themightyant

Pros and cons to each. It looks better, or fresher, initially... but with a lot of games you fit 1 less row on screen (2.5 rows v 3.5 rows) so you just see fewer games and have to scroll further. Undecided.

@fatpunkslim Even for some bigger titles. When id sofware said Doom: TDA had 3 million players at launch analysts were estimating that was around 2 million on Game Pass and 1 million in sales.

I'm sure that's true for SOME. But I suspect for many other devs they like the fact it increases the number of players their game has and the mindshare it gains being on Game Pass. It isnt one size fits all.

Personally for me Game Pass is the reason I still own an Xbox, there aren't enough worthwhile Xbox exclusives to warrant owning both an XSX and a PS5 otherwise.

You absolutely can play games like EA Sports FC offline, just not the multiplayer / Ultimate team modes. Genshin not so much. But having some offline modes doesn't make it any less of a live service.

It's not really "large," per se.

Gears isn't large? Well then what on Xbox is? It's one of their tentpole franchises. Give me a break.

@Mr-Cage For GTA5 specifically they have made around $10billion USD in total revenue that is split around 50% ($5bn) on game sales and 50% ($5bn) on Microtransactions for GTA Online and they have around 10 million weekly players to GTA Online according to the leaked data from their hack... it's a live service.

(Edit: posted this before I saw your last comment). Opinions eh? I'd love to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong

@Mr-Cage Assmuing GTA6 Online is part of the game and not a seperate game then yes it will absolutely be live service just like GTA5. Do you think GTA 5, including GTA Online, is not a live service?

As for your defintion. Halo Infinite and Gears 5 multiplayer doesn't play without it's server, so why aren't they live service in your book? Just because (I assume) you can play the single player campaign offline doesn't stop them being live service games.

There are also games that are online that require their server to play but are not updated with new content, by your definition these would be live services, when they clearly aren't.

@Mr-Cage There is a difference between updating a largely single player game with bugfixes and QoL updates to and adding whole new maps, skins, etc. seasonally to a game.

The key part is they are specifically updated to keep existing players playing and spending long after release, which Halo & Gear are. That makes it a live service.

As @Markatron84 said what is your definition then?

@Mr-Cage I agree opinions differ and you are entitled to yours.

But the purpose of langauge is to be understood when we all converse, and when everybody else thinks a term means the same thing except you it may be sensible to accept that perhaps your own meaning of a term may not be accurate.

But I accept that like so many terms in gaming there isn't a fixed definition for "live service".

To me a live service game is simply a game that is constantly updated to keep players playing after release, and often keep players spending. Gears and Halo absolutely fit into that. They recieve constant updates years after release to keep players playing and spending. What about that isn't live service?

@Markatron84 Honestly I think this is their framework.

"If Xbox is successful, if we can turn the business around and become more profitable then we will make more exclusives. We would like to do that but we aren't there right now and simply haven't sold enough consoles. Until then we will string along our players with a handful of exclusives and promises of more."

@Mr-Cage Of course Halo Infinite is a live service. The fact I've only played the campaign and not played the live service multiplayer doesn't stop it being a live service game. C'mon man.

@RiverGenie 100%. They basically have to judge if you are telling the truth or not, usually on minimum wage.

I had an issue accessing another online service related to work and when I left I no longer had access to my 2FA device (work phone) or email (work email). Eventually after a LOT of back and forth they asked me to send a copy of my photo ID and also use a face scanning site in order to verify my ID. Without that I would have lost a LOT of work files. But I could have been a scammer.

Another friend had it where he lost his bag with all his device in it and they wouldn't let him back in with new devices they thought he was a scammer even though he was legit. It's rough.

Eh? What do you think a live service is?

Seasonal "operations" content drops, battle pass like "Tour of Duty" progression with cosmetic rewards and an online store with premium currency " Iron" where you can purchase cosmetic items such as character skins, weapon skins, banners, bundles etc.

