Wooooow, they got to watch SOMEONE ELSE play the game under carefully controlled circumstances.

Truly game of the generation.

$900 for a game console.

I hope someone makes some relatively cheap replacement cases for $20.

@Banjo- Thst is an interesting factoid about CDs. I wonder if it isn’t a consequence of the X not being able to use 100 GB Blu-rays like the PS5 can. Older drive, more backward compatability? But then, the PS4 can’t read those higher capacity discs either.

Hmm.

That looks genuinely cool! I’m leery of non-Lego Lego-style sets but I could make an exception for this one…

My Series X is third on my list of current primary consoles, further down if you include my PS3, 4, Wii U, 3DS and a few others. Soooo…repair service or just sell my games and call it good.

Thankfully I’ve not had to find out yet, and I unplug them all whenever a thunderstorm is in the area.

Surely, SURELY this will make MS reverse all the layoffs! The inflatable rat and flags were the tipping point!

Emerald Achievement, obviously.

@oopsiezz Cool beans. Enjoy the wait!

@oopsiezz And yet others will.

Just because you want it on gamepass doesn’t mean it makes financial sense for THEM.

Now port BG3 to Switch 2 as well, you cowards!

(Obviously I’m joking, though I’d like an excuse to buy this game on yet another platform as well!)

I really feel sorry for anyone who didn’t buy a PS5 or XBox before all this insanity started.

Amazing that the Switch 2 is now the best value proposition at the moment, at least till September 1st. And even then, Nintendo could still toss a holiday game pack-in and sweeten the deal.

@Dm9982 Oh, I know WHY it happened. I’m just shocked they didn’t go the lazy route again with this port like they did with Switch.

I got it for PS and would have picked it up for S2 if they hadn’t pulled that crap.

@EvenStephen7 There’s a problem, tho. You’d have to use Amazon Luna, and that’s a bridge too far in my mind.

Funny how both Sony and MS could get it uncensored but they just couldn’t get it done on Switch.

And Nintendo lets Cyberpunk 2077 be uncensored on Switch 2, for Pete’s sake.

@MrStark “It doesn’t affect me, so all is well!”

And people wonder why the all-digital future isn’t all that appealing for some things.

What…is so difficult about saying, “we want both as an option?”

@SMJ Nothing you said contradicts that it’s not hard to understand that the Series X release of a game could be held back a bit by the Series S.

Baldurs Gate 3 devs and Black Myth Wukong devs had to make sacrifices to get series s and x parity, I believe. If I recall correctly, the BG3 devs even got dispensation from MS to reduce a feature albeit temporarily on S. Could be misremembering tho, I don’t care enough to google it.

@SMJ I think it’s rather obvious why one might wish for this requirement to be dropped in general.

@MinervaX76 Agreed! I need to hook mine up again, it’s still responsible for the only true physical copy of Bayonetta 2 i have!

I’ve been very tempted to jailbreak it since the eshop is dead and gone, but I haven’t wanted to risk bricking.

@MinervaX76 That…is an EXTREMELY good observation and I have no counter to it!

Tho amusingly I own both a Wii U and a Series X.

As they say, it’s hard to fall off the floor.

Hopefully this version isn’t censored like the Switch version is. Since you get access to the PC version as well, I would THINK it wouldn’t be, but…

Playing it on gamepass right now, and will be buying it either here or on Switch 2.

60fps on all platforms, 4k on PS5/X, 1080p on S/Switch 2. Looks and sounds really nice, though I’m horrible at it!

“We don’t know jack squat about these consoles, especially with Sony’s recent brouhaha, but trust us.”

@Elbow There are exceptions to every rule!

Speaking as someone who actually played it on their iPhone when it came out…this is definitely NOT one of those exceptions. The only saving grace is that it didn’t have any pay-to-win since Apple Arcade games aren’t allowed to have that

Star trek Legends is a glorified mobile game.

Quite literally, that isn’t hyperbole. It started on Apple Arcade, if memory serves.

I snagged it for deep, deep discount on Switch just because, but unless you really like badly scaled up large-screen ports of meh mobile games or you’re such a Star Trek fan that you can’t live without it, you can safely skip this game.

@NeoRatt CDs are still released. Print books are still published. Movies and tv shows still get dvd/bluray/4k bluray releases.

Sooo…your examples are, as my cousins across the ocean would say, a bit rubbish.

MS would retain me as a customer for the next generation if they backpedaled from the all-digital future and kept physical gaming alive.

Granted, they’ve done almost everything they could to KILL physical gaming this generation, but anyone can turn back from the abyss if they realize in time.

Hopefully next time MS won’t go with a stupid proprietary storage expansion thing. That will help.

1 TB Series X for $449.99 brand new at Target in April of 2024. My first and likely last XBox.

Even used some rewards I’d had at the time to put towards it.

It’s amazing that I could probably sell it for more than I paid for it now. I WON’T, but I COULD.

@RegnumSolipsi It actually hasn’t. The S2 is $449, $499 with a game included. Same as launch.

The price increase to $499 for the version without a game included doesn’t happen till September, this article is jumping the gun a bit.

