xboxjapanfan

@Kilamanjaro They say that, but there are parts that feel far removed from the Japan that actual Japanese people know.
For example, some of the in‑game signboards look almost like the Japanese-themed season from Fortnite — they’re written in Japanese, but the design style is something you’d almost never see in Japan.
(It’s still better than Fortnite’s version, to be fair…)

If Xbox still owned Tango Gameworks, I really wish they had asked them to supervise the project.
The recreation of Tokyo in Ghostwire: Tokyo was genuinely outstanding.

In Xbox’s official footage, they said you could drive across all of Japan, so I was surprised by how small the map actually feels.
Real Japan isn’t this rich in nature everywhere, and the area around Tokyo has far more buildings.
That said, since the concept seems to be ‘Japan as seen by tourists,’ maybe viewing it from our own perspective is a bit nonsensical…

I’ve basically bought every piece of hardware I’m interested in on day one since the Xbox One era.

Xbox One + Kinect, Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and the ROG Xbox Ally X.

As for the PS4 and Wii U, I picked those up later on.

I used to be a huge fan of Rare, so seeing Everwild and Perfect Dark announced at that event genuinely thrilled me.

Eiyuden Chronicle ended up being so conscious of Western “ethical standards” that it lost the harsh, convincing sense of wartime tragedy that Suikoden used to deliver.
Even so, it’s still one of those rare, one‑of‑a‑kind experiences, and I still find myself wanting to revisit that world from time to time.

@Globo I agree. Before the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, I wanted to replay Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, so I bought a physical copy. I replayed the campaigns of Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 before launch, and then went straight into the Black Ops 7 campaign.

Yeah… it was a really sad experience.

@Sol-idsnake I’m glad you understand how I feel. There used to be scenarios filled with imagination and compelling characters, but now there’s hardly any trace of that left. Honestly, their older works—back when they were almost excessively violent—were far more exciting and engaging. These days, you can really feel how much they’re trying to be considerate of various things.

I’m not particularly happy about it. I used to be a huge fan of Ubisoft, so up until games from about five years ago, I bought almost all of their titles and built up quite a library. However, the current Ubisoft has become shockingly boring and lacks appeal, so I don’t need it anymore.

If Assassin’s Creed Shadows gets added, I might give it a try.

Please also add an option to disable Smart Delivery.
Why should I be forced to install games on an SSD just to play retro titles or simple puzzle games?

The commercial failure of South of Midnight is something that the entire Xbox studio organization should take the opportunity to reassess.

I would like the UI to have smooth animations like it did in the Xbox 360 era, with avatars prominently featured. Xbox back then felt fun and full of entertainment.
Right now, the UI feels sturdy like a business device, and it’s not enjoyable.

First, let’s learn to think about games and politics as separate things. We should also stop hiring game developers based on political priorities rather than experience. Simply doing this should improve the majority of current AAA titles.

I bought three years of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at the old price before the increase, so I’m set for a while. However, considering how significantly the price has gone up, I honestly don’t feel that the added titles have improved at all. I don’t need things like Fortnite Crew or Ubisoft+ Classics, and to be frank, I just want the price to go back to what it was before.

If Xbox hadn’t abandoned Tango Gameworks, they could have approached the GhostWire: Tokyo team for help in recreating Japan. GhostWire: Tokyo achieved an astonishing level of authenticity, and I’ve never seen another game that matches it.

Please develop a technology for team‑based multiplayer games that automatically switches a player to AI control when it is clear that they have put down the controller and are inactive.
There are far too many idle players in Xbox games.

Hmm, the city areas of Tokyo look better than I expected, but the rural roads don’t look like Japan.
This is probably because the game is made from a tourist’s perspective, not from the viewpoint of people who actually live there. It looks about as different as Earthbound does from the real America.

High‑quality services come with a high price, so it may not be all that surprising even if an Xbox One X–era masterpiece shows up.

The quality of games and the decisions made over the past few years were at their lowest even before the new Xbox leadership took over. Studio closures, cancelled game projects, and the departure of many prominent creators continued.

I used to be a fan of Xbox first‑party titles like Gears of War, Halo, and Forza, but I haven’t really liked any of the recent entries. If Xbox wants to regain its former glory, it should start by improving the quality of its games.

First, let’s make it a more masculine platform again. The original Xbox and Xbox 360 were filled with sports, military, and boys‑oriented games.
But now they’re making nothing but games featuring unappealing characters created through contrarian ideas, and it’s not even clear who they’re supposed to be for.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is one of the worst story-driven games I’ve ever played, and the graphics were filled with AI-generated elements. Please stop making games like this.

From the Xbox One generation onward, instead of placing Xbox teams in each country, operations were run with full control centralized in the United States. As a result, marketing and sales strategies that showed no consideration for local cultures were adopted, and Xbox lost its presence in many regions.

At the same time, it appears that Xbox has also been losing popularity even within the United States. Wasn’t this approach a failure? With the change in Xbox leadership, I want them to dismantle the current corporate culture of Xbox.

I don’t know what Phil Spencer was truly like as a person, but at the very least, I believe he understood gamers’ feelings to some extent. He had to make many tough decisions, likely influenced by declining sales and the judgments of Satya Nadella and the rest of Microsoft’s leadership.

