wildcat_kickz

@Gabrie Dovetailing off of what @DennisReynolds said, Microsoft first pivoted to the Gamepass model because they needed something to let them compete with Sony in the console market.

The Xbox One generation was going so bad for them that they needed something, anything, to distinguish them from the competition because 1st party exclusives weren't selling consoles the same way that they were for Sony.

Since the Xbox One and PS4 were the first true "digital" consoles, customers were quickly imbedding themselves in their preferred ecosystems. Once imbedded, it would be too late to switch because customers want to keep their libraries and achievements/trophies.

Now that console sales have plummeted even further with the Series generation, Microsoft needed to pivot to a multiplatform approach because Gamepass and game sales were not meeting revenue expectations.

This is all to say that, while I applaud Microsoft for being able to pivot when it needs to, none of this has to do with Microsoft/Xbox wanting to change. It has everything to do with them needing to change. If Xbox games didn't go multiplatform, generating tons of revenue through actual game sales (not subscriptions), I would expect Microsoft to pack up the entire project.

Sony isn't afraid of Xbox. They love Xbox because now they get a 30% cut of every single sale that Xbox games have in their own ecosystem. They just have no interest in playing the same game as Xbox - they simply don't need to.

Sony published Stellar Blade. Therefore, not coming to Xbox.

@Tasuki I love the MP maps in MW 2019, but that's just taste, so I can't really say you're wrong for not liking them. SBMM makes just about every match sweaty, but I've never agreed that it "punishes good players and rewards bad players." It just means that high-skill players don't get the feeling of being a god when playing with players well below their skill level. Finally, while I agree that I don't like "off-brand" skins, go back and play any older CoD games (including WW2) and you'll find plenty of wildly out-of-pocket skins. It's not a new phenomenon.

MW 2019 is the clear highpoint of the Xbone era, but WW2 is great, too. The campaign and MP are fantastic, but the gunplay and MP maps for MW 2019 are just a cut above.

@Kezelpaso FF is an anthology series, so not knowing anything about the world is expected. None of us did when we first booted it up. I'm also not a big JRPG guy and I loved XVI. Show some support to Square and pick it up! You won't regret it!

I suppose how you come down on this argument hinges on a couple things: do you care more about future Xbox games or the Xbox console ecosystem and your current library?

Full disclosure, I was a Xbox 360 user, but switched to Sony in the PS4 generation. I have a Xbox One that I bought from a friend a couple years ago and use it every once in a while to play the MCC, Witcher 2, etc., but by and large, I'm a PlayStation user.

With all that said, I think Microsoft has done lots more pro-consumer moves than Sony since the Xbox One generation (I'm thinking Play Anywhere and Back Compatibility, specifically). Was that due to Microsoft's desire to stay competitive when they were bleeding users? Probably. But those features remain pretty exceptional for their userbase.

I totally get the resistance in the Xbox userbase to Microsoft moving to a 3rd party publisher model. You don't want your existing library to become segmented off from the future of gaming, nor do you want to be forced to relinquish those pro-consumer features to a colder, less friendly ecosystem.

BUT, given the perpetual state of games libraries in today's era and users' unwillingness to relinquish those libraries, I don't see any scenario where Xbox gains console users from PlayStation in the future, unless as a secondary console.

So, if Microsoft wants to be profitable with an increasingly shrinking console userbase, they need to publish elsewhere. My hope is that they use that cashflow to keep their console ecosystem alive, but Sony will never willingly seed that ground, so Microsoft needs to play by Sony's rules to stay alive.

@andrewsqual Bro... All @Lup said was he was excited to play this game and you just pissed all over his parade. Who cares how long the game took to make or what it's aggregate review score is (by the way, pretty in line with the AC franchise, as a whole)? If Lup is going to enjoy it, then that's the only thing that matters for Lup.

@Kaloudz Already got it pre-downloaded =)

@Kaloudz Yeah totally vibe with that! I never finished either of those shows, but loved what I saw of them. Setting is a huge driver for why I dig Origins the most, but I also think Bayek is my favorite protagonist in the whole series. Though, medieval England is pretty excellent too!

@Kaloudz I find people's takes on the RPG AC games endlessly fascinating. There's typically consensus around the older games on which is the best (usually 2 or 4), but it seems like opinions on the RPG games are all over the place! Personally, I love Origins the best, but it's no knock on anyone else's opinions. What puts Valhalla over the top for you?

I'm tempted to make a joke with something along the lines of "Xbox Sequence Delta, X.X Version S," but in all seriousness, they really should just call it "Xbox" for the console and "Xbox Portable" or something like that for the handheld.

I honestly think they could do something really interesting with Watch Dogs. Give it a soft reboot, focus on the digital stealth mechanics (maybe even force a non-lethal approach?) and then take the piss out of their own Big Brother mega-corporation.

@Cakefish I think they're banking on the fact that people will just buy Lies of P to play the DLC, and to be frank, it's well worth the cost of admission. I bought Lies of P on PS5 the day it came out and have put well over 100 hours into it. What an amazing game!

It'll sell a few more million once it releases on PlayStation.

BO6 just has bad MP maps. You can do whatever you want to the gunplay, servers, movement, etc., but when the maps suck, the game sucks. I bought BO6, but went back to MW3. The maps are of a way higher quality and there's a bajillion of them.