I’m torn on remakes. I obviously want new content, but I’m sort of excited to play Halo remade co-op with my son. I’m torn on the AC remake though. When a game is just a fresh coat of paint, I dunno. Oblivion, for instance, I was really excited for it, but I bounced off of it about 15 hours in because I’d just played OG Oblivion so much years ago and i sort of got bored repeating a game I’d played several times. The RE remakes are a showcase for what a good faithful remake is and FF7 is a showcase for what I’d like out of more remakes, where it just changes things so there’s some surprise. I don’t always prefer the changes, but I appreciate that they made some choices, if that makes sense.

Hoping to finish Life is Strange: Reunion and Pragmata this weekend. I know I’m at the tail end of them both.

I mean, it’s a recolor. The color palette is nicer though. Personally, I like the Project Helix logo better!

The part that concerns me is that they are referring to creator centric IP in multiple instances, which is a smart way of sneaking GAAS/live service methodology under our critical noses. With Requiem and Pragmata coming out recently, I’ve gotten a chance to have deeper appreciation for games that are succinct experiences again. I’m hoping that Xbox chooses to develop with those types of games in mind too. It would be nice to see Xbox have a strong portfolio again. The words are nice, but I’m looking forward to the software. It’ll be years before we see Asha’s real influence there.

I’m ok with Xbox going back to the exclusive route, but they need good exclusives to make it a valid path. Right now, I can’t say I’m a fan of how Xbox or PlayStation have played the current generation, so I’m curious to see how Xbox’s trajectory plays out on the path to the next generation.

That honestly sounds like a perfect plan for Xbox to return to what it was. I’m looking forward to seeing if Xbox can deliver on these promises. I mean, I’m here for a reason.

A D for me. I can’t say i was interested in anything outside maybe No Ghosts at the Grand. It’s a varied selection, sure, but… yeah, nothing for me. Surprised we haven’t seen Witchbrook pop up on one of these presentations given it had a release date of Winter 2025.

For me, I just want the first party and exclusives. I could pass on all the old third party games, Ubi, EA, Fortnite, etc. I only want the “Only on Xbox” section, basically. That’ll get me to plug my Xbox back in.

Can’t wait for OD. Always love whatever Kojima releases, so I’m definitely looking forward to whatever “Xbox for Kojima” means!

Starts a precedent where first party games aren’t included. Personally, I’m not playing CoD anymore currently, but that’s a dangerous road to go down, where “Oh, Halo’s not on Gamepass?” This is the beginning of a soft sunset to the service potentially

It’s still too high, to be honest, for me to really be interested. Gamepass needs a full rehaul, in my opinion.

@Markatron84 Same. The game looks like Vampire Survivors, but it just doesn’t have that same addictive loop or feel to it. I think it’s more well made than a 5/10, but I’d say a 6 would maybe be my personal score.

I’ll wait for the reviews. I don’t like what I’ve seen of the game so far, but I love Double Fine. I’d get it maybe if I like what I read in reviews.

I was sort of underwhelmed with what I’d played, to be honest. It’s a visual stunner, for sure, but the gameplay doesn’t quite translate to the feeling of gameplay the game is trying to make, if that makes sense. And the story feels sort of hijacked from existing IP rather than feeling like its own thing too. They may as well have tried to license out the Blade Runner name.

Admittedly, I’ve not finished it, but I played a chunk of it, enough to feel that way. It’s a good pick for Gamepass and you can certainly feel the passion for the project from the team in the game. They definitely made the game they wanted to make and you can feel that, but for me, it’s more fun to look at than to actually play.

Well, technically I wanted to complete Life is Strange Reunion before Friday, but that didn’t happen, so there’s a good chance I’ll try to play it this weekend.

Outside that, yesterday I got Tomodachi Life, Pragmata, Mouse PI, and Crimson Desert, and I booted them all up yesterday and tried them all and may yet continue playing them all at once.

That’s all I want. I’m back in if the price is right and they’re day one. I’d plug my Xbox back in!

If they’d have launched Starfield years ago, things might be different. Many people had more interest (and purchasing power) when Starfield launched on Xbox. Launching after Crimson Desert also probably did the game no favors as that game seems to be speaking to the Bethesda-base gamer pretty directly. I wouldn’t say Bethesda has a strong reputation right now, as I do believe many would agree they peaked with Skyrim and have been on a downward slope since. Anticipation for Elder Scrolls 6 is basically what actually keeps them alive and I’m sure they know that.

