themightyant

Surely it's first half of the year if they are featuring it here, isn't that the usual thing with most of these Dev Direct titles?

EDIT: To answer my own question. Not necessarily. Most titles launch within 6 months but not always. All have been the same calendar year I believe except Avowed which was delayed again.

Very glad Fable is making a showing, this bodes well for it coming out sooner this year. One of my most anticipated titles. Fingers crossed Playground get it right.

Beast of Reincarnation also LOOKED good, but hopefully it plays better than some of the other similar games that have released recently.

Indy DLC for £13.49... maybe. £20 seemed steep.

@BionicDodo I used to think the same, but the reality is the gaming app on PC is called “Xbox”, and the PC subscription is Xbox Game Pass PC. There’s an “Xbox” app to play games on mobile, TVs, tablets etc. “Xbox” is now much wider than console nowadays.

I'd love a Fallout 3 and NV remake. But if you are going to do it, do it properly. That doesn't mean "no jank" these are still Bethesda games, but they can't have bugs in them that were fixed decades ago in fan patches, or horrific performance.

That's pretty cool! I miss cartridges in a lot of ways, there's just something special about a chunky tangible thing you can get your hands on. Even minor annoyances like blowing dust out of the slot feel like nostalgia to me now. Getting old. lol.

@Gabrie Yes! And the Elite series 2 didn’t have a share button as a result.

Agree on it connecting direct to WiFi, it’s one really smart thing about the Stadia controller, skip additional layers of latency, every millisecond counts.

It will be interesting to see if any of their “Sebile” plans remain: “pick up to wake”, Hall effect sticks, haptics, built in battery etc.

Makes zero sense to me to launch new elite controllers / controller revisions just before next gen that SHOULD feature a lot more tech (haptics, gyro etc.) to bring them in line with the completion.

@Runex2121 I guess we all like different things.

FH5 just left me cold, I dropped it after less than 10 hours. While it was undeniably well made it just felt like a reskinned FH4 with a new map. Having put hundreds of hours into the series FH5 felt exceedingly dull and uninspired, made worse by the most severe map marker overload I've ever seen in a game. I saw a lot of similar discourse online from Forza Horizon fans.

It's a shame as I was really looking forward to it and even bought the Game Pass upgrade off the back of strong reviews, which I never ever do. That's my mistake. Personally they will have to do a LOT to convince me about FH6 than just a new setting and shinier graphics.

I have slightly more hope for Gears E-Day as they are going back to Marcus and Dom, and the amount of time the talented team at the Coalition have been at it hopefully means they are freshening up the gameplay. But Judgement, 4 & 5 all lowered my expectations.

Lastly there's a remake of a remaster of Halo. While I am sure i'll enjoy that it's not very exciting.

Obviously I hope they manage to make games I adore, but when it's the 6th, or more, entry in a franchise that hasn't evolved very much, it's probably not that likely.

@Coletrain I agree I think it will drop quite quickly, just not down to £15 this year!

@Sakai Yes, but perhaps I wasn't clear, we don't WHAT that is being spent on within those segments i.e was that increased mobile spending on Robux, Fortnite skins, Genshin Primogems etc. or new games. Similar with console.

@Fiendish-Beaver I actually spent a LOT less last year as I decided to concentrate on the hundreds of games I've bought and not played! (My bank manager had a word in previous years!)

I guess the 3 pillars of Halo, Forza and Gears makes sense in this the 25th anniversary year... but personally those are some of the the least exciting titles Xbox has on the horizon unless Forza and Gears can shake up a tired formula. Fingers crossed both for that and, if true, that the other 2 games are a bit more exciting.

@Balaam_ We're entering year 6 of these consoles, unit sales are expected to be down for both Xbox and Sony, and they are, but for Xbox it's was a massive decline on top of already large declines year on year on year - as we discussed on that post.

But for Sony they are still shifting a LOT of units, 18.5 million in the last financial year, so a drop isn't that relevant. Sadly the reality is it's only really Xbox that is struggling with console sales.

