@Neither_scene All of that is why I still buy my movies and tv shows on disc, and I avoid disc based games that don’t have the whole game (minus patches, obviously) on the actual disc. Exceptions for games like FF14 and Helldivers 2 that require being online with content patches and such are obviously made!

My concept of ownership hasn’t changed over the years: If I have the disc, I own it regardless of what the publisher wants to say. Heck, I still buy the occasional music CD!

@Neither_scene That is a depressing way to say “we like renting and not owning games.”

@cburg points to gamepass

Prove me wrong. I’m willing to wager more XBox owners played this game via gamepass than bought it on XBox. Heck, I’m one of them!

@fiendish-beaver Well said. As a newer XBox owner (first one was a Series X last year) it’s actually a little sad that this will also likely be my last XBox. And I picked up a fair number of games for this system, actually paid real money and everything! Definitely not a Gamepass machine for me except for small bursts.

PS owners buy games. Xbox owners (mostly, mind you) rent them these days.

Sad but unsurprising.

Sad to see this. Makes me wonder what the comparable numbers are for PS5 consoles. I’m betting the ratio of disc to digital only leans heavier towards disc, with MS’s huge gamepass push.

“Very cheap” for a few bits of in-game armor and an eArtbook.

We have different definitions of “very cheap!”

@Kezelpaso Thanks for that! You wacky folks across the pond have such colorful (deliberately spells that American-style) turns of phrase.

“in donkey’s years”

As an American, I have never heard this phrase in my life. Is this a European thing, or have I simply been sheltered from this phrase my entire life?

@CallMeDuraSouka That game is up there with Balan Wonderworld and the PS1 Fantastic Four game in terms of pure OHGODWHYYYYYYness!

@Kaloudz Hey, they might sucker in at least one ignorant LOTR fan who hasn’t heard about its near-radioactive status, might be worth the risk!

@Kaloudz I got that same deal in dollars!

They’d have to pay me at least that amount to have that steaming pile in my game library.

For Americans interested in SW Outlaws, Amazon is trying to get rid of their “Amazon Exclusive” disc version at $34.99 plus a 30% coupon. For $24.49 pre-tax, I’m willing to give this Ubisoft product a shot. Especially since they’re likely not making much off this purchase.

@Millionski I have zero issue with Nintendo not discounting their games much. People still buy em, why should they? Obviously their sales are good enough that they don’t have to pull a Ubisoft and slash the price by 75% three months after release.

Now the launch price for Mario Kart World, THAT I have issues with…

I genuinely don’t understand how this was even an issue, unless MS’s online store was just being mulish. You’d think “set price to free” would be the simplest thing in the world.

That said, well done to the devs for making sure this will happen properly in the hopefully near future.

@UndyingInsurgent95 You expect Larian Studios to just 50-75% discount a game that STILL sells, STILL gets played and yesterday just got a cross-play update people have been anticipating for over a year?

Nah, this is still a reasonable price for a game like BG3.

@IOI In fairness, Concord looked horrible from the get-go with its dime store Guardians of the Galaxy created by faceless committee vibe.

This at least has a more distinctive style. It certainly isn’t for me, but I definitely think it’ll do better than Concord. Not that this is a HIGH standard to exceed, of course!

I’m a Sony fanboy, and I still have no interest in Marathon-in-name-only. More power to those who want this, I’m just not one of them.

Still not showing as free on Xbox.com, maybe it’s different on console? I’ll have to check when I get home from work.

Will keep an eye out! Amusingly it isn’t free on PSN but does appear to be discounted to $4.99.

As I said on Push Square, I’d rather have a modern remake/reimagining of the original Marathon Trilogy.

Bungie could have called this thing by any other name, but using Marathon just rubs me the wrong way.

@NishimuraX This is a very wise decision, and I fully support it!

@NishimuraX Ubisoft probably won’t exist in its current form by this time next year, they just have to wait it out!

Just one more reason to despise Ubisoft.

As if we needed more.

I genuinely don’t care about backgrounds on my consoles these days. I want the shortest path from locating game to launching said game and I don’t need pretty pictures distracting me from that.

@LonR Given that preorders for the Switch 2 don’t start till next week…

@jesse_dylan It does enhance some Switch games out of the box. Nintendo announced a few like Mario Odyssey, LoZ Link’s Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom, as well as Captain Toad. And dear god, those two LoZ titles need the boost, speaking from personal experience…

It isn’t all money-gouging game upgrades. There’s free boosts out there too.

@awp69 Interesting that there’s no MS first party games on the list, except for the companies MS absorbed after the games on the list themselves were released so MS themselves bears zero credit.

Interesting how Nintendo has three all by themselves.

I get that it’s a good game, but KC2 being on the list of ALL TIME given that it’s only been out for a couple months is ludicrous.

Unless you’re terrified of bad games, I don’t think the Suicide Squad game fits the criteria of “spooky” games…

@fatpunkslim Call me crazy, but I believe small studio that said something similar to Larian Studios regarding BG3 and the series S more than massive faceless corporation trying to cover itself and its lower-powered console they demand all games also support.

@M20B25 Dave the Diver deserves a release on EVERY platform for sure!

@Kaelliellie Okay.

I’m sure other XBox owners would like to find that out for themselves though, regardless of what your opinion of the game is and what other games someone else is currently playing.

