themightyant

@Godot25 I didn't say he SHOULD hold any ill will towards Xbox - just that he's hardly going to put that on his LinkedIn profile...

Darrell doesn't seem to hold any ill will towards Xbox

Well he's hardly likely to throw them under the bus, especially when they are one of the biggest publishers in the world. Would be very silly to burn bridges. This was the smart play.

But I can empathise with being proud of projects that take years that don't work out, that doesn't diminish the work you put in day to day that sadly will never be seen. Onwards and upwards.

@Stoned_Patrol Yea. Guilty as charged. Lol

Still a bit annoying to change the default behaviour we have been doing for years.

@Gabrie Good to know, but still slightly inconvenient to change default expected behaviour.

I think the Series S is great. But as an enthusiast with multiple 4K 120Hz tv's the Series S isn't good enough for me.

Yet when they were going for around £150 on FB marketplace I did consider getting one for the backroom. But at £300+ I think i'd rather pay a bit more for a bit more.

Like everything value is subjective.

So how DO you turn the controller off now? Take out the batteries? What about on Elite. Seems poorly thought out.

Ever since they announced a precise release date over a year in advance I have said it will get delayed again. Almost nobody does that, and for good reason, and when they do (e.g. Starfield) they almost always miss the date. Should have stuck with a generic 2026, but they didn't want to disappoint investors / stocks.

I don't really understand this... you don't have to use them.

I can trivialise most games by turning on accessibility features and lowering difficulty, but I don't do it because that's not how I want to play. Why does the mere fact they exist kill your enjoyment of the game? I really don't understand. Could you explain?

This is usually the way. IF - and it takes a lot of work - you can optimise the game to run on lesser hardware you will be able to pass on those optimisations to run even smoother on better hardware.

One recent example. I remember Ori and the Will of the Wisps launching in a horrible state on Xbox One - several second pauses when you opened the map for example - but once they had figured out how to optimise it for the Switch they bought back those learnings and it runs like melted butter on Xbox One & 120fps on XSX.

However all this takes time, money, and a will.

Keeper, Moonlighter 2, Ninja Gaiden 4 AND The Outer Worlds 2. I can't keep up!

Ball x Pit is an awful name, and looks like an HD version of the AI game you see ads for on YouTube. Still if it's on Game Pass there's probably something about it, their curation is excellent!

@Banjo- I agree with you. But you do usually see hundreds of comments (especially on Twitter) from Xbox users saying they won’t buy games now having been snubbed with exclusivity elsewhere. I think most Pure Xbox users are more rational and won’t cut off those nose to spite their face, but it’s only a tiny niche here.

Whether they do in fact boycott the game… who knows. It’s probably mostly bluster. I remember a call of duty protest group on Steam where hundreds of players said they would boycott it (I forget why) but on launch day almost everyone in the group was playing the new COD, as it showed what you were playing on the Steam Forum. lol.

@TrollOfWar there’s different types of exclusivity deals, some where you are effectively funding a large portion, or all of the game; others where you might take on the marketing budget; and others still where you are only paying for timed exclusivity that might have happened anyway - devs can’t always hit all platforms at launch and Xbox is most likely to be skipped if no money changes hands. (Whereas many indies on Game Pass often are timed exclusive to Xbox, sweetened with that Microsoft bag).

But while we don’t know specifics (take this all with a pinch of salt) it was always inferred that Xbox had to pay WELL above market rates to secure Tomb Raider as an exclusive and it didn’t work for either Microsoft or Square-Enix / Crystal dynamics. The fact they didn’t do it again on that scale heavily suggests this. (They just bought publishers instead. lol)

Obviously with most console sales on PlayStation Microsoft would have to pay a lot more to offset some of the lost day 1 sales, but it was still always suggested they had overpaid for RotTR. It was an offer too good to refuse for S-E. I suspect Sony doesn’t pay anything near that for most games.

As for FF7R Sony has hundreds of their staff listed in the credits for FF7 Remake suggesting they had a larger hand in its development and likely funded some of its develoment. It was suggested at the time that it was Sony pushing for it to be made, perhaps it wouldn’t have ever been made without their money and pressure.

