ilyn

Firstly I would say I am sceptical of the detail in the leak as I am not sure they would have access to the specs of both chips to give such accurate details. I imagine its a handful of people at AMD who know this level of information so leaks would be less likely. I fell like the leak would be more believeable if they didn't go into as much detail with exact % differences.

As to how powerful it would be I can't see it ending up much more powerful because it would be pointless. Games will target the PS and Switch due to those being the more popular devices so that will be the level developers target.

Also I am still not convinced a hybrid device will set the world alight. If we take the middle figure of $1000 dollars then its to expensive for the console crowd, but to cheap / weak for the PC crowd. That leak just sounds like a PC that can't be upgraded so still has all the downsides of a traditional console generation.

@Jenkinss Ive not got around to playing that yet, but its on my list so will have to check it out at some point.

Incredible games from one of the best periods of CRPGs imo. Baldurs Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2 and Planescape Torment are all well worth playing even today as the gameplay and story are timeless.

Lots of other games have taken the D&D style and tweaked it for their own universes, and they are decent, but never quite capture the majesty the infinity engine games had.

@Fiendish-Beaver Looks like Silent Hill 2 might be included on PS+ Extra for October. So if you have that it may be worth holding off a week, giving it a play and if you like what you see and still want to buy it you can get it on the platform of your choice.

Personally I could see this Xbox being the last, simply because their actions have been all over the place recently, but it would not be a good thing.

I think the bigger issue however is not if we get a next box, but it's the continued narative around Xbox and their woes as they flip flop from one decision to the next at alarming speed. MS have left themselves wide open with the Xbox brand where no one really trusts or understands the message anymore, and its doing real harm to them.

@Ricky-Spanish You seem to be taking this all very personally, both here and PS, honestly to the point that its probably worth taking a break if you are getting that bothered by it.

For my take I don't see it as people wholesale gleefully calling Xbox users idiots. Outside of obvious trolls, the only comments that come close are people who predicted this coming and feel it was foolish to think otherwise. These same people were also called idiots and doomers for daring to predict anything negative about MS's future plans.

Just try not to get so invested, as its not healthy

@Weebleman 100% spot on about the own goal that is GP pricing. It was clear it was never sustainable and should not have been allowed to go on as long as it did.

I can see game codes going the same way down the line also its another are where they are allowing customers to bypass the correct pricing model.

It was fairly obvious this was coming when various reports where out there questioning how profitable GP was given that they remove most of the costs from the equation.

Sadly they are really circling the drain at the moment for everything except being a publisher, but I think thats ultimately all they really want to be.

If they wanted to do it cheaper they could, they just don't want to do it cheaper, which is fine. For me I am not sure why companies make these nonsense statements in the first place. Its like when your boss says I really wanted to give you that payrise but....

Im not the audience for this device but even if I was that price point is utterly comical and does highlight concerns for Xbox hardware going forward. People long suspected that a badging another companies hardware would push the price up and thats a concern if they look to that route again for future hardware.

Kind of amusing that they announced the price whilst the Steam Desk is on a great offer which makes it looks even worse value.

@Fiendish-Beaver Its meant to be pretty decent but I find APRGs always play better on PC as they are a natural fit for Mouse and Keyboard, especially if you push higher tier content.

@Coletrain I was thinking those are just weekend numbers, hell depending on the game those are 1 day numbers 😂

@Questionable_Duck If that is the case then it really douses any excitement for the game as it sounds more like a series of Experiences. At that point the price will become a major factor as it becomes a much harder sell.

@Banjo- I compared Xbox consoles ("any") with Switch 2 and PS5 Pro

Whilst only counting the Switch 2 is valid as it the next gen machine. If you are allowing for any Xbox Console, assuming you are referring to the Series generation, then you have to expand that to also include any PS5 model. You can't just cherry pick only the most expensive PS5 or it clearly highlights your bias to make one seem better value than the other.

Ignoring any opinions on the console, making an article based on a second hand price is pointless imo as the same can be true of all devices depending on the seller. It should focus on RRP as thats a better indicator of the average price.