Honestly, the last update to Gamepass was so utterly tone deaf that I’m sure sales dipped far more than they anticipated. I don’t know anyone in real life that has Gamepass anymore.

I think we’ve gone full circle and a lot of people essentially want Xbox Live Gold again. Two games a month, cheap, internet usage, good to go. Less stress of choice, more simple. Sure, it’s a pick in the lottery every month, but there’s less junk to wade through.

@Pigrotto I think some of them are intentional too. Personally though, I find this type of PR to feel more stressful. I’d prefer more transparency from official sources. It’s cleaner, more professional, and more authentic.

On the other hand, it certainly feels that Nintendo in particular have expressed that they are unhappy with leakers in the past, which is probably why they shifted away from Directs and into announcing things on an app.

Not really for me, but glad to see Xbox taking a page out of the Sony/Nintendo playbook and showcasing an individual game, even third party. This is great! Hope to see more of it!

I wish I could say I was excited for this one, but these “inspired by” games tend to land with a thud these days. I would love for this one to be what it could be though! Would be more exciting than GTA if it was a true Bully successor.

The question I always find interesting to me is, “Why do people in the industry (potentially) feed guys like Grubb any information?” Most of these projects are protected heavily by NDAs. Who is risking their job to give him info? If I was in Microsoft management, I’d be looking for these leakers, honestly, to try to pull guys like Grubb and NatetheHate from interfering with PR.

Realistically though, I feel like this is a common guess people are making right now, even though we don’t have full confirmation GTA6 is releasing. Personally, I’d prefer Fable to GTA, but I’d understand the delay to get it out of the release time period if GTA is indeed confirmed for real this time. I’d understand it if Xbox views Wolverine as a threat too for player time, even if that’s a bummer to me. I’m starting to get the feeling that the end of the year will be glacial with releases.

Finally, finally finished Requiem and had gaming time this week. Time for Life is Strange: Reunion. I did pick up Beyond Words too and I’m sure I’ll try that.

Depends on the person, but Halo and Fable are good places to start. I mean, realistically, if it’s someone brand new to gaming, I’ll recommend Portal, Ori, Skyrim, and maybe Minecraft too. I’d bring up Sea of Thieves. Honestly, I might not even recommend games I tend to play, depending on who it is. It does depend on the person’s interests too though. If they like horror, my list might be different than if they are getting the console for their family, you know?

I definitely got my sister’s boyfriend a Gamepass sub for his birthday two years ago when he was just starting with Xbox.

Castlevania’s the only thing that truly caught my eye from this showcase. I’d preorder now if I could.

Bring back good software and we’re good. That is all. I don’t need bells or whistles, just games.

@Fiendish-Beaver I see that too, but I hope you’re wrong about another Fable delay! I would be utterly surprised if this isn’t the schedule. Surely, MS isn’t going to try to overbook in October to compete against CoD and it’d be madness to go much later than that for any game (unless GTA is delayed, which I think this might finally be the year) and I doubt even CoD would try to buck time away from GTA.

I’m guessing Halo July, E-Day August, Fable September. Fable can challenge Wolverine, but not GTA. I’m expecting the last quarter of the year to be basically a blank slate this year, with maybe only a Nintendo holiday release as anything else that’ll attempt to generate sales in contract to GTA.

It feels like developers are waiting to have confirmation of GTA releasing this year before we get any release dates. Every time we get an update from Rockstar it feels like we get 50 release date announcements rapid fire because developers and publishers get just a little bit of confidence they aren’t releasing near it.

Personally, Halo and Fable are more likely to be purchased by me than GTA6. Not to get too personal about it, but I… feel sort of weird about GTA6, as much as I’ve enjoyed the series in the past. I firsthand saw someone drive into a parade with the intention to harm others and that has sort of changed my perspective on the gameplay loop a little bit.

Switch 2 is the only one I waited in line and purchased on launch day.

I got a PS5 as soon as I could secure one and it was pretty close to launch and a Series S pretty soon after that too. I got a Switch in 2017 for Christmas from my wife. My Xbox One was a gift from a friend as a moving gift, but that was also launch year.

