themightyant

@Gemini53 I think as soon as you try and force people or businesses to do something they don't want to do you are going to get the lowest effort and cheapest option most of the time. It's just normal human behaviour and not limited to the gaming industry at all.

That doesn't mean I excuse it or want this to happen, I don't, but human behaviour is quite predictable most of the time.

@Tasuki Sadly 9 of the top 10 best selling games on Xbox in the USA last year were all live services, the only one that isn’t is Borderlands 4. This list also doesn’t include successful F2P games like Where Winds Meet or paid live services like Arc Raiders that just missed the list. Until this changes I wouldn’t expect much to change sadly.

On Playstation it’s no better, also 9 of 10, with Yotei being the only non-live service game.

@Gemini53 it’s one simple example that could easily be worded on the box. Another would be to have the most rudimentary computer AI that would make the game “playable” offline versus bots but wouldn’t actually be fun to play or feel the same as playing online. I suspect if it’s made law we will see things like this to skirt around it very easily.

@Jenkinss @BAMozzy If it did become law (I’m highly sceptical) I suspect devs / studios will find a simple way around this e.g. supply an offline mode that basically just allows you to walk around the map. The game would still technically be “playable” offline it just wouldn’t be playable in a way we recognise. Perhaps a few might actually properly plan for afterlife support, but I doubt many would.

@RBRTMNZ Personally disagree, I thought those were far stronger games overall, but we all like different things. Still looking forward to PoL2 and hope it can fix some of my issues with the first game (e.g. too easy, no challenge, didn't have to think). It LOOKS great, hoping it PLAYS great too.

CyberPunk will grab headlines but on Ultimate the only one that interests me is Planet of Lana 2.

@Gemini53 100% agree. Talk is cheap. And love the Thrones quote, it's actions that really matter in the LONG run.

But in the short term I do think Xbox need to reassure the community because many in the community are rattled. E.g. Xbox commentator Destin Legarie put up a poll on his YouTube and over 50% thought "Xbox are done" from 8k votes. You have to try and stop the rot first.

But like you I look forward to seeing what they actually do, though I accept most of this will take time. Much of it years, a business like Xbox is like an oil tanker and can't change course quickly.

@Globo One thing is for certain. You don't increase the console userbase by introducing a $1000+ console, which seems like their current plan. Yet I look forward to seeing how they try this. Perhaps they will keep Series X (and/or S) also running as lower cost options.

I'll go out on a limb and say I actually think the "everything is an Xbox" strategy could work, given time, but like their "tv, tv, tv" focus or pushing "all digital" it was over a decade too early. Now xbox is mostly digital and everything is being made into tv series.

Once Xcloud is as good as GeForce Now such that even pedants like John from Digital Foundry can hardly tell the difference; once it is every game on the platform and "it just works" on virtually any device, only then it might have a chance, but right now it's half cocked.

I'm just encouraged by this apparent focus on console... feels like it's been in the background for years now.

@FraserG On paper I agree. But I wonder how they will actually go about that if we aren't getting platform exclusives. What will ACTUALLY change to make them focus on console more?

This is just reiterating what she has already said. But I think it's often more telling what they DON'T say and I don't think Asha Sharma has mentioned Game Pass once. I wonder what their plans are for it.

@Fiendish-Beaver Agreed, I pointed this out the other day too. Multiplatform makes too much business sense for Microsoft now they are so many studios. But I still think there might be SOME platform exclusives, timed or otherwise.

That isn't a 'tease'. It's either a confirmation or a very bad joke.

(Don't play with my emotions!)

@Gemini53 I think if you were to ask a hundred gamers here to vote free of influence the VAST majority would call Starfield an RPG. It's fine if you don't think it is, but it IS subjective, there's nothing objective about opinions.

@Gemini53 FWIW I did try Morrowind again not that long ago, and whilst there were some good things there was also a LOT of bad things, it's aged really poorly imo. That doesn't mean it wasn't great when it came out almost 25 years ago, but time hasn't been kind.

As for Starfield, as I said it's subjective, if you don't think it is i'm not going to argue.

@Gemini53 Starfield is an RPG to me. While this term isn't well defined I think there are a lot of things that make it an RPG e.g.

