 generation the sales figures were much higher than PS initially and people didn't follow that trend. When the Xbox was more popular people went out and bought PS3's so that at the end of the generation PS3 sold more. i think its a disservice to gamers to suggest they don't buy what they want - especially as a roughly 50/50 split on Xbox360/PS3 resulted in a huge swing for PS4 generation. I honestly believe it was the games that did that and the only difference last gen was Sony had those incredible exclusive games while MS didn't.

Also the sales figures for games like GoW, LoU, Spiderman, HZD are around 20 million and probably more now giving an attach rate of roughly 1 in every 5 consoles. Am assuming other tentpole PS games will be similar or close enough.
My take is thats what Booty is hoping to replicate. Multiple exclusive games that sell at 1 in 5 attach rate giving these people a genuine reason to pick up an Xbox.
However its just my opinion and you could be right.

Any article like this produces the inevitable "I don't 3rd person games because Sony are so good at them" comments - but I don't think that's what Matt Booty was meaning. I got the impression he means there aren't the stand out must play games on MS portfolio right now. There are a crazy amount of those on Sony platforms right now - whether people claim they are over-rated or not, there is a reason Sony have a higher install base and this is it.
I also agree it's not a case of creating a MS version of HZD, LBP, Dreams, R&C, GoW, LoU, UC, GoT, Spiderman etc as they already exist. They need their own stand out must play games. They have Halo, GoW, FH but until they buy out all the 3rd parties those games will take time to get there.
Eventually games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout will start to become these examples, and for all we know eventually Assassins Creed, Far Cry & Watchdogs once they buy Ubisoft and so on..

My guess would be the numbers of people subscribing (86% in 2020 is impressive) but then not continuing the subscription which will affect the expected 2021 growth. To be honest there wasn't much to be too excited about in 2021 on Gamepass really. The medium wasn't a hit and the other big exclusive Flight Simulator isn't really going to keep enough people subscribed.
My guess is also based on my own experience. Subscribed end of 2020 and won't re-subscribe for a while as the price will go up for me (cost me £50 for this year but will be closer to £150 to re-subscribe) and I've gone through most of what I wanted to already. Perhaps in a few years I'll jump back on board once all the first party games have been released. No point paying to wait around for them?

@AFCC There's something that the kop wants you to know....

Its looks incredible fake - he's not smiling!! Although ray tracing on them bad boys will max out the CPU

@FriendlyOctopus and continuing your theme I won't buy this because it could come to game pass. Why spend £70 to be stung on a GP release. Especially because I reckon it will come to GP eventually.

Software Beta has bugs. Guess the free testing is working as intended. Now back to the work to fix them all and see you when you're ready....

Don't feel like there was anything of interest announced - although I'm new to the Xbox side of things and sounds like it was expected from this show - although getting Mighty Goose is a nice surprise as wouldn't mind giving that a try. Certainly better than a kick in the teeth anyway!

@FriendlyOctopus I already commented on the push square site that its a bit of a joke seeing as Half Life 2 was knocked out by Rise of the Tomb Raider and Mario 64 by Batman Arkham City - but unsurprisingly as much as PS owners love God of War (myself included) the general consensus was similar to the comments on here regarding the general results.

Maybe PureXbox can do their own version or do a vote version so we all decide in a head to head knock out.
My own personal top 3 are Half Life 2, Last of Us and Ocarina of Time. Couldn't chose between them in a head to head though.

Will pick up on PS+ but not too excited about this one. Does seem a perfect fit for GP though.

@FriendlyOctopus ha! I've never been cool but you're use of that word make me think you're about the same age as me 🤣

@Widey85 good shout on Black Friday. I managed to get a year for £50 last time but doubt I'll get anything like that again. GP is incredible value if its all you spend on games but to do so would be to miss out on most of the best games so I see it as more of a supplement than anything else, which at £50 a year I'd pay every year. Similar to how I see Netflix. If all you watched was Netflix you'd miss out on a lot of great movies / tv.
I guess I'm hoping the more subscriptions GP gets the less they need to charge to bring in the income to pay for all those games, but I'd be surprised if that was the direction MS planned to go down.

Hold on I'm confused? Is this article saying that 30 million is just a made up number and no one actually knows what the number should be other than it was £12 million in January?
I don't get the point of this article if that's the case?
BUT if it is £30 mill will that mean the prices drop soon

Won't be long until my subscription is up and I really don't want to be paying 3 times the amount I paid for the current year so will probably wait a few years until all the new games are released before re-subscribing. Shame because I'll have a perfectly good Series X with nothing to play on it for a few years and having been Playstation for last few gens I have to say I am impressed with my Series X.

Come on Phil.....lets have some GP offers if you guys are doing so incredibly well!!

@Trmn8r I agree. Sony get away with everything. Why don't people here ever say bad things about PS? It's just crazy how it's only MS who get talked down about!
(*takes off rose tinted glasses)

So very odd how one needs pay wall the other doesn't? Would Sony open it up for good PR while MS don't want to? Could that happen? Not really sure how these things work.

