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?
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.
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…
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
I supported Kinect, the game-focused stance of the Xbox One X, and even Mixed Reality and Windows Phone. However, I don’t really like the current approach Xbox is taking toward games. It’s all about studio closures, canceled projects, price hikes, and endless talk of AI. Even the few games that finally get released don’t generate any buzz, and when I play them, all I feel are political messages that prevent me from immersing myself in their worlds.
After replaying CoD BO1 and BO2, I tried the campaign of CoD BO7. It was terrible. The world and characters they had built up until now have collapsed, and it has turned into a game where you fight strange aliens. Just like with Halo and Gears, for some reason the masculine, war-themed characters are being increasingly neglected.
They are definitely making new hardware. However, the current Xbox Series X|S has been almost abandoned. This can be considered the era in Xbox history where the least effort has been put into hardware.
Halo 4 was an ambitious project and one of the most visually stunning games on the Xbox 360. However, I didn’t like the idea of unraveling the Forerunners. Around this time, the series also began paying unusual attention to the depiction of women, which I felt diminished its military tone.
Comments 349
Re: Xbox Series X|S Is Getting Its First Dashboard Update In Ages, Quick Resume Upgrade Included
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?
Re: Two Games Are Available Today With Xbox Game Pass Premium (March 18)
The commercial failure of South of Midnight is something that the entire Xbox studio organization should take the opportunity to reassess.
Re: Xbox Superfan Shares Blades Dashboard Concept For 'Project Helix' Console
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.
Re: Microsoft CEO On Xbox's Future: 'We'll Always Invest In Gaming'
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.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Happy With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate In 2026?
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.
Re: Forza Horizon 6's 'Low-Traffic' Gameplay Was Done On Purpose, Says IGN
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.
Re: Microsoft Has Explored Allowing AI & Other Xbox Players To Help Control Your Games
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.
Re: Here's Almost 10 Minutes Of Uncut Gameplay Footage From Forza Horizon 6
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.
Re: Xbox Is Teasing Something 'Very Cool' For Game Pass This Month, Possibly Cyberpunk 2077
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.
Re: Poll: How Optimistic Are You Feeling About The Future Of Xbox?
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.
Re: 'Return To Our Roots' - Xbox CEO Reiterates Her Goals For The Future
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.
Re: 'No Tolerance For Bad AI' - New Xbox Boss Says Games Need 'Great Stories Created By Humans'
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.
Re: Xbox President Sarah Bond Is Also Leaving The Company, Microsoft Confirms
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.
Re: Phil Spencer Announces That He's Retiring From 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…
Re: Poll: As Things Stand, Will You Be Buying GTA 6 On Xbox This November?
If it supports cross-play, I might buy it on Xbox. But if it doesn't, I'll buy it on Steam.
Re: Xbox Showcases Five Unique Biomes With 'Breathtaking Landscapes' In Forza Horizon 6
The map details are amazing. It’s just a shame that the sign designs don’t feel authentically Japanese.
Re: Two Games Are Available Today With Xbox Game Pass (February 13)
They’re both very interesting games, and I really want to play them. But neither of them has been translated…
Re: 'Relooted' Is Available Today With Xbox Game Pass, And Some Early Reviews Are Now Live
“To Microsoft, gaming is not just business—it’s politics.
Re: Blizzard Unveils Major 2026 Plans For Overwatch 2, Including A Slight Name Change
The new characters and abilities look fun, but they don’t seem as appealing as the ones from early Overwatch.
Re: Talking Point: Three Years Later, What Do You Think Of The GoldenEye 007 Port For Xbox?
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.
Re: Forza Horizon 6 Officially Launches On Xbox In May, Here's Your First Look At Open-World Japan
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?
Re: Halo Studios Admits That The Series Needs A Bigger Playerbase As PS5 Community Awaits
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.
Re: These Are The 10 Highest-Rated Original Xbox Games Of All Time, But Do You Agree?
Ubisoft was really good back in those days.
Re: Control Resonant 'Isn't A Safe Sequel' And Will Be Remedy's 'Most Ambitious Game' On Xbox
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.
Re: Fable Developer Hyped To Show 'Much More' Of The Game At January's Xbox Event
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.