• Take on a role in a fictional world you can explore
• Choice driven story based game
• Character creation
• Character progression mechanics (skill trees, levels, stats)
• A world to explore with NPCs and companions
• Build variety
• Main quests and side quests

Whether it's a good one is of course subjective, but I enjoyed this part of the game more FAR than the exploration.

Do you do even the most basic amount of research before publishing nonsense? This is so easy to disprove. The most recent 2 new games published by PlayStation Studios scored 65 and 62 on Metacritic. God of War Sons of Sparta & Lost Soul Aside. Meanwhile the last 5 new Xbox games with scores have not got less than a 77 - Avowed, South of Midnight, Ninja Gaiden 4, The Outer Worlds 2.

Why do you think Sony doesn't get criticism when it's due? I guess you only see what you want to see.

@Gemini53 While I generally agree, I also think it depends what you like. If exploration isn't important to you in BGS games then you'll probably enjoy Starfield more than we did. For me it had some good moments, and is still worth a play, but ultimately was also disappointing.

@InheritNegative I agree there was too much negativity around this game online - I think mostly caused by people being disappointed it didn't match up to the overall experience of BGS earlier games.

But you can't honestly call it "remarkably stable at launch" it was buggy as all hell. Personally I had everything from frequent crashes, to headless companions and broken quest lines that required loading an earlier save. It may have appeared less buggy than some BGS games but that is the lowest of bars.

@GamingGod No it's not linear, but in Skyrim, Oblivion and Fallout there was a purpose to exploration, there was always something interesting over the next horizon, exploration was fantastic.

However in Starfield despite having 1000+ planets to explore 99.9% of it is powered by weak procedural generation, they are often lifeless and uninteresting, and when you do find life it's usually one of about 10-15 different things that get boring quick. It's a shame as I was hoping exploring space would be amazing. It just isn't, it's one of the weakest aspects of the game and kills immersion.

@GamingGod Always going to be subjective.

I'd say it depends what you love about Bethesda games. If it's exploration then Starfield REALLY fails at that. But if you love the other elements then it's still a good game, albeit with plenty of issues.

FWIW I put in over 100+ hours and would recommend it at the right price as long as exploration isn't your goal.

@Fiendish-Beaver Thanks, fixed.

(they are both unimaginably large numbers)

I can see this both ways. In a perfect world perhaps you would keep Halo exclusive to Xbox but I don't think Microsoft makes enough sales to justify this, in part due to Game Pass.

And you have to look at the current context of Microsoft and Xbox as a business.

• Xbox has posted declining hardware revenues for 3 years
• Microsoft has lost over 25% of it's value in the last 5 months (from almost $4 trillion USD to $2.9 trillion)

Whereas over 5 million+ Forza Horizon 5 sales on PS5 will be a very compelling argument for Microsoft right now, almost 100 million potential new customers, even if that may end up being short sighted.

That said making it exclusive would send a HUGE message.

Don't put much stock in Metacritic USER ratings which often flip flop worse than a pair of Havianas, but it is getting a lot of love.

I like Seamus as he always says what he thinks which is rare in this day and age. But he also comes across as the jaded ranty uniformed uncle in that whole interview. Peter Moore is much kinder just calling his thoughts "misguided".

@Fiendish-Beaver I’m very split at THIS moment on Returnal, I haven’t fully formed my view yet, it’s still too raw. So consider this a thoughts in progress. But I love parts of it. It’s both one of the greatest games I’ve played this gen and one of the most frustrating. It revels a bit too much in your misery. I don’t yet know how that balances out yet.

I’m not surprised that only 1 in 9 (11%) of gamers finished it on PS5 according to the trophies. It’s not even that it’s THAT hard, it isn’t 99% of the time, it’s just overly punishing that 1% when you hit a really hard difficulty spike, or lapse for a moment and lose an hour or more’s progress in seconds. Especially tough when this keeps happening repeatedly. It’s a brutally brilliant test of willpower to keep going.

Need to resolve how I feel about it overall, but I hope Saros fixes the worst elements of it, because at its best it’s incredible.

Just finished Returnal. At it's best it's one of the best games i've played this generation. At it's worst it's one of the most soul destroying games i've ever played. Hopefully Saros can fix some of the worst parts and retain the magic, because when it's good it's unbelievably great.

Nice!. I'd love to see custom sorting for my wishlist and make it sticky so for example put the currently discounted games first. Would also be good to not notify me if a Game Pass game is just 10% off.

