They cleverly mixed pre‑rendered cutscenes and in‑engine scenes right before gameplay.
Rockstar Games famously doesn't use pre-rendered cutscenes. I honestly cannot remember any single Rockstar game that uses them. Rather, all their cutscenes are real-time and in-engine. Here is a good example of what I am talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXlUG3JmFs
It doesn't seem at all like they are interested in finding which studios work best for certain game adaptations, rather they seem to simply be interested in finding which studios pay the most.
@FraserG I have one question that I cannot seem to find a direct answer to but maybe you might have seen that information somewhere that I simply missed.
Q. Is the requirement of maintaining the digital entitlement from a disc different from that of purchasing digital version from the store, i.e., something like an always online requirement?
So essentially, if a person wishes to play a game they own physical version of, do they need to verify it every time like they do by inserting the disc, only this time for the digital entitlement they get, it gets confirmed by an online check of which account the disc ID is currently associated to. In case you don't have the answer now but have physical games you want to get free digital versions of, would you be willing to test it out?
Those leaks are low quality and watermarked. You can rather experience the advertisement of our game in 4K full 6 hours early on Netflix. YouTube is only for the peasants! After all, those of you who pre-ordered the digital game already, one that will never go out of stock, would clearly pay for the subscription. Don't let these leaks damage our revenue coming from Netflix
While there are many unoptimised games out there, some games are simply quite CPU heavy which limits whether the devs can fit game logic withing the timeframe required to do 60 fps. This fixation by many to have the game always run at 60 fps is not good for development of games that push the possibilities. GTA VI, for example, has commited to having so many NPCs, evident from its trailers, that running the logic within a few milliseconds window seems impossible. But should they drop things like these in favor of making a 60 fps game? The way this game's devs have explained the depths of the game, makes it seems like the game logic is lot more complicated that both Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I wouldn't be surprised if the 60 fps mode isn't stable at all.
He said there is tonne of Witcher to come before Witcher 4. I wonder what else apart from this DLC they have been planning these past years. A Unreal Engine remaster, running alongside original game code, made with the help of a third party studio has become an industry standard to keep the IPs alive, so that would be my first guess.
the more games that are seen as exclusive on a platform, the more likely people are to opt for that particular platform. It is about the collective, not the individual title.
Not just that, sometimes additional funding from contracts like these, or even Game Pass ones, allows some games to exist.
I wish Xbox was in a position to secure 3rd party deals like this for franchises I actually want to play. Instead we get mostly AA and Indie "exclusives".
The only reason Xbox spent less on console-exclusivity is because they diverted more funds to get launch exclusivity contracts for their Game Pass subscription (the third-party day one releases). Games like Expedition 33, or even this month's big day one releases (Beast of Reincarnation and Resonance) are key examples. This Game Pass focused strategy comes from the era when then President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, would say things like "console exclusives are antiquated".
as we age as gamers don’t you guys miss having a brand new game?
Developers can probably make games more frequently, if people were fine playing games that look like they came straight out of Xbox 360 generation. But people keep crying about wanting 4K 120fps experiences with denser environments and more NPCs. Making those a possibility takes years, and so yes, I am fine with the current release schedule.
Not just another part to a continuing series; especially one like GTA
I don't see games in the Grand Theft Auto series as simple repackaging of the same game with a different story. Rather, it is probably the only franchise where each game is a unique experience, only sharing the genre specific elements. I see them as unique as Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row or Mafia are in this genre.
I’ve talked to people who don’t remember much of a social satire at all; they just remember robbing and killing NPCS
The social satire was always meant to be environmental storytelling, unlike the staged sequences in many other games. So, of course, people don't remember it. It doesn't matter. The satire serves its purpose beautifully when you are playing the game.
I haven’t been a fan of GTA online for a minute now
I have never been a fan of multiplayer or online in games. I play solo, so I never worried about GTA Online. I see it simply as a recurring revenue model that sustains the development of their future games. The good thing here is that Rockstar hasn't dropped or reduced their single player offering to chase the live service model, unlike many big publishers. Rather they keep serving the Online audience, while developing rich exceptional single player experiences like RDR2 and hopefully will continue with GTA VI.
I personally don't follow the rumours or hype around any video game, even GTA VI, but I am definitively going to play it soon. I don't know if I will be there day one or not, I have yet to see gameplay and other aspects of the game to make that decision. But it is certainly my kind of game.
I think Helix is ready to go, @badboidre, and I think the original plan was for it to release this year along side all the big games that Xbox has coming this year (including the now delayed Fable).
Then GTA 6 threw a spanner in the works
I think a next-gen console for GTA 6 would've been a perfect launch, since it has far larger appeal than any of Xbox's own games.
But I agree, the rumoured timeline about an year ago was 2026 for Xbox's next gen launch and 2027 for Sony's. Now it seems like Xbox's delay might pit its console head-to-head against Sony's.
@TheGameThrifter I don't think a patch can do much to improve the performance. We have had many multiplatform games, none of them are noticeably better on the Series X versus PS5. Sony's base PS5 has a smaller die size for its chip that makes it cheaper, yet nearly the same performance. As if the rumours are to be believed, Xbox's Helix will again have much larger chip, yet Sony will be able to reach 99% of the performance and quality with much cheaper design.
@TheGameThrifter The Digital Foundry video shows there is marginal difference between the Halo Campaign Evolved on PS5 vs Xbox Series X, and that too not only in pixel counts, rather than performance or quality of the game. PS5 punches way above its hardware, and Series X does the complete opposite.