Edit:
@FraserG Reading the comments on here, I realized I’d be curious to see an article on what consoles everyone has owned. That’d be a fun comment section to read. Just throwing an idea out for you guys. I’m sure you’d get a lot of responses. It’s something for a slow news day. We’ve got a diverse set of hardcore gamers on here that I’m sure played on a diverse set of devices.

It’s a good value for the price for gamers that may not have kept up with the industry day and date. I do wish there was an opposite option for the same price for just the Day 1 releases with none of the games I’ve already played and probably own 😅, but I will admit it’s a good value these days for more casual gamers.

Gotta be real: I’d really like to play something, but I haven’t played any games in two weeks. With it being Easter weekend, I don’t expect I’ll play anything. I really want to play (and finish!) Requiem and LiS Reunion, but I don’t see it happening.

I have the Guitar Hero guitar. I do have the janky 360 era headset for online play and battery charger thing too. I also have two dance pads for Dance Dance Revolution too! Not sure where they are right now, but I’ve got them. I’ve got nothing after the 360 era.

The 360 was a special time though, wasn’t it? Thinking about Guitar Hero and DDR, man… It’s crazy how popular that style of arcadey gaming was and how it’s totally gone now.

@Enigk Whoa! A Steel Battalion controller? That thing’s awesome. I’ve tried it out at gaming expos over the years, but actually owning that thing is crazy. It must take up a massive amount of space. They’re quite valuable and rare these days.

@GeminiX53 That would undoubtedly push console gaming out the window in full favor of cloud gaming and streaming services if conventional gaming survives and doesn’t fully replaced by mobile.

$1000 consoles would kill the industry if they launched at this point in history. That’s the end of parents getting kids consoles for Christmas outside of affluent families.

Hopefully that release date sticks for Beyond Words this time!

I’m sorry, but since when has making the cost of goods attractive to customers been a bad thing?

Yeah, everyone knows about the rising costs of development and the layoffs, but how about we get customers in the door, so they have the confidence to spend money again? Seriously, so many people in the industry are pushing for making more expensive games that cost more money to purchase for consumers when consumers don’t want that necessarily. If Xbox can afford to make an affordable tier of Gamepass and bring people in while bringing higher quality games, let’s celebrate that.

At this point though, with the attitude Larian’s staff shows, I don’t know how much interest I have in any of their games going forward. BG3 launched broken on PS5 and Xbox too, so realistically I’m not sure how much I’d trust their QA staff’s ideas either.

I haven’t been looking forward to a new IP as much as Pragmata in what feels like ages. Can’t wait for that one!

Eternal Life of Goldman looks cool. I’ll try the demo. Forever Ago looks potentially like a game I’d play with my family, but I also am not sure. I guess it’s a win for old man games today. Hades is a good get for Gamepass, but I own it on Switch 2 already. If I didn’t already have Hades 2, that would’ve been the clear game of the show…

I guess I’d give it a C, but there’s a part of me feeling like I should give it a D too. I voted C. It wasn’t one of the better Xbox presentations and where the heck were the release dates? Also, I had very little interest in most of the games shown off today. Maybe I should’ve voted D.

I just want the day one releases from Xbox Game Studios. If I can get that and not get anything else at a reasonable price, I might come back.

@FraserG @J_Mo_Money Music to my ears! I’m really hoping we finally get an update on Witchbrook. Glad to hear the words “world premiere.” Maybe we’ll get lucky and hear the words “shadow drop” too!

Right now, Beast of Reincarnation and GTA6 are the only games on my calendar after May, so bring on the announcements!

I hope there’s some other games because I’m not interested in those ones, honestly. I do like the format Xbox has started taking with in-depth showcases, so I might watch anyway.

I’ve got a busy weekend, but if I do play games I’d like to get back to Requiem. If not that one, I’ve got Rubato ready to play too. Operation: Complete Everything I’ve Purchased This Year Before Pragmata Releases is going according to plan at the moment.

@TDHorizon personally, Baldur’s Gate 3 launched in poor state on PS5, so that’ll always sour my opinion of the game. I tried playing the game co-op with my wife when it launched and we experienced several crashes and bugs. The game was borderline unplayable. In single player, it ran fine, just a bit buggy with some stuttering. I’m not usually someone to criticize a game for jank, but given the overwhelming praise BG3 got, I can’t NOT bring it up. Even after the game was patched up, I regretted purchasing the game and couldn’t have fun with it. I’m aware I didn’t have the standard experience with it, and I get where others could love it, but that’s how I feel about the game. Could be the most frustrating experience I’d had with a game this generation.

