Altaria_97

I didn’t realize these games were only a one day thing. I said I’d claim Battlefront on XBOX when I got back to my place tonight, guess that isn’t happening. The deals don’t show up on mobile for me

@BacklogBrad Agreed. I’m sure he means an “internal delay” based off the original projected release date… but wording it as just “delay” implies it’s universally known by everyone, or official.

Awesome. I’m guessing it’s going to be Sumo Digital developing it and it’ll play like the last 3 entries. I loved them all, especially Transformed. This was low key one of my favorite announcements, I just wish we saw gameplay and got a release year.

I'm shocked. I went in expecting nothing and I came out hyped for like 8 games. I didn't watch the entire show but from the small bits I watched it was pretty enjoyable.

And Astro Bot winning game of the year was great to see. Not just because I loved the game, but I think it'll push developers to make more cartoon-y games based purely on fun... which is right up my alley.

Maybe these shows really can be the E3 replacement I've wanted over the past few years.

Wow. The gameplay at the end of the trailer look REALLY good... both visually impressive and fun as hell. Looking forward to this!

Forza MotorSport 6 Apex disappeared from my library shortly after it was delisted. I contacted them with the order details and the game data (achievements, playtime, etc) but they said they “couldn’t find it” and I “never owned it”.

I know that was a free game but still… what a crap system.

Ngl, I actually thought this game couldn’t be played alone. Being able to play it like a single-player game AND offline is a lot more enticing. Thanks for the heads up, PureXbox.

I also got the game for free lol, Prime Gaming gave away Epic keys for the game back in July. Maybe I’ll finally try it out this winter. Should run well on my new-ish GPU.

Oh. The difference is actually pretty big. That said, the Series S version still looks good, especially for a console that's usually sold well under it's retail price of $300. But yeah... the Series X version has way better shadows and a noticeably higher resolution.

Agreed with others saying Persona 3 will probably leave. Most ATLUS titles only stay on GamePass for a year. Although it released at the start of February, which is probably why it isn't on this list. I'd be happy to be wrong tho as it's a great game.

I’m in rush to play it. I’ll probably start it up during my PTO around Christmas time!

Keep in mind that a score of 6/10 isn’t bad, it’s still a decent score. Plus most other reviews for it are much higher with the game currently sitting at an 86 for XBOX and an 87 for PC on Metacritic.

Looking forward to playing this one.

No way, the poll says 34% too haha

I use energy saver since I don’t use remote play. Less money spent and apparently it’s more sustainable.

It’s not bad but it’s still a disappointment. It’s still not optimized well on PC. It runs well on Series X, thankfully. The single player is still short. They still focus on “live-service” type events. Only a few new tracks. No crazy fun “fake” tracks like Prague and such. It just feels soulless still. And I still don’t like podium picking mechanics.

All that development time for a game that, imo, is worse than Forza MotorSport 7 by almost every metric. I gave it a 7 for it not feeling much different after an entire year.

It’s a solid game that just didn’t have much personality to it and came out right before the biggest CoD in probably a decade. It felt really good to handle but I just don’t see a reason to play it over Black Ops 6. Granted, I don’t play a lot of online games these days.

Thanks for the heads up. Lego 2KDrive has been toward the top of my backlog so I’ll get started on that this week. 🤙🏼

Crash Team Racing I never bought despite loving Crash Nitro Kart back in the day. I was hoping it would get optimized for Series X then I guess I just forgot about it lol. Looking forward to playing that and Indie soon!

I want the next Halo, the next Forza Horizon, Gears E-Day, Perfect Dark, Psyoconauts 3 and a revival for Banjo and Conker. I also want Fable to not get delayed.

I’m aware I won’t be getting most of what I want lol. I’m still remaining optimistic, though.

@awp69 Thanks for the info!

@awp69 EDIT: This entire time I thought Microsoft published the game. My b, I’ll look up what the deal is about the exclusivity then.

And the tail of Microsoft’s mismanagement of studios and game development continues. I’m still interested in the title but I’m waiting a bit to download it on gamepass until I hear most of the bugs are ironed out.

This really feels like the “Wii U” era for XBOX. A complete lack of direction for the system and games, uncertainty of the future, and a really mixed quality of games with a lot of big franchises just taking forever to show up.

All that is to say I still enjoyed my Wii U, and I enjoy my Series X. But I’d be lying if I said the Series X hasn’t underwhelmed compared to the Switch and PS5.