As for general gaming revenue, it's great that it's up by a record amount in the UK since 2020 but without more information it's difficult to know what is the cause of this, Robux? Fornite skins? or spending on new games.

@Fiendish-Beaver You can always use sites like PSprices.com or DekuDeals.com to track historic prices. But for the FF7 Remake Intergrade edition (with DLC) on PS5 is frequently £15.19. See here. You'd probably have to wait a year or two for it to drop to this price on Xbox though.

I haven't played Metaphor YET, but as I understand it (take with a huge pinch of salt) that game is far more about building relationships than FF7, and so there's more dialogue in Metaphor.

@ThatFilbo yes, that’s why I played it now. It had issues but was also much better than i thought. Well worth a quid 😂

@jesse_dylan @K1LLEGAL I'm the same. I don't want to play a demo for a game I know i'm not going to play for a while, because I will replay it and that's boring, but necessary. Stupidly did this with FF XVI

I love collections like this... they make my obsession with this hobby seem almost sane. Great set up though and what a sound wife!

I'm so behind on this series! I've bought so many but need to actually play them. One day.

@Questionable_Duck £1 at CEX!

Physical media my man, it's the future!

The opening movie is wonderful!

@ZeD Thanks for the correction. Still recommend the DLC, it ties it all together nicely. Enjoy.

Little Nightmares was fun. Also enjoyed the story DLC, which I think is included in this version.

@Balaam_ absolutely right, that context matters, for Xbox it’s been significantly down consistently for 3-4 years running. These huge percentage drops in every reported market stack up and mean sales are now only trickling in. That means they have only sold around 35 million units total globally.

Whereas PS5 sold 18.5 million units globally in FY2024 alone; down from 21 million in FY2023; which was up from 19.1 million in FY2022; and 11.5 million in FY2021 when there were stock shortages. These are still all huge numbers in years 3-5 and while sales will be expected to drop again in years 6 and 7 they are predicted to remain high. A shame as the series X itself is great.

@Tasuki the rage bait is strong with this one 🤣

Nope. Trying to not buy much as my backlog is so large + Game Pass. I did buy the Soul Reaver 1&2 remake and Lorelai and the Laser Eyes on PS though.

I did pick up Anthem for £1 though... I actually quite enjoyed it for all it's obvious flaws.

@ZeD Last years Xbox showcase. But assuming you did see it then, I don't blame you for not remembering, it looked nothing like APT only the name. We are also inundated with hundreds and hundreds of announcements that week so some get lost/forgotten.

Hmm... not actually that many I am really excited about yet, at least without knowing more. But then the same was probably true at the start of 2025 and that ended up being a banging year!

There will be many surprises, some we will know little if anything about right now, as well as some disappointments, but I hope it matches or betters 2025, that would be great.

You expect hardware sales to be down going into year 6 of a console cycle... but not by 39% YoY, that's huge... and not on top of previous bad years. Hardware sales have been disappointing for Xbox this generation, especially as the Series X is such a great bit of kit.

But it's also not that surprising considering all their bad business decisions that have shaken many gamers confidence in the brand.

However it's also true that Xbox is now more than just a console, so units sold isn't the only important metric, and Xbox more generally is doing fine as a publisher and Game Pass service provider.

@Gabrie I still love the wii controls for this version most. Aiming manually added to the tension.

Anthem before the servers go down in a week. It’s much better than I expected, some really strong elements let down by some weak ones. But I’m having fun.

Spend less time on live services. Stop putting off long games that are GOTY candidates just because they may be 50-100+ hours: e.g. Elden Ring, Hades, Cyberpunk, FF Rebirth, Persona 5, Yakuza (whole franchise) etc.

@Jenkinss @RBRTMNZ @Lup Interesting. I never played it, but I never saw any hate for it, in truth I never saw very much about it at all. It came, scored mid scores, and went.

Without knowing much I had sort of filed it into that category of decent, but not amazing games, of which many fail to find an audience along with Immortals of Aveum, Atlas Fallen and others. And without anyone championing the game in comments it never even catches a second wave. That’s a tricky box to find yourself in with the sheer volume of games released.