As I said take all with a giant pinch of salt, we have few facts here.

It seems likely it won't be a timed exclusive, but they didn't actually confirm that, it was only inferred. Could still go either way.

Much like the first game, Nintendo console exclusive. Hopefully less than the 11 months on that system.

Auto-redeem SHOULD be the cheapest way to redeem, but it isn't. So no major loss other than convenience. But rewards have been massively nerfed for years. It now takes so long to maximise your points that you'd be better off making money on a side hustle in that time and gaining far more.

I've played Expedition 33, Silksong and Blue Prince and they are all masterpieces imo.

@Ricky-Spanish More and more models in the last few years have VRR but it's usually still towards the higher end models. What TV do you have / want? You can check a site like Rtings to see if it has VRR compatibility.

Never played Destiny but it all looks in keeping. Unlike some recent COD skins that are more Fortnite than COD.

"Zero Gravity"... Marketing will say anything. lol

Absolute mad-lad! Love to see the passion.

@Vipor007 More the merrier and you can dip in & out when you want if you don't like a game, don't have time. But it's fun to discuss games we are all playing together on Game Pass.

It’s currently a nice to have extra to use in a pinch, especially on smaller screens, but it’s nowhere near being a replacement for a console. Low bitrate and artefacts are obvious on larger screens.

Personally waiting for the announcement of the final game's release date before diving in to Pt2.

@SodaPop6548 I agree with others i'd play HK first. The first few hours can be quite tough and it might not click initially, especially if you don't usually play the genre, but persevere and you might experience one of the best games ever made.

Interesting they are slightly adjusting both Splinter Sister and Moorwing. the former I found quite easy, the later I found quite hard, but neither were some of the toughest early bosses imo.

@Ricky-Spanish It is hard... but while I only played about 4 hours of Cuphead I found that MUCH harder. Progress was very slow (almost non-existent) in that game for me.

With Silksong I find that you get some nice exploration progress but then have difficulty spikes at bosses. To be honest they are all pretty well designed and fun, even when they are a challenge, though the game is tuned JUST a little too hard for me. Of course your mileage may vary. Enjoy.

That IS a good price for 2TB but it feels very late in the generation, especially if they aren't usable next gen as I suspect.

@Fiendish-Beaver I feel your pain about always being full. But I spent a few minutes being honest with myself and deleting some games I knew I wasn't going to get to in the next few months. They can always be downloaded again and we don't really need all out games instantly accessible. We're hoarders! I also like that you can pin a game to a group without downloading it, between these two things my constant storage woes are mostly solved for now.

Almost 200 games (current count 191) that's a pretty huge number to be sitting on! Granted plenty are licensed games, but plenty aren't.

Honestly I would rather they moved on to other projects. Starfield was a good game, but nothing more, from Bethesda I expected a lot more. I think there is enough fundamentally wrong with the game that DLC isn't going to fix. Honestly don't know if I would purchase another DLC.

@Titntin At this point I hope Microsoft opens up the "Xbox Full Screen Experience" so that I at least have the option of buying / building a PC myself that can sit under the TV and be upgraded. Especially at the cost of PC parts, replacing this wholesale every X years like a console could be cost prohibitive.

Absolutely lives up to the hype. But at just £16 on PSN I bought it there. Currently a 9/10 for me, my one criticism is the bosses are tuned just a little too hard for my tastes and many have taken a lot of attempts, it slightly ruins the progression. If the game wasn’t so good I would have taken a break / quit over some of them.

Hmmm. I really enjoyed the main game, but £20 for 3-4 hours of DLC that does little new seems like a big ask. Wait for a sale right now.

Bit dirty to be using frame-gen and then declaring frame rates. It still feels much slower.

Totally agree that one of the biggest changes is the removal of the downward pogo attack, it was OP in Hollow Knight, but the diagonal one requires more skill, thought and precision. Loving it so far but very early days.

@Vordus @LaurenceJ1987 That’s all completely valid and a fair criticism of both games. If you can’t surmount that hurdle perhaps the game just isn’t for you. But if you can… what a wonderful adventure you have ahead of you.