Sure you or I may not engage with these elements, but that's like saying Genshin Impact or EA Sports aren't live service because you don't have to use those elements... doesn't stop them being one.

Ball says that "large live-service titles" will be multiplatform moving forward

You mean large live-service titles like Gears E-Day? Honestly I think they are just making it up as they go along, trying to string along and appease fans with promise of "exclusives". Unless their business performance turns around I really wouldn't expect that many.

Ball adds: "We have a framework for these selections, including how we evaluate them. I recognize that this approach is not obvious to all of our players, and we are committed to making this clearer."

If you are committed to making it clearer then perhaps just show us the framework, it really shouldn't be THIS complicated.

Good to hear... though obviously they need to be careful when resstoring accounts that the people are actually legit and not scammers. It's a hard balance to get right.

@betterthings Nintendo is CREATIVE led, if a major game doesn't hit their creative standard they go back and keep iterating, and if it still doesn't hit their standard they reboot the entire project. Nintento fundamentally understands that making great art is not a straight line. The downside to this is games often take a long time and we wait many years for the next mainline entry in a series like Zelda or Mario to hit that high quality bar, seeing long multi-year delays to announced games like Zelda BOTW and TOTK, or longer for Metroid Prime 4. That doesn't feel like what Asha is doing or wants, it feels like she wants efficiency and lower costs.

Capgod is a better analogy... I frankly don't know that they are feeding them, they are on a roll. But it's also not that long ago - just over a generation ago - that Capcom were floundering. I really do wish we could take a look behind the curtain, study them, and replicate at Xbox and other studios!

@betterthings I sort of agree, but games are creative endeavours, they are Art. I don’t think it’s as easy to put a fixed time frame, efficiency and process on making good art. Sometimes it all comes together, sometimes it doesn’t.

While I can understand the want to get games out faster more reliably, streamlining workflows between teams. It feels a bit like Sharma is trying to bring programming like efficiency and mentality into the creative space. I’d love it if it could work and we could see games arrive faster and cheaper to make… but I am HIGHLY sceptical of it, the last time we saw a huge publisher try this was Ubisoft… look how that worked out for their creativity. I guess only time will tell.

@AgentCooper I enjoyed the gameplay of Dungeons of Hinterberg very much. Each dungeon felt unique and had new ideas and puzzles. I didn't really vibe with the writing and one dimensional characters but thankfully skipped a lot of that in order to finish late on the 15th, the day it left Game Pass.

No. Will play on Game Pass. Don't want to support the "early access" business model.

Visual search: On desktop I just bookmarked a visual search result and click the bookmark.

It takes a few days to get used to the new design, but once you are used to it I don’t think it’s as bad as the comment suggests.

I haven’t decided how I feel about the new rewards. I suspect for how I use rewards it might perhaps offer a few more points that before but that completely relies on streaks. I’m not going to do switch to Edge or Bing and do daily searches throughout the day.

Asha was pretty clear she would LIKE there to be more exclusives, but also only when the business was in a better shape to support it. Which feels a bit chicken and egg.

Will be interesting to see how Gears E-day and Clockwork Revolution do first... The plan is the plan until it's not the plan.

Good to hear, but also feels like damage control, which I can't blame them for with all the rumours and speculation. Good to hear they feel confident. But frankly what else is he going to say?

@trev666 Fair. I was thinking about BGS timelines. Hopefully faster, still wouldn't expect it till mid-next gen tbh.

@betterthings that does make some sense on paper... though it wasn't as if they weren't already using dozens of outsourced third party studios in their projects e.g. Avowed used QLOC for QA; Lionbridge for Localisation, Adia, Airship, Art Bully, Beamdog, Blind Squirrel, Cloud Mark Studios, Devoted, Exigent, Game Art Goodnam, Kokku Games, Little Red Zombies, NXA for Art assets; Heavy Iron for Programming; Humain & Passion Republic for 3D models, Jali & Superspeed for animation, Virtuos for many of those and others.

My point is I doubt this will massively speed up development.