Personally I still wanted to play it, but also can’t keep up with the number of seemingly far better games released. Too many games not enough time.

@TheGameThrifter Yes and No. If you ONLY compare it to their own previous console sales and that of the competition than it is a failure. I agree with that.

But I think it's more complicated than that. If you accept Microsoft has changed the game, and console sales are no longer the only metric that is important to "Xbox" success - PC is also big for them for example - then it's not so clear cut. Xbox's financials seem very healthy for a "failure".

If you only consider the first group I can understand why people might think they are leaving hardware behind, but I think it's more complicated than that, I'm sure there will be another Xbox. Whether there is another in 2035+ who knows.

(BTW Cloud is still in it's infancy, a nice to have bonus but not yet ready to be a service on it's own.)

As for Game Pass, my top 3 games of the year were all included day 1 (E33, Silksong and Blue Prince) though in truth they were all so good I ended up buying them anyway and played the latter 2 on PlayStation as Blue Prince was also Day 1 on PS+.

But that's still amazing curation from Xbox, keep it up, it's been an amazing year of games on the service.

This is very sad. Albert wasn't often front and centre, but whenever he was he came across as a passionate but level headed lead who was at Xbox for years and spear headed a lot of great initiatives. Thank you for all your contributions to gaming.

Thoughts with his family and friends. Cancer sucks.

Blue Prince is a masterpiece of Game Design. There's nothing quite like it, with layers and layers of depth. To say much more would be to spoil it, it's a game you have to experience for yourself.

It won't be for everyone, and if you fall off before you dive down it's labyrinthine rabbit hole it may not ever click for you... but if it does... boy what an experience! Unique.

It's very slightly let down with frustrating RNG in the later stages, slowing progression, and not always being able to do what you want to do but if you get that far you will have already been utterly absorbed and had your money's worth, this is a small blotch against it. If you have a chance try it.

I put $800 BUT it really depends what it is, what it can do and how well it does it. For example if it really is a PC like device that goes under the TV but crucially with all the convenience of a console while unifying ALL the PC stores, Xbox, including backwards compatibility, all in one device... and is as powerful as reported i'd consider paying over $1000. But I suspect it's unlikely to tick ALL those boxes and do it well. Fingers crossed.

I'm playing Anthem right now, it's better than I expected with some really good elements, but the connective tissue holding it together and some of the multiplayer / live service elements drag it down. A shame as some of the core gameplay, lore, and world are great.

Also a shame as I can't see any reason Anthem couldn't have been pretty easily patched to be single player without servers, i'm playing it now solo.

Here’s my 5. Riffing on yours.

1. I agree it’s a big year for Xbox, not just the anniversary, but they need to build momentum going into next-gen potentially in 2027.

2. I’m not convinced GTA6 will arrive this year to be honest. Every game I can think of that gave a specific launch date over a year in advance has slipped. My money is on 2027.

Instead of GTA I’d say they need to give us a reason to own an Xbox. Without exclusives Game Pass needs to overdeliver as that is their main differentiating factor.

3. They need to refresh those tentpole releases. I’m not especially excited about a second remake / remaster of a 25 year old Halo game, though I’m sure I’ll play and enjoy it with Game Pass. Nor is a sixth Forza Horizon that thrilling unless they do something to shake up the same old formula. Hopefully Gears E-Day also feels fresh and not just Gears 6/7. These series feel quite stagnated and need new ideas else those “tentpoles” will look rickety and tired. Hard to do, but needs doing, look to what Nintendo do with Mario and Zelda to keep long established franchises feeling evergreen. Good luck.

Personally I’m far more excited about Fable, Clockwork Revolution and a few others, so hopefully they launch in 2026 and deliver. Fable in particular was announced in 2020 so we really need an update. They also gave a lot of other studios that haven’t released games in a while so I expect some surprises here. How are Arkane getting on with Blade for example? Or State of Decay 3?

4. Meanwhile Xbox Play Anywhere needs to become far more widespread if “everything is an Xbox” is to succeed. Currently it only works for a fraction of the library and you have to check on a game by game basis if the game you are playing, or want to play, is compatible. There’s too many asterisks, too much jumping through hoops, it doesn’t “just work” yet. If/when it does it can be a game changing feature, it’s not yet.

