TrollOfWar

@Jaxx420 True, marketing was way more aggressive in the 90s. In my opinion, it feels like gaming is now past the "edgy teenager" phase and is finally becoming mature.

Oof, another 80-90 million dollars of development is a tough spot for a game which probably already spent several hundreds of millions in development hell. And that's without the marketing budget.

I would have loved to see Crystal Dynamics finish the game without The Division. Could have been a cool game.

Hopefully this doesn't stop Xbox from developing new Perfect Dark games with a clear vision and a more moderate budget.

@Jaxx420 Well, the "console war" did take place between PlayStation and Xbox. Ken Kutaragi (former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment), Kaz Hirai (former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment), Shawn Layden (former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment), Peter Moore (former vice-president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business), Phil Spencer (CEO of Microsoft Gaming) and Matt Booty (Head of Xbox Game Studios) all gave some comments or had emails leaked (in case of Matt Booty who was thinking of "spending Sony out of business" ) over the years where they did acknowledge the rivalry.

But as soon as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) took over the control of Microsoft's gaming division by acquiring Activision-Blizzard-King, he seemingly ended the console war from Microsoft's side.

Since Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he has been shifting the company's strategies and has emphasized working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple, Salesforce, IBM and Sony. In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns under Nadella Microsoft embraced Linux and are making their products, like MS Office and Teams available on all platforms, where those products would have been Windows exclusive before.

I guess that same open approach is now being applied to Microsoft Gaming.

@ButterySmooth30FPS

Massive change on this website from the "LOL! Suck it, ponies!" of 2022-23 to the, "Can't we all just get along?!" of 2024-25.

Some people grow up and change. They learn how pointless the "console war" debates are and move on. Let's celebrate playing together. 😉

@Medic_alert

But as hardware becomes more generic and PC like and all games start to be shared then where's the competition?

Game quality, successful franchises and subscription services.

Microsoft has been in the top 10 charts of the sold games on PlayStation with multiple games for several months. Sony's games are now competing with Microsoft's games on their own platform.

@Fiendish-Beaver

... and Microsoft stopped fighting the minute they announced that they were porting 'just 4 games' to the PlayStation.

I think Microsoft gave up way sooner, precisely at the point where they acquired Activision Blizzard King.

They now have 2 of the biggest multiplatform game publishers. Business wise it wouldn't make sense to make their games exclusive to Xbox when the games cost so much to create and market.

@ILuvGames Thanks. It suits my profile name, as it's a play on both God of War and Gears of War (and the console wars).

Wanted to generate a picture of a Helldivers 2 soldier and Marcus Fenix, but Google Gemini has no clue what they look like.

Love it! Crossovers between Xbox and PlayStation games next. ❤️

EDIT: Oh wait, we already have Halo ODST in Helldivers 2. What a time to be alive! 😄

@Balaam_ Might be Ben is implying that it's related to PC, as Battlefield 6 will only release on current gen consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series S|X) which support ray-tracing and PC. There was a controversy around Doom: The Dark Ages requiring a ray-tracing enabled graphic cards on PCs.

There's the debate wether people should move on and upgrade the hardware, as it helps advancing technologies and helps game development with the usage of more dynamic lighting. Digital Foundry had a discussion about the "forced RT" in Doom: The Dark Ages: https://youtu.be/HCqS_uZ0G4Q

Probably a reasonable decision, given that they want to target a large player group rather than sell new expensive hardware.

I understand some might feel underwhelmed by the visual fidelity advancements of the current gen (we got major advancements in other areas, like better streaming, faster loading and a lot more 60 fps games). But hardware is becoming increasingly expensive and unaffordable for many casual gamers.

Based on the beta which many of us played, great art design and a masterful usage of "old" graphical technologies, applied to destructable large-scale environments is a good balance, helping the game feel "current gen" and competing with games of the same caliber.

It's a bit disappointing that it isn't a full remaster with upgrade visuals of the whole trilogy, but hopefully Reloaded does well enough to pave the way for the other 2 parts in the trilogy.

@Kaloudz I could see Rare releasing some smaller titles similar to how Obsidian Entertainment released Pentiment.

I think Rare is highly regarded in under Xbox. They've supported Xbox in many crucial moments have proven to be quite versatile: They provided several launch titles for the Xbox 360 with Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and Viva Pinata, they helped the Kinect camera with Kinect Sports and Sea of Thieves is one of the few ongoing successful live-service games which was developed internally rather than being acquired by Microsoft.