I played in on PS and it was a really good experience. The story is good and I though all the charcters were fun and had their own stories which worked into the large narrative, and party chats. The combat and world design was a clear improvement over inquisition, but I do feel the combat could still be improved a bit more past the 3 abilities limit.

8.5 / 10 seems about right and I look forward to seeing where they take the series next. Hopefully with more people getting to play it on a service they will see the game for what it is and not the 20s snippet they where sold on social media

I think they would be best moving on to another project and putting all their resources into that instead. The game did alright but was not the flagship it was expected to be. I would honestly say their is also probably not much point in porting it to PS5 at this point as I don't think it will do much more than it already has.

Honestly they would be better just focussing on ES6 and making that the best it can be.

@RentedPanda Pretty much yeah, free with sub gives less ties to the game so you can bounce off it and move on and don't care as much as you were already paying, or at most threw a single month cost in to trial the game. If you had just paid £70-80 for the same product then a lot of people are more inclined to stick with it due to sunk cost.

The real annoyance is that it shows how silly engagement metrics are compared to traditional sales without knowing what the fall off % is on average. It devs are freely acknowledging it then I imagine its pretty high.

@TrollOfWar I would agree with your points and add the additional one of a single fixed difficulty level for the game. Whilst you can increase it further in NG+ you do have to beat the entire game in the designed difficulty. I know some players try to claim certain specs are the "easy difficulty" in souls games but I don't buy that.

For me games like DMC they remain simply action games because of the fact that you can select difficulty setting and even swap to auto mode so anyone can beat the game with ease.

I do think the explosion of action based RPG games has really muddied the water of the genre unfortunately so this definition will never get easier.

Singing the swan song for a console that is barely out off the gates of a poor look. I fully accept that this generation, and future generations, will be heavily cross gen. That said I feel with everything that accompanied the launch of this current gen then they should still be looking at another two year's instead of writing it off already.

@Coletrain I think so far E33 is the most likely. Blue Prince was excellent but it did start to suffer in the end where to solve the post game puzzles it fell foul of RNG and didn't give you enough ways to stack the deck in your favour.

I think the other contenders so far will be Death Stranding 2 and possibly Mario Kart World. I could also see Yotei being in contention if it launches well, but can't see them beating E33 either.

@Coletrain Yeah the majority were from China but people crowed about it everywhere, tbh you can probably thank Astrobot for a lot of that hype. BMW got a fair portion of the internet talking about it just because they wanted to hate on the idea of a platformer winning GOTY.

@Coletrain I'll never get why it was so lauded in the west, surely this was just a big deal in China

I would say its partly because it was classes as a "Soulslike" which has become the redundant term in gaming now as anything action based is suddenly soulslike.

The other part is the romantic appeal of how different and interesting the culture is, even if its shown through a heavily distorted fantasy lense. I think its a big like most of the UK have little intrerest in UK history, the Royals etc. Other countries lap it up however and are amazed at how much history the UK has. Its just the appeal of something different to what you know.

@WildConcept6 I think Halo as a series or film will always be doomed to fail simply because the character is boring. Master Chief was dull as dish water by design. He is like Doom Guy in that he is just a character you play and originally had no major back story. Some was added in later but the character is just not interesting enough to carry a story outside of a game.

Fallout had more appeal becuase at it heart is always been a story game with lots of lore and humour. Fallout lampooned everything and when you added in that low tech futuristic 50s it all worked to create a universe where its easy to make new characters and story for, because the real main character is the world its set in.

I think it can continue to do well in games but outside of that the story and concept of Halo is just not strong enough to carry it as a wider IP.

@Coletrain I can see the UK price being £550 - £599. They could do it for £499 but I just can't see that being the case as its a niche product thats going to sell very limited numbers regardess of how cheap they make it.

I'm more surprised that the graphic features #playALLyourgames with the Xbox logo. We all know it won't play all games so the claim could easily land them in hot water.

@Ricky-Spanish Ahh fair enough, Ive not played Andromeda myself. It was on my list for a while and then I just kind of missed it and lost interest when they essentially wrote it off and said any future games would return to the main storyline.

I know what you mean about 10years tho. I had not realised that Inquisition was 11y old now. I suppose thats the sad truth about dev cycle times now.

