Xbox Reveals More Games Coming To Game Pass This Holiday

The Medium is the game I’m looking most forward to on that list. Something new and interesting. Doubt I’ll play Skyrim again, I’ve played it so many times at this point.

Great additions! Especially if you're into the Yakuza series. I got bored of it after Kiwami 2. Might try Skyrim some day finally.

@Fenbops Yeah me too, I wish it had a Xbox One version.

Nice to see Skyrim, but unless they do a Series X/S patch, I'm not going to play through that for a 4th time!

Why no Morrowind?

Wow, that's a lot of Yakuza. Pretty amazing to be able to play the whole series on Game Pass.

Nice! Lots of Japanese games!

Skyrim!!!! 🐉 Nice!

I’ll definitely be playing this on Game Pass.

Finally, the rest of the Yakuza series!

Now I have to rebuy the danged things on XBox to have them all in one place....argh!

I'm hoping for a next gen patch for Skyrim, especially since it'll be under MS. Plus Todd was running out of ways to sell Skyrim again....

@AJDarkstar Given the close relationship of MS and Sega since the start, it always felt weirder the Yakuza games weren't on XBox. I mean we got Shenmue years before Yakuza. Just felt off. PS isn't getting PSO2 at all and it's old hat on XB while we wait for the new gen version.

@AJDarkstar I don't know what went down with Shenmue III. The Year of Dreams money hatting on a million dollar stage was just uncomfortable. I'd say Sony funded it, but Sony didn't want to fund it so much they just acted as a charity organization begging their fans to fund it. And the devs never committed to it not being on other platforms. 1 & 2 were Xbox first. I don't really get what happened to 3. Plus it was more or less forgotten on launch.

I get that XB isn't as big in global sales numbers as PS/Nintendo, but it seems to me like the niche of people who love niche games seem to live on the platform and it may make a better target platform for a lot of this stuff than always competing for the FifaOfDutEmon crowd making up that big install base. And Switch should be a no-brainer, but Sega hates Switch outside Atlus. They ignore it every chance they get. Maybe the 90's console war never ended for them. Can't blame them. Ninty was flat out evil back then.

@AJDarkstar Seems like Sony doesn't mind PC, they're even bringing their own games to PC these days, so I don't think PC factors into whether something is Sony funded or not.

For MS, PC is a natural fit, but I can't help but think for other companies it's mostly about reaching markets consoles don't perform well in in Asia and Eastern Europe. (Not that there's any high profile gaming releases going on that highlight just how PC-focused Eastern Europe is..... )

Yeah, Sega does Sonic games on Switch, and little else, except Atlus that supports Nintendo heavily. Otherwise they really ignore Japan's biggest console to a bizarre degree. Even Falcom came around eventually.

As for Sega's marketing, yeah, I hate that sort of thing. But it was a two way street. Nintendo was busy inventing controversy to wield the US government as a weapon against Sega.....and all Sega managed to do was say disparaging things about how uncool/slow Nintendo was in their adverts. And they were trying to make headway against a pseudo-monopoly at the time. I can forgive Sega for that more than PS that continued it for years, though the "we're sooo edgy!" advertising turned me off them more than anything else.

I used my SNES a lot more than my Genesis/MD, that's for sure, but I do have some hours logged on that machine, too. Toejam, Ecco, All the Sonics - there were some Disney platformers that were Sega exclusive and remain excellent. Aladdin! Dynamite Heady.....some cool stuff at the time on there, just not as much as SNES. But yeah, especially early on in the Genesis/MD most of the games were arcade focused, and Sega really ran with the arcade-at-home theme once they got to Saturn and Dreamcast.

I admit I still grin like an idiot whenever I hear the old "Seegaaaa" intro in a game's logo screen. They may have blown it in a lot of ways, but what they'd managed to do back then was pretty special. It was the first time video games could conceivably be anything but Nintendo. And broke Nintendo's chokehold on...well...everything. It's an ironic twist that Sega basically prepared the market for Sony to walk in and take it from them. But neither could actually dislodge Nintendo, even decades later.