My wisdom in acquiring a PS5, Series X and Switch 2 before their respective price increases continues to please me.

@IronCrow86 So if MS required you to have two MS accounts with GP active to play split screen co-op, you wouldn’t be upset, eh?

Good to know.

@shiny-enzo Ergo me saying it’s a not-quite-physical release. Which is why I’m not buying it at this time. There is no real game-on-disc version of this Halo game. Which is especially egregious on the PS side since it uses higher capacity Blu-ray Discs than the Series X does.

@Balaam_ I was so excited to pick this disc up for PS5, but I’ll hold off till a deep discount. MS just continues to disappoint with these not-quite-physical releases.

But at least I have GPU for the next couple months, so I’ll just play it on Series X for the moment!

Looks like the update is now live.

@Daniel1221 The fact they haven’t ported WoW over to Series X yet baffles me. You’d think that’d be an instant subscription seller.

Then again, the horrible speech filters would have made in-game chat laughable, just like it did to FF14, I suppose.

@Banjo- If they could make it so, cloud would be very much not optional.

Thank god they can’t. Yet. That’ll be the day I finally attack my backlog with a vengeance.

If it goes cloud based, I go no more XBox. Ever.

Already said my Series X was likely my first and last Xbox, but for a while I was thinking otherwise.

This…would reverse my optimism drastically.

@Banjo- Delayed welcome to the Persona/SMT fold!

Look, I’m still technically a member of Team Green, even as I primarily game on PS and S2. My series X has been getting MASSIVE usage thanks to Horizon 6.

MS needs to get in front of this immediately and admit the foul up. PS has a problem being clear about anything currently. MS being fully transparent about this cockup (yes, I’m American, I just like the way Brits say that!) would do a world of good for perception.

@BacklogBrad Indeed, how dare they give things away for free to people who support their company. What complete jerks they are.

I mean, never mind that they could…I dunno…give their existing consoles to friends and expand the user base that way, or have a spare console.

You’re right, good will is completely worthless. They need to be humorless and coldly calculating.

As a PS5 Pro, Series X and Switch 2 owner, I no longer care about what is exclusive to what. I just have an order of preference. PS5 Pro, then Switch 2/XBox depending on performance, but leaning Switch 2.

So glad I got all three current consoles before the absurd price increases. I’m good for gaming for…oh, the next ten years or so.

Good news for MS, though unexpected. Tough sell for those who don’t already have an XBox, though. Especially with all the consoles going more expensive.

Would have been nice to see this on PS5 Pro, but them’s the breaks.

I just hit Legend Island last night, sitting at level 171 and I have 150 cars exactly!

If one can’t go without spending more money for the sake of playing a game a couple days earlier than normal, ESPECIALLY knowing how bugridden most games are at launch these days…it kinda sounds like one has larger issues in one’s life than games in the first place. Maybe don’t spend more money to be an unpaid bug tester and just…wait?

@MrStark Until a month or so ago, we COULDN’T disable it on a game by game basis. And I’d bet the majority of XBox owners don’t even know that’s an option now.

Quick resume was the bane of my existence when I played Horizon 5 on my series X, and I thank the XBox console OS devs for finally letting us exclude specific games from it, especially always-online games like the Horizon titles.

If you only own/care about XBox, I get it.

If you own other consoles alongside an Xbox, it’s nice to see what options you have.

That said…it’s an MS show, so I have no issue with showing XBox logos only. But I also have no issue with knowing non-exclusive releases are non-exclusive. shrug

@Weebleman Where else is she supposed to go for near-instant reactions? Facebook? Instagram? Bluesky? Reddit? I don’t see those being all that cross-sectional as far as accuracy goes…

@DonnieTACO You…understand that we don’t play the games directly off of the discs, right? They’re installed to faster media.

We just like to actually own our games.

Before anyone comes in saying “tHe gAmE IsNt eVeN oN ThE DiSc!1!1!1!”, that is sadly true for a large amount of XBox games currently (I hate Smart Delivery…), but for PS the opposite is true. There’s a playable build on the vast majority of PS4/PS5 discs.

@Banjo- To each their own! I’m glad I got a Series X so I could finally play all the games I’d missed over the years since I had a volcanic hatred of MS ever since the mid-90s when they bought Bungie and screwed my Mac-using self out of Halo. XD Nowadays, my hatred is less, though it’s still there!

@racerXplayer Right now…I have zero reason to buy any more Xbox games/hardware. No compelling benefits. I have a Forza Horizon 6 controller arriving today, but that’s because of how gloriously awesome/ugly it is.

When I buy a game, I check for a PS5 version. If not for PS5, then I decide whether to go Switch 2 or XBox, and 99% of the time it’ll be Switch 2.

I’ve said it before here, but this Series X is almost certainly my first and last XBox. It’s a nice piece of hardware, but my god MS has dropped the ball. Sony has too, don’t get me wrong, but I have a lot more attachment to them than MS at this point!

My friend…I don’t know that he’ll ever completely abandon Team Green, but it sure seems like he wants to. He’s been blowing through the Spider-Man games and having a blast.