@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think franchises like EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, Call of Duty, etc. need to do anything against GTA release. Most of the people who buy these games day one, often play just that specific game all year long. So the stickiness is far too much for a game like GTA to pull away these gamers. Call of Duty might have some competition in the form of Battlefield 6, but the rest are de facto monopolies in a sense.
But I agree, for the rest of the games on consoles intending to release around that time, it is far more sensible to launch on Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. PC releases, of course, don't need to worry. However, the reason I believe most games are avoiding a release around that period is that GTA VI is expected to overtake all communication cycles developers rely on, including articles, gaming outlet, youtubers, social media, etc.
@FraserG Just to clarify, I am not questioning your intention at all. My reply to Fiendish-Beaver still cites all your articles, since I trust the information you share. But that opening line certainly creates that implication, even if not intended.
We've already seen so many games announced for September over the past few months as publishers desperately attempt to avoid GTA 6 in November, and we're continuing to get more announcements by the week.
@FraserG I don't see why you would use that opening line which implies these games have chosen said dates to avoid GTA, when in reality they have always released during this exact same period.
EA Sports FC 27 - 25 September 2026 (announced)
EA Sports FC 26 - 26 September 2025
EA Sports FC 25 - 27 September 2024
EA Sports FC 24 - 29 September 2023
NBA 2K27 - September 4, 2026 (announced)
NBA 2K26 - September 5, 2025
NBA 2K25 - September 6, 2024
NBA 2K24 - September 8, 2023
I do worry about the slippery slope and ads start creeping in elsewhere. Give an inch and they will take a mile.
Well said. Nearly every ad-based platform starts with roses and only when it is sticky enough for people to not leave, they start extracting more value. I am sure they would have some target number of users to sustain the cost. If they don't achieve it, it is possible they would start showing more ads or more obnoxious ads.
@smoreon I don't understand if they have it on the store, that means the publisher is willing to sell it, why can't they ask the publisher for some cover art? I can understand the issue for the delisted BC games, but for the rest they can certainly ask the publishers.
@Millionski Yeah I believed it would be exclusively Windows, especially since Sarah Bond's Xbox-AMD partnership video described Windows will be the greatest gaming platform. But, there were also conversations, how Microsoft could use their hypervisor to instantly switch between Windows and XboxOS, which at least technically seemed sound.
As for the status of Windows, I too have little hope in its dramatic improvement. I am using it daily and I have thought about switching to linux quite a few times. I am on laptop however, and thus the linux support is quite limited, especially for things like fan control, etc.
@Millionski yes I had the same thoughts, but I believe this makes it a lot more concrete than ever before. If they can directly run those games on PC without any hardware modifications, this means most PCs can be converted to Xboxes. Phil and Sarah's "This is an Xbox" dream is eventually coming.
As for Windows, my hopes for improvement aren't that high. They have horribly diminished any good experience you can have on Windows, which is especially notable if you ever interact with any other OS, including XboxOS. I don;t see them making such a giant leap in such a small amount of time. But if they go the Valve route, they would be improving the system over time. Their actual next-gen product is Windows now.
@General-Foley My only contention with PCs is Windows. It hasn't been a stable software for the past 5 years, and I don't think they can improve much in 1.
@themightyant yes those were the reasons, but I believe this was also the time last year when Xbox announced Gears of War Reloaded will come to PS5, and conversations around Xbox becoming a multiplatform publisher started catching up, lowering trust in the platform and the reason to buy an Xbox console, especially when it wasn't clear if whether the next announced Xbox first party will also jump ship.
My only desire is to see QuickResume on Windows. I know it is likely much more complex with the sheer openness of PC hardware, but even if we get it on limited devices, I would be happy
@Banjo- I think the percentage growth is a lot more significant for Xbox than other consoles because trust was at all time low before the leadership change and the subsequent drop of many customer-facing bad faith advertisements such as "Everything is an Xbox". This is like you see huge gdp increase after a recession in the economy. The long-term strategy still seems to be the same, especially now that they are rolling out Xbox games for Windows, and Windows largely being an everywhere platform with laptops, handhelds, boxes, and such. But it seems like Asha Sharma has certainly steered the ship away from collision. Whether the path becomes sustainable in the long term is yet to be observed.
I said it in the previous post, this set of announcements have left me wondering whether,
Helix can just be a PC, not even a hybrid, with Xbox mode resembling more and more like the Series consoles, and the rest being Windows. I know this was a possibility, but now it seems more feasible than ever. I don't see them keeping separate OSs, when they can offer a lot more games on Windows, especially the ones that skip Xbox console on launch but always release the PC port.
@trev666 why did you need a guide, isn't there a map (if it is open world), or directional hints (if it isn't). Or is the game like Atomfall, where you simply have written text in the menu, but have to figure out where to go yourself.
This is some great news. But now I am also wondering Helix can just be a PC, not even a hybrid, with Xbox mode resembling more and more like the Series consoles, and the rest being Windows. I know this was a possibility, but now it seems more feasible than ever. I don't see them keeping separate OSs, when they can offer a lot more games on Windows, especially the ones that skip Xbox console on launch but always release the PC port.
The posters for Xbox and Xbox 360 games have a thick black bar at the bottom. Since I don't sort my games by size, that black bar has nothing covering it and oddly stands out. If they fix that, I would start using the posters with the medium size, until them I will stick to large size tiles.
@themightyant Oh I never meant to suggest they are going to make good games, especially after losing such an amount of institutional knowledge.
You are correct in pointing out the software brain of Asha. I wonder if they ever thought about creative houses like the restructuring that Ubisoft is currently making. Because this one, as you pointed out, was already done and failed.
