chesheer

Turning Quick Resume off is a huge deal, I wanted it since release. It always unexpectedly breaks, and I can't count on a feature that works MOST of the time.
Also some games just don't support it altogether, for example, Borderlands 3 always starts anew.
And of course, multiplayer games throw a tantrum every time. Losing connection to servers is understandable, but catching this problem and solving it gracefully is a whole other thing.
For example, Halo Infinite for me almost always lost any and all hope to restore connection to servers after QR. And that's an Xbox game! Don't they have some API for such cases so that application would understand it was loaded from QR? I always had to close it manually and start again. Waiting for multiplayer games to restore connection is always longer than closing them and starting again, because Xbox is crazy fast.
Also, Quick Resume reserves a lot of SSD space.

As always, I have no idea what did he meant by this. It's too high corpo-talk for me, I'm nomad and never been to Night City.

Currently I'm not subscribed, but if I had I'd choose Premium (if I actually want games) or even Essential (just for multiplayer). Ultimate makes absolutely no sense with all these bundled crappy subscriptions no one asked about: couldn't care less for Fortnite, EA doesn't release good games anyway, Ubisoft games are all bought many years ago and are being sold dirt cheap every next week. Microsoft just doesn't release games that worth playing day one, and even those games will be on Premium year later.

The Division 2 Gold Edition for $12 is an insane amount of game hours if you like looter games. Easily hundreds of hours of diverse content.
Although the last DLC Battle for Brooklyn is probably not included, you should check that out.

Activision can go to hell in general, but they are certainly right in this case. Leaks suck, whatever the game.
I can understand leaks about things that already had happened. Like behind the scenes stories of game development.
But people who just ruin the fun for everyone with their leaks... they don't do any service for the community, they're just grifters and ego-maniacs.

That's impressive. I don't like Resident Evil or horror games in general, but that's great news. They did a great job.

I have it on every platform except Switch. And I don't even like the game, never managed to finish it.
By now everyone interested probably have already played it, Cyberpunk being almost 6 year old game. But announcements like this look good.

We all read what we want in Sharma's words. But I agree with the take. Halo should stay on Xbox. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
There's absolutely no problem for Xbox to cancel PS5 release. Like any publisher they killed even those projects that were ready to launch. Canceling Halo port would even bring them more internet points and respect.

I don't quite understand what this game is but it looks pretty.

Moore is a great example of a man who came to gaming industry from an absolutely different walk of life (he worked in Reebok before Sega of America, if I remember correctly) and still he became an absolute legend. Like Asha Sharma came from logistics, marketing and AI. Whether she'll be up to the task — we'll see.

I'm surprised that the gap between RE8 and Ragebound isn't that big (compared to DS vs RE8). Maybe that's because RE8 is a much older game. Many people have already bought and played it.

So basically someone at Xbox vibecoded straight to production servers. Great.

Of course her account is more or less "fake", but I don't think that's necessarily a huge problem. Phil Spenser was a gamer and apparently a great guy, but still Xbox is in dire state. So whether Xbox will thrive or fail does not depend on Sharma's gamer creds.
If Sharma will put Xbox console and great games first, I don't care if she has a Mile High Club achievement.

Never underestimate Bethesda's ability to disappoint you!

@dskatter Oh, that might explain some things.

Looks like a pretty good update! But what boggles me is that "the game was not initially designed with [New Game+] in mind". I just don't get it. No one in the management thought for a second: "Hey, every single action RPG with a completed story adds New Game+ because players like it, but nah... we probably won't ever need that".

@ZYDIO It's just not good.

@Elbow This shocked me as well. They don't even have a greedy publisher. And they run out of money two weeks after release? And they actually wanted to do a shadowdrop without TGA hype? What was the plan actually? Be like Apex Legends? Come on.

@Fiendish-Beaver I agree. I own Witcher 3 on all platforms except Switch and would never play KCD because I get dizzy even watching videos with it. First-person games are not for me anymore.
Other indie games look cute, but I probably won't try them out.

I'd like to move a motion to reinstate Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 manufacturing. That'll settle it. We'll get our consoles at a fraction of a price, developers will start releasing cool games again. It's a win-win! =)

Still no Death Stranding 2. Me sad. =(

That feeling when the sale is really good, but you just don't see what to buy.

@RedFlash475 At least what player doesn't want. =)

I think Blizzard is a unique company as it supports second, third, fourth and mobile installments of its game simultaneously.

Why, oh why people spend their precious time and honest efforts working on a game that will obviously drown in contempt. It's beyond me.
Just make a fun 2D side-scroller or action platformer.

@16BitHero I'm on the fence with this game.
When's the next sale on friends? =)

With Microsoft bragging about 30% of all the code written by AI getting Windows 11 into shape becomes harder than ever before. As the situation stands only Omnissiah knows when and what next Xbox will be. =)

Hold on a second. Then what was the job of a publisher? Create a store page? And they still get their cut, right? This story would sound better if it had been their initial agreement with the developer from the start.
That being said, I agree that Xbox store in some cases delivers better visibility. It looks like there's less trash neuroslop games and "New Releases" tab makes more sense than on Steam.

Long story short, another price hike is imminent.

Whoever waited for a good price on Red Dead Redemption 2, know: the time is now! Just buy it, delve into this world and never go online again.

It's great Square Enix follow their strategy to go multiplatform.