@Fiendish-Beaver The first game actually holds up a lot better than you would expect due to its style. Its more akin to a top down CRPG and that gives it an element of timelessness about it

The second game however is utterly terrible to play now. Its the classic example of those early 3D games which reused the same 5 tilesets for 60 hours and as such it feels very dated. Also the companions are just not very interesting for the most part.

I enjoyed inquisition, but I wold say my main issue was how some of the areas are very bloated and not much fun to explore. The game has some great zones like the forest, but for every good zone it has the Hinterlands and the Wastes which are just painful.

For Veilguard I understand that it could be an issue for some players, but I also get why its a flavours of good story. Giving the player the option to go fully negative would not really make sense for the story they are trying to tell.

Veilguard certainly made me interested for what comes next tho, be it DLC or a full sequel.

@Ricky-Spanish In fairness Veilguard was a very good game so I don't think EA are to blame. I just finished it this weekend after doing a full playthrough of the entire series. I think a lot of the talk about companies who used to be good, and are now poor is due to rose tinted glasses.

That and modern games are heavily slated from the outset by a much more vocal internet base who criticise games based on what some one told them to think rather than an opinion formed after playing the game themselves.

Being playing through D4 recently and its a decent game but suffers from the same issues that most ARPG's suffer from at end game. The main one is meta builds, where most builds use the same 4/5 talents because some are just much better than others.

You also hit a point at Torment 3/4 where its just a gear lottery and there is no way to improve your build futher. Mythics are stupidly rare and only about 4 are used by every build so about 15 of them are pointless. Even on torment 4 the chance of GA Ancestrals is low, but getting anything 2GA or higher is absurdly rare.

The other main issue is having the Glyphs tied solely to the pit which is not an interesting endgame activity. Having to constantly run the pit over and over for lackluster loot just to get your glyphs up is dull.

I enjoy the game and it is good fun to play, but they do need to look at the endgame elements and balancing the loot so you can farm it yourself without making it all about 3rd party Auction Sites.

@Jenkinss Yeah they had said they wanted the game multiplat for ages. I think that coupled with their recent announcement that they have made enough money from HD2 to self publish their next game meant Sony will be more inclined to allow it to keep on their good side for future projects.

@darylb24 So if the next Xbox does go the PC route then I assume it will have zero games that interest you? Becasue PC doesn't really have generations and games are playable on older machines (within reason). How about The Series X, are all its games meaningless because you can also play them on the much weaker Series S?

This mentality of games not counting on a newer console if they are also available on the older or weaker console is utterly ridiculous. A good game is a good game regardless of the devices you can play it on.

@Kaloudz Not for consoles but there is a fan made remake called Black Mesa on PC which is very good. Its not an exact remake as they improved some areas, and they heavily expanded and improved the final act of the game on the alien homeworld.

Shame its never transitioned to console but I imagine its way beyond their knowledge

@WildConcept6 I think PS6 will carry on with the optional drive stye, and personally I think its a very clever, practical solution to a modern problem. One SKU that can easily be sold at two price points if they package a bundled box.

If they somehow manage to use the same optional drive as the PS5 then this would be even better for the consumer in the long run. I'm not sure if that would happen however due to the effect it would have on deisgn and income.

Starfields greatest achievement was making people concerned for TES 6 since Bethesda have fallen a long way with Todd Howard believing his own hype.

Im still 50/50 on this. Blade, much like Spawn or punisher, is a comic character than could easily be used to make a 18+ game that really has an excuse to get dark bloody and gritty.

However Marvel are unlikely to want a game that alienates a large amount of the younger audience and a watered down Blade could easily suck.

I can also see it being cancelled down the line as the film is dead in the water which is going to limit the characters appeal.

Always felt the aquisition was a bad idea and nothing has changed my mind. I had a slim hope that maybe I would be wrong and maybe, just maybe, microsoft would revisit IP's or realise that you don't need to gouge customer wallets constantly.

Sadly the gouging has got worse and Acti Blizz are more greedy now than ever before. D4 and WoW being the standouts of pure greed. The games are decent but the naked greed on display does sour the experience somewhat.

@Fiendish-Beaver were they presented with a similar service on the PlayStation, they would jump at the chance. It is only because they do not have those first-party games on their service day one that they find it so objectionable...

