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@Tasuki the objective is what ever the individual players decide it is. For some that's social and roleplaying so they have RP servers. For some it's PvP so they choose that server type. And for others it's endgame so they pick PvE servers.

Gatekeeping the game behind your expectations makes you sound exactly like the elitists you are railing against.

Its set in the WoD so that means its got about a 20% chance to be decent. The source material is fantastic but outside of Redemption, Bloodlines 1 nothing has made a huge impact. Hunter was good and I really enjoyed it, but it was always a small and simple twin stick game.

Someone like Owlcat / Harebrained need to get their hands on the rights to make a RP that really leans into the PnP system to its fullest.

Lets all cheer on corporate consolidation and then moan about the state of the games industry next time we see a post saying another 5,000 people have been laid off.

No this is a terrible idea, MS have more than enough to focus on without needing more.

@Tasuki I swear we have had this discussion before, or I have had it with someone else but it is not a misconception at all. The Devs have even said that its a problem as they have to keep boosting difficulty to stay ahead of how powerful mods are when developing high end content for the game (Heroic / Mythic / Mythic+). Its why they started using hidden auras because they can't be tracked Also why they have started using clearer graphics in undermine to remove the requirements for addons, there is more going on so keep it clearer.

Clearly if the Devs themselves have admitted its a problem, then yes its a problem. Its just one they can't undo by pulling the rip cord as removing addons now would see 50% of the playerbase quit.

Edit: I to have been playing since it was originally launched, so yes I know how important this stuff is for high end play.

£9 may be more reasonable buy I still dislike this faux early access fomo model which has no impact on the final product. If you want to do early access then do it properly like POE2 or BG3 where you get a very substanial portion of the game, for a long period and use the feedback to actually improve the final product.

It should be day 1 (-5) to everyone with the extra just covering the digital goodies if people want to buy them.

@themightyant Well they did say they wanted to make Xbox more like windows and I swear that requires more clicks to do basic stuff with every iteratinon 😂

@Master_Cthulhu70 can you imagine how many people on Xbox who'd be like me and want to play World of Warcraft for the first time?

Unfortunately as a long time player I think you would be pretty dissapointed. If they went with the retail client then you have 10 previous expansions worth of content but they funnel you through the main levelling process so fast that you would only experience about 40% of one expansion and it would make very little sense.

If they go the route of classic and start at OG WoW then it would be much more rewarding, but the gameplay is pretty poor, very easy and relies heavily on nostalgia. We are talking most classes had a 1 or 2 button rotation in OG. You have to wait for 2-3 expansions before it startes to get better.

I still question how viable WoW will ever be on a console without Mods / Weak Auras. You could certainly level and do basic dungeons, but anything endgame like Raiding / Mythics / High End PVP would be awful especially if you had to play against people on a PC.

I still think that if they want to block them then they will 100% be able to, even if it ends up being a bit underhanded. That said I think all this steam talk simply relates to the Asus Handheld they are badging as an Xbox and I can't even see it doing that well. At that point why bother blocking it as its going to have zero impact when the Ally / Deck already exists.

For the next main machine I would say Steam is just a pipedream people are latching on to.

@Dalamar73 @LogicStrikesAgain I am with you guys in that I just cannot see how this next device will incorporate steam with full compatability unless its just a 100% pure PC. If that is the case then you will just end up paying more long term, and if its a hybrid device then its not suddenly going to gain access to this mythical trove of 10,000 games.

As for PS games they will find a way to block it out if they need to and it likely will not even be that hard. The only way the allow it is if MS goes pure PC because at that point they are basically out of the game anyway.

I still think the steam screenshot was just a mockup for the new MS Ally UI and nothing more than that.

All that looks like currently is the ability to see all your games on one screen for the handheld / PC app. Its basically what Armory Crate already does on the Ally I belive.

@Kaloudz It will likely still keep going. Changing it early would just affect any punitive damages they may be found liable for. Its a toss up of making the changes in good faith, but by making the changes you could be construed to have admitted fault by your actions.

I think it depends on exactly what they are doing them for. Nintendo are clearly not saints when it come to lawsuits, but if it is something like a code lift then Pocketpair dropped a huge clanger and brought it on themselves.

@Kaloudz The patent by all accounts seems to be related to the release sytem of how a pokemon is summoned rather than the fact its a sphere thats used.

Pokemon are summoned by throwing a ball at a patch of ground and the creature appears at that location.
Palworld seemingly used the exact same system (it was suggested it was copied code) and have recently changed it to the ball being held out and the Pal just summons to the side of the character.

As for the patent they were using the arguement of how should we know the idea was patented, but in these situations ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

EDIT: I should say this is not to defend Nintendo as I have no skin in this game as I care for neither Palworld or Pokemon.

@Sol4ris The steam deck has more memory than the SS and they have repeatably stated its the memory issue they are struggling with.

As for insurmountable its more a case of if they have the knowledge and support to make the game run. Its their first game and its not optimised on any platform. So its perfectly believable that they are just struggling. Unfortunately the longer it goes on the more likely they are to give it less resource as they will need to move on to the next project.

