nicols

@NEStalgia Man, now you've got me all hyped for Tom Clancy's Military Dude With Gun game...

It's a pretty lackluster launch (both in terms of content and technical quality), particularly in a UK market that now has at least 4 major players plus several minor offerings/channels and the big one (Netflix) has just discovered that its business model based on infinite subscriber growth doesn't work as well when people are economizing...

I don't see this being particularly successful for Ubisoft in it's current form because...

(1) 12.99/m is a lot just for new Ubisoft games - in 2019 (pre pandemic) they published 7 games on XBONE, 3 of which were new AAA games - that annual sub would have purchased 2 of those 3 games outright.
(2) Historically, their AAA games go on deep sale very quickly after launch month so most people with an interest in their back catalogue probably have most of the games of note through sales.
(3) They currently make a lot of their revenue in the launch month and some of that will be lost if people dip in and out of the monthly subs when the big launches happen without committing to an annual sub. This applies to GPU as well but MS benefits from GPU building the XBOX user base as a result - Ubisoft encouraging Xbox ownership has little to no benefit for them.

A more realistic approach would be the EA model (with possible financial deal from MS for inclusion into GPU)... a much cheaper service (no more than £30-40 per year) with their back catalogue with new AAA games being added 6-12 months after launch.

Although it's a port of an IOS game, Infinity Gene is a really good update on the Space Invaders IP - It's an old school SHMUP meets a Jeff Minter 2D / 3D trip-a-thon. If you aren't into retro it may not be for you, but if you are its worth the download.

@Nightcrawler71 As much as I would like those to be BC, they are difficult for exactly the reasons mentioned in the article - Bizarre Creations is defunct so MS would likely be dealing with an uninterested Activision, plus re-licensing cars and sound tracks would be expensive.

On paper it's the 360 (if nothing else, by sheer weight of sales). However, I voted for Series SX as, despite the lack of 1st year exclusives and supply issues, I've really enjoyed the console this year... and it owes a great debt to the One series! Yes, MS really messed up some aspects of the ONE hardware and it really never recovered from the launch fiasco sales wise... but to their credit, they took it on the chin and put in place a LONG term strategy to fix things... all the things that I like about Series X stem from that strategy - the improved hardware specs at sensible prices, gamepass, BC, performance patches for older games and the studio acquisitions all started years ago as they tried (and IMHO succeeded) in repairing the reputational damage with companies and gamers. Even the understated series console case designs are direct evolutions of the One S and One X.

@FraserG Perhaps a simple catch all phrase - "Confirmed for UK, may not be available in all regions" until a better solution is found?

I'm finding it a little disconcerting to be watching preview gameplay for a XS exclusive game months before release and having absolutely no concerns over the games performance, playability, launch date or fun factor... Seriously, this is not how the games industry works these days

@John117 Xbox has mouse and keyboard support (and has done for a while) but its down to developers to include it - about 50 games so far. The closest to an rts would probably be something like they are billions but other strategy games include Gears Tactics, wargroove and cities skylines... and recent support for MS flight sim.

Literally was just searching for info on this - been like it all morning. Also, some other MS services seem a bit sluggish - did a manual search for updates, which often takes a few minutes on my series x - this morning it took nearly 30 minutes. No obvious issues my end re internet connection etc.

I bought the upgrade and because of the lack of smart delivery, I had to download the dlc on my existing BC install, open it up to check the dlc was installed, close it, delete both then search in the store for the XS version (which it know acknowledged I owned), download onto the internal drive from scratch and then it all worked. And in fairness, although a Facebook friend said he was having these crashing issues, I've played a couple of hours and all good so far.

FAO Jeff Minter... Remaster Hover Bovver

@Parksey1972 Update - it turned up on the friday so a few days late but at least it was the right week

@Parksey1972 Had mine pre-ordered with Amazon UK last week and as of last night all was fine - got up today and my order has been changed to "we'll email when we have an estimated delivery date"

@Blessed_Koz and the most accessible in terms of how you can adjust difficulty of the opposition, the course conditions and the control scheme itself.

@themightyant It's also worth noting that (despite a slightly convoluted history) this is effectively the 4th game in the "The Golf Club" series... the devs have been doing golf games for at least 7 years, picked up the PGA tour licence back in 2019 and publisher 2K then bought the studio and licence and renamed the series with this edition. This means they've refined their swing control system (with this version having many more beginner friendly options) plus the course editor brings 100s of free courses (from this and previous iterations) designed by players, some of which are pretty accurate famous club knock offs, with a fairly effective search / rating system.

It's the most polished edition yet and the main criticism (outside the odd and completely optional cosmetic season pass system - thanks 2K) is that the PGA licenced players are limited in number and relegated to names on the leader board and highlight cut scenes mainly.

It's my understanding that this title has underperformed pretty badly on all platforms, despite positive reviews and word of mouth. At least part of the issue is its now fairly well established that Ubisoft are pretty aggressive with their price cutting when a game drops out of the charts (Fenyx barely scratched the top 10 in many regions). I've seen loads of comments along the lines of "looks interesting, I'll pick it up on sale". Nevertheless, going on sale for as much as 50% off less than 2 weeks after launch is pretty terrible... last time I remember that happening to a big holiday title was Fallout 76... and Fenyx is a damn sight better than that was at launch.

@Freakdahouse Sorry, meant Cold War - its listed as not supporting raytracing in the list

@Freakdahouse and ray tracing, just for shadows and lighting, not reflections

I've seen a number of graphical issues with several games - basically, coloured glowing balls of light. Its very prominent at the edges of the screen in Poker Club, sometimes happens in Rogue Company (before the XS patch) during playthroughs and I briefly saw a similar issue on the menu screens of Monster Hunter (no series x optimised) but only whilst playing with the graphics options (which state you need to restart for the effect to take effect - once restarted, the effect was gone).

It sort of looks like HDR / lens flair gone into overdrive and has been seen by other users in Rogue and poker club according to reddit. At forst I thought I had a broken console but the 20 oir so other games (a mix of graphically demanding xs and bc games) have been absolutely flawless so I think its a software rather than hardware fault.