XxEvilAshxX

Xbox, for all its innovations and technology, really... REALLY ****ing sucks at UI/UX. Seriously.

How, after multiple iterations and designs across the 360, Xbox One, and Series consoles, they settled on this travesty of an interface is beyond me.

I come from a day when we used to have binders full of 5.25 floppy disks. Downloading a 5 MB file meant tying up your phone line for three hours.

Today, I have about 30 TB of storage spread over several hard drives on my PC and a 1 TB expansion card with a 5 TB external hooked up to my Xbox. I pay for fiber and can download a 100 GB file in about an hour. Sometimes less.

I will download any damn thing I can get my hands on. It's wonderful.

Kinda sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.

Capped at 30 is not the same as locked at 30. Just pointing that out.

The generation had some great games, but there was also a ton of innovation and experimentation at this time. The 360/PS3 era was a time when there were a lot of "firsts" on console.

True wireless controllers, that could turn the system off and on. Integrated party chat that allowed anyone to talk to anyone else no matter what they were playing. Gamerscore and trophies were introduced in this gen. An integrated, unifying store that you could browse. This generation also introduced digital downloads, disc installs, custom profiles and avatars. It also saw Xbox experiment with several different dashboard styles, some great... some not so great.

We got to play around with the Xbox Vision Cam and Eye Toy, putting photos of ourselves on our driver licenses for Burnout Paradise and mapping our face to our character in Rainbow Six Vegas and NBA 2K.

We got the Kinect and the PS Move.. and while they weren't as successful as we would have liked (it was commercially successful for MS) it was still an experiment in pushing gaming forward.

Xbox Live became much more stable, netcode got more competent and people's internet overall was much better by the time the Xbox 360 rolled around. Games were playable now. I loved the early days of XBL but let's be honest, most of them were a laggy mess.

Social media and digital streaming were really starting to become a thing at this time as well, and while that's not directly related to Xbox or Playstation, it did impact our enjoyment of the generation, as our social reach was beginning to expand and we were communicating in new ways.

No generation will ever be as memorable as that one, because for the most part, technology has gotten faster and better, but innovation has stagnated. We are at a bit of a impasse when it comes to "new" experiences. It will be a case of increasingly diminishing returns until the next big step forward comes about, whether that is VR, AR, or something we haven't even thought of yet.

It's not about just great games. Because there are great games now, too. But they don't or won't have as much impact because they're not "new" experiences.

So congratulations, youngin's. You now understand what nostalgia is and why us old people yearn for the good ol' days.

I'd rather have a capped, steady framerate at 30 than something that runs smooth as butter in a single room then crashes to **** when you walk outside.

It's good to see Embracer selling off studios and IP. I was legitimately afraid they were gonna die and all those properties would be stuck in legal limbo for the rest of eternity.

• MS buys Activision, which includes a studio that had basically been a CoD support studio
• MS sees that since they were a CoD support studio, they have absolutely nothing in the works
• MS doesn't want to pay a small studio of people to literally start something from scratch, that won't see completion for three or four years.
• MS gonna shut them down, but agrees to let them go indie, with a stipulation that whatever they make comes to Game Pass.
• Toys for Bob gets a new lease on life. MS looks like a good guy for letting them go.
• MS gets game either way.

These games were cool back in the day, but the netcode was terrible and people's internet connections as a whole were pretty poor. The lag was the one thing that kept these games from being a blast. I'll probably be taking a look at them. I do hope they launch into one service or another though, because I don't know how long a mulitplayer game like this can survive on just nostalgia alone.

Their marketing of the game was pretty poor. I saw this game regularly on gaming sites and stuff and not until I read this article did I realize it was a single player shooter. Nobody talked about it. I always thought it was a magic-based pvp arena shooter for some reason.

I never saw anything based on story (that I remember) or the setting. Nothing other than just a bunch of lights and electricity flying around on the screen.

Hell, even now I don't really know what the game is. Is it like a wave-based horde mode shooter like Serious Sam? Or is it slower like a Bioshock?

I literally know nothing about this game, and I follow games daily.

Gauntlet Dark Legacy. That game is still fun as hell, but them graphics are looking pretty rough these days.

I'd also love to see Ubisoft do a remaster/remake of Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike.

If EA keeps going on their current trajectory, funding games like Jedi: Survivor, Dead Space Remake, Lost in Random, It Takes Two, and more... then I think EA Play leaving Xbox would hurt quite a bit.

Unfortunately, Madden has fallen so far that I can't even bring myself to play it. Not even for "free."

I bought MWIII about a month ago, but jumping in mid-season was a bit overwhelming. I'll be ready to go at the start of Season 2 though.

I don't think Xbox or Sony was interested in anything handheld... then suddenly Valve and Asus proved you can have power and affordability at the same time and shocker-- gamers loved it.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if they're literally trying to beat each other to the shelves.

Honestly, Microsoft's infrastructure is already primed for it. They just need the device. Sony might already have the device, but they're integration is behind.

I enjoyed Callisto Protocol quite a bit, but I have to admit, it was just a little bit too similar to Dead Space. I think I would have enjoyed the game more if they leaned a little bit further into third person shooter territory.

I'd totally play a sequel though.

Eh, gives me more time to play the first STALKER.

