Vordus

Ugh, 5pm is waaay too late in the day! Don't they know we have things to do? Sparkly pan-European things?

@Fenbops I suspect it might have been the other way around; without Shinji Mikami MS may not have seen Tango as a viable studio.

I'm wondering if Shinji Mikami's exit from Tango may have resulted in the studio losing its footing. Especially if some of his longer-term collaborators at the firm were planning on jumping ship with him.

The minimum character limit won't let me just say 'Welp'

But 'Welp' regardless.

To be fair, a significant number of those captures are just me fumbling the controller.

@Fiendish-Beaver these are the core titles; they're existing game pass titles being added to the service that replaced Xbox Live Gold.

I can't even access the rewards on Xbox any more. As far as I can tell, MS doesn't recognise my ISP, so it thinks I might be using a VPN to tunnel in from an unsupported region. The only way I can access them is by physically unplugging the Xbox and tethering it to my phone. And unlike the old MS Rewards app that only locked me out once a month, the new system locks me out of rewards the moment I plug the ethernet cable back in.

Ironically my PC can access it fine. Because it's behind a VPN.

Well SOMEBODY'S got to revive Jazz Jackrabbit.

@Kloppo alas, the PC version is €37.49, and the physical Xbox/PS5 copies seem to be selling at €44.99, so I'm guessing it's one for the waitlist.

@TheSimulator Ironically I suspect 'cheap and cheerful trials-like' has a much larger audience than a Spawn game would in this, the year 2024.

@jesse_dylan It's fully voiced at this point, so it should be comfortable on either.

Going to be the iconoclast here and say that I'm ready for some goddamn plant-themed puzzles.

@MehrunezZDagon It's a Larian game, so it'll be years before there's a significant discount.

I already have an X and an S, so I don't really need a midpoint between the two.

I've already deleted the YouTube app from my Xbox. Constant ads don't make me want to pay money to get rid of them, they make me want to do something else instead.

"Spyro 4 is in development. That's a statement. No theory crafting, no evidence-based assumption, no conspiracy theories or even a heavy-handed hint. Spyro 4 is in development. Period."

Interesting how he somehow twists the concept of 'having some evidence' into a negative here.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he's right, but that's a bit of a weird way to say "look, I can't tell you how or what I know, but I know".

Considering that these games are quite often more than 75% off individually, this seems like a particularly mediocre deal.

@somnambulance Yeah, no, I get it. I'm all for a bit of risk. If the big players don't at least try out some new franchises soon then the conventional third party AAA industry is going to collapse.

But I'm not sure that earmarking/spending a billion dollars of money that the Saudis haven't actually given you yet was a smart play. Or being a second-tier publisher whose entire bread and butter was based on making niche carefully-budgeted games that the AAA publishers didn't want to touch any more, and then suddenly greenlighting, like, a dozen AAA games over two years.

I like it, but I'm not entirely sure I'm enjoying it. It's very prone to sudden difficulty spikes.

@somnambulance It does look good. It's just a lot of money to be putting behind a franchise that hasn't had a well reviewed game this century.
But then, decent horror games can be decent sleeper hits. Not sure what Embracer needs right now is a sleeper hit, what with it being almost the end of their fiscal year, but I'm sure it'll be a lovely investment for whoever buys it off them in the bankruptcy sale.

So, will anyone actually be buying Alone in the Dark, or is it going to be another disappointing money sink for the publisher that's mostly known for being a disappointing money sink?

@GamingFan4Lyf They'll probably switch it out for something else. Raw Fury's had a pretty long relationship with MS for Game Pass games so it's pretty unlikely they won't have come to some alternative agreement.

@StylesT Microsoft isn't using it at the moment, but a lot of the tech from the motion control era has essentially evolved into the tracking technology that underpins modern VR.

Talos 2 is a marvel, and Lil Gator Game is a cute and extremely fun romp; like a more evolved A Short Hike. I've got my eye on Lil Guardsman, but my backlog (and crippling Balatro addiction) take priority.

Nothing says 'independent' like a $40 million marketing and distribution budget from EA!

It's like if Dead Island was good!

Right then. So business as usual. Who'd have thunk it.

Insert the Aunty Donna 'everything's a drum' sketch here, but with the word 'drum' replaced with 'Xbox'.

Bit of wild mass guessing here, but MS has a huge back catalog of PS4 and PS5 games through aquisitions.

Is it time for Game Pass on PS5?

The irony is that internally this isn't particularly different to what Xbox have been doing for years; some games go multiplatform, the rest go to both Xbox and PC. They've been doing some variations on this for years, so nobody inside the company was really thinking about the optics involved in adding more multiplatform games immediately after laying off thousands of people.

But then, 'nobody thought about the optics' seems to be the Xbox corporate mantra.

If it's less prone to disconnection, that would be a help.

Speaking as a baker, that slice of bread is upside down.

Between this and Palworld, it must be a fun month for the lawyers.

@S-Bacc Wii Music was 15 years ago. *
Crumbles into dust*

@ZuneTattooGuy Arkane is two studios under one banner. The Blade game is being handled by Arkane Lyon, which is the one that made the Dishonored games and Deathloop, whereas Redfall was made by Arkane Austin, which also made Prey.

I'm pretty sure that the guys that made Dishonored are well-positioned to make a street-level superhero game with supernatural elements.

@K1LLEGAL I think we could workshop the name. Possibly 'Green Apron'.

Hm, the Devs for this one are owned by Embracer, who are absolutely up ***** creek when it comes to finances.

Wonder if it's just the Remnant games, or whether there's going to be a big push of older THQ/Nordic/Koch/Deep Silver/Embracer titles over the next few months as Embracer tries to recoup some of their overspend.

I wouldn't say I'm excited. More, morbidly interested.

It'll be nice not having to unplug the Xbox and switch my phone to being a mobile data hotspot three times a week any more.

Disappointingly, the venn diagram between games in this sale and games on my wishlist consists of two circles just barely touching.

Massive corporations getting gobbled up by even bigger corporations is a good thing, says person with personal financial interest in having his massive corporation be gobbled up by an even bigger corporation.

@StonyKL Brazil wouldn't make for a good test market as thanks to a history of tariffs and import taxes aimed at foreign electronics, it has a completely unique gaming ecosystem.

Bring back 'The Movies' you cowards.

Discs are basically just physical licence keys these days, so maybe? I have a few disc based games that would be very comfy to play in bed.

Activision own the Infocom back catalogue. Let's farm out some preservation work on those to Digital Eclipse!

"measures to improve profitability" sounds like layoffs to me :/

Some more games in the Battletech universe would be nice, yeah. Microsoft still has the gaming rights to a whole bunch of the old FASA RPG universes, right?

It's a Bethesda game, in space. It's got some nice QOL iterations over previous Bethesda games, but it's still very much what you'd expect. Which is good, because that's pretty much exactly what I was looking forward to.

@Lightning720 The industry is still obsessed with Christmas. You have to get everything out in the last four months of the year so that they'll still be nice and crisp and new for when Christmas comes around and people need presents to hand out and games for their shiny new consoles.