I first took a notice of Schreier during his stint at Kotaku, and as far as I can tell, he is a decent enough journalistic writer - with enough clout to both keep and attract solid sources. Which is pretty much what I want a journalist to be.

I've seen people be angry at him for various reasons. Some of it is antisemitic nonsense, and other stuff seems to be mostly about how they find him snobby, "anti-my-favorite-brand", "full of himself" and "gleeful about reporting disappointing news in order to spoil other peoples joy".

I won't claim to have read everything he has ever written, but from what I have read and seen of him, I've never gotten that impression, and I remain puzzled as to why others would.

I´m a simple enough soul to appreciate the number of my gamescore going up, but I really only do it for my own sake.

Getting an achievement is a digital receipt of having played a game and done a thing in it - not a metric I use to compare myself to others. So cheesing them just has no real value to me.

That having been said, the exploit being used by publishers to goad people into buying their games all over again just feels like a thing that shouldn´t be in the first place. I'm theoretically happy to see Microsoft do something about it.

I have a lot of love for the Telltale-games that found their formula starting with the Walking Dead. And while I personally think the first "Tales from the Borderlands" was a sliiightly better experience, "The Wolf Among us" was absolutely brilliant on its own - and it gets a massive amount of extra points for introducing me to the Fables-universe, which I went on to buy and read multiple times in the following years.

I actually replayed this very recently, so I'll probably hold off on the remaster for a bit, but I'm happy to see it get a glow-up so that more people might feel compelled to check it out. It's among the best in its genre.

I absolutely want gaming consoles in my life. A piece of hardware under my TV that's dedicated to one thing; videogames. Microsoft trying to expand the scope of what an Xbox "is" is what made them fumble the ball badly during the XBONE-release.

But having said that; if I'm paying 1800 bucks for a piece of tech, it better be for more purposes than just playing games. My PC is expensive, but I use it for other hobbies and my livelihood as well.

Basically, I want a new Xbox - but I want it to be priced reasonably, or I'm not buying it. Anything north of $1000 is going to make it a seriously scrutinized purchase, and I don't think Microsoft can back it up with the amount of high quality exclusive games needed to make almost double that feel good within a single generation.

I had a very brief moment in time in the late 2010s where I suddenly got a real hankering for 100% completion of achievement-lists.

It quickly passed. Most of the time there is one or two I don´t see the juice being worth the squeeze to grind it out, so the amount of Mythics vs the total games played on my account will always be abysmal. I´m guessing I´ll hit 10-20.

I agree that this is most likely a step towards making the next gen digital-only for Xbox. And I don´t like that notion one single bit.

But keeping the conversation to what is provable, factually offered (or denied) to us as consumers, this is an undeniable boon to us today - regardless of what we might infer about the future from it.

Team Xbox gets a gold star from me for this feature. Even if you've personally been digital-only for a generation or two, there is no reason not to celebrate (or at least appreciate) more choice given to the consumers.

With the Switch 1 and 2 being portable, I really really wish Nintendo would offer the same feature. Bringing lots of carts with you on vacation (and possibly loosing them) is a lot worse than getting up to retrieve a disk from the shelf. Microsoft has earned a solid gold star in my book from this initiative.

Having played Ocarina of Time several times since 1998, I doubt I´ll spend more than 2 weeks on it anyway.

I can't imagine a world where every single "don't worry about this" message regarding this couldn't rightfully be subfixed with a "... yet".

If the limits exist for someone, then it's only a matter of time before it will expand to include you as well.

@Millionski I mean... valid concerns, I guess, but "rumoured to be" and "sounds to be" aren´t really damning factors that play into it when I say "from where I stand at the time of writing".

As someone who loves both the collecting-aspect of the hobby, and the comfort of digital copies, this is a real pro-consumer move on Microsofts part. Hopefully it'll roll out soon, and eventually allow 360 and OG disks as well.

