themightyant

@Balaam_ You keep asking for this despite the fact there are very OBVIOUS reasons why they don't allow you to completely delete games from your history.

What is the point of a 100% completion rate if you can just delete games you didn't finish? It makes it entirely worthless.

Plus there are several other issues with it.

@HonestHick It massively complicates things. What if you did it by accident, how do you reverse it? Can you? What if you suddenly decide you do want to collect those achievement, do you have to start again?

It also opens it up to more cheating, hacked accounts and fake timestamps etc. with more to cover.

Instead they have allowed you to hide games you don't want from your profile so you don't have to see them. That should be enough.

@Romans12 You missed GTA: Vice City in 2002

@ZeD Also means you can't share the game with your family - spouse, siblings, nephews etc. unless they are on your device. It sucks.

Seems very sensible right now. Though I think by the time we get there "Early 2027" is going to be stacked too.

Hopefully the game will be more polished this time as a result, unlike the last game at launch.

Such a ***** decision. Makes me want to pirate the game if they are going to be so anti-consumer. Don't want to support this at all.

Everyone was worried about GTA6 pricing but this, which other publishers will likely now copy, is just awful.

@kmtrain83 Feel the same. It's a massive two fingers to fans.

No disc in the box... ***** off. Honestly that anti-consumer decision makes me want to just pirate the game.

@shiny-enzo Same looks quite cool, and probably some fun to be had, but not at full price for me either. Deep sale or Game Pass for me.

Not sure if I knew, or forgot, Goldman is coming to Game Pass. That’s amazing, been hyped for this since first reveal

Isn't the Magnus chip going to be used for more than just the XBOX?

@FarmDog08 I hope not! It should have been designed SPECIFICALLY with gaming in mind and optimised for that, otherwise they will be losing gaming performance relative to price.

@fatpunkslim Agree that performance‑to‑price ratio is important, though total cost is very important too as it will just price most people out. If it's £1000+ for example don't expect it to sell in large numbers even if the performance to price ratio is good v PC.

However, from what I understand, Xbox has already said they want to offer affordable solutions, and several manufacturers will be able to release cheaper versions

It's a nice goal, but I don't really understand HOW they can achieve this. This will just be adding another company wanting a cut AND they can't subsidise it unlike a platform holder.

Building a Steam Machine equivalent PC is around £750, how are other manufacturers going to come in well below that on a much higher spec machine? I don't see it. It will be more like ROG Ally X pricing. Expensive.

Gotta say I agree with Jez Corden. Why delay it? I don't think the hardware crisis is miraculously going to be resolved in the next few years, this is just what it costs for the foreseeable future.

If you delay you will end up doing the same as Steam Machine and releasing too late for the specs, although not as severely. Steam Machine is 5 years too late for it's performance, and too expensive.

Assuming prices won't come down the only reason I can see to delay is to give people some time to save.

Also agree with @Coletrain that Helix will look much better value vs the Steam Machine, even if it costs more.

@ZeD Also locked in at £64.99 for PS+ Premium, because we had PS Now, it's nice to see long time subscribers supported like this. I also use Cloud streaming on Portal a lot, so that would be hard to drop.

But in terms of games alone Game Pass is the clear winner for me.

As for MS Rewards I don't get anything like £14 a month back unless I am spending on the Xbox store, which I don't do much as I have a PS5 Pro so most of my money is spent there. I get around 9,000 - 10,000 points, around £8, which is better than nothing. I stacked Game Pass for 3 years via those Rewards and the occasional good conversion like EA Play cards so i'm effectively on a much lower rate here too. This makes having both affordable.

@StonyKL @J_Mo_Money According to the fan managed spreadsheets Game Pass Ultimate has 763 games, whereas PS+ Premium has 989 games. These should be pretty accurate numbers, they are constantly updated but may have missed one or two.

What I would say as someone that subscribes to both is that they both offer good value to me as an enthusiast, but if I had to keep just one it would be Game Pass as it has more games I am interested in, mostly Day 1 indies. Thankfully I pay FAR less than the listed prices so don't have to choose yet.

@Millionski I don’t think it’s doomed, it will just start slow until prices come down, which means an even longer cross gen period.

But one thing about the state of economics is that it is dividing people into two groups “haves” and “have nots” - there are still a large number of people with a disposable income, but also an increasing number without. That gap is getting wider. But it means high end products still sell - e.g. see Apple AirPods or all varieties up to Pro etc. - next gen consoles, even if £900+ will still sell, just more slowly if the tech is compelling.