@Kaloudz You intolerant monster! How dare you not stand with the 12 year old console owners! XD

@Dalamar73 PCs can be upgraded. Consoles cannot. They are static. Can’t pop in a new graphics card or cpu and say “yup, I’m ready for version 2.52 of Popular MMO now!”

That’s the part you’re missing. Imagine if they kept FF14 running on the PS3 and held the whole thing back just to placate those owners.What a horror show that would be. They discontinued it for that platform in 2017 for not being able to handle things, and now in 2025 it would be an utter joke.

You don’t hold the entire class back because one or two students can’t keep up.

@Runex2121 Perfectly stated.

@Kaloudz @Dalamar73 Heck, let’s pour one out for all those PS3 owners who got left behind when the Stormblood expansion came out for FF14 back in 2017 and were forced at gunpoint to go to PS4!

Tech moves on. Games move on. If someone is THAT heavily invested in BDO (and if they are, I have to question their choices in life anyway…) I’m sure they’ll either upgrade eventually when money allows or move on with their life and seek greener pastures!

FH4 and 5 are the entire reason I ended up keeping the Series X I bought a year ago as my first Xbox.

I absolutely fire it up every so often, just to enjoy the pretty graphics and the VROOM VROOM!

I look forward to WoW running on XBox with the overbearing chat censorship that FF14 experienced on this platform…

@OldGamer999 Not too surprising, the PS5’s compression tech is likely responsible. Games are just bigger on Series S/X due to that.

@HonestHick The PC market is larger than the Xbox market, and WAY larger than the folks who only play gamepass games on XBox.

I’m sure they’ve done the cost/benefit analysis at a much more detailed level than us rando commenters could ever do, and the fact that they AREN’T porting games to XBox is all we need to know.

Also, PC users certainly do buy games. Steam wouldn’t be successful as a storefront if they didn’t.

@BacklogBrad XBox owners are, for better or worse, Gamepass people. Gamepass people rarely outright buy games these days.

Sony doesn’t crow about “engagement” numbers like EA and Ubisoft do. They go by actual sales, with some exceptions for PS Plus of course.

Sony has no real monetary incentive to port and sell games on a platform they’d sell fewer games on.

@BacklogBrad Agree to disagree! Sony clearly feels no need to test the waters beyond LEGO Horizon on Switch, and even on that they excluded the XBox completely. And you’ll notice that neither the Spider-Man series or the forthcoming Wolverine games are for any console but the PS!

You’re 100% right about MLB forcing the multiplatform release for sure. But whatever the reason, it technically IS a Sony game on XBox.

Time will tell, but MS is clearly not banking completely on their own gaming consoles anymore.

@BacklogBrad Technically they’ve released a couple. MLB The Show, anyone?

@Onlyboxmatters I…genuinely can’t tell if you’re serious or not!

MS needs multi platform since “every device is an XBox.”

Sony does not need multi platform since Helldivers 2 exists for PS and PC, and Sony is pretty good with keeping only PlayStation consoles as PlayStations.

Helldivers won’t come to XBox. Sorry, folks. MS has pretty much guaranteed that games will flow from XBox to PS, not from PS to XBox.

I’m not saying this as a Sony fanboy (though I do favor PS over XBox) but as a realist. And also as one who does fight for Super Earth on occasion and would absolutely welcome our green brethren in the fight against the democracyless legions of the galaxy!

Xenoblade Chronicles X currently, then Atelier Yumia eventually.

I like my Japanese games MADE by Japanese people, with Ghost of Tsushima being the sole exception to that rule.

@RentedPanda I’m just making it clear that “players” doesn’t equal “impactful income” and Ubisoft is essentially giving us a rather meaningless statistic.

We’ll see what they say a month from now. Or three to six months from now when it drops to $30.

That’s players.

It doesn’t differentiate between someone who bought and kept it, bought it on Steam then tried it and refunded it, or Ubisoft plus players who paid whatever monthly fee it is to play it.

This is like EA celebrating “engagement” with Veilguard. It means exactly nothing.

In a world where MS currently considers the underpowered series S a required supported device, there is currently zero reason for them to release a new console by 2027.

@Millionski My X is a decent console, and I’ve definitely gotten some use out of it. But now that I’ve dipped my toes into the green side, I’m content with hanging out in the blue and red areas of the pool for future hardware.

At least Sony and Nintendo consistently use industry standard storage in the form of M.2 SSDs and microSD respectively. Having to get an expansion card for my X is annoying, even with a 2 TB external hard drive for my XBone/360 games.

@donv2135 …because I own an XBox? Or are people who own multiple consoles not welcome here, regardless of which one they prefer?

I never said I didn’t enjoy the one I have. But definitely going to be a one and done for me, though I’ve picked up quite a few discs for it.

@donv2135 I…am not an XBox fan. I have a PS5 as my main console, along with my Switch. The Series X was bought to play some BC games and some previous exclusives like Halo and such. I’m glad I did, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just not much incentive to stick with the platform.

I guarantee this is my last XBox, especially with Forza Horizon coming to PS. Horizon 4 and 5 are what let me to keep the series X in the first place…

I’m glad I got a Series X as my first XBox.

It will also be my last XBox. MS has given me zero faith in their seriousness about consoles, and I’ll be content giving my money to Sony for the PS6 down the road (assuming they aren’t dumb enough to nix the optical drive in it) and the Switch 2 sooner.