We still don't know the plans for Helix, but from where I stand, Xbox is at the time of writing vastly preferable to Playstation on every point except for the few exclusives Sony has in the pipeline. Which is nice for Sony, sure, but it means 3rd party purchases (aka the bulk of my console purchases) are money directed towards Microsoft instead of them.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games of all time, and I´d happily pay a full $60 for a remaster that looks as good as this trailer does.

Historically, CDPR has been really really generous with enhanced editions being free upgrades on new hardware, but in the context of the industry overall, this feels almost perverse.

I´m practically giddy thinking about playing it again from scratch with a brand new chunk of DLC next year. I´m also looking forward to a Digital Foundry breakdown and side-by-side comparisons.

So the path to success has three main routes - neither of which are "make good games". Got it.

In all seriousness, I'd hate for them to go the Nintendo-route. Even Nintendo themselves only make that work half the time.

I have it on GameCube, and I've tried to get into it a few times, but it´s all kinda "meh" to me. I´ll absolutely agree that it's one of the better games based on the Simpsons, but that´s a low bar to clear, and its contemporaries (GTA Vice City and San Andreas, for instance) were still a lot better as individual games, as far as I´m concerned.

I left Overwatch behind years ago, but I'm happy to hear they're chugging along. I enjoyed my time with it quite a bit.

The FOMO-design-choices means I'll never be back, though. There are way too many seasons with loot I never got at this point, and I'm not paying real money to get any of it at a markup no matter how cool I think they look.

Besides, being a casual player at best, whoever sticks around these days are probably gonna play circles around me.

This is a real monkeys-paw moment for me. I've said multiple times that the second Microsoft had both Bethesda and Obsidian under them, someone should have gotten on the phone about a New Vegas-sequel within minutes.

But it does feel like Obsidian maybe rather wouldn't. Surely someone has had a conversation about it by now, and they still did Outer Worlds, Avowed, etc. instead. And frankly, if they're heart isn't in it, I'd really rather they didn't when push comes to shove.

I'll certainly play whatever Fallout-game Obsidian makes, but I do hope there is some internal excitement about it, and not just because it's mandated from 'on high.

Awful news for so many. I hope the many talented people being let go land on their feat with minimal stress and few sleepless nights.

No chance Helix comes with a disc-drive. I'd be happy to eat my words, but I feel like too many forces at the Sony and Microsoft want it in order to lock down their customers to a ecosystem, take used-games off the board, and save in distribution while keeping the prices the same (or higher).

It's been in the cards for a decade, and I don't think it'll stop there either. We're only a few years away from a high-profile game being a "streaming only"-release. And I'm sure they'll tweak the numbers and statistics then, too, in order to justify it.

To me, the main reason to have a console is because it has historically allowed me to collect the games in a physical way to compliment my hobby of exploring the worlds they contain. I can't see a single reason why I'd personally want to buy a multiplatform game digitally on Playstation (or Xbox for that matter) when the PC has a more open selection of storefronts, deeper sales, I can back up the games I buy without jailbreaking the hardware, and the graphical fidelity is better than on the consoles. Exclusives will have some pull, sure, but I don't think Sony has the franchises to roll the dice on my continued support in an all-digital future.

I'm not side-eyeing people who prefer the plug-and-play aspect of a console release, and have no desire to keep their games for posterity. They're the perfect customer-group for what Microsoft and Sony are becoming. But that's not me.

It's moronic not to lock the ability to review behind a proof-of-purchase to begin with - that's on Microsoft - but I can't help but shake my head at the simpletons who insist on posting reviews of a game half a year away from release either.

The ability to review a game is our chance to actually move the dial if we genuinely like or dislike the game. Sort of a collective favor to other potential buyers. I'll never understand why people figure it to be the place to express sycophantic hype for a game they haven't played, or "punish" the developers because they deigned to portray a black/gay/trans/[Insert minority here] person in the game.

Maybe this article just found me in a crabby mood this morning, but this nonsense is why a lot of good things eventually gets taken away or changed - because somewhere out there, some idiot who thinks himself the center of the universe is knowingly mis-using it for a laugh because he is so special, and unique, and needs to do it for attention and/or internet-points.

Bah, humbug.