The only publishers/platform holders we can consider sustainable today have a mix of AAA and experimental endeavors. Both feed into each other, creating unique experiences. Xbox and Sony are both moving to AAA exclusive space, which while less risky and profitable, is only going to deplete creativity in the long term. I would have liked Xbox to move to Capcom or Nintendo models.
the simple truth is that she needed to make 3200 people redundant in order to save money. The easiest way for her to rid Xbox of those people is to get rid of some studios, which she has done. The next easiest target for these sackings are studios that have just released a game, which is where iD fell foul
I agree, people keep ignoring the raw financial motivations. I am surprised people keep pretending that Asha Sharma or Xbox management would perform every action with utmost sincerity. Sure there might have been a few cases where divestment was necessary and teams didn't match the future strategy (example ESO).
But let's not pretend they were appropriately distributed or won't affect any projects. I keep hearing repeated PR lines like id being the size it were during Doom 2016, when in every single developer presentation for the technology id built for The Dark Ages, they explained the game is significantly more complex than Doom 2016 and Eternal, to the point that if they didn't use ray-tracing and relied on traditional lighting calculations, it would've taken them 2-3 more years to get the same game made. We might look towards some of the older games with ferveur but I don't think anyone would pay full price for a game that looks or feels like it came from the previous decades.
@datamonkey he's not the sole investor in the film and probably won't be in the game, although it would be significantly easier for him to get into the investor circles. I grew up watching most of Hong Kong cinema, a Sleeping Dogs film is certainly something I am excited about.
@Millionski if you look up my comments on other articles, then you would know I neither fully supportive of the actions nor am I completely against them. I agree with some parts, I believe some others are just fictional justifications for which we will never see the true reasoning, and there are parts I hugely disagree with.
Here is my previous take on the matter. https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/07/xbox-has-another-potential-goty-candidate-on-its-hands-even-though-its-just-dlc#comment9251087
The fact of the matter is that there are some solid truths on both sides, which co-exist whether we might like it or not. There were definitely some studios that grew too much, but there were also studios which didn't have a project in production (example is id), hence the staff was being payed without much work on the table, making them easier to cut off to reduce the overall expenses of this year.
I agree that historically Xbox has painted disproportionately negatively, however, this is essentially The Boy Who Cried Wolf story. Do you not believe the wolf has come just because all the previous times it wasn't true?
@themightyant I know what you mean, and that is why I said it is a speculation. But reducing teams to delegate more work elsewhere isn't unprecedented. And while I agree that the games might still be delayed from the potential plan I shared, it depends how whether their new strategy is effectively executed, which historically for Xbox has largely been an area of misses.
We don’t really know the exact role of the people who left, either.
That's a false narrative. We know exactly what roles were laid off. For laying people off, they submitted the WARN notices.
Here you can read the roles yourself. https://www.gamefile.news/p/xbox-cuts-texas-california
@Fiendish-Beaver I agree with your sentiment. I would also include the fact that games are much more complex than Doom 2016 was. Even assets and animations are much more detailed than they were a decade ago, so the comparison just seems absurd.
@datamonkey they did remaster it horribly with the definitive edition. Honestly, the visuals on Xbox 360 version, the original, fared far better, even if it had a lower resolution. There are comparisons on YouTube you can see if you don't know what I am talking about.
And the actor Simu Liu also promised to fund the game after he makes the movie. It could probably be him hyping the film, but he also seems quite dedicated in getting this film made
Most of the recent layoffs were likely to hire cheaper non-western co-developers, which has become an industry practice at this point. Even games like Expedition 33 touted for its smaller team, had hundreds more developers credited in-game.
This is speculation, of course, but I believe Asha Sharma likely wanted to layoffs as many people as possible and then use the same budget for cheaper, and thus higher in number, developers to speed up the development of many projects. If it weren't the case, I see no reason for announcing all these if they were 10 years ahead, they have already seen what happen when you announce projects too early with ES6.
I believe we are looking at one Fallout remaster within the next year, another 1.5-2 years from the first one, and the next Fallout within the next 5 years. I am fine with these remasters as long as that creates a cash influx for the next big projects.
If I were BGS I'd get FO:NV remastered out this year
It is possible yes, but August and September are already quite crowded with too many AAA releases. No one wishes to be anywhere closer to GTA VI release, since that is an instant revenue killer. So, I think they have likely delayed it to next year, possibly to Xbox Developer Direct.
So many games only find their true identity in their sequels (the second iteration). I believe if the upper management starts learning what sticks with players from each project, we would be getting a lot better AAA experiences than we do now. Instead, they just follow the money trail, and now we have every game getting some sort of loot and leveling system, which only encourages you to spend on special DLCs/microtransactions.
I played Halo on a PC more than a decade and a half ago. I don't know if were the original one or the combat evolved remaster, but I didn't enjoy the game at the time. Granted, at that time I wasn't into FPS genre. Rather, I was playing games like Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row The Third, LA Noire, Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Far Cry 4, etc. those days.
I didn't play any other Halo until last year, when I bought the Series X and played Halo Infinite on Game Pass. It was quite a good experience overall, especially with the way Master Chief controls, although I felt it lacked some enemy variety overall or a memorable story. I am looking forward to Campaign Evolved to see if Halo finally clicks with me, as it does with millions.
@fatpunkslim You are speculating a bit much, mate. Yes, she talked about heavy expenses relying on "external vendors". But it doesn't necessarily mean the game engines will largely be switched to in-house technology. She never declared any names yet you already boast that her statement refers to Epic. I will give you one example. If Obsidian develops the rumored Fallout in Unreal Engine instead of Creation Engine, they can easily use the assets developed for the Fallout TV Show, since Unreal assets are shareable between games and content. Whether or not they would use Unreal is, of course, speculative, since neither you or me know if they have rights to the assets and whether those assets will be considered for reducing expenses. But ultimately, Xbox can, definitively, consider using Unreal Engine for all those future projects that it wishes to adapt into other mediums like TV Shows or Films, if it wishes to reduce expenses through shared assets. That would actually be a sustainable business decision for both the studio and Xbox.