Looking forward to this in due course but Silksong is up first.

Worked for me. 7 of 8gb downloaded. Almost there...

A Work in progress. A Windows based device has some pros but plenty of cons. Should get better with time.

@armondo36 That would be horrendous imo. Many of us don't have enough time to keep up with that sort of release schedule. Would instantly drop Game Pass if it was 90 days max.

One of the beauties of the service is we can take out time to try and discover different titles. I would have played so many fewer games I never would have discovered with a 90 day limit.

Superb game. First person was the right choice to match the gameplay, you needed to be closer to the action than third person to find all the secret passages, find clues etc.

The CURRENT YouTube video is running at 30fps in a 60fps container. You can test this my locking it to 1080p60 but then pausing it and pressing '.' (dot / period) to advance the frames, it only advances ever other frame, hence 30fps.

However quite a few games have done this and then had 60fps performance modes. I expect this to be the same. I also stress 'current' because we have seen these videos updated in the past to have higher framerate versions later on.

It both looks good, but i'm also not sure there will be the amount of flexibility a Hitman offers. Might be more of a one and done. No major problem with that, could be fun, but also probably not a Day 1 buy for me. I want to play it, but will wait for reviews, it's certainly nowhere near the top of my wishlist.

Cataclismo looks interesting and it's by the developers of Moonlighter... but Silksong just overshadows it. Cannot wait to explore Pharloom!

@Fiendish-Beaver Agreed Prey (by Arkane) is a masterpiece, but should have never been called 'Prey'. Just latching another game onto an IP was always weird. But I guess if it worked for Super Mario Bros 2 then why not...

Probably Keeper, it's just such an unknown, but the Outer Worlds 2 looks to have addressed a lot of the issues I had with the first one. I liked but didn't love Ninja Gaiden 1 + 2 so am not so hyped for that, but will likely play it.

@Sol4ris I was massively looking forward to PD. But a large problem was The Initiative just wasn't who Microsoft had intended them to be. Morale seemed low and the studio culture reportedly wasn't great. It never quite came together as a studio, hence it was a relatively easy one to cut WHEN Microsoft needed to make cuts to hit targets.

Initially Microsoft successfully poached a lot of experienced game devs for The Initiative, many of whom were tired of the long AAA dev cycles, endless sequels, and were promised smaller more agile teams working on exciting new projects... Basically more like game dev used to be but with veterans, which was an enticing and exciting proposal.

As such they manged to poach many veteran devs from a lot of Sony studios (Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Santa Monica etc.) as well as other big studios, but ultimately they lost over half of them a few years ago when the studio never found it's way and ended up to be just another AAA game making dev making a sequel to Perfect Dark. Many of those devs went back to their former companies.

While PD did finally get a great looking vertical slice it was far too long in the making and reportedly only just working. It's a shame, but also a pretty obvious one to cull. I would have liked to see it finished though.

Will play on Gsme Pass but will almost certainly also buy it somewhere too.

@MrFrosty REengine is horrible for open world games - look at the awful performance and low base resolutions of Dragons Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds.

idTech8 runs wonderfully but we haven’t really seen whether it’s versatile across other genres, just first person games.

UE5 gets a lot of flak but it is versatile and can be staggering in the right hands. But it’s never going to be as efficient as an engine specifically designed for one task like idTech8.

Yes… eventually. But it’s come out at a really busy time with Sword of the Sea, Shinobi, Silksong and a host of other games I want to play first.

Hopefully it’s as great as the main game, but going back just for DLC is often disappointing and a bit confusing as you try and remember the game controls and mechanics.

@Millionski that’s not what I said. But you can brute force it with more power, whereas optimising and learning the ins and outs of hardware to get the most of it takes a lot of time.

Part of me agrees with him and if we froze hardware for another 5 years we’d get more out of it. But we are already seeing many limitations. Games upscaled from low base resolutions to hit a shaky 60fps, and limited ray tracing. New hardware would enable a lot. It’s also not likely till 2027, 2 years is along time in tech.