Mixed. I am excited for a fresh start, but it feels like an unrelenting uphill battle too. I am excited to see what could change for the better in terms of strategy, but it's not going to happen overnight, and I am also worried about what might change for the worse too.

EDIT: I'm also worried that their plans for the next Xbox, if the leaked specs are true, will be the most affected by price increases for RAM, SSD, GPU etc. raising an already expensive looking system even further outside most players budgets, and further from the competition.

I never actually got around to Wolfenstein 2. I didn't love the The Old Blood. Need to make time for it.

Fingers firmly crossed for the future. Only time will tell.
And thanks Phil for the memories!

I look forward to trying 1440p streaming on Console. I thought this had already rolled out and was disappointed when I thought I tried it. xCloud is fine for smaller screens but awful on my huge TV, noticeably the worst of the streaming services i've tried on TV. Hopefully this improves that.

Wake me up when they have actual actions to discuss, words are usually empty in business. As they also said:

"the plan is the plan until it's not the plan".

Sounds great! Looking forward to playing it... but not for a while, haven't played Village yet though I bought it.

@Coletrain She is saying some of the right things, but talk is cheap, and she is also hedging her bets on a lot of these statements. Which is fair enough, I don't expect her to have all the answers yet.

I will be waiting to see what ACTIONS she takes, words mean little. It won't be overnight but by the end of the year we should start to have a much better idea of what direction she wants to take Xbox. Fingers firmly crossed it's one we like!

@Globo I think it's less about not wanting other players to play games it's more that we want Xbox to thrive and to do so it feels like exclusives are necessary. To give an example I never would have bought a Switch 2 if all Nintendo's games were on Xbox or PS5, I only bought it FOR the exclusives.

You have to give players a reason to want to buy an Xbox over other systems and I think games are always going to be the #1 reason.

Like a lot of her statements she's covered all bases and it will be up to interpretation what she ultimately means. Though it's clear that she may not know what the plan is yet, and it's subject to change.

But two other quotes from the same interview that to me made me think multi-platform is more likely were:

"We're going to keep meeting players where they are..."

"We want to invest in reducing the artificial divide between different types of devices that they want to use with us. I think that's going to mean a lot more investment in breaking down the barriers, in helping developers build once and show up across different hardware experiences."

Personally I think Xbox has enough studios to BOTH be a top multi platform publisher AND have some exclusives. Only time will tell.

@Cikajovazmaj It can be seen that way... or similar to PS+, you could argue that to keep access to all those games you need to keep subscribing to Game Pass else you lose a lot of the games you added to your library.

@Globo I agree it was a problem with the cost of the Cell processor, and then the difficulty of devs using it. But my point was Sony didn't WANT PS3 to release over a year after X360 but it was the Cell processor being delayed that delayed the PS3. That definitely helped X360 get a huge head start, they won't want that again.

That said things are different now. For starters we won't have the same technological jump as we did then. (I've said this before but I had a PS2 and was saving for PS3 but then spent all that PS3 money on an X360 the very day after I saw Gears of War at a friends house.) We aren't going to get that sort of jump again.

Additionally most players have already chosen their platforms, they have libraries and backwards compatibility, friends and achievements etc., they aren't as likely to jump between them now. I still don't think Sony will want to give Microsoft a large head start.

@abe_hikura @Globo I can see Sony perhaps releasing a little later, maybe even a year, but I don't see a 2 year gap like you said. Though my money would be on same period launch.

PS3 is something Sony will never want to repeat again, it almost bankrupted the whole company, not a good example to base on.

@Globo I think Sony will do whatever Microsoft does, within reason. I don't see a world where Xbox puts out a new console a few years before Sony, despite reports saying they are all "considering" delaying. Of course they are all considering it, doesn't mean they will do it.

I'm quite excited about the promise of the new Xbox personally. I like the idea of a high end device that would be the best place to play console games, with no mid-gen refresh needed, but also plays all my PC library with a more console like experience. + Game Pass

Obviously expectation is not reality, so we don't know if that is what they are doing, but most signs seem to support this. If this isn't what they are doing they need to make that clear ASAP.

That said, while I am personally interested in that idea making an expensive device will make it niche and further reduce Xbox's market share which has other implications. e.g. third party games.

