Xbox's 2024 Showcase Was Great, But It Was Missing A Big ActiBlizz Announcement

I'm starting to worry they are going to be using them to patch gaps in the gamepass line up. So next time a months looking a little light they bust out some actibliz games.

What’s great about this, at least for me, is I want to play many of the games in ABK’s catalog including the Crash trilogy and Spyro trilogy, but never bad enough to actually buy them. I have been tempted during a few sales, but never pulled the trigger. This will allow me to jump in and play them as I see fit without having to spend any additional money.

And my backlog is massive so MS taking its time adding ABK’s catalog hasn’t bothered me one bit. Diablo IV was the big one I was looking forward to and that already dropped.

Game Pass, it really does just get better and better over time.

If Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 have all been patched up to use the API for Micrsoft Store on PC, then I am sure these 3 games will hit Game Pass very soon.

You know what is curiously NOT on Game Pass PC?! Doom 2016. Doom Eternal is on Game Pass PC, but not Doom 2016. I wonder what's taking that so long.

Also, Heretic, Hexen, etc. haven't dropped on PC Game Pass either despite now owning both Raven Software AND Bethesda and those games also being available in the Microsoft Store on PC for a while.

Being honest I’ve played all the games I want to in Activision’s catalogue.
Except COD campaigns over the last 7 years.
So they would be for me.

I wonder if the classic cod games would draw a noticeable number of players where they would rather they play black Ops 6.

I'm always amazed how many people play call of duty even when they are split between warzone, the current full game, and some older titles. Since they have the "HQ" maybe they could just keep that as the all-in-one place and loop the classic content into a single collection.

I always give nintendo a hard time for their old port announcements at directs (bioshock 1, borderlands 1, etc) so I'm not disappointed that they didn't mention these games at the xbox show. Keep the excitement pointed forward not backwards.

The pessimist in me thinks these games will be added around the time a price hike is announced.

Yea StarCraft …..

I was wondering what happened to this announcement and now I'm thinking it might be at Gamescom 😧

It's better for Microsoft and for the players that the ABK games are released progressively. They can add 100 games in one day and one month later some people would complain about no new games being added.

@abe_hikura That’s my guess as well. They’ll drip feed us Activision/Blizzard titles when they have light months. Hopefully I’m wrong and most of them just pop on the service soon.

I would love this month but don't think it's gonna happen they will probably be drip fed to use just hope all the crash and spyro games are next

I went back down to Core until they drop the ABK games. And I'm not even seeing a drip feed, so there's no point in staying on Ultimate right now.

It was missing Japanese games, too, and other exclusive stuff.

There is not much actiblizz I even care about anymore, except the myriad ancient franchises from the 80s and 90s they’re sitting on and should hire indie devs to do something with.

The games will come with the price increase is my pick. They sold the rights to cloud gaming with these titles to Ubisoft. My guess is the price increase will include Ubisoft + to accommodate this.

Yeah, just not buying that these will come with a price hike. They give us the new Call of Duty with no price hike, yet they are gonna hike the price for older catalog games that don’t even make a lot of money anymore?? That makes absolutely zero sense to me. If there was gonna be a price hike in the near future, it would have come on the heels of the new COD, not on the heels of old COD games along with Spyro, Crash and Tony Hawk.

They don't make games I like, so I don't care. I'm happy with what I saw at the showcase. Every game looked good. Even tho I'm only interested in playing 1 or 2 games from that showcase.

I don't really care. I usually just buy what I want to play. So, nothing at this point would interest me.

For me, MS hasn't capitalized on the ActiBlizzKing acquisition just like they haven't capitalized on the Bethesda acquisition. They needed known properties or at least plans for known properties right out of the gate. Even if they just announced exclusive Spyro, Crash, Fallout, etc with a logo or a teaser, it would have gone a long way toward differentiating the console from the competition. I have OG XBOX-XBONE in my home, I don't even own a Series console. I was going to wait until Doom was announced as an exclusive, but they seem to not have the testicular fortitude to have exclusives.

I can see a few Acti games dropping just before Xmas

@LikelySatan

In all fairness, everyone knows they are working on the next Elder Scrolls before the next Fallout, so doing a teaser for a Fallout game that is likely 6-8+ years away doesn’t make a lot of sense. Given they are likely making plans with Fallout beyond that given its massive surge in popularity, but that just came about recently and was not the case when they acquired Bethesda. And they advertised Starfield and its exclusivity quite a bit after the Bethesda acquisition.

And they dropped Diablo IV, which was arguably the biggest game they could have dropped from ABK at that time, relatively quickly on Game Pass. So it’s not like they didn’t capitalize at all.

I agree they could have done more, but it’s not like they did nothing at all.

Not that I’m bothered because none of those games have any appeal to me personally but I think they’ll be drip feeding them in over several months rather than dropping them all at once.

Tbh, they could probably have a separate showcase for ActiBlizz.

@abe_hikura Lets be honest here, if MS hadn't bought ABK, any of these 'OLD' ABK games coming to Game Pass would have felt like a filler to fill in the Gaps between the Big 'new' releases.