5. Lastly I think Xbox need to rebuild trust with their fanbase, as many of us have been disappointed with the key decisions they have taken recently, especially since buying ABK. It would be great to go through a year with few awful stories whether that’s mass layoffs, game cancellations, studio closures or price hikes, etc. etc. Stick to their plans and be clearer about them. Consistency.

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TLDR: the best thing Xbox can do is stay away from negative press and quietly just deliver top notch games one after another both from first party and especially on Game Pass. If they do that it will be a great 2026, give gamers a reason to specifically own an Xbox snd build momentum for next-gen. Fingers firmly crossed.

@rhyno_888 true, you’re right about the date, but it’s still just a rough estimate, we can’t really take that and subtract PS5 to extrapolate accurate Xbox numbers. (Additionally their “consoles outstanding” is vague, is that sold or shipped?)

Either way they are all in a similar ballpark.whether it’s a max of 36 of 37 million now makes little difference. Everyone is pointing to similar units sold give or take a few million.

@TheGameThrifter It’s only a “failure” if you comparing it directly to Nintendo or Sony’s console numbers. But Xbox is far more than consoles sold nowadays, it’s also PC, cloud etc.they have a different business model now, so I don’t read too much into that one number other than noting it’s a sharp decline of consoles sold this gen.

@Markatron84 I agree with all of your statement except I think some WON'T buy the next Xbox as they may be priced out if reports and not-so-cryptic statements from the president of Xbox are to be believed.

@rhyno_888 I said it was likely VG charts was in the right ballpark “within the 32-36 million range” and most of those figures correlate with that. Only Welfares’ is higher but he’s the upper limit and as you said may be based on shipped not sold.

FYI the Take Two report is from just over a month ago, November 2025, so no Xbox certainly will not have sold another 2 million units in that time! But also the 107 number is just an estimate using an “approximately equal” “~” symbol I wouldn’t read too much into it.

It’s the right path to stay on for now, and has a lot of potential for the future, however it’s half baked at the moment. Only a small amount of new games are Xbox Play Anywhere making many of those devices a poor Xbox, you have to check on a game by game basis if a game is compatible, you can’t just pick up your phone/tablet/other device and KNOW it will work. Sadly it’s doesn’t work that way yet.

Hopefully from next gen they will mandate that EVERY game going forward will be playable on your Xbox console but also Play Anywhere & Cloud, then it will be great. Until then it doesn’t “just work” quite yet.

Happy new year everyone. 2025 ended up being a banger year for great games. Bring on 2026.

Lots of good games! Glad Blue Prince made the list that is an all timer in terms of genius game design.

@darylb24 very interesting, both the timings and the ps5 day/dates, I guess time will tell.

But while I absolutely want them to take all the time they need to make great games this would also be personally disappointing as Fable and Clockwork Revolution are my most anticipated upcoming Xbox titles now that Perfect Dark has been cancelled, probably alongside Blade and then Elder Scrolls 6 further away. I was expecting the first two in 2026, especially Fable.

Personally I’m currently not THAT excited about FH6 or Gears E-Day unless they shake up the tired formulas; and Halo is just a remake of a game I’ve played so many times already, hence it’s less exciting. But that can all change with good showings in a showcase, and I’m sure I’ll play them all on Game Pass regardless. Hopefully they will all be good games.

@dskatter I find this kinda hilarious, it’s not only that Microsoft didn’t consider anyone playing beyond 2025 it’s that they actively put a limit in at all. It’s actually MORE work to do this and program an arbitrary restriction than not have one at all. Bizarre decision for some reason.

@Weebleman you too dude. Merry Christmas and happy new year. Hope all is well with you and yours, you got games under the tree and some time to play them!

That's a little off the wall, a streamer led showcase, but no bad thing to have new games highlighted. But ive never heard of any of them except Luke Stephens who I find irritating.

As so often nowadays, waiting to play is often the best option!