themightyant

Blood dragon! Best Far Cry partly due to the 80s retro future aesthetic and zaniness, but also because less is more, it stays interesting to the end unlike the others which drag with too much open world BS

Internal is basically full. But I try to leave 100gb for game updates etc.

I also have a 1TB Expansion card that is 70% full and 5TB of slightly slower storage.

Fable 2 is probably the better game, but I have a soft spot for the first game, which I've played half a dozen times.

It's still a great service with lots of games for xbox enthusiasts, but with multiple price hikes and tier benefit changes it's only "the best deal in gaming" for a few super heavy users, for most Game Pass Ultimate just isn't worth it anymore. I've no experience of other tiers.

Personally Ultimate is still worth it for the amount I play, but I locked in the price I am paying now 2+ years ago by stacking via Rewards, I will have to re-evaluate in 2+ years when my sub runs out.

@jesse_dylan agreed.Shame they’re all sports titles.

@andrewsqual The point is some of us on Xbox were a little tired by Forza Horizon 5 because it's basically the same game as FH4 with a new map, it felt like we'd played it before, which isn't as exciting.

But on PS5 it's the first taste of Forza Horizon for many Playstation gamers, that makes it more exciting and more likely to do well.

Good points on how long each has been available.

OMG Rise of the Dragon... I haven't thought about that game in over 30 years. I never had an Amiga but played bits of this at my mates house back in the day.

That all said I am not sure I actually want to boot it up, I suspect my memories of it are more gracious than the game will actually end up being if I played it. I'll stick with my unassailable memories.

@FraserG How did I miss that! Yes 5 of the top 10 rated games on Xbox not being updated feels like a bizarre oversight somewhere.

Pretty outrageous that we haven't had HD remasters or remakes of 4 of the top 10. 3 x Splinter Cells and KOTOR. Far lesser games have been updated to play better on newer consoles.

Things like saves and cloud saves need to "just work" if an "everything is an Xbox" future is to succeed.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Agreed. But the fact they didn't get Forza Horizon 1-4 also made FH5 even more popular over there, it was new and fresh to them.

Love to see it, well done on coming together to try and tackle this, it’s bigger than one company.

Xbox continue to be leakier than a sinking ship. They are their own worst enemy a lot of the time, you only had around a week to go till the Dev direct.

That's very cool to see. While I was personally a bit disappointed by Starfield there was always plenty of potential for the modding scene. While that scene isn't anywhere near as active as Elder Scrolls, Fallout or BG3 it's great to see there is an active community making fun things.

I like the look of several of these, but it's the same old story, too many games not enough time. Will likely give Mio a go on Game Pass and keep an eye on the others.

Gears of War at my friends house is the one that first springs to mind, I went out and bought a X360 the very next day with the money I had been saving for a PS3.

I did see Halo before in a store, but never really engaged with OG Xbox much as no one I knew had one.

Wishing Larry all the best along with many others laid off. I miss his frank honesty and earnestness as the go-between between Xbox and fans but I don't think that would work with Microsoft's current policies and practices.

This looked awesome in the trailer, and I love that Remedy doesn't just make safe sequels.

Loved Hellblade 1, utterly unique use of binaural audio, and playing with headphones (a MUST) was a truly memorable experience.

Was pretty indifferent to Hellblade 2. It was a visual tour de force, but almost everything else was worse in the second game and it ended just as it was starting to get good.

I'd take a Hellblade 3 but it needs to focus far more on what made Hellblade 1 so unique and important.

@GoldenPants I understand what you are saying, you are monetising time you couldn't otherwise monetise, but if someone came up to me and said I could earn £100 for 60+ hours simple but repetitive of work over a year i'd tell them, very politely, to piss off. As I said that is subjective and some may think it's a good use of their time, that's fine, we're all in different positions.

But I also disagree with it taking just 10 mins to do everything across 3 devices. Having tried it for a while at the very least if you optimised it from booting up your Xbox, launching a game, back to PC to launch Solitaire, do PS searches/dailies, onto mobile search and app, back to Xbox (after 15 minutes) then back to PC to get game rewards the minimum you are looking at is 17+ minutes a day imo, that's 100+ hours a year for £100, or < £1 an hour. My time is worth more.

@GoldenPants If it's worthwhile for you great. But 10 mins a day is 60+ hours a year, and for that we get around 120,000 points which equates to around £100 in Xbox vouchers (I'm not sure what that is in CAD). This will be different for everyone based on their circumstances, but personally that isn't a good return on my time. You may feel differently, that's fine.

@Netret0120 @Elbow Agreed. It used to be a lot more worth it.
I'm not sure the Xbox rewards would even cover the energy cost of playing 15 minutes a day on XSX let alone all the time taken on all the other things.

That said I do the Xbox ones as you get them while playing and the daily set and get most of these for minimal effort through normal use.

Always depends on circumstance. If you have no console or are short on funds getting a XB1 is a win, most games are abailable and they can be had for cheap second hand.

But for most everyone else a series S or Series X is a better buy.

Fable >>> Beast >= Surprise >>> Forza

Just not very excited about a sixth Forza unless they change a LOT. With FH5 I felt like I’d already played it, that’s not exciting to me.

Once again rewarded for waiting. While this is on Game Pass, I am being conditioned to wait for games and often get them much cheaper.

I watched a bit of it and what I saw was cool but 3.5 hours is a joke. Certainly designed by streamers who have all day to sit around and play/watch games.

@abe_hikura We posted at the same time. lol.

I think it might be the other way around... but who knows, not long to wait.

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.