I would take a more nuanced take rather than offering unconditional support through unannounced fictional narratives (such as Xbox committing to using iD Tech for projects yet to go into production) or deeming things good or bad simply because of their consequences.
Asha's decisions so far all seem financially reasonable, even though I have significant contentions against some (especially the nonsensical lay offs at iD). Her focus seems to be only focus what I call "excel sheets" where
1. Some studios expanded, but their output didn't expand.
2. Some studios became black holes of investment.
3. Some studios didn't create enough face value for the Xbox brand that they didn't need to be first-party
4. The studios that delivered record revenues and recognition weren't expanded to the rate they could've been.
5. Some studios did not switch to cheaper technologies
and so on.
But what these "excel sheets" fail to reveal is
1. How technologies developed for one project can be taken into a future project, reducing the development burden and, therefore, the time necessary for a project. I do not believe Xbox's strategy (under Matthew Ball) has studied the case of RGG studios. There hasn't been a single conversation by anyone at Xbox that reveals any hints towards such consideration. Reusing assets is necessary if single-player exclusives are to be made sustainable and released at a regular cadence.
2. How many underlying technologies are sometimes gold mines which by themselves don't generate revenue, but if invested appropriately can reduce expenses and therefore improve relative revenue. id Tech is the best example of this. It needs to be expanded to a multi-studio project to ever reduce its overall cost of development, like RE Engine is at Capcom, otherwise, a switch to Unreal Engine would always make the most sense, given how cheaper it is to train people on Unreal and how readily available Unreal developers and assets are. People are simply speculating too much from her reliance on the external vendors statement. I have seen people suggesting how id Tech is already used across different studios at Microsoft. However, they miss some significant considerations. First, recent forks such as Motor (used by Machine Games) relied heavily on id to develop the technologies. Second, older forks like IW engine have deviated heavily in their development that they might not even share the same rendering pipeline. Thus, considering them an easy replacement or even expansion of id Tech is a fool's errand.
So far, she hasn't done anything that hints towards improvement in Xbox's historically awful management of these studios. Those corpo statements like the same size as Doom 2016 team ignore how the expanded size during Eternal improved revenues or how Xbox's decision to increase Doom The Dark Ages prices by $10, sacrificing it to be the first game under Xbox to face the backlash of price increases, reduced the sales potential.
It is not just PlayStation fans being robbed. Activision has also raised the prices of both these backward compatibility games, not new ports, in Canada. I cannot speak of other countries. Here is the evidence:
So if you wish to play the games, but don't own them on Xbox (if you are like me who sold his Xbox 360 console and games long time ago), then you are being robbed as well.
Comments 126
Re: Roundup: The First Hands-Off Previews Are Starting To Roll In For GTA 6
fatpunkslim wrote:
Rockstar Games famously doesn't use pre-rendered cutscenes. I honestly cannot remember any single Rockstar game that uses them. Rather, all their cutscenes are real-time and in-engine. Here is a good example of what I am talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXlUG3JmFs
Re: Xbox Is Reportedly Pitching Multiple Game Adapations To Hollywood In A 'Bulk Studio Deal'
It doesn't seem at all like they are interested in finding which studios work best for certain game adaptations, rather they seem to simply be interested in finding which studios pay the most.
Re: Xbox Disc To Digital FAQ - Five Of The Most Common Questions We're Seeing So Far
@FraserG I have one question that I cannot seem to find a direct answer to but maybe you might have seen that information somewhere that I simply missed.
Q. Is the requirement of maintaining the digital entitlement from a disc different from that of purchasing digital version from the store, i.e., something like an always online requirement?
So essentially, if a person wishes to play a game they own physical version of, do they need to verify it every time like they do by inserting the disc, only this time for the digital entitlement they get, it gets confirmed by an online check of which account the disc ID is currently associated to. In case you don't have the answer now but have physical games you want to get free digital versions of, would you be willing to test it out?
Re: Rockstar Games Publishes Lengthy Statement On GTA 6 Leaks
Dear all,
Those leaks are low quality and watermarked. You can rather experience the advertisement of our game in 4K full 6 hours early on Netflix. YouTube is only for the peasants! After all, those of you who pre-ordered the digital game already, one that will never go out of stock, would clearly pay for the subscription. Don't let these leaks damage our revenue coming from Netflix
Sincerely,
Rockstar Games
Re: The Blood Of Dawnwalker Adds Much-Requested 60FPS Performance Mode For Xbox Series X
While there are many unoptimised games out there, some games are simply quite CPU heavy which limits whether the devs can fit game logic withing the timeframe required to do 60 fps. This fixation by many to have the game always run at 60 fps is not good for development of games that push the possibilities. GTA VI, for example, has commited to having so many NPCs, evident from its trailers, that running the logic within a few milliseconds window seems impossible. But should they drop things like these in favor of making a 60 fps game? The way this game's devs have explained the depths of the game, makes it seems like the game logic is lot more complicated that both Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I wouldn't be surprised if the 60 fps mode isn't stable at all.
Re: The Witcher 4 Team Talks 'Future Of The Franchise', Confirms 2028 Release Window
He said there is tonne of Witcher to come before Witcher 4. I wonder what else apart from this DLC they have been planning these past years. A Unreal Engine remaster, running alongside original game code, made with the help of a third party studio has become an industry standard to keep the IPs alive, so that would be my first guess.