On the one hand this is pretty cool. On the other some of these are likely a LONG way away. Does anyone expect Fallout 5 in the next 5 years? probably nearer 10. Feels a bit like them announcing Elder Scrolls VI almost a decade ago.

Hopefully things like Fallout 3 and New Vegas remastered aren't too far away and deliver better than Oblivion remastered.

Not a bad game, I enjoyed it enough when I played it, but other than the graphics I remember almost nothing about it. A lot was mid.

Glad to hear it still holds up outside VR. Moss is wonderful, glad more players get to play it. I also hope this leads to a Moss: Book III

All nice QoL features, though nothing major.

Would really like to see the option to either shut down the Xbox fully (eco mode) OR go into rest mode on the power off screen.

EDIT: Someone already added it to player voice. Vote here.

Sometimes you want fast boot and full remote features, other times you don't, but only having a toggle buried in settings means once you choose this you are unlikely to change.

Looks incredible, hopefully it is as fun to play.

Though statements like "Most Technically Ambitious Gears To Date" are completely pointless... of course the latest mainline Gears is the most technically ambitious... did anyone think they were going build it on UE1 at 720p?

Pointless thing to put on player voice, but does show frustration from gamers about this.

You might assume so but this that isn't accurate. It's both a supply issue and gamers waiting to see what games are worth upgrading for. It's usually year 3 or 4 it peaks as @Jenkinss said, sometimes later.

E.g. PS4 sold 13.8m year 1 / 15.6m year 2 / 18.2m year 3 / 20.1m year 4 / 18.6m year 5 / 16.7m year 6 / 10.8m year 7 / 3.1m year 8

PS5 sold 13.4m year 1 / 11.6m year 2 (heavily supply constrained) / 21.6m year 3 / 18.9m year 4 / 18.8m year 5.

We don't have precise Xbox numbers but based on estimates it's also year 3 or 4.

Feels like pissing in the wind at this point.

But it doesn't take a genius to predict PS6 will likely outsell Helix in the region of 2.5 : 1 initially, as they have here (17.2m v 7.3m), as that is what has happened the last 2 generations.

But their PS6 prediction seems high. Assuming a Nov 2028 release selling 17.2 million PS6s by 2030 (5 quarters) seems excessive. For reference PS5 sold 17.3 million in that time and PS4 sold 20.2 million. If the consoles are as costly as expected AND people don't feel the need to upgrade it's hard to see it matching this gen's sales, even with PS5's early supply issues.

@Millionski I don't agree that the "only" questionable move is id.

What about Obsidian, what about Double Fine, and others they did exactly what Xbox asked of them - make smaller games to fill out the library - and have been brushed to the side when the wind has changed. They are also cutting staff from other Bethesda and Xbox Studios... all feels like gross mismanagement... and Arkane doesn't sound positive at all.

@Shinato2024 And if they try to make a game of the budget of We Happy Few or Contrast they likely won't sell enough to keep the studio funded. It's a super-tough market right now.

Feels like damned if you do, damned if you don't, unless you get lucky.

I would hope that a sequel to South of Midnight would be significantly cheaper and have the benefit of knowing what they need to fix (gameplay/combat) without having to spend years iterating as much. Might be their best shot imo.

Yes it is.
Insinuating it is “insider trading” is not.
Do you not see the difference?

the GTA 6 marketing colors are gone as Rockstar didn’t like all the smoke around PS, FACT

The first half is true, the GTA advertising is gone. Fact.
The second part is just you speculating.

Just as likely that Rockstar had a marketing agreement to have this on for week or so - similar to what Xbox did with COD and full screen ads - it wasn’t going to stay there all year. Right?

Again do you see the difference? You are conflating actual facts with speculation, half truths, which is exactly what the rumour mill is doing with Xbox and what you are complaining about. You can’t have it both ways.

"There are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations. Reports that there’s only one person left in Texas are inaccurate."

