swedetrap

Still Wakes the Deep is an absolute classic

Honestly, you guys did more to celebrate it than Microsoft did, so for that, thank you.

Bought it because of the sale. Haven't played it because I don't like scary things.

Gaming awards shows need a category for something like "Best PS2/OG Xbox era-style game on current gen platforms." I feel like South of Midnight and Keeper would both be in contention for that. Honestly, they're 2 of about a dozen highlights for me this year precisely because they remind me of that era. I'm over 8000 sq mile open world slogfests that take 120 hours to complete (except Square RPGs obviously). Give me great, unique, and even quirky stuff that I can spend 6-8 hours in and just enjoy

Good of them to keep the Remnant IP so that they can ruin it down the line and keep it out of the hands of its own studio and creators

It's only NOW in early development? I assume this was due to moving resources to Marathon? It feels like Destiny 2 is almost as old as the Xbox One generation.

Downloading this .... now.

I love these games. Thanks for the heads up. I somehow missed this completely.

Eh, that's fine, but what I really want is the a proper Gushing Geoff reveal of the next Hazelight game, followed up with a expletive-filled speech from Josef Fares, letting me know that his next contrived and mediocre game is better than all of the other games at the show. It's not the Game Awards without him and Hideo getting a proper foot wash.

And yes, I just called It Takes Two et al "Mediocre." I'll stand by it. I halfway enjoyed his prison game a few years back but the rest have done nothing for me.

Love this! There are quite a few games I come back to that I don’t want to install. Now they’ll look even better.

@Blastfemur This is exactly why I haven’t picked it up. Sounds like my experience with every extraction shooter to date.

I have a launch day ROG Ally with a 2TB drive in it, so Play Anywhere games are the lifeblood of my gaming life, Switch 2 aside. I LOVE the program, though I do get a bit confused at how some publishers deal with it - looking at you, Square. Why are they so inconsistent? Either way, I give Play Anywhere credit with my having finished quite a few games in the past year: Keeper, South of Midnight, and several others.

I fully admit that I think twice before buying anything that doesn’t have Play Anywhere.

Funny you should compare this to Ryse. I felt that both were given a bit of a bad wrap when they were released. Maybe it was because there wasn’t a whole lot to play at the time, but man, I sure do love both of them, even all of these years later.

Thanks for celebrating this. It feels like the rest of the world, at least in the gaming press, has more or less given up on the Xbox brand.

For me, one of my fondest memories of the past 20 years is moving to my new home state and falling asleep on my recliner playing UNO multiplayer on Xbox live. It was NEVER boring, I’d just play it that late into the evenings. Add on some of the best experiences and innovations in the history of gaming, and the 360 will always hold a special place in my heart. I no longer own one, but I’ve managed to pick up nearly every BC 360 title available today, if only for the nostalgia of it all.

This was the game I was most excited for after watching the showcase. Can’t wait to try it.

@Banjo- ohhhh. Got it. Thanks!

I can’t seem to buy it in the US store, at least not from the link above. Searching doesn’t turn anything up.

Loved it. One of the best showcases of the year from any platform. Full stop

Remember when we were all sitting around waiting for ANY word on whether or not Alan Wake 2 was even coming? And here it is, discounted.

The pinnacle era of gaming, between 360 and PS3 and Wii. We'll never reach such heights again. In fact, I think we're moving further and further away by the day. That I'm busily playing remastered 360 games more than almost anything else says something (well, it says I'm old but it probably says something else too)

@themightyant You're not wrong. I have a small handful of exceptions in mind, and quite a few AA games, but it's exceedingly difficult to play something like a Starfield or a Diablo IV on a handheld, at least for me.

Strangely enough, this kind of extends to Switch/Switch 2 as well (AAA by Nintendo standards anyway) - Pokemon aside, there's no way I'm playing Metroid in handheld mode if my experience with Metroid Prime Remastered was any indication.

@themightyant yeah that’s my biggest issue. Handhelds are great for a lot of things but competitive FPS isn’t one of them, at least that’s been my experience.

Bought Octopaths 1 and 2 anyway. Worth the price! Such great games.

I’ve enjoyed my time with it enough to go ahead and buy it.

Was completely unaware of Routine. Now I’m stoked for it. WOW.

What do I expect? I except Xbox to share their birthday with Sony and Nintendo, rather than keeping it exclusive to Xbox.

It feels like every 4th or 5th CoD is a complete bust on the campaign side. Advanced Warfare anyone? This is what happens when you put unrealistic expectations on teams to deliver an iterative update to the formulaic on a yearly basis – no one has time to innovate whatsoever.

I enjoyed Black-Ops 6 and am still playing it, even with the new Battlefield sitting on my home screen. That said, I'm not excited about the prospect of moving on just yet either.

And in truth, I haven't played through a CoD campaign in about 4-5 years. They're mostly crap anyway. Sounds like this is more of the same.

Forza is just another in a long line of things that MS didn't have enough patience for.

• Windows Phone
• MS Band (1+2)
• Kinect (whether you love it or hate it)
• Cortana
  The list goes on (and on and on). Thing is, they could learn a good lesson here from Sony - GT7 wasn't a massive hit upon release either, nor was the game before it. Phil can throw the word "hiatus" around all he wants but at the end of the day I think we all know what it means. Forza is dead, just like Perfect Dark, Halo Infinite, and many, many other things that died either before their time or were killed before they really saw the light of day.

Bottom line: for as much an Xbox and MS fan as I've been, they've completely lost my trust.

Do I blame Phil? Nope. I truly (maybe even misguidedly) believe he wants to make great games and wants to do right by the Xbox community. I blame Satya and the shareholders.