Sure I'll bite. I have about 20k saved up from before when I figured I might use it on Overwatch or Sea of Thieves.

I've since retired from those games, and I have no plans for the points, so I guess I'll chip away at it - and if it pushes GTA6 into a reasonable price for me, I might bite earlier than I planned to this fall.

I now nothing about logistics for this kind of business, but I assume Microsoft has a sturdier, more robust network and production-line setup than Valve does for actual hardware.

So maybe they'll be able to score a slightly better deal on components. And being in direct competition with the next Playstation, Microsoft has an incentive to keep the cost-of-entry low. I reckon if (big "if") the RAM and HDD costs have sunk and normalised a bit by the time Helix comes around, it'll end up costing about the same as Valves niche PC-experiment here.

It´s entirely too much for a luxury item like a videogame console, but I think enough people have the expendable income to convince the higher ups that it'll be fine.

I´m personally not paying 1k for a new console anytime soon.

I can't even imagine what the full reveal of Elder Scrolls 6 is going to look like. 2011 was ages ago, and not only was Skyrim absolutely jawdroppingly good for its day, but the main trailer narrated by Max von Sydow is still one of my favorite videogame-trailers of all time.

I really question how you'd be able to top that. But hearing the crowd loose their mind at the brief nothing-teaser Todd Howard showed years ago suggests that a lot of us are primed to get on the next hype-train that passes by.

A part of me doubts Bethesda can ever come up with a game that matches the lofty expectations placed on a new Elder Scrolls. It's not like their subsequent games were bad, but they've done nothing as remarkable since, and their particular brand of game-design has seemed a little more stale with each new game.

The assets they acquired in the deal are certainly notable, but the pricetag (even before paying the lawyers for the tedious process of getting a go-ahead from governmental bodies) was pretty heinous.

And judging by the subsequent layoffs that just never seem to end, Microsoft was obviously not ready to take on such a large influx of talent and workers. Basically, Microsoft bought the IPs - because it means they don't have to create their own. But they still need to be cultivated, which is gonna be hard with less people working on them.

I thoroughly disliked the people running the ship at ABK back when Microsoft made the move to purchase, but a lot of talented people lost their jobs in the aftermath.

On an unrelated note, I literally never think about Candy Crush, so it's the oddest feeling whenever I'm reminded that it's apparently big enough to be in the discussion alongside IPs like Call of Duty.

I'll admit, Fable never hit me as much as it probably should have. I'm usually the worlds easiest lay for a swords-and-sorcery-dungeons-and-dragons-fantasy-adventure, but I found the first to be underwhelming, and the third to be just plain weird in its structure and priorities.

The second one I quite liked, but they all lacked something ineffable for me. Like, I can talk about seeing Solitude for the first time as the sun rose above Skyrim in 2011. Or seeing the giant dead Ice-giant on the frozen lake in God of War in 2018. Or finding the Master Sword resting in its pedestal deep in the Lost Woods in 1992.

But I can't remember a single location or visual element from any of the Fables that triggered a spark of joy or awe in my fantasy-loving-heart. For some reason, that brief clip of a shiny sword encased in crystal during this trailer actually hit something akin to that for me. It's a silly thing to focus on, I know, but paired with the rest of the trailer looking really good, I'm excited for Fable next year.

Maybe I'll give the 1st and 2nd another go while I wait.

I'm not fond of exclusives, but that's a game both Sony and Nintendo are playing, so Microsoft trying to leverage their (frankly obscene) vault of IPs and developers to compete at their level makes sense if they want to build the brand.

Clockwork Revolution looks like it stole and copied Bioshock Infinites homework, but even if that game doesn't entirely hold up, I did really love it back in 2013 or whenever it came out. So this is solidly on my radar.

I think it's funny how the green translucent look seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it kinda thing. Reminds me of how so many people adore the FUNtastic line of N64s back in the day.

Personally I'm not too fond of it. I prefer my consoles to be sleek, monochromatic, discreet boxes under my TV - which is understandably just dull and boring to some people. As far as this specific Xbox goes? I think it's thematically appropriate for the brand, and I like seeing the industry celebrate milestones, so sure. It's even got a disk-drive to play retro-games with.