Glad they’re improving it. It’s a very underrated game but like a lot of other games these days, it released in an unfinished state. Excited to give it another go this weekend.

Too little too late for me. I wanted one of these a bit ago, but I now have a PS5 and PC to divvy up my game library. I don’t mind uninstalling a couple games if I need to every now and then. It’s a good deal for those who still need one, though.

Insert Avengers “What the hell happened here” meme

Anyone that hasn’t played this yet is in for a treat. This is a fantastic remaster of some great old-school collect-a-thon platformers. I enjoyed my time with these games on PS4 Pro back when it released, and if they updated the games code and animations to run at 60fps I’d be willing to replay it.

I got my Series X early 2022, right after holiday 2021. Playing Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and Psychonauts 2 on a new 4K console at 60fps really wowed and stuck with me. Unfortunately, other than Hi-Fi Rush (and to a degree Forza MotorSport), nothing else has really stuck out for me.

That awesome to see… but I still feel like this will be a fall 2026 game 😭

It feels weird to say I’m nostalgic for a current gen console but I agree. The first year on the market was so exciting. A huge push for backwards compatibility, some really beautiful launch-window games, and killer games for 2021 (Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, and Psychonauts 2). Truly an exciting time and it’s why I chose the Series X over the PS5 (I now own both, tho).

But since then… it hasn’t hit the same. They ended all development for backwards compatibility and most years after just haven’t been as huge for me. 2022 I remember being a nothing year, and 2023 was solid but also had some disappointments. Hi-Fi Rush is still the only XBOX game to truly impress me since Forza Horizon 5, and that’s multi-platform now. Forza MotorSport was great but also felt like a bit of a step back for the series in terms of its career mode and track variety.

Here’s hoping things pick back up. Stalker 2, Flight Sim, and Indiana Jones prove to be a solid holiday lineup after just getting Age of Mythology and Black Ops 6. I just see the big names that I personally play XBOX for (Gears, Forza Horizon, Halo, Banjo, and now Psychonauts etc.) not showing their faces again until the end of the generation or sometime into the next one.

Their current 2025 lineup is great, it’s just not my personal cup of tea.

I remember getting my XBOX One in fall of 2014… I got Destiny and the Halo MCC. I didn’t like Destiny at all and the MCC didn’t have functioning online for a fair bit. I traded both in and was beginning to regret buying the console.

Then I saved up some money and bought Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, and eventually… Sunset Overdrive. All these games were amazing but Sunset Overdrive was easily the most unique. There’s nothing like it and reading this makes me want to replay it at 4K/60+ on PC.

I’ll cast my vote at the end of the weekend. Was only able to play yesterday for about 20 minutes but the multiplayer was fun like the beta. I’m excited to try the campaign and zombies. Visuals and controls are good and it’s the most entertaining CoD I’ve played in a very long time.

I remember really liking this game… er, game development application. It’s actually what eventually got me interested in trying Unity out, which I used to make a game for one of the software development courses.

I also remember making a fake social media app (which was kinda crappy lol) freshman year for one of my classes and I actually called it Project Spark. I even used the game logo for it haha.

Point is, I really enjoyed the title despite not being something I played all the time. It kinda got me to dabble into game dev, even if I never fully dove into it. Might try again someday, but regardless, I’d love to see this game come back.

I have Dirt 5 on Steam and loved it. I had my gaming PC with no consoles other than the Switch at the time so it was the game that made me feel like I was playing a “next gen” title lol. That aside, it was just a really fun racing game. Kinda want to go back to it now.

I’m on the boat of it being a game changer. I don’t play as many online multiplayer games as I used to but it’s been really nice when I do. The bulk of my buddies are on PC and PS5, so being able to just turn on my Xbox and play with whoever is incredible. Crazy to remember things weren’t this way in the past.

I’ll definitely check out Stalker 2. That’s probably it for me, which I’m fine with. Lots of other games to play!

I unfortunately still have the delay mentioned toward the end so I don’t use Dolby vision. Shame as it sounds REALLY good when I tried it. Much more full and elevated sounds. I’m connected through E-Arc and don’t have an actual sound system/amplifier, so that could be my problem but it’s an expensive solution to try just to see if it works. I also tried feeding the image to the sound system then to the tv, but that means I can’t get 4K/60/HDR, which is more important to me.

Regardless, it’s cool for those with the correct setup. Really awesome list and it’s cool to see a good chunk of titles making use of the feature.