Re: Xbox's Avowed Gets Permanent Price Drop To Coincide With Upcoming PS5 Release
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.
Re: Nex Playground CEO Talks Comparisons To Xbox & PS5, And Why Their Console Is So Affordable
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.
Re: Halo's Master Chief Rides Onto The Field As 2025 Xbox Bowl Winner Is Crowned
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.
Re: Microsoft Forces Removal Of Halo Multiplayer Mod In Counter-Strike 2
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.
Re: Xbox Studio Rare Is Getting Inundated With Requests For A New Banjo-Kazooie Game
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."
Re: New Microsoft Survey Suggests Five AI Features That Could Be Added To Xbox Game Pass
"First, please use AI to bring back Kinect's Milo. I'll listen after that
Re: Phil Spencer Was Asked About Xbox's 'Unusual Strategy' In 2019, And The Answers Are Still Relevant Six Years Later
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.
Re: Xbox Play Anywhere Grew Substantially In October, With 60+ Games Added Last Month
I want Sonic Racing Cross World to be added.
Re: Black Ops 7's Messy Campaign Is Being Detached From 'Endgame' Mode This Week
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.
Re: Xbox Series X & Series S Receive Small UK Discounts To Kick Off Black Friday 2025
In my country, the PS5 is cheaper than the Xbox Series S. There’s hardly any reason left to buy an Xbox console anymore.
Re: Poll: How Important Is The Xbox Play Anywhere Program To You?
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.
Re: Black Ops 7 Campaign Review (Xbox): Black Ops Pedigree Can't Save This Mess Of A COD Campaign
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.
Re: Seven Things We Miss About The Xbox 360 Era In 2025
@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.
Re: Seven Things We Miss About The Xbox 360 Era In 2025
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…
Re: Xbox President Talks Positive & Resistant Feedback From Fans, How It's Shaping The Future
@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.
Re: Two Xbox Game Pass Titles Nominated For GOTY At The Game Awards, But Microsoft Misses Out
They keep making highly political games because they care so much about critics and public opinion, yet they don’t get chosen…
Re: Xbox Series X|S: How Their Prices Have Changed Over The Past Five Years
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.
Re: Cities: Skylines 2 Changes Developer, Console Version Still In The Works For Xbox Game Pass
EA should have made Sim City now.
Re: Xbox President Talks Positive & Resistant Feedback From Fans, How It's Shaping The Future
I supported Kinect, the game-focused stance of the Xbox One X, and even Mixed Reality and Windows Phone. However, I don’t really like the current approach Xbox is taking toward games. It’s all about studio closures, canceled projects, price hikes, and endless talk of AI. Even the few games that finally get released don’t generate any buzz, and when I play them, all I feel are political messages that prevent me from immersing myself in their worlds.
Re: Poll: What Are Your First Impressions Of Black Ops 7 On Xbox Game Pass?
After replaying CoD BO1 and BO2, I tried the campaign of CoD BO7. It was terrible. The world and characters they had built up until now have collapsed, and it has turned into a game where you fight strange aliens. Just like with Halo and Gears, for some reason the masculine, war-themed characters are being increasingly neglected.
Re: Sarah Bond Insists Hardware Is 'Absolutely Core' To Xbox, Teases Powerful Next-Gen Console
They are definitely making new hardware. However, the current Xbox Series X|S has been almost abandoned. This can be considered the era in Xbox history where the least effort has been put into hardware.
Re: Talking Point: Exactly 13 Years Later, How Are You Feeling About Halo 4 These Days?
Halo 4 was an ambitious project and one of the most visually stunning games on the Xbox 360. However, I didn’t like the idea of unraveling the Forerunners. Around this time, the series also began paying unusual attention to the depiction of women, which I felt diminished its military tone.
Re: Poll: How Much Are You Enjoying Ninja Gaiden 4 On Xbox Game Pass?
I thought the maps, characters, and story were terrible. However, the action was fun.
Re: BioWare Insists Mass Effect 5 Is Still In Development, Says Team Is 'Exclusively' Focused On It
Are they learning why Dragon Age failed?
Re: Masters Of Albion Will Be Peter Molyneux's Final Game, And A Chance At 'Redemption' For The Creator Of Fable
“His games were full of imagination and always let us try something new. The games in today’s video game need him.”