Even so, I feel like Elden Ring had a bigger cultural impact too. That’s the only game this generation that literally everyone I knew was playing the game when it launched. Death Stranding, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, and Resident Evil launches come pretty close in my group, but literally everyone was on Elden Ring, and most of my group would be considered a not-Souls group. Elden Ring united gamers in a way that only Rockstar, Halo, and Bethesda did in generations past with my group, so after a long while without that, Elden Ring felt truly unique and special. Plus, everyone loved the game on top of that. I don’t know anyone in my gaming circle that wasn’t absolutely immersed in it.

Even after the reviews, I have no idea if I want to pick this one up. I’m trying to catch up with all the games I’m currently playing before Pragmata comes out and I’m on the trajectory to do that, but I’d have changed plans if this one was the 90+ on Meta some were saying. I can wait to see what friends say about it.

With the influencers being so happy with this one, I know people that are buying it. They’ll let me know if it’s for me. The last five to six years or so, I’ve been firmly out of sync with the big influencer hits (outside Elden Ring, which may just be game of the generation), so I’m finally avoiding taking a flyer on another one that I have no idea if I’ll like. It took me six or seven years to break the habit of buying every hype game, but I’m doing it!

And I have to echo everyone giving props to @FraserG. Honestly, reading the reviews for this one has to have been the most partisan playing field I’d seen in a game release. It doesn’t feel like there’s much fair and honest reporting about the game. It’s either a disappointment or the light in the darkness by so many perspectives. It seems the truth is more or less in the middle and I appreciate that perspective.

Romeo is a Dead Man deserved better reviews. I’m thoroughly loving it.

My top 10 right now is (and yes there’s some non-Xbox games, but I can’t quite make a top 10 list I’m comfortable enough sharing right now without them):
1. Requiem
2. Pokopia
3. Romeo is a Dead Man
4. Mario Tennis Fever
5. Monster Hunter Stories 3
6. Forgotlings
7. Battle of Asciion
8. Planet of Lana 2
9. God of War: Sons of Sparta
10. Marathon

For it being March, a top 10 this strong is honestly an indication that this year is going to land for me above 2025 and 2024. I’ve not finished every game in my top 10, so it may change, but I’m happy with this list. I’m expecting Rubato and Life is Strange to push two games out of my top 10 at the end of the month, maybe even a new Legacy of Kain game to do it too! And then there’s Crimson Desert, of course, which is a total unknown.

Romeo is a Dead Man and Pokopia for sure. Due to the winter storm in my neck of the woods, I’m getting an extra day to my weekend. Hopefully I get the chance to get back to Requiem too. Honestly, 2026 has had a fantastic start with games.

@FraserG @space_g0blin @Fiendish-Beaver I’d honestly expect that Phil’s probably pushing out MORE of his vision out now than anyone would realize. It’s too soon for any of Asha’s visions to be materializing. With him being out the door, he’s probably being more open about his ideas and I’m sure a thing the team is pushing out now would’ve been developed before Asha was announced. Optically, Phil and the rest of the leadership team, as execs, knows the layman will see any changes coming at this point to be from a place of fresh perspective, even if they were being planned in advance. I’ve said it elsewhere, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Phil’s retirement is more a strategy piece to resuscitate the Xbox brand image and to allow changes to happen with more positive criticism rather than judgement based on the previous team’s record. Watch him remain an executive consultant at Microsoft.

With the way things have been lately, it really does make one wonder if Sarah Bond’s leadership and vision was a big part of the problem.

Preordered Life is Strange a while ago, but this was a bit better than your typical show from this team, honestly. Future Games Show seems to be getting bigger. Dave the Diver and Mr Coo looked really interesting to me and I know we have no confirmation that Project Shadowglass will be on consoles, but I hope it is.

@TrollOfWar No idea they had such a short period of time with dev kits! With how long development takes, you’d think they’d need them for a few years. Clearly I don’t know how the technical process works in gaming.

This sort of debunks the idea that this console will release in 2027 doesn’t it?