Good to have a LITTLE more clarity and it’s good to hear id tech isn’t completely gutted, but this doesn’t really confirm very much either. The fact they haven’t denied the numbers of devs being laid off at id, only makes those seem more accurate else they should have denied this too.

@HonestHick I totally agree there are far too many rumours and speculation circling Xbox right now… many of which aren’t completely accurate, it’s frustrating and hard to parse what is true from what isn’t totally accurate.

But I’m also not surprised, Xbox ARE laying off 3,200 staff in one go, seemingly from almost every studio… that’s utterly unprecedented. It is a bloodbath., or similar words to that effect. That is always going to create a LOT of stories, not all will be entirely accurate.

But trying to conflate that with something like Sony shutting Bluepoint - around 70 total staff - is many scales of magnitude difference. Do you HONESTLY not see the difference @HonestHick? While shuttering Bluepoint was an exceptionally sad day, (personally I’m still frustrated with Sony for failing them), it just isn’t remotely on the same scale as this and shouldn’t create the same amount of news.

As for the Sony CEO, if he sold his stock a few days AFTER the announcement then it’s unlikely to be viewed as insider trading because investors and everyone else are making trades based on the same information.

But I do find it ironic that you have just talked about people peddling inaccurate or poorly sourced news about Xbox and then have IMMEDIATELY done the same about Playstation. Can you not see there are plenty of not completely accurate stories about Sony too just like this one? It isn’t just Xbox like you seem to suggest, but obviously with 3,200 job losses in one announcement there’s a lot more Xbox news and rumour right now, that’s expected and normal.

Frankly your post reads like deflection borne out of frustration. None of this has anything to do with Sony and yet you’ve tried to deflect it that way. You’ve been posting here a long time, and I often enjoy your posts, but gotta say it as I see it, frankly I expected a little better.

This used to be the norm that devs were contracted for a game, and then moved on. I suspect we are partly moving back to more project based hires outside the core group.

@Mincey0 I didn't understand all your post, which particular parts do you want confirmed with sources. Most of it was confirmed in the leaked emails from the FTC leak.

Agreed i've made that point many times; they aren't representative. Though I wouldn't say they 'manipulated' those numbers, they are factually accurate, but they don't tell the whole story they are DECEPTIVE and don't give a fair impression of how the digital : physical split is when all things are even.

@Questionable_Duck Think that is HIGHLY unlikely to be any number worth even considering.

Would love to see it, not least it might make Sony kow-tow, but I think it's unlikely. If PS5 is 15% physical what is Xbox? 5% - 10% max

As long as they can do disc to digital as rumoured I think that makes more sense for Xbox with play anywhere.

@Jenkinss Gamerscore is pointless nowadays. I could actually play decent games all week and maybe add a few thousand GS, or play absolute trash and add fifty thousand. They made it worthless.

Just played the first few hours and it looks and plays fantastic. Thank you whoever suggested turning the parry window down and game speed up, it makes everything flow MUCH better. No more green orbs floating at you slowly, it’s got a much better rhythm.

This feels like a spreadsheet decision that doesn’t factor in what their creatives may want.

If creatives are forced to work on games and IP they may not want to work on I expect an exodus of veteran staff. Perhaps not right now - with jobs and funding being hard to come by - but as soon as there is any upturn or friends form a studio I think many will jump ship.

Yes... very easily. Before they bought Zenimax and ABK their finances worked, they had exclusives, Game Pass was a success, it was growing slowly and Xbox made a reasonable profit. In fact their profit margins were reportedly much higher than Sony's at the time.

But Microsoft wanted to be bigger, faster and got greedy.

By trying to force growth they then added around 15,000 staff to their wage bill buying Zenimax and ABK (a conservative estimate would make that around another $2 - $2.5 billion USD per year in salaries) HOPING that this would massively increase Game Pass subscribers both from the number of games being added and making things like Starfield exclusive. (Leaked FTC emails confirm this).

But their gamble didn't work. Instead they saw a small increase to subscribers, but not enough to cover that massive wage bill increase.