I think both can be true at once. GP is a good deal for the consumer, provided you like the games. People can take advantage of it when its offered, they can also believe its ultimately harmful for the industry in the long run. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

@PushButtons Except you are not paying $500 for old and inferior tech. Unless the PS4 was a handheld device and I clearly missed something for all those years.

Yes handheld tech will always be behind console tech, which in turn is behind PC tech, but its still modern within its niche. Trying to compare them all is pointless because at that point everything is old tech compared to a PC with a 5090.

As others have said the worst thing about all of this is the fact that its looming over people's head and they know without knowing. Worse when its then subject to leaks, rumours and reporting.

Its typical scummy corpo behavior to leave staff hanging until they decide to announce, when in reality the decision has probably already been made.

@Neither_scene I think they lump the whole gaming area into one for their financials and it was their 3rd biggest area last I saw. I think a huge portion of that was solely from the Actiblizz buyout which boosted gaming revenue a lot.

Hopefully the layoffs are not to major

@Weebleman As you say they all wan't our money and this idea that one company is altruistic, and the others are greedy is nonsense. The reality is if they were not trying to get more out of us they wouldn't be very good at their jobs.

Honestly anyone who has spend any time dealing with Microsoft licencing would see exactly how bad they are for it. They want every penny out of you they can get.

@Moby What complete and utter guff. Do you honestly think Phil Spencer funded almost $90B worth of investments over 10 years without access to Microsofts main cheque book.

Its those investments that have allowed Xbox to course correct recently and none of it would have been possible without access to the parent divisions wealth. Its why the Nadella is so heavily involved now because that spend clearly came with added oversight.

@Ricky-Spanish You are not alone

When Space Marine 2 launched they did the same for and deisgned 1 SX and 1 PS5. All I could think was how much I would rinse a Warhammer collector for if I had one of those, because they would sell for so much money.

How long before they sell it 😂

Things like this are very cool, its also winning the jackpot if you sell it to the whales.

@Fiendish-Beaver Lots of places do cross platform games also where you redeem it via a code on say Epic, but it requires you to have Origin and the game actually loads via that. If anything its more annoying than just opening the right platform in the first place, but you have to use both for it to work.

Its become more prevelant with free games via Prime / Epic etc where it seems to be a requirement for the game being free. As it drives people to be aware of their platform.

@Ricky-Spanish Different games, different genres, different review.

Edit: Its only like how Balatro got a 9. its a great game, but you can't hold that 9 against bigger AAA 9's. They are both deserving on their own scales.

@theduckofdeath it's more that if I want to play a pad game, I'm doing it on the sofa with the big screen and sound system. If it's mouse and keyboard I'm sitting at my desk upright.

I've just never found myself thinking of I wish I could also pay borderlands or similar on console. So the benefit sounds decent on paper, but has no value for me at all.

PC would be my main one for anything MS based, but obviously that may now also include PS5 with them being multiplatform.

I have always said that play anywhere has no real value to myself however as I buy and play a game on the platform I prefer to play it on, which is dictated by the control option. Having access to Age of Empires / Diablo / Doom on Console would be about as useful to me as having Dark Souls / Nioh / Resident Evil on PC.

It all just feels like the new strategy is to slap a badge on something and call it an Xbox. It's the least exciting strategy then could have chosen.

As for the potential of a hybrid PC I don't see anything there to excite me, it will be a costly weak PC. I would rather see real console innovation.

@Fiendish-Beaver PC gaming is nowhere near as simple as that ...

I tried saying this ages ago and it fell on deaf ears as people gushed in excitement at the idea of the full PC library on a console. I recently played Dead Space 1 on my PC again and it was a bugger to get running, as are many older games, because of stupid things like resolution.

The other thing I have had crop up a lot on older games is they won't boot correctly if my 360 controller in plugged in. You have to unplug it, load the game then reconnect it.

PC players accept this stuff as standard, console players will not.

As to you other various posts about steam the other thing I was thinking tonight is would they want to curate the games available to be played on an Xbox platform. Steam has a lot of very questionable titles (Sex with H**ler etc) that I don't think MS would want people playing or streaming on their Xbox Eco system.