Re: Silent Hill: Townfall Confirmed As Timed Exclusive, Will Likely Hit Xbox
Fiendish-Beaver wrote:
Not just that, sometimes additional funding from contracts like these, or even Game Pass ones, allows some games to exist.
fatpunkslim wrote:
I am sure you felt the same way when Xbox paid to make Stalker 2 [or-insert-any-other-such-game-here] timed-exclusive. /s
oopsiezz wrote:
The only reason Xbox spent less on console-exclusivity is because they diverted more funds to get launch exclusivity contracts for their Game Pass subscription (the third-party day one releases). Games like Expedition 33, or even this month's big day one releases (Beast of Reincarnation and Resonance) are key examples. This Game Pass focused strategy comes from the era when then President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, would say things like "console exclusives are antiquated".
Re: Xbox Reportedly Makes Up Less Than 5% Of US Physical Sales In 2026
US doesn't mean the whole world.
Re: Xbox Reveals Dates For Six More FanFest Events Taking Place In 2026
You do you man, but I am more of an exception to your thesis than the norm.
badboidre wrote:
Developers can probably make games more frequently, if people were fine playing games that look like they came straight out of Xbox 360 generation. But people keep crying about wanting 4K 120fps experiences with denser environments and more NPCs. Making those a possibility takes years, and so yes, I am fine with the current release schedule.
badboidre wrote:
I don't see games in the Grand Theft Auto series as simple repackaging of the same game with a different story. Rather, it is probably the only franchise where each game is a unique experience, only sharing the genre specific elements. I see them as unique as Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row or Mafia are in this genre.
badboidre wrote:
The social satire was always meant to be environmental storytelling, unlike the staged sequences in many other games. So, of course, people don't remember it. It doesn't matter. The satire serves its purpose beautifully when you are playing the game.
badboidre wrote:
I have never been a fan of multiplayer or online in games. I play solo, so I never worried about GTA Online. I see it simply as a recurring revenue model that sustains the development of their future games. The good thing here is that Rockstar hasn't dropped or reduced their single player offering to chase the live service model, unlike many big publishers. Rather they keep serving the Online audience, while developing rich exceptional single player experiences like RDR2 and hopefully will continue with GTA VI.
I personally don't follow the rumours or hype around any video game, even GTA VI, but I am definitively going to play it soon. I don't know if I will be there day one or not, I have yet to see gameplay and other aspects of the game to make that decision. But it is certainly my kind of game.
Re: Xbox Reveals Dates For Six More FanFest Events Taking Place In 2026
Fiendish-Beaver wrote:
I think a next-gen console for GTA 6 would've been a perfect launch, since it has far larger appeal than any of Xbox's own games.
But I agree, the rumoured timeline about an year ago was 2026 for Xbox's next gen launch and 2027 for Sony's. Now it seems like Xbox's delay might pit its console head-to-head against Sony's.
Re: Talking Point: Xbox's Final Games With Gold Titles Were Announced Three Years Ago
@Bobarino One could say they deliberately made the service worse so that the transition to Game Pass Core would feel like an upgrade.
Re: Xbox Cloud Gaming Arrives On Hisense & VIDAA TVs With Dedicated App
"This is an Xbox" but without that slogan
Re: Not A Good Look For Xbox As Halo: Campaign Evolved Plays Best On PlayStation
@TheGameThrifter I don't think a patch can do much to improve the performance. We have had many multiplatform games, none of them are noticeably better on the Series X versus PS5. Sony's base PS5 has a smaller die size for its chip that makes it cheaper, yet nearly the same performance. As if the rumours are to be believed, Xbox's Helix will again have much larger chip, yet Sony will be able to reach 99% of the performance and quality with much cheaper design.
Re: Not A Good Look For Xbox As Halo: Campaign Evolved Plays Best On PlayStation
@TheGameThrifter The Digital Foundry video shows there is marginal difference between the Halo Campaign Evolved on PS5 vs Xbox Series X, and that too not only in pixel counts, rather than performance or quality of the game. PS5 punches way above its hardware, and Series X does the complete opposite.
Re: Two Massive Sports Games Have Joined Xbox's Stacked Lineup For September
@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think franchises like EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, Call of Duty, etc. need to do anything against GTA release. Most of the people who buy these games day one, often play just that specific game all year long. So the stickiness is far too much for a game like GTA to pull away these gamers. Call of Duty might have some competition in the form of Battlefield 6, but the rest are de facto monopolies in a sense.
But I agree, for the rest of the games on consoles intending to release around that time, it is far more sensible to launch on Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. PC releases, of course, don't need to worry. However, the reason I believe most games are avoiding a release around that period is that GTA VI is expected to overtake all communication cycles developers rely on, including articles, gaming outlet, youtubers, social media, etc.
Re: Two Massive Sports Games Have Joined Xbox's Stacked Lineup For September
@FraserG Just to clarify, I am not questioning your intention at all. My reply to Fiendish-Beaver still cites all your articles, since I trust the information you share. But that opening line certainly creates that implication, even if not intended.
Re: Two Massive Sports Games Have Joined Xbox's Stacked Lineup For September
Horrible opening line.
@FraserG I don't see why you would use that opening line which implies these games have chosen said dates to avoid GTA, when in reality they have always released during this exact same period.
EA Sports FC 27 - 25 September 2026 (announced)
EA Sports FC 26 - 26 September 2025
EA Sports FC 25 - 27 September 2024
EA Sports FC 24 - 29 September 2023
NBA 2K27 - September 4, 2026 (announced)
NBA 2K26 - September 5, 2025
NBA 2K25 - September 6, 2024
NBA 2K24 - September 8, 2023
Fiendish-Beaver wrote:
As the article says, only EA Sports FC 27 is coming as a 10 hours trial for Game Pass subscribers. They did the same thing for EA Sports FC 26, EA Sports FC 25 and EA Sports FC 24 as well (See links below). So this correlation is completely unsubstantiated.