The former studio head Craig Duncan is now the head of Xbox Game Studios. I don't think he'd allow a studio he was part of to be closed that easily. But Rare, like many others in the industry, doesn't have the luxury anymore to spend a large amount of time and resources on a project without any results.

@Millionski

Usually when I say this, people jump at me saying is not a souls-like...but it is: harder difficulty, bosses where you need to memorize animations, you have to dodge/roll. the only good part is the skill tree and many abilities but the level design itself is poor.

Would you call the Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry series "souls-likes"? They have those points which you mentioned like hard difficulties (hard to master), tough bosses where you have to memorize their animations/attack-patterns, dodge/rolls. Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry predate the Demon's Souls and the "souls-like" genre.

I think a game requires more than a hard difficulty, tough bosses and dodge rolls to be associated with the "souls-like" genre. It needs lightweight RPG elements, a currency form (souls) that you can collect to level up, but lose a certain amount when you die, a checkpoint system (bonfires) which help you save and level up, an Metroidvania-like interconnected world where you can unlock shortcuts and loop back to earlier areas.

I haven't played Black Myth Wukong yet, but it sounds more like a classic linear action game with a high difficulty similar to Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry.

@Fiendish-Beaver In case you're interested, based on the stats on trueachievements.com, somewhat more people have played Gears of War Reloaded than Helldivers 2 on Xbox in these few days since release. But of course a large majority of those players got Gears of War Reloaded for free of they bought the 2015 released Ultimate Edition.

Personally I think there was no classic "exclusivity deal" between Sony and Game Science. Probably there was some "partner dev support" where Game Science seeked out support from Sony PlayStation to get the game running on the PS5. Would be interesting to know if there were any conditions tied to that support.

The problem is that Game Science is quite terrible, not just with optimizing their game, but also terrible at public communication, which all added more fuel to the conspiracy theories about an exclusivity deal:
1. They shouldn't have removed the Xbox logos from their trailers in 2024 if they were intending to release on Xbox anyways.
2. They should have reached out to Xbox if they needed dev support, just like other multi-platform developers do.
3. They shouldn't have publicly blamed the Xbox Series S for the delay (even if that was the case)
4. They shouldn't have stuck to that "20th August" date for the Xbox release. Outside of China nobody knows what that date means and a serious business would rather try to get their product out as soon as possible while the marketing hype is up, rather than wait a full year for that specific date to come.

This makes them look like amateurs.

So it basically took them exactly 1 year to find the Lumen settings in Unreal Engine 5 to turn it off for Xbox? /s 😄

Well, better late than never.

I'm surprised it took this long for Microsoft to make their cloud streaming offer cheaper/ more accessible, but it's a step in the right direction.

@smoreon I played through Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox Series X 3 years ago and that game often looks better than many new release thanks to a strong art direction. Same with the original Ninja Gaiden Black and Dead or Alive 3 which look great upscaled to 4K.

As I am getting older I seem to enjoy simpler experiences more than the current over complicated "everything is an RPG" AAA games. So those backward compatible games are perfect for me.

@Fiendish-Beaver I understand that it's fun to discuss and speculate about Sony's and Microsoft's business strategies and their success and failures on these forums and of course numbers help a lot.

Personally I use the numbers from websites like trueachievements.com or exophase.com to calculate the percentage of the people who played the game compared to the total number of registered/tracked users per platform and then apply the percentage to the estimated number of sold consoles from vgchartz.com. The method is definitely not perfect, but gives you a rough estimate about how a game is doing and it's much better than an estimate based on review numbers on a platform's store front (as it was done by Alinea Analytics for the Final Fantasy 16 on Xbox and reported by PushSquare).

But please keep in mind, these are just numbers and no matter what other people try to tell you, the numbers often don't matter that much. What really matters in the end is, if a game is fun for you to play. 😉

@Fiendish-Beaver

Would 100,000 on the Xbox be considered good?

The game has been only out for 1 day on Xbox so it's hard to say.

At the same time as the Xbox release the game also received a large content update which got lapsed players to return. On SteamDB you see the daily active players going from 60K on the weekend to 160K today. Probably something similar happened on PlayStation.