If I’m remembering right, the MW2 reboot took up like 200GB for me so if this is true… it’s not too bad. Not great but a step in the right direction.

@Ricky-Spanish Agreed, I’ve never understood the point of these. It seems like a waste of money for Microsoft and a middle finger to the hardcore collectors that would buy them. They’d probably sell way more hardware if they released these to the public, which you’d think would also increase software/subscription sales.

But what do I know lol

I completely forgot this game was a thing and that it was coming out this year. That said… it looks really good! It’s definitely something I’ll check out once I finish my current lineup of games.

@HeavyHoggJP Same here. My brother and I want to play co-op. He owns it on PS5 but paying for the PS+ sub on top of the game is just too high of an asking price for me. Especially because we don’t even know if we’ll like the game.

I’m waiting to get it once I can get it on Xbox with cross-play. The devs seem great and I’m glad they’re working on it.

I’m sure it’ll be good but it’s hard to be excited at the moment. No gameplay or release year. The setting looks great but I need to see more and I’m worried it won’t come out for another 2 years.

Probably the first CoD I’ve been excited about in a decade or more. I got Vanguard and the MW2 reboot to play with a couple buddies but they quickly stopped playing and I got bored playing alone.

The beta of BLOPS 6 I played alone and actually had a ton of fun. Not sure what it was but I liked the maps, the movement, and graphics. The UI also wasn’t garbage once you get into the BLOPS 6 section of the CoD launcher. Looking forward to the full release!

I agree with some others here. Game pass the past few months has been very lacking and the price increase is just an extra slap in the face. PS just got Plucky Squire. Game Pass for some reason didn’t.

You can really tell XBOX is trying to make up money from the Activision buyout and putting Call of Duty on Game Pass.

Damn, about this time a year ago I was saying, “excited to try Gotham Knights!”

Didn’t play it once. Too many other games for me to even try to rush through it in a couple weeks. Kinda crazy how there are so many games (plus other adult things) that make even a game being free still not worth playing for me lol.

I’ve bought a couple games on Xbox but they were dirt cheap during sales and I used rewards points, like Lego Harry Potter.

My favorite game of the year, among all platforms, is Paper Mario TTYD. Astro Bot is right behind it.

I watched Rugrats a lot as a really young kid and loved it. Plus I love 2D platformers. This is right up my alley.

FYI: if you have PC, the game will be free to claim on Epic from the 12th - 19th. Kinda shocked but I’ll take this for free!

I forgot about it, and I only don’t miss it because Microsoft gave up on making the games worthwhile a long time ago. Not that there weren’t any good games in recent years, but the days of getting consistent hits like Forza Horizon, Sunset Overdrive, and others was long gone.

I definitely want to try it but it came out at the busiest time of the year in terms of game releases for me. Star Wars Outlaws and Astro Bot have my attention right now. Then I'll be playing The Plucky Squire and Zelda. Plus I have a lot of stuff going on outside of gaming that's occupying a lot of time. Maybe I'll give it a go in October when things wind down a bit for me.

Regardless, I'm glad to see the general consensus is that it's a great game.

@ZeD @FraserG Just did a few quick searches and also tested the game from my end, and it is 60fps already. Seems like it natively ran at this frame-rate so no need for FPS boost.

So on Series X, it seems the only benefits to this upgrade are better shadows… and I guess better textures designed for 4k? Maybe better haptics? I didn’t think the Series X controller had any different rumble capabilities than the standard One controller but I could be wrong. Think they could be referring to the PS5 controller there. Odd remaster, in my opinion.

I’m only thinking a lot rn because I bought this game a couple months ago and was planning on playing it soon 😂

I'm very close to finishing Luigi's Mansion 2 HD. I also got Star Wars Outlaws on PC off a key website and it's really good so far.

I did download the Black Ops 6 beta and it's surprisingly great. Legit the most fun I've had with a CoD game since the 360 days. I'll definitely be playing it once it fully releases, plus I get it with GamePass.

People are too harsh with interpreting review scores these days. A 77 on metacritic is a good score if you’re interested in the universe and game. It’s pretty much all good scores minus that nasty Eurogamer review.

Everything I’ve read and seen looks really good to me. I’ll be picking it up when it gets a bit cheaper but it looks fun.

My TV does a pretty good job upscaling 1080p content so as long as the visuals are impressive (which they look to be so far) and the 60fps holds up well I’m okay with this.