Even some brand new releases don't get that much love/attention from gamers if they aren't AAA or 90+ on Metacritic, let alone a game from at least 2yrs ago that didn't exactly win awards and that they don't 'own' to be excited for.

Diablo 4 was released into Game Pass whilst that title was 'relevant' and still receiving Content. If they release CoD 360 games into Game Pass, they are 'dead' unsupported games these days and I expect barely played - same with Prototype for example.

Point is, the 'bulk' of games they could add are basically the 'old' games that won't move the needle in terms of getting people to Subscribe. Yes some Subscribers may be 'happy' to get to play those Spyro, Crash remakes etc but its not going to bring people in like Black Ops 6 day/date might - those big Day 1 games.

So whilst I do think that these may well come in the 'rest' of 2024, I don't think its a 'major' announcement type situation that will suddenly change 'momentum' for MS/Game Pass, because the vast majority are 'dead' games in that their life cycle is over - old release no longer selling, being supported etc. If they weren't 'ABK' now owned by MS games, a 'dead' game coming to Game Pass would seem like a 'Filler'.

I doubt they can give away the latest CoD's, even most of the XB1 era CoDs, as Sony will likely have some 'deal' in place keeping them from Game Pass or at the very least, not able to be 'promoted' by MS/Xbox until BO6 is out, they'll want their 'year' of promotions and bonuses etc with MW3. So maybe they have to 'wait' for CoD on Game Pass - especially with the newer releases.

Apart from Crash, Spyro and TH remakes (I count Crash 4 in that - whilst not technically a remake, its a follow-up to a remake of a 20+ yr old game) ABK haven't exactly released a lot during the XB1/XSX era - most are OG or 360 games that 'could' come to Game Pass now and I wouldn't think that many are 'excited' about playing 'old' games so I do think they'll feel 'filler' even if MS doesn't use them as Filler....

I bought all the Crash Bandicoot games on -50% more than a year ago, so the most wanted games for me are already in the collection.

Although I'm not the biggest COD fan anymore (was during the 360 days), there are few SP COD's I need to play. I don't know what the holdup is, but it's time to put some ABK games ASAP, instead of drip feeding them.
They are not on the top of my list but with Game Pass, I "expect" them to be there!

I'm almost sure, if the costs aren't too crazy, they will 1) remaster some of them or 2) maybe even make a new title in one of the series (Prototype, older COD's, Singularity & Transformers, and even a small Indie title based on OG Pitfall)

@Pusher2021 I don't think you'll see the Transformers games - not unless MS does a deal with Hasbro to have the Licence to remake old and/or new Transformers games. I think these are likely to be the same as Activision's Marvel games (like Spider-Man) or their James Bond games (like Skyfall) for example due to licensing issues.

I don't think you can 'buy' Transformers today (not unless you can find it on Disc somewhere) as they were delisted after Activision no longer had the Hasbro Licence.

I'd love to see the War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron Transformers games to be remastered or even receive some BC upgrades (res/frame rate boosts), but I don't think we will see many of Activisions 'old' Licensed titles on Game Pass...

Abk just got finalized months ago. They're just going to be releasing what was already scheduled to release for them for a few years. New Xbox projects that started talks at acquisition would only be entering into actual development now if at all so that's years away. Like Series Y launch title later.

I didn't expect Spyro 4 to be a thing. The trophy 2024 sure it's cool but didn't mean much. The others don't have anything to say about really.

No Activision back compat games RIP. Prototype, Singularity from Raven or any other Raven games (I wonder about Quake 4 even), Pitfall Lost Expedition, Blur I know wouldn't, Geometry Wars older versions besides 3, old CODs I'm getting for PS2 instead when saw Xbox versions. What's the hold up for OG Xbox/360/PC versions on back compat or Gamepass? Activision Anthology was PS2 and no Xbox beside what mobile versions or something but there was a PC version right?

Yep time to keep buying PS2 versions instead. I get it takes time, but how long do I wait, why have the program come back what to prepare for the next console. Sigh. What source code/licenses are sitting around collecting dust or reverse engineering.

Summer of Midnight and Gears, Fable/Avowed or Perfect Dark are fair trailers still. Otherwise eh and waiting and not much I care for. Welp back to retro gaming because like current gen is offering much mechanically exciting for me at all.

I mean at this point I only care about Steam World Heist 2 that's it.

Might as well dig up old games with better mechanics to research in videos or buy regardless of how different and less refined of safe cameras and generic movesets modern games are to play because characters/boring themes and message or worlds with eh interactivity in them.

My Xbox One X/VCR are back compat, listen to Soundcloud instead of Spotify, play CDs in it or DVD/Blurays for any TV/movies usually anime. Literally I haven't been interested to play anything on it and just use it for Youtube instead just to give it some use besides my phone and not the old Roku box that's weak on RAM and bugs out both consoles can use apps well and have enough RAM for any internet based tasks. It does struggle at times but it's not as bad as the other was with the Roku box being an older model with as much RAM as a Vita (512MB I guess as much as 360 as well) or near a Wii U (2GB but commonly apps/games used 1GB) and the Wii U Youtube app was bad too struggling at times. RAM isn't much but even still the CPUs/GPUs limits as well besides setting them to 360/480p, 720p if feel the need to (unless it autos to 1080 again because reasons and an eh UI anyway), with 2 1080p TVs.