I'm not sure why on every article about BMW PX feels the need to lead by repeating rumours that have no evidence to back them up, when GS have made a clear statement multiple times. It just fuels toxicity and the writers should frankly know better.

@Friendly Or we could take them at their word that they are having issues with it on the SS. It's not the first time and if people like Larian struggled its hardly surprising a studio would struggle on their first ever game which was poorly optimised on both PS and PC.

@Runex2121 But it works and thats all that matters for marketing. PS1/2/3/4/5/6 is simple and effective for describing exactly what it is.

I would potentially give it a go, but oblivion was always the weakest of the modern three for myself. It was not a scratch on the setting of Morrowind or Skyrim, and just felt a bit safe overall. I also found the base game to be very repetative.

Knights of the Nine was bland but the armour and free recharge was so good it felt like you had to use it. The Highlight of the game was the Shivering Isles as it was just such a interesting location. It was like they took all the generic safety of the base and turned it round to make something truly bizarre.

@themightyant Haha nah it was more to say you are knowledgable about such things and your posts are always worth a read.

I guess hedging bets on the price at present is a fair strategy as it depends on what the target market is for the device. At present I would say its clear microsft is less concerned about hardware than they are about software, and its smart as thats where the money is for them.

If the target market is moving console players to a PC which I think seems to be their long term plan then the lower price is where they want to shoot. If they are wanting to target PC handheld to grow GP subs then I think the device would steer towards the higher end because PC gamers are less price conscious.

If they do just rebadge something like the Ally, and slap an OS on it, then they could do both with a base and pro model. Even if the main difference is just battery and storage then It would give people the option. Plus as a rebadge it would require far less risk overall.

@themightyant Genuine question as you always have a good amount of thoughs going on about stuff. How much do you realistically think an xbox handheld would launch for because I think we all agree that is going to be the biggest hurdle to start with.

For myself I think it will easily land in the same ballpark as a full console at £500+ and thats where I think it will be a very hard sell if its just a handheld.

@Justifier If they are aligning themselves with the Ally which is looking more and more likely then it will be more expensive than the Steam Deck for sure. You can get a base Ally for a similar price as the top model SD, but the battery life is garbage. If you want an ALLY X the you are talking more expensive than a PS5 Pro so I can't see this landing well.

The portal got flak at launch but I think they have nailed the price point by making it a bare bones streaming device.

@BacklogBrad MS and early access is quickly becoming the scummiest thing in gaming imo. They are just throwing the tag on everything at this point for the fomo payout.

@Titntin I think you are pretty much spot on that it benefits AA far more than AAA as a general rule. However with each and every games thats not 1st party its a gamble on the price. Sometimes MS willl get a great deal, and the dev could lose out if the game blows up. Other times a game might bomb and the dev gets a great deal and MS lose out due to the wasted spend.

Its just that more often for AA it will work out, and I would argue it works out more for XB as the lower install base presents a bigger risk for those games. Which is not a dig at the install base, its just a fact that devs have to address.

@VivaUtd Its not really about Subscription services being good or bad. Its as simple as they likely believe the revenue from the sub service offer will be close enough or higher than the sales would be on their own via traditional means.

I would say he is way out of touch, VR has been pretty successful overall when you take into account all different headsets for PS, Quest or PC. There are also loads of killer apps for it

No Mans Sky
GT7
Half Life Alyx
Resident Evil
Walkabout Mini Golf

Even the smaller little puzzle games are massively enhanced by exploring in a proper 3d space.

@themightyant Yeah I know thats the downside of Meta that some reviewers are allowed more weight than others. I was more just trying to explain it simply as it not being a platform tax, just the result of different reviews leading to a different overall.

@Kaloudz People love to complain about cross gen but with dev timescales being what they are its here to stay and all considered is probably a good thing given the dimishing returns on graphics anyway.

Its great that people don't have to miss out just because they can't afford to buy the new console day 1.

@Dan1283 Its just because they are using the average score across multiple reviews.

PS is 90 with 79 reviews
X|S is 90 with 13 reviews
PC is 88 with 40 revies

@Cikajovazmaj I think it will do very well but I just can't see it being given a shot at game of the year because of its genre. FPS of the Year could be a possibility however.

Makes sense, loads of people play Live Service games and probably don't always realise it, or class their game as one. I myself have put about 30 hours into WoW Classic this week and despite being known as an MMO it 100% fits under the Live Service umbrella.

@Weebleman Gamepass is still clearly bringing money in, but the 1 billion a quarter is revenue that doesn't deduct costs. Would be interesting to see what the actual figure is with development costs, etc... deducted.

The cost is often ignored when it suits, its similar to the 70/30 split when games are released on PS / Switch etc. People focus on MS making 70% and don't factor in that they also have to foot all the Dev and publishing costs. It would be interesting to see how muh of that 70% is profit.

Obviously this works both way, its just more a MS issue currently as they move towards a more multiplatform soltuion.

@abe_hikura Over 40 I believe now.

Looks nice visually but its to early to make any real comment on gameplay as it showed very little (im not counting the walking / riding).