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/07/ea-sports-fc-26-launches-for-xbox-in-september-includes-10-hour-game-pass-trial
https://www.purexbox.com/guides/ea-sports-fc-25-release-date-release-times-and-xbox-game-pass-details
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/09/ea-sports-fc-24-free-trial-now-live-with-xbox-game-pass-ultimate
Re: Xbox Introduces Free Game Streaming With Ads, Outlines Five Principles They'll Adhere To
themightyant wrote:
Well said. Nearly every ad-based platform starts with roses and only when it is sticky enough for people to not leave, they start extracting more value. I am sure they would have some target number of users to sustain the cost. If they don't achieve it, it is possible they would start showing more ads or more obnoxious ads.
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think Of The New 'Poster' Artwork On Xbox?
@smoreon I don't understand if they have it on the store, that means the publisher is willing to sell it, why can't they ask the publisher for some cover art? I can understand the issue for the delisted BC games, but for the rest they can certainly ask the publishers.
Re: Microsoft Is Officially Bringing Achievements To 'Select' Original Xbox Games
@Millionski Yeah I believed it would be exclusively Windows, especially since Sarah Bond's Xbox-AMD partnership video described Windows will be the greatest gaming platform. But, there were also conversations, how Microsoft could use their hypervisor to instantly switch between Windows and XboxOS, which at least technically seemed sound.
As for the status of Windows, I too have little hope in its dramatic improvement. I am using it daily and I have thought about switching to linux quite a few times. I am on laptop however, and thus the linux support is quite limited, especially for things like fan control, etc.
Re: Xbox Announces Backwards Compatibility For PC, First Four Games Revealed
@Millionski yes I had the same thoughts, but I believe this makes it a lot more concrete than ever before. If they can directly run those games on PC without any hardware modifications, this means most PCs can be converted to Xboxes. Phil and Sarah's "This is an Xbox" dream is eventually coming.
As for Windows, my hopes for improvement aren't that high. They have horribly diminished any good experience you can have on Windows, which is especially notable if you ever interact with any other OS, including XboxOS. I don;t see them making such a giant leap in such a small amount of time. But if they go the Valve route, they would be improving the system over time. Their actual next-gen product is Windows now.
Re: Xbox Announces Backwards Compatibility For PC, First Four Games Revealed
@General-Foley My only contention with PCs is Windows. It hasn't been a stable software for the past 5 years, and I don't think they can improve much in 1.
Re: Xbox Achieves Its Biggest Month For US Console Sales In 2026 So Far
@themightyant yes those were the reasons, but I believe this was also the time last year when Xbox announced Gears of War Reloaded will come to PS5, and conversations around Xbox becoming a multiplatform publisher started catching up, lowering trust in the platform and the reason to buy an Xbox console, especially when it wasn't clear if whether the next announced Xbox first party will also jump ship.
Re: Microsoft Is Officially Bringing Achievements To 'Select' Original Xbox Games
@Jark I simply copied the text from there and put it inside the format for highlighting quotations. This is the format:
(quote)<ANY TEXT HERE>(/quote)
but you have to replace the round brackets () with square brackets to get it correctly formatted like this:
Re: Xbox Achieves Its Biggest Month For US Console Sales In 2026 So Far
fatpunkslim wrote:
My only desire is to see QuickResume on Windows. I know it is likely much more complex with the sheer openness of PC hardware, but even if we get it on limited devices, I would be happy
Re: Xbox Achieves Its Biggest Month For US Console Sales In 2026 So Far
@Banjo- I think the percentage growth is a lot more significant for Xbox than other consoles because trust was at all time low before the leadership change and the subsequent drop of many customer-facing bad faith advertisements such as "Everything is an Xbox". This is like you see huge gdp increase after a recession in the economy. The long-term strategy still seems to be the same, especially now that they are rolling out Xbox games for Windows, and Windows largely being an everywhere platform with laptops, handhelds, boxes, and such. But it seems like Asha Sharma has certainly steered the ship away from collision. Whether the path becomes sustainable in the long term is yet to be observed.
Re: Microsoft Is Officially Bringing Achievements To 'Select' Original Xbox Games
@themightyant damn. How did I even miss that, lol. I probably need an energy drink or something.
Re: Microsoft Is Officially Bringing Achievements To 'Select' Original Xbox Games
I said it in the previous post, this set of announcements have left me wondering whether,
Also, has anyone any idea what this could be?
JasonRonaldVPNextGenXbox wrote:
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think Of The New 'Poster' Artwork On Xbox?
@smoreon why can't they use non-black bar ones like this, which they already have access to? I am sure they can edit some of the cover art, at least for the ones still on sale.
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/07/xbox-announces-backwards-compatibility-for-pc-first-four-games-revealed#comment9261187
Re: These Seven Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass (July 22 - August 4)
@trev666 why did you need a guide, isn't there a map (if it is open world), or directional hints (if it isn't). Or is the game like Atomfall, where you simply have written text in the menu, but have to figure out where to go yourself.
Re: These Seven Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass (July 22 - August 4)
@Fiendish-Beaver alright, thanks! I may check it out.
Re: Xbox Announces Backwards Compatibility For PC, First Four Games Revealed
This is some great news. But now I am also wondering Helix can just be a PC, not even a hybrid, with Xbox mode resembling more and more like the Series consoles, and the rest being Windows. I know this was a possibility, but now it seems more feasible than ever. I don't see them keeping separate OSs, when they can offer a lot more games on Windows, especially the ones that skip Xbox console on launch but always release the PC port.