I like Thomas Mahler, he speaks from his heart, but sometimes he is wide of the mark, or hyperbolic. I completely disagree with him here.

Developers DO show up for Game Pass and Xbox’s curation is excellent. Look at last year everything from Expedition 33, to Silksong, to Blue Prince was on there - all 3 potential GOTY contenders, and there were hundreds of third party games on top of Xbox's own.

It’s rare that I see any game on the service that doesn’t belong there. Of course that doesn’t mean every game is for you, some are for families, kids, partners, or in genres you don’t like, but they are usually at least good within each category, often excellent, and when they aren’t there’s usually something interesting about them that makes them a worthwhile inclusion.

The trouble Game Pass has is they haven’t sold enough Xboxes and the PC offering doesn’t seem to resonate. If they had sold 80 to 100 million Xboxes they would have had a lot more subscribers and in turn could add even more to the service. A few system selling exclusive games would have helped too.

For now I assume it's just to cover all of ROG Xbox Ally, ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally X20 Anniversary Edition... which is a bit of a mouthful. Xbox Handheld is much easier.

But in future it could mean additional devices.

@Bob_Tempura Exactly. It doesn’t make sense. If there’s no enhancements then why are they £40 with no DLC? and if there are enhancements why aren’t these coming to Xbox? Their communication on this has been awful. It shouldn’t be this hard.

$40 is far too much for a basic port with reportedly no enhancements. I’d expect to pay that for a proper remaster. Feels like a cash grab. And not including the DLC is just stingy.

Probably 30fps. And judging on Rockstars previous games probably not a very stable one when things get busy.

Series X should run marginally better than base PS5, but as always this gen you will probably need side by side footage to notice. Meanwhile Series S could be a pretty low base res.

Hoping for at least a 40fps version on PS5 Pro. While @carlos82 @Balaam_ and others are right that it may be CPU bound in many places I slightly disagree that Pro has no advantage in those circumstances. The CPU runs 10% faster than base PS5, but more importantly with PSSR2 they could run at a lower base resolution, saving some CPU cycles, while also having a better final image resolve due to ML upscaling. That might be enough to fit in a 25ms game budget instead of a 33ms one.

Most cynically I wonder if R* would even bother to try a 40fps or 60fps mode simply because they willl want to resell us the game, or an upgrade, on Helix/PC/PS6.

That all said it’s their own custom engine might they surprise us? The industry has moved on, how would people react to a shaky frame rate or no 60fps option, would they get a pass because it’s so ambitious and GTA6?

Look forward to finding out.

I really don't care, especially not for saving £75+ on Game Pass.

I haven't played the last 3 or 4 campaigns, maybe more.

Cool title screen, but we really didn't need 6 hours of it.

Looking forward to giving this a go in due course.

@Millionski agreed on the 7” to 8” screen. It sounds such a small change but it's actually around 30% larger in terms of screen area, that makes a large difference. I find at arms length it can mean the difference between text (designed for a larger TV screen) being easily readable or not. And more generally it’s just a much better experience to see the details the devs put into modern games. I’ve noticed exactly this on other devices.

@TheGameThrifter have you heard of Eurogamer or Game Informer perhaps?

Hmm. Not for me I think, based on the trailers. But that's OK more than enough to play.

@CallMeDuraSouka Dude! I didn't think of the implications of why it's suddenly shown up now. But it is a bit off, we don't usually get long videos of "early alpha" gameplay from Xbox.

It could just be coincidence or it could be that Microsoft want to distract from the closures narrative and want to show their games. That would be understandable.

I hope it isn't as you suggest. Bleak.

It's been 8 years since State of Decay 2, honestly I thought they would be further along than "early alpha". It looks pretty janky and probably not for me. I liked the first, but fell off the second quite quickly. Will wait for reviews, or try it on GP.

What do people think on price?

I still think it might be £70 but there will be a lot of higher priced FOMO editions perhaps including early access to GTA6 Online + shark card credit starting from £120 and more.

But really they can charge almost anything, it will sell, but it will sell better at £70

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!! lol

I can't see that happening, has to be a communication issue. Right?

Would be a massive self own if they didn't launch on Xbox, and just at the wrong time, Xbox can do without more negative PR right now.

MS already promised 75+ day 1 games this year.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I was thinking about that number the other day. It's one of the few guarantees we are meant to have with Game Pass, though there is no stipulation on what these games have to be, they could in theory just add 75 tiny ID@XBox games day 1 and cover that requirement... not that I think they will, but it is interesting.