@Utena-mobile Im not sure how well 4 would do as it was always the weakest of the originals despite having a pretty creepy vibe to it when you where back in the room. 1 and 3 I can see working but I doubt they would ever bother with 4.

@fatpunkslim And what about PS? Nothing!

Days Gone Remastered, The Midnight Walk, Lost Soul Aside, Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei. So I count 5 that we know of so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if another 1 or 2 get announced later in the year. And at least 8 more games on the way after that for 2026.

So a deecent amount of nothing apparently.

Was always pretty obvious this was unlikely to land in 2025. Its never felt like it was close to being ready which is why we only saw cinematics and looks at this celeb we have in the game. 2026 is fine, there are loads of game this year anyway across the various platforms, more than most could play.

@Fiendish-Beaver I still doubt the Next / Prime will be a 2026 lauch, 2027 at the earliest would be my guess and I would bet the PS6 won't be to far behind it.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Being an outright Gundam clone you would think they would want to hammer Japan, but I suppose the purists there might hate it for being such a blantant copy of the style.

When I asked Kwok why the team decided to do timed exclusivity with Xbox over PlayStation, he stated, "Because they are more aggressive than Sony." After a laugh, he clarified that he believed it was a mutually beneficial arrangement with Microsoft since mech games are already saturated in the Japanese market. As such, bringing a mech game exclusively to the Western market via Xbox was less risky.

Full quote to give more context.

@YeyoFairy I went with E as I mentioned above and was in no way trolling, or impossible to please. I imagine others are the same if the show just did nothing for them. Its not that unusual as indies are generally more hit and miss for people.

For me rating the show as a whole includes rating the hosts, which i though were very poor, they just lacked chemistry. It also means rating the way it was presented and it was a glorified IGN advert with some trailers inbetween, It really didn't need an advert break every 10m just to shill IGN services.

As for the games only two caught my eye. Blue Prince which we saw last week, but i liked how this trailer showed us a bit more. The other game was Lies of P but i think last weeks trailer was far better overall as it showed proper gameplay, this one was just artsy and did nothing for me. The others just did nothing for me either because they are not my style, or i had not played the originals so no hype.

So E seems fair, it did very little that I had not already seen.

@GamingFan4Lyf I guess, in some ways, it's interesting to see if it's super popular for a snapshot in time, but I don't think it's any actual gauge of a single player game's success.

Exactly that, its great for showing how popular a game is at launch where you have a high peak showing who jumped in. Like you could see BG3 popping off in real time with a peak of 875k just on steam. But for other games the numbers are usually a fraction of that so outside of genre defining games everything else is similar.

@Cakefish Your numbers seem to be off by a lot, if a 30% increase in PC took them to 40m then that would mean that PC would have had more subs that the consoles ever had.

A 30% increase on PC would realistically be around 1m more I would reckon.

E for myself, The only game that really stood out was Blue Prince. Lies of P should be good but I thought the Trailer was very poor.

As for the show it was an awful presentation, the presenters were poor and it just felt like a gloried ad for IGN with the amount of breaks just pushing their services.

Will give it a watch but not expecting much of note. I usually find that means it will be better however as you can only be pleasently surprised

2026 would be far too early to launch a new machine. I've said before that it would just be a early exit kick in the teeth too any series owners. Also 2026 would mean a lot of cross gen which would not be a great selling point.

@Cakefish Largest Technical Leap has always been such a silly statement as it has no real measurable meaning as you can flip it any way you choose.

If they add in something like PSSR / DLSS and Ai for the next box, and PS6 also adds Ai they could still feasibly state its the largest leap in a generation as PS added PSSR during this gen. Its really just meaningless marketting speech which will mean what they want it to mean and nothing else.

@Rodimusprime13 ethernet available as a add on for Final Fantasy 11, which was the only game which used it.

Champions of Norrath wants a word with you 😂

Joking aside that was a truly great game and needs the remaster treatment for all machines that the Baldurs Gate games got.

@Millionski for me its as simple as GP has little to no value at all, I had it for abouit 3 months as i got it free and even then had very little I wanted to play on it.

Its not a dig at all, just as with anything its only got value if the games appeal to you and very little on there does.

@Rog-X The point is that you continually bring up that you can only get discounts on Xbox and it's not true.

You can buy store credit if you stop around for up 15% off at times and then spend that however you like. The VFM may not be the same but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist

@RBRTMNZ I just found the actual combat in Nioh to be more my style. Both very good games I just prefer the stances, skills and dodge from Nioh over martial arts and parry style of Wo Long.

Being able to upgrade gear with items was a nice change, but capping your gear in the base game and the dlc having no real upgrades felt off. That was something I felt Nioh did better by having divine gear only drop from the end boss and then all the dlcs increasing on it.

Wo-Long is a bit of a shame for anyone who had not tried it yet. It was not as good as Nioh but it still held its own as a fun action game.

The only real drop off was DLC3 final boss being overly tuned. It basically required a NG++ character playing on NG difficulty which was a stupid decision.

Just launch them at the same time, I doubt the crossover between players would have a big impact on fable.

@Rog-X you can buy PSN store credit from those same sites and use those to pay for sub services or games. An extra step but the end result is the same.