I feel more optimistic than I did before she got the job, but the cup wasn´t exactly overflowing back then to begin with.

She has been good at establishing a name and face for us to associate with the brand going forward, and that´s not a bad thing. But I can't possibly say if she is doing well or poorly this soon after her getting the reigns.

But every small statement and nod towards the hardcore fanboys are accompanied by something else I find off-putting. Like, I recently read that when the HDD inside the Series X fails, the console is effectively bricked since it has a unique signature tied to the rest of the hardware that means you can´t just replace it.

Stuff like that. Anti-consumer-decisions that are made to safeguard from piracy, or tinkering or whatever else Microsoft don't like that we do with our own hardware is not great in my eyes. It doesn't matter that it won´t be relevant until years down the line. Technology will always fail on a long-enough timeline - I don´t need companies like Microsoft to design it to as well.

Yes. Show all the logos on the end-card. It´s relevant information about the game, and information is what customers need to make informed decisions about how and where to spend their money.

If you're triggered by seeing a PS5 logo somewhere in an Xbox-showcase, then you're too far down the tribalism-rabbit hole and should probably go outside and touch some grass.

I was toying around with the notion of doing a 3rd playthrough of the Witcher III this year, but now I´ll probably push it a bit to sync up with this.

I hope it´s as content-rich as previous CDPRs expansions tend to be - whatever else you´d say about them, they do offer good value on their DLC.

I'd rather have the option to keep playing physical, but seeing as most of my countries retailers have heavily phased out Xbox-games altogether, I doubt I'd be able to buy them easily anyway.

The disc-to-digital-program is an ok-ish compromise, but it better not staple a hole in my original disc in order to stop us from registering and reselling games.

My heart goes out to the dude who is sitting there praying for Assassins Creed: Black Flag 360 - a game that has full BC on the Series, has a native port to the XBox One that is still available digitally (on the Series too), and is getting a full-on remake this summer - to be relisted on the storefront.

It is objectively the worst way to play the game in the Xbox Ecosystem, and the physical release probably sells for a pittance on eBay anyway. If it remains at the top of the list, then people are clearly voting for it just for laughs. Even a single phonecall from Microsoft to check if Ubisoft might consider it is a gross miss-use of resources in my opinion. There are so many other games far more worthy of consideration and effort.

If a game costs $70 or more and doesn´t have "Zelda" or "Final Fantasy VII" in the title, I´m waiting for a sale. Simple as that.

Honestly, even then I´d be pretty resentful to hand over more than $80. Which bodes ill for the future, because my local retailers have already started pricing first-party Nintendo games and big AAAs in general at close to $100.

At this point, I´m likely to skip games I'd normally be eager to buy out of sheer principle. My backlog isn´t going anywhere, and you can have extraordinary gaming-experiences for $20 if you're patient.

Meanwhile, me and 185 other weirdoes voted for the OG Xbox game "Kung Fu Chaos". No idea if it holds up (or even ever were all that good) but it's the one game from my childhood I enjoyed that I haven't really been able to revisit any other place than on original hardware. Backwards-compatibility with a boost to internal rendering-resolution would be great.

Honestly I'm surprised we haven't gotten it yet. It was published by Microsoft themselves back in the day.

I know it's very elder-millennial of me to say it, but I genuinely prefer a controller that's basic, no-frills, with AA-battery-support.

Both my PS3-controllers, one of my WiiU controllers, my PSP and several tablets have all had their batteries reduced to either nonfunctional or outright danger-pillows over the years. And I have a lot of tech that will go the same way in due time. So a controller that fits well in my hand, gives me the basic buttons and sticks I need to play, and allows me to use common store-bought batteries is all I need.

The Steam-controller probably feels better than it looks, but I'm gonna pass. I'm very likely to get a Steam-machine, though, so I'm glad their hardware-division is testing the waters.