Thank you for "None of the above" option. =)

It's not up to Lisa Su to decide when the next Xbox is coming out. Microsoft can change their plans twice a week.

@GuyinPA75 You can still find a lot of people hanging out around underground in your base. Some game modes and activities like Last Stand are a barren desert though - you won't find anyone playing them unless you gather a group yourself via LFG. There are some people playing Survival and Underground.
Of course it won't bring a lot of new players to Division 1.

Both games were just average. Both didn't bring anything to the RPG table, didn't offer anything new or exceptionally interesting. And Microsoft put insane price tags along with insane sales expectations. No wonder they failed.
So Obsidian shot their shots and we probably won't hear from them for several more years.

Not that my answer qualifies for a weighed opinion, but I found it off-putting right from the character creation screen. I don't know who came with the idea of fungi faces, but it's gross. The fact that you can turn that abomination off with no consequences proves they knew it would be off-putting for some people and still built the whole game around it.
I deleted the game after 15 minutes and somewhat blame Game Pass for it. My 15 minutes came up in a stats of millions of players who joined the world of Avowed, but 15 underwhelming minutes death-sentenced the game for me because I didn't pay for it. It cost me nothing, I just downloaded it and gave it no second chances.
If I had to pay for it, I probably wouldn't and for me Avowed still would be another Obsidian game I didn't play. Now it's a game with disgusting mushroom faces I wouldn't poke with a ten feet stick.
That's a somewhat strange turn of events.

@SpecialT I probably would've bought 1Tb expansion cart too, but they were non-existent in my region back then.

I am totally disappointed in Game Pass. Right now I am subscribed for the lowest tier just to get multiplayer. Microsoft doesn't release anything worth playing for me and doesn't plan to. Except for E-Day maybe - even then better buy it than spend money on subscription. Third-party titles - again, better pay for one or two interesting titles on sales than spend ever increasing amount of money on subscription that contains crazy amount of games that I'm not interested in.
Game Pass Ultimate is a joke now. Dozens of perk that mean nothing to me. Why the hell I have to pay for Fortnite Crew if I'm not playing and not going to? Why do I have to pay for Cloud Gaming if I won't ever use it? Old Ubisoft games - I own them all anyway, they are dirt cheap on sales every next month. EA Play - yeah, call me when they release something worth playing.

I bought Series S on release along with 1Tb external HDD. Great combination. Used it for years. Totally resolved all the problems with free space for me. Also, it is worth mentioning that in the first years of Series S not a lot of games were released specifically for Series S or received upgrade, so I could run them right from HDD (no problems with loading speed at all).
Now I came to realization that I don't even need an HDD. 512Gb is totally enough for me. I never play more than one or two games. I rarely jump between games. I don't play a dozen of live service games simultaneously.
Also, Series S games finally started to use Xbox hardware compression and game sizes lowered considerably. You can get decent AAA game 30-40 Gb in size instead of 100-150 in the last years of XOne generation.

@Fiendish-Beaver That's a reasonable question. My gaming started in the '90s, so Atari 2600 titles were ancient even back then.
I think it's good to have them for game conservation, but I honestly doubt someone will actually PLAY them. Probably someone would download and run once just because why not, but PLAYING them for a considerable amount of time - I don't think so. Maybe one or two guys who have nostalgic memories of those games.

Having finished Death Stranding on PS4 several times (I'm a big fan of this game), I'm immensely disappointed in Director's Cut. I played it on Xbox, but that's beside the point.
Honestly, people who played DS for the first time in Director's Cut version received worse experience. Kojima turned this brilliant game into clown fest with strange quests and collaborations and numerous additions that make absolutely no sense and definitely had been added only to justify "Director's Cut" in the title.
Also, Director's Cut somehow broke standard Death Stranding on PS4 because since its release most porters turned into "Unknown". And Kojima Productions won't fix it. I am deeply disappointed in this developer since Director's Cut.
And now this game breaking bug (I didn't know about it) that took so much time to fix.

Hellblade 2 was such a massive disappointment after Hellblade 1. It wasn't a game really, it was a several hours long emotional violence.
But I guess they had no other choice than pitch Hellblade 3 to prevent studio shutdown.

Phil, for Chief's sake, just hug Sarah. What the hell are you doing with this hand? What a low "I don't have a Mile High Club achievement" type of vibe. She doesn't bite. Probably won't even sue you.

I'm sorry, but it seems that this article is deliberately or involuntarily misleading.
The subtitle says "Despite the price increase", so for a person who reads only titles and not the article itself it would seem that "over two million" consoles is actually quite a good result, that price increase didn't affect the sales at all contrary to popular belief.
But the article itself says: "Compared to 2024, this is said to be a -45.1% decrease on the previous figure of 4.79 million, but that's absolutely no surprise when you consider both systems have received quite significant price increases".
So the price increase actually heavily affected sales (among other reasons) and "over two millions" is not a good result at all. Twice less consoles sold is never a good result.

@dskatter I agree. I don't see a reason to boost hardware again. We're yet to see true capabilities of our hardware, PS5 or Xbox Series.

Ok, great to know I'm safe: no friends, no messages!

*Nintendo: digital articles are not counted. =)

Whatever you do at Xbox, stop doing that, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah, right. They say this literally every time. This exact phrase. They should probably ask Copilot to write something fresh.

@Scummbuddy Oh, my sweet summer child...