What concerns me now is that his successor comes from the AI division and has no experience in the gaming industry. I’m worried that, in the name of cutting costs through AI‑driven game development, Xbox may undergo drastic changes.
There may already be very few people left at Xbox who can create truly imaginative games, but I still hope they can once again make titles with the brilliance they used to have…

If it supports cross-play, I might buy it on Xbox. But if it doesn't, I'll buy it on Steam.

The map details are amazing. It’s just a shame that the sign designs don’t feel authentically Japanese.

They’re both very interesting games, and I really want to play them. But neither of them has been translated…

“To Microsoft, gaming is not just business—it’s politics.

The new characters and abilities look fun, but they don’t seem as appealing as the ones from early Overwatch.

Since localization isn’t provided, I play the Nintendo Switch version when I want to play in my own language, and the Xbox version when I want to use modern controls.

It’s such a shame that Rare Replay was never translated.

I’m hoping this will turn out to be a great game, but the fictional signboards that appear in the game don’t feel Japanese at all—they look like a strange, Fortnite-style version of Japan. Was there no one supervising or overseeing this aspect?

They’ve been expanding the story through novels and comics that are only available in English, and they’ve repeatedly released games that barely function outside the US when it comes to matchmaking. (Back when Halo 5 and MCC launched, you could leave the game searching for over an hour and still not get a match.) If they think they need a larger player base, this is exactly the kind of thing they should be fixing first.

Ubisoft was really good back in those days.

The translation in the first game was so poor that I honestly couldn’t understand what it was trying to say. I really hope they avoid turning it into another incomprehensible game.

I love the Fable series, but to be honest, I’m worried about whether the new game will actually be fun. The protagonist’s design doesn’t stand out, and based on the footage released so far, it doesn’t look particularly interesting.

The Japanese version was announced to be delayed to the new release date, and since it only came out last August, it’s actually been less than half a year. What an honest game company this is.

There’s no doubt that Xbox should never have abandoned Kinect.
Pursuing high‑end gaming puts them in direct competition with PC gaming.
The current situation is the result of that.

The Xbox 360 era was cool — it had a masculine vibe that even fit well with football. Now it feels far removed from that image.

This is only natural. Assets hacked and extracted from a game should never be permitted for use in another. What’s worse, even though most of them are built from stolen data, people sometimes praise them as being 'better.' For the original developers, there is hardly anything more insulting than this.

Recently, Xbox pushed out legendary game developer Gregg Mayles. Playtonic is a company made up of Banjo-Kazooie staff without him, so their games felt more like fan-made imitations of the original. If they were truly going to make Banjo-Kazooie again, Gregg Mayles absolutely should be brought back."

"First, please use AI to bring back Kinect's Milo. I'll listen after that

As a result of stopping the creation of exciting games that could push hardware to its limits, it has become a place with no appeal. However, the fact that Xbox’s first-party games have become boring is an even more serious problem.

I want Sonic Racing Cross World to be added.

The campaign’s content is truly terrible. It’s unbelievable that it’s supposed to share the same world setting as BO2—if anything, the atmosphere feels more like Control or Quantum Break.

In my country, the PS5 is cheaper than the Xbox Series S. There’s hardly any reason left to buy an Xbox console anymore.

I play on both. I'm really frustrated that Sonic Racing Cross World, which I've been hooked on lately, doesn't support Xbox Play Anywhere.

I played it solo from start to finish, and it was shockingly bad. Since I heard the protagonist was returning, I replayed CoD: BO1 and CoD: BO2 beforehand, but without a doubt, the Xbox 360-era campaigns were far superior.

It felt like a shallow sci-fi game with no sense of reality, more like something in the vein of Control. It’s hard to believe this is the same series that once depicted the bloody battles of the Cold War. Enemy character models were reused so often that it looked cheap—something unimaginable compared to past entries where each scene had its own assets.

I actually enjoyed the campaign of CoD: BO6 to some extent, so this was honestly quite a shock. Activision needs to remember the right direction.

@HonestHick I agree with your opinion. It looks far too profit-driven, as if they’re just trying to cash in by copying a game once it sells. And since all the ambitious developers are gone, no matter how much money is poured into a game, it ends up being soulless.

I can’t help but wonder why Xbox and other game companies don’t try to do what Nintendo does. Instead of only investing in games that are guaranteed to sell, if they invested in a wider variety of titles, they could reach a broader range of gamers.

If you cherish the brand, families across generations can share memories and talk about those games together.

Xbox has so many great IPs, yet they’re not being utilized. Even if a title isn’t a mega-hit, it can still be an important reason for someone to buy an Xbox. Not everyone buys a Switch just for Pokémon—some people love Pikmin, others love Kirby, and that’s why they buy it. Xbox needs to value its IPs in the same way.

I miss the days when the Xbox team during the Xbox 360 era was trying to make fun games. Now it feels like the place has turned into one where politically correct hires make politically correct games. I liked games like Gears of War, where guys would throw around ridiculous jokes with each other…

@JayJ I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I never thought the day would come when the Xbox One generation would be considered a good era. I do think Game Pass is a fantastic service, but I really hope the first-party game studios go back to prioritizing entertainment the way they used to.

They keep making highly political games because they care so much about critics and public opinion, yet they don’t get chosen…

I don’t think they even want to sell the Xbox Series X|S. They don’t advertise it, they only raise the price. PC Game Pass is cheaper and clearly favored by Microsoft, making the console feel like a system where you don’t even know why you’re playing on it.