I'm fairly confident there's already an Xbox version of the game sitting on a server at Squeenix. I really do think it was ready to go at the end of that of that original one-year exclusivity deal. I do think that Sony took advantage of whatever chip on his shoulder the previous CEO had for Microsoft and renogiated to keep it off the platform.

that's just me and my tinfoil hat though.

The fact that no one has mentioned Altered Beast yet makes me sad and ashamed of all of you.

I really like the Gears series. That said, I hope they wrap it up with Gears 6 and move on. Six games (seven if you count Judgement, which I don't) is enough.

I would like to see what The Coalition would do with a blank canvas.

Well, you can't take away something that people care about. What you do is gradually make it worse and worse over time, so that when you finally do kill it off, nobody notices.

I mean, look at Games with Gold.

I think the comparisons to Bioshock are fair. I don't think it's a coincidence by any means that it just happens to share a similar look and setting. That said, I'll give it a try. Hopefully it's actually got some fresh ideas and they're not just putting all their chips on it being a (ugh) Bioshock-like to get them by.

1: It's stupid that Microsoft bans the uploading of stuff found in games that are on their own platform.

2. Bro, why you recording nakey clips? There are websites for that.

There are literally so many more uses of AI generated art to be angry over than a twitter post that nobody will remember next week.

Shocked face

I really wish MS would just put hall effect sticks in their standard controllers so I can confidently buy them again. The past few first party controllers all got stick drift after a short time and I'm kinda done with them.

But most third party controllers kinda suck too.

Not spending $200 tho.

Hopefully they updated those wonky-ass controls. I loved that game back on the Gamecube, but when they ported it to Xbox they didn't do a very good job of re-mapping the controls from Cube and it always felt like garbage.

"It's not canceled!"

-important dev milestone

Can't wait to play it in 2037!

I used to make sure I did my dailies and tried for the weekly goals, but it stopped being worth it a while back. Now I just play my games and I'll take a look at the rewards once a month or so to get the points but I hardly pay attention to them anymore.

I'm pretty sure MS's goal is to slowly make them worse so that when they eventually kill it nobody will notice.

GT7 has split-screen? Now me and my friend can be bored together!

Joking aside, I own both GT7 and FM and neither one of them are going to knock your socks off. If you're a FM fan, you'll continue being an FM fan. GT isn't going to change your mind with one feature addition.

@Widey85 RDR has been on sale for $10 or less multiple times. Just wait for the Holiday Sale.

@GamingFan4Lyf The only reason I care about physical media on Switch is cuz I can sell the games for almost as much as I bought them for.

Not surprised. Their game shelves have been a wasteland for a while now.

"Wimpy bosses?" You mean bosses that I can actually beat?

It's a pretty niche genre in an extremely crowded gaming season. Couple that with reviews talking about it being buggy as hell, and I'm not really surprised.

That said, they're writing it off pretty quick. This game has "wait and see" written all over it. If they could get some of the bugs patched up they very well could see a second wind next year after this insane few months are over and people are looking to see what else there is to play.

I bought Gran Turismo 7 back when it released, and I was pretty disappointed by it, to be honest. I expected it to look much better than it did. Sure, the replays looked great, but GT has always had good looking replays. I don't care about replays, and I hardly ever watch them.
Aside from a few flashes of brilliance, the game looked pretty bland.
I even compared it to Forza 7 on the same tracks to see if I was imagining it. There were parts of Forza 7 that actually looked better.
I still played a ton of GT7 but I expected a graphical powerhouse to showcase my shiny new PS5 and I just wasn't seeing it.

I haven't played FM2023 yet so I can't compare.

Ubi gonna tease us with this nice smaller AC before going full GAAS with the next one.

...although they have been having some troubles lately with their current roadmap so maybe if this one does well, we'll go back to smaller experiences.

I picked this game up on sale a few years ago, but man I have a hard time getting into it. Maybe I'll try to do this game club thing. At least I'd have someone to commiserate with.

Can't wait to give this a try on console. I played a little bit of it on PC but it was at the beginning when it was a bit of a train wreck. I really hope they figured it out.

Actually I don't remember Hyenas, and after watching that video, I know why. That looked generic as ****.

Sucks for the developer for the game to be canned so close to completion, but c'mon. It's such a crowded market and aside from some zero gravity stuff, I didn't see anything to set it apart.

Stardew Valley, but in the ahire with Hobbits, would have my money instantly.

Suda51 AND Swery65?

Well that pretty much confirms I won't know what the **** is going on.

I've been playing it and it is indeed very good.

But it is A CARBON COPY of Forza Horizon. I do kinda wish they wouldn't have gone so hard in the "Festival" direction.

If the HDR is going to be anything like Elder Scrolls Online's... please just leave it off lol.

@evan23 Yep, BUT the game it's playing has to support it. If the game itself only does 480p, the Xbox won't upscale it.

I can appreciate the dev's self-awareness. And financial common sense.

@GuyinPA75 Fujimi Kaido. I would also love to see that track on new technology. As well as Rio, New York, and Dubai.

I would also love to see a few fictional tracks as well. Not everything has to be official licensed locales.

Graphically it already holds up pretty well due to the art style... But I really hope they tweak the controls. The game was originally designed for the GameCube controller and when they ported it they didn't bother to adjust anything. It just feels wonky to play now.

At least they're going out on their own terms.

Symmetrical thumbsticks?

**Throws up in mouth**