In trying to grow too fast, too soon, Xbox had transformed themselves from a profitable business into one with too many outgoings and not enough revenue. At that point they had a tough choice, massively reduce staff (including closing several studios) or go multiplatform to earn more revenue. In fact they did a bit of both laying off around 5,000 staff AND going multi-platform to try and balance the books.

But that plan hasn't worked either and now they find themselves going to back to firing even more staff and a big reset.

The trouble was greed. They tried to grow too fast, too soon, aiming for 50 - 100 million Game Pass subscribers when they just don't have the platform for that. PC users seemingly just aren't all that interested in large enough numbers.

I haven't said Game Pass doesn't have ANY problems, it does, but primarily because Microsoft has forced growth of studios and staff to an unsustainable point for their business - multiplatform and 8,000+ layoffs in 4 years is the result. They took a huge gamble and lost.

I just don't see how removing Day 1 games will fix their finances, they have to right size their business and be more efficient, which is exactly what Asha Sharma is doing.

@Fiendish-Beaver But they don't "receive absolutely nothing" from you, that's the point, they have received YEARS of Game Pass from you in advance - albeit at a lower rate than it is today.

That's like saying they don't get anything from you when you pre-order, because they receive nothing from you the day it releases.

The difference is that instead of paying when the game comes out you, and I, have been paying for years. We've been funding during development instead of after it.

And while there are those like us that have smartly stacked for years, we KNOW we are in minority. Part of the FTC leaks showed us exactly what the average Game Pass subscriber paid and it was only a little less than the list price, those of us hunting deals and stacking are the minority.

And for every one of us enthusiasts who play far more games than most and make the most of our subscriptions there will be dozens who barely use it but stay subscribed because of convenience, just as many of us do with TV, or Gym memberships.

@Coletrain I think what isn't working is Microsoft's studio management. They have spent too long and too much money making mostly average games with a handful of better ones.

Even when Game Pass isn't a factor they have poor sales on PlayStation and Steam (as well as Xbox) for most titles. They need better marketing too.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I agree we don't have all the numbers clearly... so what can we rely on? Xbox's ACTIONS.

Xbox do have all the data and are doing a huge reset right now cutting off the parts of the business that are failing. And yet the one thing they haven't said is an issue so far is Day 1 Game Pass games. In fact they doubled down at the Xbox Showcase with even more Day 1 Game Pass games over the next year, that strongly suggests Xbox doesn't think Day 1 games are the problem.

But the plan is the plan until it's not the plan... perhaps tomorrow, or next month, they will change tack... again.

@MinervaX76 Agree subscribers not as critical to Xbox as Netflix etc. but still critical to the Game Pass service itself that's what I was referencing, not wider Xbox.

E.g. Xbox could survive if Game Pass subscribers hit 1 million (Assuming they sell a lot more) but Game Pass wouldn't survive.

Why wouldn't they? They are telling us all sorts of negative things about other parts of the business (losing 64 cents on the dollar, etc.); telling us which parts of Xbox are failing and what they need to do to fix it... and yet they aren't saying this about Game Pass. Why not?

If Day 1 Game Pass is the problem... then fix it, isn't that what this reset is all about? This isn't the time to be quiet and keep up a failing strategy... right?

They had to take COD away because they added it to the subscription and specifically raised prices by the same price as COD and this massively backfired. The trouble is COD is released every year and costs around $700 million to make. It isn't a good fit for Game Pass.

@Balaam_ I believe they were rumoured to be near 50 million.

@Mincey0 I am not saying no one ever unsubscribes after a month, of course some do, but keeping subscriber churn to a minimum is what all subscription services are about.

To Xbox it doesn't matter one bit what any one individual does; it matters what the masses do. Typically you can see a trend for subscriber churn and see patterns over time. It's like watching a shoal of fish move as one, whereas individual fish may be doing different things.

The reason they put the price back down is because raising it massively backfired and they saw massive loss of subscribers. Now they have to build again.