But it's worth considering that today is Wednesday, the mid of the week. Many will start playing on the weekend. Probably more people have bought the game who haven't started yet.

100 000 Xbox players would already be enough to make the release profitable, but I suspect it might have sold more than 200K copies on Xbox already.

Happy to see that the game is doing great on Xbox as well.

I remember enjoying Cold Fear quite a lot back on the original Xbox. It plays like Resident Evil 4 but with more refined controls. The first section on the ship rocked by stormy ocean waves is brilliant, but the second half on the rig is forgettable.

@fatpunkslim

I’m surprised the graphics are this bad — I thought PlayStation players were more demanding when it comes to visual quality.

It's because graphics alone don't make a good game. Helldivers 2 is a fresh experience which is fun to play in co-op and most players don't care if the graphics look dated.

Some of the best selling and most played games currently have dated graphics (like Minecraft, GTA5) but it doesn't matter.

I bet many of us would have been happy with the Xbox 360 and PS3 if we had only gotten full HD, 60fps and fast loading via SSD as the only upgrades

It's amazing what talented developers were able to pull of on limited hardware with outstanding creative designs and practical solutions around limitations.

#BuyEvercade 😁

@FraserG Sorry, I guess I missed it. 😉

It's worth to mention that there's a demo for Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, for those who want to get a good impression:
https://www.xbox.com/games/store/shinobi-art-of-vengeance-demo/9pnvpkftm8bs

The more players the better. A PS5 release would also make sense.

There is a lot of room for interpretation, or to "read between the lines" in this citation: 🤔

...all grounded in the work we're doing to create a unified platform that allows players to play across devices and in entirely new ways [...] So together with AMD, we're designing dedicated silicon and hardware to enable the next generation of gaming experiences, and so that means we're investing deeply in the next generation of rendering technologies, such as neural rendering, which will bring a new level of fidelity to the quality of the games that you're having...

You know who is doing the exact same thing? Sony PlayStation

I'm speculating that Xbox and PlayStation have partnered with AMD to create a unified next-gen hardware architecture. PlayStation's architect Mark Cerny mentioned that any advancements they do with AMD regarding AI upscaling can be used by AMD with other partners.

This 3-way partnership benefits everyone:

AMD would be able to catch up with Nvidia on graphical and technological advancements and might become more relevant in the PC gaming space.

Microsoft could use the newly established architecture for their handhelds, PC/consoles and cloud streaming infrastructure. They wouldn't have to care about "games not being ported to Xbox, as it's one architecture.

PlayStation would benefit from lower research and development costs for their next gen hardware and a platform which is easier to develop for. Additionally porting costs of PlayStation games to PC would drastically decrease. And it could also benefit them for cloud streaming if their infrastructure is also hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud.

All just speculation of course. ☺️

@Sindayl Truth is, from a technical point of view both the PlayStation (since PS4) and Xbox (since Xbox One) are hardware architecture wise pretty much the same. Probably 90% of the games are released on both platforms. So there is no need to buy the other platform if you already have one, especially if you have a large games library.

I believe that a big number of Xbox players moved on to PlayStation (4) due to the terrible Xbox One launch and stronger PS4 exclusives. They miss the Xbox games, but prefer to buy and play games on PlayStation.

I'm surprised it takes so long for Microsoft to offer a lower-priced streaming only GamePass tier. The ad-supported option has been teased for more than a year now.

@Jenkinss According to ex-PS Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, this is Sony's definition of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party games:

First-party
A game published and fully funded by Sony. Usually owns the IP.
Second-party
A game published by Sony with partial or full funding coming from an external company. Usually doesn't own the IP.
Partner title
A game published and developed by an external company launching first or earlier on PlayStation platforms.
Third-party
A game published and fully funded by an external company.

Source: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2025/02/sony-clarifies-the-difference-between-first-party-second-party-and-so-on

It seems like everyone has their own definition on online forums, but I think the former President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment would be the most qualified person to explain what the definition of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party games are.

Helldivers 2 is fully funded and published by Sony PlayStation and they own the IP. According to Yoshida Shuhei'd definition that's a 1st party game.

The Pokemon games are developed by Game Freak, a 3rd party independent development studio. Would you say, for Nintendo "Pokemon" is a 2nd party game?

@Questionable_Duck @Godot25 Helldivers 2 is a 1st party PlayStation game just like Pokemon is a 1st party Nintendo game. Just because the development studio is independent that doesn't make the game or the IP independent.

