Void/Breaker was made by a single developer apparently, and it shows. Not a very fun game at all to play and quite janky. The gimmicky destruction is the best part about it, the gunplay and lack of enemy types as well as the staggering mechanic is just frustrating and ruins what could be a decent shooter.

Almost never. I don't see the point in buying a game I have already played and completed. I have better things to spend my money on, and more / new games to play.

I'm amazed Payday 3 hasnt been abandoned. It's dead and players are never coming back.

Waiting for this one to hit gamepass.

This game looks incredible! Only 13 days to go! I have my flight booked to New Zealand to play it early.

Hopefully more developers actually use it than they did FSR 3. Not many games actually implemented it, it's used alot on PC but the majority of games on Xbox didn't.

@PharaohTV right right. He's only widely regarded as one of the most reliable, well-sourced, and credible investigative journalists in the video game industry. See you in 2029+ when ES:VI releases and you have egg on your face, again.

It's a real shame what 343 did to the Halo Franchise. This game basically killed Halo, and gamers trust in 343 / Halo Studio.

@GivemewhatIpayfor No it wasn't. RDR2 was only around 100GB at launch. But sure lets go with whatever nonsensical , tin foil hat conspiracy you're attempting to spread about Sony. Because Sony is in charge of Rockstar games, right? Sony owns Take-Two, right? They obviously have the power to make these decisions for these companies.

Bandai Namco would be a good fit for Arkane. It's probably gonna be Tencent though.

Toxic Commando SUCKS. It's like a worse Back 4 Blood. I bought it at launch excited to play it with friends and un-installed it a few days later never to be touched again

Apparently the game is still at least two years away.. after being revealed 8 years ago..

After Starfield, I'm keeping my expectations in check for a new Bethesda RPG.

@FraserG Shannon Loftis has now chimed in.

Shannon Loftis, a 29-year Microsoft veteran who already shared criticism of the current leadership.

“Team Helen all the way. The ‘leak’ itself (of false information, for what purpose -? Let's all speculate on who made THAT decision) shows the loss of moral character and ‘clarity’ in leadership at Xbox. A real leadership team would have relentlessly pursued the ‘leaker’ and taken appropriate action because ‘confidential personnel matters’ actually are bases for defamation lawsuits,”

“It's a clownshow up in there and I feel terrible for anyone that still has to deal with it,” - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-loftis-she-her-417b83

I'm so ready! 16 days to go!

I wonder what kind of drugs the person was on at Xbox that thought that was a good price for this bundle. Lmao what a rip off!

@nomither6 and so soon after a promotion. Not as bad Josh Daniels, promoted then laid off 48 hours later after 11 years at Xbox. That was a real head scratcher as to just what the heck is going on behind the scenes at Xbox.

Only game that matters this month is GTA VI. 17 days to go!

If "Clarity is Kindness" then no one in this story is being "kind" because no one is being transparent on what exactly happened.

Sounds to me like there's alot more to this story than meets the eye.

This still doesn't change the fact that E Day cost far too much to create and has sold poorly to the point that all of this investment may never pay off. The next Gears will only add to that $500m investment making it even higher, when E Day has at most generated $40m

Reminds me of mockbuster movies that use similar names to cash in on blockbuster movies. Top gun? No, it's Top Gunner. Snakes on a plane? No, it's Snakes on a Train.

I have over 1800 mythic achievements which puts me in the top 400 gamers on Trueachievements mythic leaderboard. Terrible Lizards is about to be my next one. Great game from a new studio.

At this rate we won't see this game actually release until Helix is out.

Because Battlefront 2 was such a great success for EA. Not like BF2 was a massively controversial game that sold poorly and triggered widespread government investigations, regulatory scrutiny, and proposed legislation around the world for it's monetization or anything.

@Lup it's cute you think people / media will move on. This game will still frequently be in the news cycle and be very much discussed for many months to come after release. Skyrocketing back into the spotlight once the online mode is announced.

@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah these AA and indie games do little to move the needle or get me excited for gamepass additions each month. There might be one or two that I see and go "hmm that could be interesting" but the overwhelming majority sit untouched and make me regret subscribing to ultimate that month without a big AAA game I want to play.

All it took was laying off over 1600 employees to cut the decline by 8%, later in 2027 Xbox will be back to growth after the other 1600+ lose their jobs as well.

Also read an article the other day that Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 employees, 25% of their global workforce, including Xbox employees. Sounds like you can either voluntarily leave with a payout or they are just going to fire you in a couple months. Rough times ahead for Microsoft employees and a sad state of the world as the executives continue to burn billions on ÀI.

I look forward to seeing my year in review. I feel like I played more hours this year than previous years. Last year trueachievements showed I played over 5500 hours. I wonder if I broke 6000 hours this year. I know my FFXIV playtime went up another 2500 hours this year alone.