Re: The Planet Crafter Is Out Now On Xbox Game Pass, And Here's What The Reviews Say
No zombies in this one.
Re: These Seven Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass (July 22 - August 4)
@Fiendish-Beaver is hell is us a soulslike? I don't want to play it if it is one.
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think Of The New 'Poster' Artwork On Xbox?
The posters for Xbox and Xbox 360 games have a thick black bar at the bottom. Since I don't sort my games by size, that black bar has nothing covering it and oddly stands out. If they fix that, I would start using the posters with the medium size, until them I will stick to large size tiles.
Re: Xbox CCO Says Not To 'Overly Fixate' On All Single-Player Games Being Exclusives
themightyant wrote:
A wise woman once said, "the plan's the plan until it's not the plan."
Re: Two Fallout Remasters Announced By Bethesda In Massive New Roadmap
@themightyant Oh I never meant to suggest they are going to make good games, especially after losing such an amount of institutional knowledge.
You are correct in pointing out the software brain of Asha. I wonder if they ever thought about creative houses like the restructuring that Ubisoft is currently making. Because this one, as you pointed out, was already done and failed.
The only publishers/platform holders we can consider sustainable today have a mix of AAA and experimental endeavors. Both feed into each other, creating unique experiences. Xbox and Sony are both moving to AAA exclusive space, which while less risky and profitable, is only going to deplete creativity in the long term. I would have liked Xbox to move to Capcom or Nintendo models.
Re: DOOM Director Elaborates On The State Of The Studio Going Forward
Fiendish-Beaver wrote:
I agree, people keep ignoring the raw financial motivations. I am surprised people keep pretending that Asha Sharma or Xbox management would perform every action with utmost sincerity. Sure there might have been a few cases where divestment was necessary and teams didn't match the future strategy (example ESO).
But let's not pretend they were appropriately distributed or won't affect any projects. I keep hearing repeated PR lines like id being the size it were during Doom 2016, when in every single developer presentation for the technology id built for The Dark Ages, they explained the game is significantly more complex than Doom 2016 and Eternal, to the point that if they didn't use ray-tracing and relied on traditional lighting calculations, it would've taken them 2-3 more years to get the same game made. We might look towards some of the older games with ferveur but I don't think anyone would pay full price for a game that looks or feels like it came from the previous decades.
Re: Talking Point: What Was The First Halo Game You Ever Played?
@datamonkey he's not the sole investor in the film and probably won't be in the game, although it would be significantly easier for him to get into the investor circles. I grew up watching most of Hong Kong cinema, a Sleeping Dogs film is certainly something I am excited about.
Re: DOOM Director Elaborates On The State Of The Studio Going Forward
@Millionski if you look up my comments on other articles, then you would know I neither fully supportive of the actions nor am I completely against them. I agree with some parts, I believe some others are just fictional justifications for which we will never see the true reasoning, and there are parts I hugely disagree with.
Here is my previous take on the matter.
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/07/xbox-has-another-potential-goty-candidate-on-its-hands-even-though-its-just-dlc#comment9251087
The fact of the matter is that there are some solid truths on both sides, which co-exist whether we might like it or not. There were definitely some studios that grew too much, but there were also studios which didn't have a project in production (example is id), hence the staff was being payed without much work on the table, making them easier to cut off to reduce the overall expenses of this year.
I agree that historically Xbox has painted disproportionately negatively, however, this is essentially The Boy Who Cried Wolf story. Do you not believe the wolf has come just because all the previous times it wasn't true?
Re: Two Fallout Remasters Announced By Bethesda In Massive New Roadmap
@themightyant I know what you mean, and that is why I said it is a speculation. But reducing teams to delegate more work elsewhere isn't unprecedented. And while I agree that the games might still be delayed from the potential plan I shared, it depends how whether their new strategy is effectively executed, which historically for Xbox has largely been an area of misses.
Re: DOOM Director Elaborates On The State Of The Studio Going Forward
fatpunkslim wrote:
That's a false narrative. We know exactly what roles were laid off. For laying people off, they submitted the WARN notices.
Here you can read the roles yourself.
https://www.gamefile.news/p/xbox-cuts-texas-california
@Fiendish-Beaver I agree with your sentiment. I would also include the fact that games are much more complex than Doom 2016 was. Even assets and animations are much more detailed than they were a decade ago, so the comparison just seems absurd.
Re: Talking Point: What Was The First Halo Game You Ever Played?
@datamonkey they did remaster it horribly with the definitive edition. Honestly, the visuals on Xbox 360 version, the original, fared far better, even if it had a lower resolution. There are comparisons on YouTube you can see if you don't know what I am talking about.
But yeah, we need a new Sleeping Dogs. There is a Sleeping Dogs movie in production btw
https://movieweb.com/sleeping-dogs-timo-tjahjanto-statement-action-best-video-game-movie/
And the actor Simu Liu also promised to fund the game after he makes the movie. It could probably be him hyping the film, but he also seems quite dedicated in getting this film made
Re: Two Fallout Remasters Announced By Bethesda In Massive New Roadmap
Most of the recent layoffs were likely to hire cheaper non-western co-developers, which has become an industry practice at this point. Even games like Expedition 33 touted for its smaller team, had hundreds more developers credited in-game.
themightyant59 wrote:
This is speculation, of course, but I believe Asha Sharma likely wanted to layoffs as many people as possible and then use the same budget for cheaper, and thus higher in number, developers to speed up the development of many projects. If it weren't the case, I see no reason for announcing all these if they were 10 years ahead, they have already seen what happen when you announce projects too early with ES6.