I won't deny that the machinery of developing, distributing, supporting and nurturing both hardware, brand and software is probably more complex than most of us know. So there are a lot of gears that could malfunction and derail the entire thing.

But for all the bluster and PR-speak the Xbox figureheads might conjure up, the most glaring issue to me is the utterly basic concept of pricing a product at a point the market will accept. The Xbox Series is too expensive. Games are too expensive. These are luxury items, and times are tight for a lot of people.

Personally I'm hardware agnostic enough to kind of just want everything available to everyone. So to my mind, the "right thing to do" is to publish everywhere and make your hardware, OS and features overall a better prospect than what the competitor offers.

But the annoying thing about doing the "right thing", is that if you're the only one doing it, a lot of people will just view you as a sucker. Ultimately this all comes down to what Microsoft wants to be going forward. If hardware is a focus, then they need to build their brand, provide games that people want to play, and make sure they all know that to play them, they need an Xbox.

Day 1 consoles for me were the Gamecube, the Wii, The Wii U, The Switch, the Switch 2, the Xbox 360 and the Xbox Series X.

Only the Switch was worth it day 1 for me out of those, but I´d argue the SNES and N64 also would have been if I wasn´t too young and/or broke at the time those came out.

Buying a console is all about the software that accompanies it, and the only launch-titles I personally feel were gamechangers enough to warrant the upfront cost for a whole new console were Super Mario World, Mario 64, and Breath of the Wild. Obviously that's very subjective. Halo has that stamp for a lot of people even if it never clicked with me.

You could make a valid argument that the PS5, Series X and Switch 2 were also worthy day-1 purchases, but that's solely because of the fact that they're just increasing in price as time goes on.

I have a soft spot for the Xbox One S. I like its footprint, it plays 4k BluRays, its white design is appealing to me, and its games are recent enough to still offer graphically compelling experiences (though still a bit aged I suppose).

It's my main console whenever I visit parents for a weekend, even if gaming isn't my main priority at that time.

I have retired two X360 plastic guitars to the basement, a DJ-hero turntable in the closet behind me, and the drum-set from Guitar Hero: World Tour is squirreled away at my offsite-storage (read: my parents' house).

I thankfully never got into Skylanders, Lego Dimensions or Disney Infinity, but I do have a box of various Amiibos on a shelf above me right now waiting for the day when I have the proper space to display all my little nerd-curios.

All things considered, I haven't accumulated too much plastic nonsense from my gaming hobby. My Dungeons & Dragons-hobby, though? Oh god, you don't want to know.

One day, I'll have to toss or sell off some of this faff I've accumulated. But hopefully not any day soon.

I remember when the iPhone X was about to come out, and I said to a friend that there was no way in hell I'm paying $1000+ for a phone. That was almost 9 years ago.

I have to this day not paid more than $1000 for any of the phones I've had since then. And I am not paying $1000+ for a gaming-console either. Simple as that.

Don't get me wrong, I can spend silly amounts of money of my hobbies, and gaming is one of the bigger ones I have. But solely as a ticket-to-entry, it's an obscene ask. Time for them to get humble and start selling hardware at a loss again in order to onboard customers who make up for it in software-sales.

I'd rather spend thrice that much to build a PC-upgrade, because that'll have way more utility to justify the investment.

I think Microsoft is done with disks. The only reason the Series X had a drive was the fear of alienating a subset of gamers who prefer physical, but with day-one-patches, key-carts and codes-in-boxes, I think our time of influence is rapidly fading.

Best we can hope for is an optional drive-attachment, but my local retailers have more or less stopped selling physical xbox games altogether this generation, so what would I use it for beyond back-compatibility?

Never been a CoD-fan, but I do remember enjoying the original CoD4:MW when it came out. Bounced off of MW2 at some point.

I did pick up both the 1 and 2 remakes at one point. Maybe I´ll give em a try. Did the third ever get a remake, or is the 360-version the only proper way to play that?

Either way, the Modern Warfare-sub-brand is probably as reliable a thing for ActiBlizz as the CoD franchise can get, and I hear they struggled with the last instalment, so this is a very predictable and safe move on their part.