@LtSarge Relationships tend to be good when you throw a ton of money at it. Probably exactly what SE needs right now as well.

Had no plans to try this due to the reception it got critically and publicly, but that's exactly why I'll try it on GP. See it for myself and delete it if it doesn't grab my attention within the first 7 minutes.

@teknium_ Can I ask why you would do this? Is it the only way to cloud stream the games on Series X?
I ask because I tried this on my PC as soon as I read the update was out. Seems amazing to just pick any game and go into it straight away, but found the frame rate on Fallout 4 really poor. Is this something that runs better on Edge vs the Xbox app on PC?
Would be great to not have to download games onto the box to play them unless I really get into them - like a initial trial, then if they keep my attention I will download them.

Anyone using cloud gaming yet? Its pretty nifty but I'm finding the frame rate vomit inducing. Does that get better at different times of the day or is it always like that?

These articles have such predictable comments every time so in the spirit of @PhhhCough - Xbox does something not good. Xbox owners defend it. Claim its fine because Sony is worse. Xbox owner will criticise MS for the something not good. Person will be called Sony fanboy. Sony fanboy will come on and laugh at Xbox saying PS is better. Eventually comments about how PS owners are worst fanboys while commenting fanboy garbage in same sentence. Sony fanboy then argues back that at least he has games to play offline.

Right all done and skipped ahead so down the crux of the article - I didn't notice a single outage all year - on either consoles, so everything has been fine from where I'm standing. I do remember the old PSN when it was free and not so reliable. Happier days now.
Did anyone actually have any online issues over the last 12 months?

@LtSarge You're right - but Fallout and Skyrim have been the worst for me over all others. I was unable to finish Skyrim on 360 (it RROD my machine), PS3 (no surprise there though), PC, PS4 and haven't started on Series X. Have a love hate thing going on with that game

@Serious_Snape I wasn't sniping at all the devs - like I said Wolfenstein is one of my favourite games - it was a tongue in cheek comment about how bad Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are universally known. And Arkane are a great studio.
Played Fallout 4 on PS5 with a couple of Mods on but it was really buggy crashing and restarting twice in an hour so gave up. Perhaps I'll start on Series X if people have no issue with it there.

Again didn't mean to cause offense to anyone - just my experience with those two game series were terrible. If it helps they were mainly PS4 & PS5 experiences so probably explains why they happened. Will try again on Series X as people here sound confident they should be fine there.

@LtSarge Bethesda do make buggy games and they are terrible for it - but they are all forgiven because of Wolfenstein.
Must say I tried Fallout 4 again recently and just so many bugs it was unplayable. I did have the mods on so could be the reason - but it was enough for me to give up ever trying again.
Here's hoping all the new games are higher quality following Daft Punk 2077

I think the results just show how little this site represents the majority opinion of gamers. COD will obviously wipe the floor sales wise with BF and Halo but will never be the favoured game on here. Unfortunately for me I'm not interested in either of these or Halo as I've already had my life times worth of these games unless they innovate massively which isn't really their aim.

@John117 to be honest I go to these site mainly because I find them the best in many ways. I prefer the writing style which seem extremely similar between them and find their site so much easier to navigate than the others, especially when reading on the phone.
I also find the comments are much more toxic on shared sites. I do go to a few you tube channels such as what culture, digital gaming, gameranx, ign gaming but the comments section there are shocking in general.
Joking aside these sites do have some decent commenters that offer more than just fanboy comments and even some excellent gaming recommendations so worth reading.

@Stocksy I must agree as a frequenter of each site owning all three consoles this site feels the most fanboyish or defensive in terms of comments.

I reckon the buy out is Bluepoint games 🤣

I bleeping can't stand this game! I must be nearly 100 hours in and just can't stop playing it. There is nothing positive I can say about this game other than its like a bleeping drug to me.
I'm not even actively chasing achievements but just want to get everything in the game........I need help!

Isn't that a given? Bluetooth headphones work with bluetooth output? That means my bose will also work then?

Yep been having these problems with connection for a long time but think I managed to solve it by now always having the controller plugged into the console. Only did it because the battery ran out and didn't have spares but noticed I didn't get any connection issues so have kept with the 'workaround'. Means I have to sit on the floor to play though. Makes playing the PS5 like a treat because I get to sit on the sofa! Although one of my PS5 controllers now has drift problems as well! Just can't win! And don't get me started on the switch controllers 🤣

Oh well looks like Hades for all of September as well then.

Came for the article, stayed for toxic comments

Of course its gonna be good. Arkane are an excellent development team. Just a shame their games aren't appreciated by the public the same as the critics. Think the combination of Arkane and Game Pass is perfect. Their games deserve a wider audience and GP offers that where their sales figures suggest they don't get it.

My take away from that photo is how big the PS5 and Series X look. Yes I know the PS5 is laughably big but for some reason the Series X looks massive too. Mine don't seem anywhere near that size! Think its a small TV they have there!