yeaman

@Pac_Bot for sure! One of my most played games of all times at this point. I'm on my third save! Can't stop playing.

@GameOverScreen Disgrace? Calm down!

Jumped in after all the positive reviews about how it feels different to every other extraction shooter. Got to say it feels exactly like every other extraction shooter lol. But oh well. It's still fun.

I don't think the graphics are crazy impressive personally on the series X. I've been playing some co-op today with my ally and series X. It looks good but it's AA quality and you can tell.

@johnedwin sounds like ninja gaiden! In the conclusion it says "if you’re a fan of this type of game – it’s a bloody excellent fight" which I think is fitting for the series in general. It's all about gameplay.

These things are the main event for me these day. I play it handheld all the time at home. I dock it and use it like a PC a lot too to play strategy games from steam. I've stuffed it full of emulators and it can handle literally any of that stuff easy. It's just great. The only thing I really still use the series X for is multiplayer shooters and I play them rarely.

No desire to get the xbox version though as my 2024 model is nailing everything I throw at it tbh. I would reccomend it actually if it's cheaper. Still very solid.

I think what I've learned during my time with the Ally X is that this is the way I like to play games. It isn't a secondary device to me. It's my main console. I don't really fire up the Series X or PS5 too much anymore. I don't care that I'm not running games at comparable settings. It does everything I want and is extremely comfortable to play. I can even use a dock and use it like a proper desktop PC and play all the old strategy games I used to like. I've emulated all my old N64 stuff. I felt the reviews would be good and I really hope more console gamers are able to explore PC handhelds even if it's really just a branding exercise.

FYI the 2024 ROG Ally X is still more than capable of playing all your favorite games to a really decent standard so if the price is making you baulk consider it. It's not past it's sell by date by any means. Radio Times were correct on that. I've played all of this years biggest games on mine and plan to continue. No desire to upgrade.

Replaying games is never that fun imo. Once I've done it it's done. Plenty more fish in the sea.

Xbox has lost a lot of trust and is burning all it's goodwill from the frankly pathetic market share it currently holds. This is the consequence of years of poor decision making and if it continues the rumours will be self fulfilling. So sure... take it all with a pinch of salt. But don't be surprised when they u-turn. There is plenty of precedent and they may not have much choice.

@LeonR I bought it for PlayStation for this reason! I love my xbox but there's just more players and greater longevity with a larger install base.

Bought and played a few matches. It's good! Confusing and I may be way too old for it. But it's good.

I would guess this is a strategic leak to counter recent rumours

Easy win for expedition 33 although I really enjoyed Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 tbh. Both really solid but 33 was very special.

There is no such thing as hybrid. A console eliminates all the faffing about and ensures everything you buy for it will (in theory) work seamlessly. Assuming that will no longer be the case then pricing will be key. It must be competitive with the gaming PC market and represent a saving vs other off the shelf products or what's the point in buying it?

There's some panic being exposed here tbh. Otherwise why bother?

Consumer protection laws ftw. I was stupid and swapped to a 3 month free trial I got a while back and hadn't used. Oops...

Nice. Similar to my experience on the old Ally. I actually found mine came with a 3 month gamepass subscription so that alone is worth something like £800 by next Wednesday /s

@SeaDaVie Yep. These things are wordsmithed to kingdom come.

I'm very meh about it all now and will be looking to transition to PC hardware over the next couple of years anyway. Greed. Always greed in this day and age. Like I can afford the GP price rise and still find it will more than cover my costs. But it looks like a really bad strategic move. Just another time Microsoft squandered an advantage because of greed and really how many times will they keep doing it until the business is no longer viable? I'd say it's getting pretty close as far as first party consoles are concerned regardless of what they have to say. I don't trust them. So for me any new games will be purchased outside of the Xbox ecosystem.

Old ubi games are a dime a dozen. Shrug.

I'm looking at the pipeline right now and I can justify it. I have a gamepass backlog with the persona 5 and secrets of mana. Outer Worlds this month and I'm just halfway through dragon age coming off the back of expedition 33. Playing the grounded games with my kid. Still haven't played gears. I will spend more if I cancel right now and I guess that is what they're banking on. The value currently exists and it would be crazy to say it isn't. If I wanted to purchase all those games I'd be several hundred down. But the past few years... If it fails to deliver it won't take much.

Negative reception of course flop but then idk why people put up with it on Spotify. The vast majority do though.

@ElkinFencer10 this is a good point. I think most people can do without ubi and it must be a large part of the cost for MS.

@Jakovasaur yeah for sure like I hope the boycott makes an impression. But at the same time outer worlds comes out this month and that pays the bill as far as I'm concerned.

@BustedUpBiker Well regarding the family subscription this is kind of why it's a still a good deal for me. My son can play on his profile. I can play on mine. I can download something onto my ROG and onto my Xbox. We can play co-op on different profiles. Doing this right now with the grounded games. That's money saved.

Sticking with it. I don't like a price increase but I play a lot of games through gamepass even on PC. Most of my gaming is done though gamepass. It saves me a lot of money. £15 is one year old low tier second hand game.

I do want AC shadows but holding out for more!

@Gabrie Yes and I have seen as of now steam games are showing up in the MS interface so i guess they're just embracing it. That said gamepass is still extremely compelling. The majority of games in my library are from gamepass. It's just new buyers of this device are unlikely to be new gamepass subscribers. So perhaps they did the math on that!