Additionally that number was originally touted when the prices were massively increased 9 months ago, the price has since come down, do Microsoft still have to legally uphold this? I believe they said nothing else is changing except COD but legally I don't know if they could squirm out of it if they had to.

Again not that I think they want to - frankly they could do without more bad PR and rake stepping - but again thought it was interesting.

Regardless, if my count is correct, they are well on track having launched 40 Day 1 games so far and we are in month 6. At least 35 still to go!

Agreed. If they are going to shut Game Pass down the first step would be to limit stacking. I have 3 years stacked to 2029 at a much lower rate, mostly redeemed through free Microsoft Rewards.

I agree conversion has been worse recently but there's still good deals to be found. e.g. I topped Game Pass Ultimate back up for £7.70 a month via cheap EA Play conversion. Sites like hotukdeals are useful for this, though this one was on Eurogamer.

The trouble Xbox has is if they cancelled Game Pass, or significantly downgraded the service, they would owe refunds pro-rata based on the actual subscription cost, not what we paid - which they don't know as these are all digital codes. That could equate to billions in losses, that's not going to help them become more profitable! That said IF Game Pass is as unsustainable as some say that might still be the better option.

To be clear I don't think it is unsustainable, and so far based on Asha's actions they seem to want it to continue, in which case neither do they. (Actions like reducing Game Pass pricing, talking about increasing subs, and continuing every Xbox game coming Day 1). But then "the plan is the plan, until it's not the plan..." and all that! We will wait, and we will see.

Only time will tell. I look forward to finding out.

Oh my! That looks incredible. The Coalition finally making the most of what Unreal Engine 5 can do. Nanite, Lumen, Megalights and all running on XSX at 60fps. Brilliant.

@TheGameThrifter I agree with a lot of your second post. I am also excited about many of those points. But I am also sceptical because Asha is great at PR and I don’t really care about words. I care about ACTIONS. I will judge her on those over time.

Quoting game dev times also isn’t very useful. The same game could take a team of 20 around. 10 years or a team of 500 maybe a year or two, which is more efficient? (Scale often wastes time) Until we see P&L sheets for each studio - adjusted for Game Pass “engagement” - then we don’t really know how any of these games has done.

But as I said I agree with many of your points. At the end of the day I just want Xbox to be a success, so I hope she succeeds, but we’ve had so much BS, so much flip-flopping for years that I can’t take what they say at face value anymore.

Xbox is like the boy who cried wolf.

Oh really? So this article directly quoting The Coalition is fake?

@Millionski I’m also interested in what happens to Game Pass. I still think the numbers can work, but not when they bought ABK. Too many mouths to feed.

I suspect a large part of the XBOX RESET will be making the numbers work. And if they don’t Game Pass will slowly be gutted or shuttered.

In fact we will know if Xbox still believes the model is sustainable by their actions. So watch this space!

@Boogaloo_Jenkins The reality is you don't uauslly have ALL developers for the whole time. Usually it's a skeleton crew during pre-production and early phases, and at certain points certain jobs will be done. So if it's 17 devs it likely isn't 17 x 25k.

But I do understand the finances are always worrying and it seems this probably didn't perform.

Though as I said elsewhere, the decision is so soon after the game released that it's highly possible the decision was made before the release - investment is down everywhere - and only a massive hit might have saved them, perhaps not even that.

@NishimaruX (before I go) Haven't played Cyberpunk yet, really struggle to start 100+ hour games (at least how I play them) it's top of the list, along with Elden Ring as soon as I make some time, especially with work... and stop commenting here so much!

Have a good evening.

@MinervaX76 I agree it's much more nuanced, and agree with many of your points but disagree with "Xbox would have likely been considered insolvent by Christmas 2025". The financials I saw that Microsoft released don't seem to support that.

But Microsoft are irritatingly cagey about all their financial data and almost never show the same metrics quarter to quarter or year on year so you can't track how they are doing, we are limited the few scraps they are willing to share with to show us. (Incidentally I made a ranty post about this a few days ago here, I won't repeat it all)

I agree some of this is of their making, and some is circumstantial - wars, cost of living crisis, AI etc. etc. are outside their control. But as a company you can position yourself to deal with downs far better, and by buying ABK they exposed themselves. They made a huge gamble that it would lead to millions of Game Pass subscribers, that was the math they were planning around (we've seen the leaked emails from ABK and targeting 100 million subs) instead we are seeing the result of what happens when that gamble doesn't pay off - mass layoffs.