Really interesting and diverse range of opinions, which only highlights the difficulty for Xbox leadership going forward, who do you listen to when everyone wants different things. You can't please us all.

@Tasuki which customers do you listen to? The noisy vocal ones online who say they only want single player games, or the masses that play sports, COD and live services? It’s not easy to balance this. Whose voices do you concentrate on? Can’t really please em all.

@madmaxrules I think if all you are doing is delaying games for 12 months to other platforms (timed exclusives) most players will just wait for the more polished patched version 12 months later. I don’t think it will change anything much in terms of console sales / market share. And it will probably just increase the meme of “thanks for beta testing it for us”.

1. Bring back SOME full exclusives and more timed exclusives when it makes sense. They have enough studios to be both the #1 publisher AND have a few exclusives. Accept you might make a loss on some of these, it’s a long term risk/investment. important they can’t afford to make them all exclusive yet, not enough Xbox / PC day 1 payers, so they have to bide their time and try and increase the user base.

2. focus on the quality of releases over the quantity of releases. This goes across the board, too many 7/8 out of 10s not enough 9/10 GOTY candidates. Let the developers have the extra time needed. Hopefully these are the exclusives, give people a reason to own an Xbox over a PS5.

3. Make COD great again! Focus on making a great campaign. If that means only releasing a campaign every 2/3 years so be it. It’s currently on the slide.

4. Create an ad-supported Game Pass / Cloud tier to try and increase the user base. This feeds back into point 1, if they ever hit a critical mass of players they could consider making more games full exclusive.

5. be open and honest with the community. decide now if they are going to double down on XboxPC with all storefronts and make it clear what we should expect asap. Too much rumourmongering. Generally be better with comms.

6. Try and go 6 months without stepping on rakes! Stop endlessly making anti-consumer decisions.

7. (Cheeky) buy Bluepoint! If, and only if, they would be happy to make remaster / remakes of your library.

@FraserG THIS! First 8 or so years it was hard to fault and I'll always be grateful for all these things and many more. I'd also add getting their studios in line so that games now release at a good cadence... finally! Even if it should have been sooner.

But I think it all started to unravel a bit towards the end. The first time I really had issue was during the XSX launch where there were almost no Xbox games for the first year, that seemed like a mammoth blunder when they had a great console.

But the time is right for new blood and I look forward with anticipation to see where this leads. Fingers crossed!

Looking forward to seeing and judging her actions not her words.

@FraserG Good luck, not easy when news like this drops, suddenly. Appreciate all the hard work.

BUT please talk to gamers about what they want for the future of Xbox

@Martsmall Absolutely agree. @FraserG this would likely be a good engagement piece right? What do we want for the future of Xbox?

Sorry not buying it. As I said yesterday her Townscaper was 1000GS in 30 minutes, the ONLY way to do that is by following an achievement guide, it doesn't happen through natural play, is that what she did? If so why?

But lets take a step back. None of this really matters that much, I don't care about if she games at all as long as she's good at her job. That's the main bottom line. But I do care about honesty and this doesn't come across as honest imo. Hopefully her policies are much better, i'm rooting for that and look forward to hearing them.

@TrollOfWar Perhaps IGN did have a story ready that rushed them from announcing Phil's departure on Friday, not Monday, perhaps.

But why does the Verge suddenly have an in depth article apparently sourcing over a dozen people (without actually going into detail) ready to go at exactly the right time to push Sarah Bond under the bus? All feels very cloak and dagger like someone is cleaning house!

It's not like we've ever had any whiff of this news before and then suddenly, most conveniently as she departs, it's suddenly all Sarah Bond's fault and a horrible person to work with. Not suspicious at all. Nope. /s

That said I don't really care about any of this. It's all a distraction. I only really care to see what Xbox is going to do going forward. Only time will tell. But as we were discussing yesterday TRUST is at an all time low for the brand and I don't think they are doing a very good job in the first couple of days of restoring that. A lot of this all feels manufactured AF.

@TrollOfWar They've certainly said plenty of things to try and appease the most vocal Xbox fans disappointed in the recent direction the brand has gone.

But talk is cheap, it's actions that matter, I will be interested to see what ACTUAL action she takes give time. But I do expect a strategy shift because otherwise you don't shake up the hierarchy like this. Only time will tell if it works out well for Xbox.