Of course PlayStation is promoting Helldivers 2 for Xbox. They want it to sell well.

Personally I would rather buy a regular Asus ROG Ally if that Xbox-centric Windows 11 update is made available for all handheld devices (probably only a matter of time) and attach some 3rd party grips, all for half the price of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally.

Funny. I've been actually thinking of playing The Division 1 (as a solo game). New York during winter is such a great & moody setting, The Division 2 just cannot compete with it.

Some free games would be great.

There's a way to cheese through perma-death games/achievements on Xbox: Just close the game app frequently to have your save file synced to the cloud and if you die/mess up, quickly delete the local save file and restart the game/app.

@Kaloudz Yes, they seem to be available for purchase. I think I bought them on sale at half the price:
Max Payne
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Max Payne 3

Good enough reason for me to revisit the game.

I've been looking forward to play the demo of Hell Is Us. Happy to see that it's finally available.

I replayed both Max Payne games a year ago and they are still great games. Solid gunplay, great stories and awesome soundtrack.

@Kaloudz I think the original games are still worth to replay. They run great on Xbox Series consoles thanks to backward compatibly and they are sometimes on a sale in the Xbox store.

Not a big surprise given that the PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware are nearly identical and Unreal Engine 5 is built for multi-platform.

Probably porting games from PS5 to Xbox Series X is just as simple.

@Fiendish-Beaver No problem. So the correct way is to use the [ ] brackets. I had to use < > (which is wrong) to provide sample code, as the tags "pre" and "code" still applied the formating when trying to use [ ].

@cragis0001

As Microsoft tend to have grand ideas then fall at the final hurdle.

That's why I am currently optimistically skeptical about the current situation. The promise of an open Xbox platform, with Steam/Epic/GOG Store integrations and the end of console exclusives sounds very intriguing. But as we often saw with Microsoft, they either mess up the message, or the implementation, or shift their strategy midway. 😄

@Fiendish-Beaver Of course, it's a pleasure. I'm using the so called "BB Code" (Bulletin Board Code). There are special tags placed in square-brackets [ ] which can be used for different things. You can find more details here: https://www.bbcode.org/reference.php

So here the common examples which I use, just replace "< >" with "[ ]":

Quote
<quote>Someone might have said something</quote>
Looks like this:

Someone might have said something

Named Quote
<quote=TrollOfWar>I am being falsely quoted, I never said this.</quote>
Looks like this:

Bold/Strong
The point I am trying to make is <b> important</b>
Looks like this:
The point I am trying to make is important

Link-Text
Do not <url=https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ>click here!</url>
Looks like this:
Do not click here!

Spoiler
Spoiler Alert: <spoiler>big revelation</spoiler>
Looks like this:
Spoiler Alert: All 3 endings in Mass Effect 3 don't matter, you're basically just choosing a color.

Image
<img>https://i.imgur.com/ZT9bqbh.jpeg</img>
Looks like this:

Hope this helps. 😘

@Lup

It was as boring as AC1 or Revelations.

Those 2 are some of my favorite Assassin's Creed games. 😅

Executives say all kinds of things to keep shareholders satisfied.

Also, being a multi-platform publisher doesn't necessarily mean that the platform holder is leaving the console space.

Sooner or later we will see what that quote meant, what we all know though is that Sony is changing their whole strategy and are adapting to market conditions.

@Kaloudz The first game managed to deliver a high quality, cinematic, AAA experience with a very limited budget.

I think many were hoping that with more budget, time and development team, Team Ninja could offer a full game with deeper gameplay. Instead the team focused even more on the audio-visual presentation and somewhat less on the gameplay. I guess many were hoping that Hellblade 2 might become Xbox's "God of War 2018" and felt let down by the end product.

@HonestHick

i have lost a lot of respect for Push Square writers.

The writers need to write in a polarizing way to increase discussion/engagements/clicks, so I guess it's just business. Though I think a few of the writers do believe in what they write and express their brand identity more than rational thinking.

@smoreon Oh, my bad, it wqs actually Phil Fish who discussed The Legend of Zelda, but Jonathan Blow was the one who opened the discussion about over tutorializing games. Here is a bit about what was discussed: https://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/0/666828126986481575/?l=japanese&fp=2&ctp=2