I would probably have liked Oblivion more if I hadn´t picked it up right after sinking 60 hours into Fallout 3.

In comparison, Oblivion just felt a lot older. I found the character models to look ghastly, and while the rest of the environment looked good, the world itself was lacking a bit of depth.

My fondest memories were the Dark Brotherhood-storyline, and the Shivering Isles Expansion. I´m currently playing the remaster now, and my opinion is virtually unchanged - but I´ll add that I think the remasters "realistic" approach doesn´t look nearly as nice to my sensibilities as the footage I've seen of the fan-mod Skyblivion.

I doubt anyone but hardcore archivists would be all that fuzzed about them today, but demo-disks were pretty cute.

I remember getting an Xbox-magazine during the 360 era that included the full beta-installer for Final Fantasy XI - and while that's worthless today, the disk remains a neat trinket in my collection that connects me to the hours of wasted youth I spent in Vana'diel.

@Shinato2024 Sure. Those numbers look good enough, so it´s probably not a flop, but the general vibes from the public discourse doesn´t make it it feel like a huge success either - hence my "limping across the finish-line"-metaphor.

I´m sure a lot of people loved it - I´m very happy to see a few comments to that in this very thread - but I don´t think a sequel is going to be a priority for Bethesda anytime soon.

It´s a fascinating level of dedication and skill that goes into hacking consoles like this, kudos to the people doing the work.

For my part, I only really care about this stuff insomuch as it allows me to make digital copies of my purchased games. As a collector, I´m always vaguely haunted by the specter of disk-rot, faulty lasers, crashed hard-drives and closed digital storefronts, so being able to make backups of my games is something I appreciate - and that more often than not starts with people unlocking the hardware originally used to play them.

I will say, though, that as we get closer to modern day, increasingly fewer games are truly exclusives to consoles. A lot of my favorite games from the XBONE-generation are also available as native PC-ports. But being able to rip my old (often licensed and unavailable) retro-games in order to play them on PC via emulation has been a godsend.

Cool. Happy to see people in the PS-camp get to check it out, I´ll give it a third chance to see if it finally clicks when the new stuff gets released.

I get a sense that this was a passion project for Todd (or at least someone at Bethesda), and it´s always a bummer when brand new IPs limb across the finish-line like this one did. I appreciate it when big companies that could just keep going back to the well of established franchises chooses to try something new instead - I just wish the games also turned out good as a result of that passion.

I guess the vibes I've seen around it over the years suggests that I'm in the minority, but I don't think the blades are all that good or interesting. To me, it's just nostalgia-as-UI, and it was kinda nifty that it played into the physical design of the OG 360.

And yeah, sure, seeing the crisp OS boot up and break down the doors to HD-gaming in 2005/06ish was awesome, but I didn't dwell on the UI any longer than it took for me to boot up Kameo or Perfect Dark Zero.

But I guess I'd still take it, if only because it's not designed to accommodate adds.

Xbox was my main ecosystem this generation, and I do think the new management is going to further erode what I appreciate about Xbox in favor of an AI-powered, cloud-based, hardware-untangled rebirth for the brand. Which is a pity, but certainly not a surprise.

People seem to have some mixed feelings about Phil as a Microsoft figurehead, but I generally thought his heart was in the right place - even if directions from above sometimes limited his ability to follow it.

More than anything, I shudder to think how a newly-emboldened Sony might continue ahead when "Xbox" as a hardware-competitor falls to the wayside. Nintendo is always going to do their own thing regardless - but I think Xbox being a viable alternative, actually did temper Sonys arrogance and hubris quite a few times over the years.

The beauty and appeal of sleek cars and competitive racing is completely lost on me. But the open-world nature of the Horizon-series, paired with the obvious love poured into crafting the various locations, means I still somehow always end up buying them - even if I eventually spend more time just futzing around taking in the visuals than actively racing.

Trailer would have sold me a lot more if it gave proper deference to the K-car, though. I want me a garage of those little aluminum deathtraps in-game.