@Weebleman interesting. I wonder if this is the most up to date model otherwise it's a bit bizzare that I was hitting 44fps with zero modification on the same hardware. Or maybe which store it came from? IDK. I played it on gamepass. No worries.

The only games I have had issue with actually are games with really serious optimization problems in the first place - specifically Ark Survival Ascended (nightmare of a game!). I never bother with the frame generation and all that stuff. Haven't even tried. so far all I have done is set games to medium and occasionally if I am travelling to 720p + lock framerate to 30 to save battery life on a plane or whatever.

@Weebleman yeah a quick Google shows other people are in the same boat as me. Enjoying that specific game with good framerates. People who did mess with settings were able to do much better actually. Also worth saying I chose it specifically because it was an offline game and didn't even run it on turbo mode a lot of time lol

@Weebleman Mate. I played clair Obscur 100% on the existing Ally X. Hundreds of hours. It ran at 44fps steady with zero intervention. Didn't even look at the settings. Don't know what you're on about.

@Kilamanjaro they do but if you've owned Nintendo consoles long term it's not a pipeline that's constantly churning out mega hits. I'll tune in when they release something notable and so far on the switch 2.... tumbleweed. Mario kart is nice but I've played enough Mario kart on switch it's just not something that's going to tide me over.

Anyway yeah I agree you might as well go whole hog with the ally. The form factor is already limiting. The X will play everything at a decent framerate with some compromise in settings. Most things run well over 30 on medium but there are a lot of optimisation issues in gaming right now. Borderlands 4 being a recent example. If you go for the cheaper version you're going to struggle with more.

@Kilamanjaro is it though? Switch gets the least play for me because first party is few and far between... and of questionable quality most of the time while also being very expensive. Third party seems to be mostly poor ports and indy games that are available everywhere else. Sorry to say since I got the Ally X I have not even turned on my switch and the thing that prompted me to buy it was that I only had to spend a tiny bit more than a switch 2, Mario kart and some basic accessories with very little further investment in games required.

@SaltySpitoon957 well it was telegraphed by the fact the existing Ally X costs the same. I don't know why people are surprised. It's an impressive bit of kit when you get your hands on it tbf. It's a tiny PC that plays current releases natively. How much did you expect it to cost?

@SaltySpitoon957 except there are games. And for your average console player far more games than they normally have access too straight off the bat.

Cases are cheap. I got the one from curry's for 20 quid. It does the thing.

One thing I really reccomend is the dock. It has a USB slot on it too so you can connect a mouse and keyboard. Very useful for travel and when you need to get to grips with windows setting up emulators or whatever. Or for Steam games. Especially strategy games.

Same price as the existing Ally X. Why is this a surprise? It's worth it though!

This is good! I do use it more than I thought I would. Sometimes it's to try a new gamepass release before I commit. Sometimes it's to spin up a co-op game with my kid using my handheld or phone. Nice!

@Weebleman it can be. Ubisoft connect sucks. I consider Ubisoft games off limits it's that bad. It can be hard navigating what works offline too. I have to research before a big trip! Claire obscur got me through the last one! And on steam you do have to be careful about controller support. But overall my experience with the xbox store has been pretty much seamless.

@Weebleman well yeah the steam deck is huge and in the grand scheme of things it's aging now. It just goes to show the power of a big name like steam. If you compare the two there's a clear winner. The current ally X is already leagues ahead but even now it's relatively unknown. Everyone is talking about this xbox version as though the experience doesn't already exist. It's on the shelves right now and fully capable of playing all current games at a decent level.

Bad luck America. I'd say FAFO but you're dragging the rest of us down with you. Good work. Hope all that winning feels good!

@Weebleman IDK. I go on a flight and I see a lot of them these days. They're much better than they used to be. Maybe this will be the one to really grab the headlines and inform people that a premium handheld gaming experience is already here. We'll see. For me personally I actually rarely play consoles anymore. The handheld is just so damn convenient and easy to sit down with.

Wobbly life is surprisingly good! I play it with my kid and it's definitely my favorite family co-op game. I didn't immediately warm to it but over time there's so much to do. I just wish the economy was a bit more forgiving! Getting the mansion and stuff was a proper grind. I stayed up a couple of evenings down the mines to help him out in the end!

I've resolved to wait. It looks unfinished. Maybe it will always be unfinished. But I want more before I commit.

Borderlands may be one of the most heavily discounted franchises in history. It pays to wait.

I would say something but I'm usually the only skateboarder in the park these days so it'll probably be a huge success! It looks really good actually. But it's very hard to tell with these games!

Ey! More family co-op please. I'm running short!

@Markatron84 skateboarders are a fairly big community and play these games long term. Skate 3 is still a game that people play a lot. So maybe the vocal minority are a little more commited than fans of an obscure parkour game that was never a massive hit in the first place.

Am I missing something? Farcry is already live service and has been since 5. At least if it has multiplayer (assuming more robust co-op and pvp options) it can justify the fact. I am old enough to remember that the original farcry did have great multiplayer!

@Fiendish-Beaver have fun! I'm probably maybe joking about letting it go on sale. But I always like to wait and see how the launch goes. Modern games man... Never pretty.

Sounds like borderlands! The only problem I have is that it's one of the most on sale franchises in existence! Maybe I'll wait a month or two.