I do love seeing when Sega and MS partner up though, and really hope for more of that (Yakuza coming over and PSO2 exclusivity is a good start) - XB is still the closest continuation to the good parts of Sega we have.

In reality, Sega's best stuff never left Japan. Yet, weirdly, Sega never actually did very well in Japan. Must really mean Xbox is the continuation of Sega, then....

@AJDarkstar To be fair HzD was kind of one of their first forays (in a long time) into the PC world. They seem to be approving them a bit faster these days. I do think it's more to do with "other markets and global footprints" than to do with wanting to compete in same-market with PC. And MS abandoned....well....everything for a while...but that was the Balmer/Matrick dynamic duo.

Funny thing is Steam is what drove me out of PC gaming to begin with. Combined with the fact it was clear at the late PS2 early 360 era that the industry was putting console first, and most PC games kind of vanished, while instead we just got late ports of console games on PC. Then somehow it reversed again.

Yeah, I was Ninty/Sega during PS1 (never had the PS1, but I eventually bought a lot of PS1 games for PC emulation), didn't get a PS2 until I had as PS3 (for "bc" tiles after they removed bc....). Ironically I was most excited for PS3 of them all. I had really high hopes for that box. It disappointed, but I had high hopes. Vita was the second most exciting to me. I was SUPER hyped for that. I sure do pick winners! I was never really excited for PS4. It seemd like a bland generic bare bones system. And it was. The only "excitement" at launch was "at least it's better than xbox done." The whole 8th generation was kind of a miserable disappointment. Some great games came out of it for sure, but the generation itself felt like the companies just kind of gave up. They launched in "the Great Recession" - They did give up. If these new consoles launched next year they'd have given up on these too.

This gen I was far more stoked about XSX than PS5, though when I look at the libraries....I have a looot of PS4 backlog to still play on my PS5 before the sequels come out. I'll end up doing 70% of my gaming on it probably. But XBox is the one I have the most fun with picking up and game surfing, for sure. Initially I was most excited about XSX (after all it takes the good parts of the past 2 gens and makes them better!) As it stands, I still like the XSX quite a bit more - but there's a number of games and moneyhatted exclusives I'm probably more eager to dive into on PS. Even if they don't benefit from the 5, at least the controller is great to use instead of the hot piece of garbage that was DS4.

Yeah, I'm still probably a Nintendo fanboy foremost. Though much as Switch and 3DS have been my 2 favorite platforms of all time, I feel that's sliding over to be replaced by XSX for a number of reasons. I'm not usually one to call for new hardware, but I think Switch needs something to revitalize it. It's finally starting to feel kind of antiquated. That happened fast.

Sega was involved in the Xbox design though. Just as MS was involved in the OS of the Dreamcast, MS had contracted Sega for some of the hardware design of the XB. At one point there were talks about the XB actually running DC games, but that ended up not happening (most of the best games got ports, though.) It wasn't a secret collab, though - there were press releases

I know Sega said years ago they were going to focus on PC. In usual Sega fashion that made absolutely no sense ans most of their fanbase is on consoles....because......they were a console company....

Atlus and P5 is just weird. As far as anybody knows, there's no moneyhatting by Sony for that series. And yet you'd think it was a 1st party Sony game. FF/KH games it's clearly because Sony owned enough stake in Squeenix to control that (it went multiplat when they sold.) But Atlus/Sega? Not really. Sony didn't even buy Atlus when they were for sale.