Sure the Series X is in reach of use but I don't care to use it in the family house and it gets used for some Gamepass but otherwise basically sits there.

Like the Xbox One did most times unless something major of worth came out of Halo/Gears or odd others but at least Xbox One got used (or probably I do use it a fair amount now) more than the Series X has and that's aside from me having both Xbox Ones on me (the VCR collects dust, I need to rework it for Kinect and another storage option to offer to play around with it for other back compat so it gets some use) and still on and off using it for the above or smart delivery to buy and play/older third parties or first parties or third party exclusives I didn't see till later but buy up to collect.

Forza Motorsport 8 would have but it didn't impress me, also menus/progression versus track footage sigh the issue with every racing game I research I swear just show me menus sometimes. GT7/FM8 are ok not compelling enough to me. Then again many Indies haven't either. Back to 6th gen niche gems mechanics and modes/event types for me there too. At least 5-7 had fair events can't say that for some games. Ride 4 region system over FM1&2's attempt at it, car builder of WRC 2023/Sega GT/Pure and more ideas out there for racing games.

@BAMozzy I own the Transformer games so I’m hoping it gets treated with some BC, at least. Good games imo. Still, I expect them to do some effort since they keep talking about preservation! But … it probably will be a slow and careful process.

@Pusher2021 MS cannot 'preserve' the games they have no 'control' or 'Licence' to 'preserve'. If they NO LONGER have the Licence for Hasbro/Transformers, they have NO right to preserve those.

If you 'own' those games, you bought them specifically for the Hardware of that time. If you bought for Xbox 360, you can play on 360 as long as you have a working 360 and Copy of that game. It was 'never' released for Xbox Series S/X hardware and as its 'illegal' to profit from anothers IP, it would be foolish to 'sell' it. Its 'preserved' on the Hardware it launched on effectively.

MS can't 'sell' the Activision Transformers games anymore as they no longer have the Hasbro licence - therefore those games are NOT likely to come to BC and they remain 'playable' on the Hardware that they had been licenced for - even if you cannot 'buy' them because they were 'delisted!!'

Its far too complicated to 'preserve' every game ever made today because license holders, devs, Publishers etc have disappeared making it impossible to find ALL the right people to get 'legal' permission to use anothers IP. MS don't own Transformers, just like they don't own Spider-Man or James Bond IP's, so cannot 'preserve' those games. Goldeneye took a LOT of negotiating, compromises etc to bring that game 'back' despite owning Rare who own the Game Code. Nintendo own the Publishing rights and there is the James Bond Licence too - maybe why MS can't 'sell it' separately but can put it on Game Pass and make it part of Rare Replay too...

I would expect to see a big GamePass drop in around the holiday season (October) timeframe to try and drive more console sales. CoD and a bunch Activision-Blizzard games would drive sale pretty good. Add Overwatch 2, Crash, Spyro games, and Tony Hawk for holidays 2024 would probably help drive console sales nicely.

@BAMozzy
They could preserve games that are liked in the community and renew licences of some of them, hence why I stated that, if so, it could be a slow and careful process, as in, technical and licence challenges.

We don't know what their exact plans are and how big the scale can be but maybe you know more than me?

What I do know is that I can play many other 360 games/X1 games on my series X, and, that MS has formed a new team dedicated to game preservation (April 2024) to add more titles to the catalogue. They don't need to own every game to make that happen ... If copyright owners are willing to agree (how good the relationship is) and it doesn't cost millions to do so, these things are possible. Not easy peasy, but possible in time. All depends on how far that new team is willing to go to build that bigger catalogue of Xbox games history.

@Pusher2021 They ain't going to pay out for a license they can't sell in their store and recoup that money.

They didn't sell 'many' on Xbox in the first place and as they are moving to a 'digital preservation future, so that you can 'buy' as well as 'play' old games, they aren't going to bother about trying to convince Hasbro who Licenced that version on 360 hardware and you can still play on 360 hardware as long as you 'preserve' the hardware etc

They have added a new bunch of games they can now work on - like Prototype, Crash 4, Call of Duty etc - games Microsoft now owns the IP, the Licence etc to 'bring' back via BC and 'preserve' digitally in their 'store'

They don't own the James Bond, Marvel or Transformers Licences!!!

"They don't own the James Bond, Marvel or Transformers Licences!!!"

Don't know what your point is but there are many many more they don't own!! Assassin's Creed to name another big one! (all BC). They seem to have a good relationship hence the cloud gaming deal. That's how things work!

It doesn't need to be all about money either, but to keep their customers (or win) were their game library is. For me a reason why I like BC on console (to be able to put the old one back in the box to save space).
There are so many other games where people would think, why bother, but they are there anyway. Not every BC title is a big seller. We don't get to choose individually...