Fable in a year? Yeah right

@Kieduss This. 100%.

And yeah, it’s a mediocre game for sure. I bought it day one and regretted it 20 minutes later.

Funny how Phil and Satya can talk about the war for attention and it’s laughed off as “that’s because you lost” while Reggie says the same thing and it’s wise words. We live in completely different times now compared to the last half dozen console generations. Roblox is eating everyone else’s lunch and there’s not a damn thing any exclusives can really do about it. Sure, you’ll see some Metroid sales this fall, but the era of consoles is over, many of us just haven’t accepted it yet.

Eh, kept Ultimate and dropped Disney+. Easy choice.

My kids still use Series S consoles and love them more than any other consoles they have, and we’ve got PS5’s and Switch 1&2. Go figure.

@kmtrain83 and that has what to do with what I said? I mean, at one point Titanic was the biggest film in history. Doesn’t make it good. It definitely didn’t make it a great film before it even came out?

Speaking as someone who couldn’t care less about Xbox’s anniversary

Can’t wait for another game from the Marvel Disappointment Universe!

Gosh, no sequel news for a game that’s barely a week old? You don’t say!

But definitely sign me up for Avowed 2. Day one.

I’m so tired of hearing how GTA6 will be the biggest game ever that I’m not even looking forward to it anymore.

I get that it’s a big franchise but please, calling it the biggest video game ever is hyperbolic and premature.

...and the shareholders were thrilled that virtually no money was spent making this thing into a true, proper Xbox but gave the gaming division a reason to issue a press release or two.

And now back to the slow, steady decline of the Xbox brand, already in progress.

If this is a bad ass gaming PC with a forward/backward compatible Xbox 'layer' then I don't really care what it costs. I'm in regardless.

I would 100% buy this right now except that it isn't a Play Anywhere title. Considering literally 95% of what Square Enix is putting out these days IS Play Anywhere, I don't get why the omission here, but it's definitely keeping it off my Xbox, Ally, Cloud, etc. for the time being.

Does it even have cross-save? Doesn't look like it.

Based on the high percentage of respondents that own the 2TB card (which is WAY more than I expected) I would venture to guess this will be in higher demand than most think. I'll get one. I love having even my old Xbox One and 360 games on one of these whenever possible. Loading screens are for suckers.

I had zero interest in this based on the earlier teaser but holy crap did this drop it in first place on my want list. Wow.

Day one buy for me. My Ally is already my favorite gaming device - deeper xbox integration just makes it better I would think.

Eh, whatever excuse I need to play the originals all over again. I'm here for it. And if bringing in a few million new PS players is a bad thing, then I'm too old to care about petty console wars (and own both anyway so whatever).

@Kaloudz Yeah, some kind of licensing thing that I never fully understood. Such a bummer.

@Kaloudz Couldn't agree more. Friday the 13th felt ahead of its time and was a blast to play with friends or even strangers. Every copy of it since has felt contrived or somehow inferior. Even Dead by Daylight is all rather meh in my opinion.

I'm still not sure what makes the SoM combat all that much different from the combat in games like Bayonette, but whatever. Either way, my Game Pass subscription has paid for itself with the latest CoD, Indiana Jones, Avowed, and now SoM. I've never been happier with a subscription. I'd like to think we're just now starting to see the fruits of the labor that all of these studio acquisitions have bought; no reason to think it'll end anytime soon.

I'm over the $1000+ incremental bi-annual graphics card updates for PC and I'm REALLY over the console "wars" at this point. What I want is an Xbox that acts like my ROG Ally: all of my Xbox stuff, Steam stuff, Epic Store stuff, and GOG stuff, all in one box. If it has a portable component to it, great, but I'd love a set top box that does all of the above and I've got $800 or more to throw at it. I don't care if its 5090 level graphics because honestly, I can barely tell the difference between my 3xxx card and my 5080. I want 4K60 and I'm happy.

Right now, Game Pass is still by far the best value in gaming for my household. We have every console + PC and the Xbox still absolutely reigns supreme. My kids shrug at the news of the Switch 2 and haven't touched the PS5 in months, but the 8-10 new GP games every month keep them from getting bored. I'm continually amazed at the sheer diversity of titles we're getting for $20/month here. Yeah, a lot of it is indie stuff, but for whatever reason, that "indie stuff" resonates more with my kids than almost any AAA title. The ONLY game we've bought in the past 9 months was Monster Hunter Wilds, all the rest have been on Game Pass.

The future for Xbox is a lot brighter than the average console warrior seems to grasp. I blame Sega vs Nintendo for that mindset. It's time we all moved on, every other industry has.

@whmchrish What? You didn't want the FFVII outfit for an additional $20? Or the paw-print jammies or whatever? Yeah, this whole idea that every single game needs three editions at three different price points is absurd. This one was one of the bigger offenders.

I love the original Life is Strange and mildly enjoyed the game after it but c'mon, these games are SO similar to one another that whatever uniqueness and originality one might have found in the first is completely lost by the 3rd or 4th game. I distinctly remember rolling my eyes when this was announced, out of sheer fatigue with the whole concept. Just because it was cool once (maybe twice) doesn't mean we need 19 of them. Move on already.

The kids in my house literally have thousands of hours into these games, going all the way back into the 3DS era. I've tried most all of them, starting with a pair of them on PSP to present and the only one that's managed to hook me for any length of time has been Worlds, and even that one only got about a dozen hours out of me. I just don't get it. I really WANT to get it, but I just don't. Something isn't clicking. I'll no doubt try this one too in hopes that this will be the one; I have to buy it for the kiddies anyway.