I learned about an interesting quirk of the Xbox store, and games that offer 7 days early access like with MW4.

I forgot to cancel my pre order from the beta and my pre order was linked to a card I load up with funds separately from my actual bank account so it didn't have the funds available for MS to take the money for the pre-order. I was still granted early access and MS did not cancel my pre order until some point on the 23rd when the game launched, so I played the through the campaign (excellent campaign), DMZ 2 (also pretty good) and a little bit of multiplayer (the weakest part of mw4 imo) all for free before access was revoked. Who needs gamepass when the store works like that? Lol

I have the ultimate edition on pre order. Can't wait! Only 23 days to go! My hype is absolutely through the roof and into the stratosphere.

@Pigrotto exactly. I can't think of a single "delisted" game I actually care about and think "man, I really want to play that.". I care about new games with only a few select games from previous years, not decade plus old games I have already played and beaten X number of times. Besides, any delisted game I actually cared about, I can still download because if I cared about it I would have already purchased it digitally over the last 14+ years.

It hasn't changed how I buy games. I still buy digital only, as I have for the past 14 years or so.

From the sounds of the reviews, Phanton Blade Zero has game of the year on lock-down. Another game that has skipped xbox unfortunately. :/

@Schonks It makes perfect sense. Why do I pay extra for ultimate when there's literally one game this month I actually wanted to play? Premium would have gotten me by just fine and cheaper.

Nothing of real interest capping off what was otherwise a mediocre month outside E-Day. I sometimes ask myself what I pay extra for to have Ultimate, when there aren't that many Ultimate exclusive games each month.

Tried Dying Light 2.. man that game is as bad as people said. The first game is better in basically every aspect besides maybe visuals.

It's a good thing they cancelled the port that would have generated the most revenue for the game. /s

Xbox has already mismanaged the IP and studios they already have, why would I want them to add another? I would rather Mass Effect go to a company like Capcom.

This has been another rough week for Xbox headlines. It's like it's been all downhill ever since the disc to digital program was announced.

The Playstation ports biggest advantage over the backwards compatible versions on Xbox is the lack of mod menus and cheaters. On Xbox it's as simple as going to the theater mode in black ops 2 and watching an infected clip that then grants you a mod menu in multiplayer and zombies that can give you god mode, infinite ammo, no clip etc that ruins the game for legitimate players.

I find it hilarious how some people still try to pretend like this doesn't happen and that the backwards compatible versions are not compromised or plagued by this issue.

Absolutely dissapointing sales for a major 1st party game. Under 300k units in it's first week on sale, meanwhile Sony's Wolverine game sold nearly 2m copies in three days.

Unfortunately the Coalition is likely to see more cuts in the not too distant future with sales like this.

Not porting WoW to console is such a huge missed opportunity. Leaving alot of money on the table.

I agree with the sentiment, the post launch support and updates have been abysmal and the player numbers have fallen off a cliff. I used to see people at the time attacks all the time, now I'm lucky to see a single other person and the leaderboards each week are a tiny fraction of what they used to be.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict the game will sell best on Playstation for a myriad of reasons including a larger userbase, Playstation centric marketing, and the game performing / playing best on PS5 & PS5 Pro

That is one hell of a reward for the devs at coalition after just pouring their heart and soul in E Day.

"Thanks for developing what is going to be one of the biggest games of the year for us. Now get out."

Hopefully we, and the developers affected, don't have to wait as long as last time to find out what is going on. The amount of bad press and articles covering and leading up to the bloodbath of the previous layoffs hurt the Xbox brand alot.

Forbes is reporting that now that Kojima and Sony have relatively cut ties, Kojima no longer has access to the Decima engine, which his games are built upon, as well as Sony Pictures & Columbia pictures.

This will be a huge hurdle for Kojima to overcome after all the work done on presumably OD (apparently actually on UE), Physint (confirmed Decima) and his film adaptations he had planned. Don't expect to see these games and films / shows for many, many years to come as Kojima Productions will need a new engine, new partners for motion capturing etc.

@RTGX exactly as I said yesterday.

I'm never impressed by these types of "milestones" because when you look at the games they've played, it's slop on the store with 1000s of gamerscore you can unlock instantly, or in under an hour.

I intended to beat borderlands 4 over the weekend but I'm really not digging it so far. The story isn't very good and It feels.. off. Like the borderlands ID is there but the gunplay just feels.. idk. Buggy and unresponsive? I'm still in the early game though so maybe it gets better but like hit boxes and what not feel off.

@RTGX it's common knowledge that Kojima spends a lot of money, and takes a long time to make games. With so many projects in the works (OD 7+ years , Physint 2.5 years, Death Stranding live action film, Death Stranding animated tv show + movie), it's an easy assumption to make that he can no longer produce games as quickly as he did before ala Death Stranding 1+2, when he is alot busier now than he was before.