I believe we are looking at one Fallout remaster within the next year, another 1.5-2 years from the first one, and the next Fallout within the next 5 years. I am fine with these remasters as long as that creates a cash influx for the next big projects.
CoolDadTx wrote:
It is possible yes, but August and September are already quite crowded with too many AAA releases. No one wishes to be anywhere closer to GTA VI release, since that is an instant revenue killer. So, I think they have likely delayed it to next year, possibly to Xbox Developer Direct.
Re: New Report Reveals Original Plans For Ryse 2 And Why We Never Got A Sequel
So many games only find their true identity in their sequels (the second iteration). I believe if the upper management starts learning what sticks with players from each project, we would be getting a lot better AAA experiences than we do now. Instead, they just follow the money trail, and now we have every game getting some sort of loot and leveling system, which only encourages you to spend on special DLCs/microtransactions.
Re: Talking Point: What Was The First Halo Game You Ever Played?
I played Halo on a PC more than a decade and a half ago. I don't know if were the original one or the combat evolved remaster, but I didn't enjoy the game at the time. Granted, at that time I wasn't into FPS genre. Rather, I was playing games like Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row The Third, LA Noire, Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Far Cry 4, etc. those days.
I didn't play any other Halo until last year, when I bought the Series X and played Halo Infinite on Game Pass. It was quite a good experience overall, especially with the way Master Chief controls, although I felt it lacked some enemy variety overall or a memorable story. I am looking forward to Campaign Evolved to see if Halo finally clicks with me, as it does with millions.
Re: Roundup: Rave Reviews For Denshattack! Make It A Must-Play On Xbox Game Pass
I'm excited to play this one.
Re: Xbox Has Another Potential GOTY Candidate On Its Hands, Even Though It's Just DLC
@fatpunkslim You are speculating a bit much, mate. Yes, she talked about heavy expenses relying on "external vendors". But it doesn't necessarily mean the game engines will largely be switched to in-house technology. She never declared any names yet you already boast that her statement refers to Epic. I will give you one example. If Obsidian develops the rumored Fallout in Unreal Engine instead of Creation Engine, they can easily use the assets developed for the Fallout TV Show, since Unreal assets are shareable between games and content. Whether or not they would use Unreal is, of course, speculative, since neither you or me know if they have rights to the assets and whether those assets will be considered for reducing expenses. But ultimately, Xbox can, definitively, consider using Unreal Engine for all those future projects that it wishes to adapt into other mediums like TV Shows or Films, if it wishes to reduce expenses through shared assets. That would actually be a sustainable business decision for both the studio and Xbox.
Re: Xbox Has Another Potential GOTY Candidate On Its Hands, Even Though It's Just DLC
I would take a more nuanced take rather than offering unconditional support through unannounced fictional narratives (such as Xbox committing to using iD Tech for projects yet to go into production) or deeming things good or bad simply because of their consequences.
Asha's decisions so far all seem financially reasonable, even though I have significant contentions against some (especially the nonsensical lay offs at iD). Her focus seems to be only focus what I call "excel sheets" where
1. Some studios expanded, but their output didn't expand.
2. Some studios became black holes of investment.
3. Some studios didn't create enough face value for the Xbox brand that they didn't need to be first-party
4. The studios that delivered record revenues and recognition weren't expanded to the rate they could've been.
5. Some studios did not switch to cheaper technologies
and so on.
But what these "excel sheets" fail to reveal is
1. How technologies developed for one project can be taken into a future project, reducing the development burden and, therefore, the time necessary for a project. I do not believe Xbox's strategy (under Matthew Ball) has studied the case of RGG studios. There hasn't been a single conversation by anyone at Xbox that reveals any hints towards such consideration. Reusing assets is necessary if single-player exclusives are to be made sustainable and released at a regular cadence.
2. How many underlying technologies are sometimes gold mines which by themselves don't generate revenue, but if invested appropriately can reduce expenses and therefore improve relative revenue. id Tech is the best example of this. It needs to be expanded to a multi-studio project to ever reduce its overall cost of development, like RE Engine is at Capcom, otherwise, a switch to Unreal Engine would always make the most sense, given how cheaper it is to train people on Unreal and how readily available Unreal developers and assets are. People are simply speculating too much from her reliance on the external vendors statement. I have seen people suggesting how id Tech is already used across different studios at Microsoft. However, they miss some significant considerations. First, recent forks such as Motor (used by Machine Games) relied heavily on id to develop the technologies. Second, older forks like IW engine have deviated heavily in their development that they might not even share the same rendering pipeline. Thus, considering them an easy replacement or even expansion of id Tech is a fool's errand.
So far, she hasn't done anything that hints towards improvement in Xbox's historically awful management of these studios. Those corpo statements like the same size as Doom 2016 team ignore how the expanded size during Eternal improved revenues or how Xbox's decision to increase Doom The Dark Ages prices by $10, sacrificing it to be the first game under Xbox to face the backlash of price increases, reduced the sales potential.
Re: Xbox Seems To Be Making A Fortune On The New Black Ops Ports For PS5
It is not just PlayStation fans being robbed. Activision has also raised the prices of both these backward compatibility games, not new ports, in Canada. I cannot speak of other countries. Here is the evidence:
https://xbdeals.net/ca-store/game/22573/call-of-duty-black-ops
https://xbdeals.net/ca-store/game/219220/call-of-duty-black-ops-ii
So if you wish to play the games, but don't own them on Xbox (if you are like me who sold his Xbox 360 console and games long time ago), then you are being robbed as well.