I'd love to stay and debate gaming all night (I REALLY would!) but I have to go munch some dinner and get to my mate's football party. Later.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I don't think they will close them, there's too much talent there to do that. But they do need to restructure them.

I'd also love to see Bungie work on a single player FPS but do they want to? If staff aren't happy they will leave, and not put in 110%. It isn't just up to Sony or they will lose much of their staff.

@AI-Generation I honestly don't know what Sony will do with Bungie, it was a bad buy, we all said it at the time. Felt like desperation as Xbox was signing up all the FPS studios (id, Activision, Machine Games etc.)

CERTAINLY wasn't worth what they paid for them, much like ABK. A silly moment in gaming history where due to gaming's surge during COVID investment was at an all time high and execs were just spending willy nilly. Madness.

@NishimaruX I got ripped apart here for being against the ABK deal. Got called a Sony fanboy and all sorts of other nonsense simply because I was against mass consolidation.

Maybe because I am a little bit older, but these things rarely end well and lead to a lot of job losses. As the quote @Jenkinss put at the top of the thread from a leaked Xbox email to Phil Spencer

I’m just super worried about the moat you’ve built, that the winds will change and we have a bloodbath a few years down the road.

That was lamentably prophetic. Sad times.

@AI-Generation Sadly that's the truth, there will be more job cuts just about everywhere.

But the reality is PlayStation isn't in the same weak financial position as Xbox right now, where the CEO of Microsoft is coming out and publicly stating it can't go on like this, that things have to change and they have to find a way to make it profitable. The cuts here will sadly be far worse.

@McKeownPlayz I honestly don't know if they recognise what they have done, it's far easier to attribute blame. But I am certain they realise how bad the situation is and bought Asha in specifically to shake things up and try and turn it around, giving her far more of a wide remit than Spencer had at the end.

It's a smart move, and she's doing a solid job so far, but the real challenge is still to come. I'd love to see her turn it around, but the odds are against her, and I am worried about what Xbox will be when it's all done. Fingers firmly crossed.

@Elbow I don't think it's so black and white. Until they bought ABK Xbox were making decent profit margins (around 12%) and were heading in the right direction. But Satya and Amy Hood spearheaded the ABK acquisition, and with it around 12,500 more staff that completely upset that balance.

They were hoping Game Pass subscribers would go through the roof, but they didn't, instead they effectively lost money with COD on Game Pass and ABK had little else to add to the service Day 1. Since then it's mostly been a ***** show.

I would put more at the feet of Nadella and Hood than Spencer, though of course he is in part to blame.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

I mean it's ALREADY been a bloodbath. Xbox have already had 5 major rounds of layoffs in the last few years with over 4,000 confirmed job losses, and that doesn't include several where no official figure was given. In reality it's many more. Data: here

Painful to listen to. (FYI most of the video is history, the recent bit is at the end) Jason doesn't report on things without speaking to and verifying with multiple sources, so I believe him.

@NishimaruX Definitely not through lack of trying here either! I usually play around 30-50 games a year depending on their size. Elden Ring and Cyberpunk are about the top of my list to play, but I struggle to start large games simply because I know I might be playing them for a month or two, it's so much of an opportunity cost when I could play 5-10 other games. I just wish I had more time.

As for Game Pass, I agree they may be reluctant to lose more of their audience... but if the Game Pass numbers REALLY don't work out for them then surely it has to go, or be massively restructured regardless and the XBOX RESET is surely the time to do it. I will be watching closely to see what they do here.

Personally I think Game Pass is fine, it's just a different business model, it's certainly not "FREE GAMES" as people like to point out when Game Pass Ultimate costs $275.88 a year, or almost $2,000 over a 7 year console generation.

Anyway gotta run, too much games chatter, not enough work!

@somnambulance I agree. I am concerned with that. Only time will tell what games Xbox greenlights under Sharma, what studios they support etc. But for my tastes they seem to be considering closing many of the ones I play. Sad times.

On a separate but related note. I have been thinking about how Asha has come in, has looked at all the data and is deciding what works, what doesn't and is seemingly cutting off those she thinks doesn't to streamline the business.

What I find interesting about this is Game Pass. People are always saying the finances of Game Pass don't work or similar. However so far they haven't made any changes to Game Pass except to lower the price. That suggests to me it's something that does work for her. It will be interesting to see if they change anything fundamental about Game Pass - other than perhaps a select your own tier - and if they don't I think it's pretty clear the model works for them, otherwise NOW would be the perfect time to say this isn't working. Only time will tell.