@AJDarkstar Early 00's PC was in a great place. I really got into PC gaming in, I guess, '97. That was the dawn of the golden age, with the Win95 and late DOS games combining with the emergence of the 3dfx cards shortly after. 97 through maybe 2001felt like a world of endless possibilities and light years beyond consoles. Yeah, PS2 really fired a broadside into it, but it didn't really feel like it was slowing down. I think PC tech always feeling like it was playing catch-up. Every other year I'd have to buy a new $1200+ rig just to keep up and then everything would change again just to get decent fps at high settings on the new games. id was a big part of that. Each new Quake meant all new hardware. But in that time we had the great Black Isle RPGs, Half-Life, Unreal, Quake, Diablo, etc, etc.....tons of stuff, each reinventing the world, not much to complain about. I remember the tide shifting when the OG X-BOX came out. I hated that thing. Not because of the console but because of what it did to PC. Suddenly every publisher was pushing console first, PC last. PC games were just glorified console games rather than special PC-oriented games, dumbed down....and then there were the travesties. Deus Ex was amazing - and then we got Invisible War, a weird, gimped, small......I don't know what.....all because it was designed around the X-BOX. It was 1/4 as open as the years old OG game. From then on, we got into that weird mid-'00s period where PC felt "done" - and then Steam really started making a mess (people always love Valve.....they weren't there when Steam was just plain evil. They were the #dealwithit company long before Matrick came along.)

I'll have to do some digging on the Sega thing. I was actually following XB very closely during it's run up to launch - I was press at the time, and on the inside for all the communications. I narrowly missed the lottery to get a review unit of the OG! That was a fun time (but I still resented what it did to PC - we were PC-only press up to then, getting pulled toward console primarily by the shifts in MS's handling of their games. (This was pre-Matrick....I was out of the biz by his time, it was a really different Microsoft Games back then in the pre-Xbox era, lol)

Dual Shock....I was certain Sony just didn't know how to make a good controller at all. The OG Dual Shock was literally taking their non-stick controller and shoehorning sticks into it wherever they fit after N64 came out without ruining the layout. Ok, fine....but sticking with that layout was insane! DS2 was ok-ish really. DS3 was an unholy spawn I prefer not to try to remember. everything about it was wrong. DS4 was actually a marked improvement over DS3....but the grips were still awkward, the sticks at the wrong angle to the grips (I prefer XB asymmetrical sticks overall but other symmetricals manage not to be so awkward as DS3/4.) The battery was terrible (launch especially), the rubber caps were cheap and fell off (especially og) and get sticky with time unused (all DS3/DS4) - the triggers were creaky and cheap. The materials felt cheap. Mushy dpad. It was usable unlike DS3.....but it wasn't good. Dual Sense absolutely does a whole lot better. It's the first controller from Sony that felt like they put any thought intoand feels really good in hand. I prefer the XSX controller slightly as it just melts into my hands and I don't notice it's even there, and the sticks are my preferred tension compared to DS5 - but I actually like them both quite a bit.

Yeah, XSX feels like a new X1X....but I think that's kind of the point they were aiming for. It's all about continuity and seamlessness - a PC like experience on console. Your new Win10 box feels like your old Win10 box but a lot more powerful. At least it doesn't feel like a UI-step back like PS5 that's missing basic interface functionality PS4 had for 5+ years with nothing new really added (yeah, the cards.....don't talk about the cards..... )

I love the PS5 overall, but it really feels like instead of "new experience" it feels like "we broke stuff just to throw you off" (every. single. time. I go to shut down I press and hold PS!) and no folders...just a few recents on the desktop.....ugh. It's a basic launcher. Nice hardware but not really a great interface for switching between games and the like. It's clearly meant as a disc launcher first and foremost.

The problem with PS4 (and X1 beyond the myriad problems at launch) is that the CPU was so held back, the GPU was somewhat held back...everything was "play it safe" and the whole point seemed to be a transition console to move to x86 without losing money. What we really got was PS360 Pro and called it a new gen. It just set up the architecture switch.

I was so hyped for Vita. I boutht the AT&T modem preorder bundle with Little Deviants, a memory card and that hard custom case (STILL the best case they ever made for it limited to the day 1 kit.) I was so gutted with how that went down....