BacklogBrad

@BAMozzy I dont think they would consider the fan boy reaction as a pr disaster especially on the Sony side (not playstation side). If you were looking to invest in a company and knew that Sony had this easy revenue boost to every single game they made but they deliberately are not doing that, you're taking your investment somewhere else right?

People on twitter/bluesky dump on these companies all the time. Yet they still put making money first by increasing prices, laying off employees etc. Twitter blowback is not preventing them from doing anything when it comes to their bottom line.

There are like 20,000 games releasing every year. One or two exclusives per year does not have the console selling power that it used to. It would be more beneficial for them to take the 70% from multiplat then just simply cut off people that are not going to move to their ecosystem.

I've been saying this for a while now but its only a matter of time before Sony executives and shareholders force playstation leadership to go way harder in multiplatform releases. Unless Playstation leadership come to that conclusion themselves, it will be forced on them by higher ups.

If xbox and switch ports of games like spider man 1, uncharted collection, ratchet and clank are not being made right now then they are shooting themselves in the foot.

It would be interesting to know how many units have been made before the launch of the xbox ally and the Lenovo go 2. Guessing the demand for such a niche product must be tough. I dont think this thing will sell very much more or less than the other non steam deck pc handhelds.

They probably won't convince too many others that own a pc handheld to convert to this one and people that wanted a pc handheld probably already have one. I think this will be a very cool product that doesn't have much of an audience but that's true of all pc handhelds.

The key is to use mouse and keyboard on console.

@Markatron84 that sounds promising.

I misunderstood the title and subtitle, it had me hoping they fixed the bad combat system. This is just a difficulty setting.

I hated the combat system where it seems like action rpg but once a meter fills up you have to constantly pause the combat and select an action from a menu. Like 10+ times per battle you are fully pausing combat. It would have been better to hotkey those or go with a full turn based combat. It was a bad mix of both genres that didn't work for me.

I didnt hate the combat enough to want a god mode but I did hate the combat enough where I haven't played part 2 yet. Not sure if I ever will.

@GeeEssEff pokopia

The company that patents commonly used game mechanics and goes after every small game that slightly resembles their games is making a blatant Minecraft clone. The Evil Npire strikes again.

Thankfully 3rd party (and 1st party) publishers are seeing how badly exclusives are harming their IP. Multiplatform is the future.

I wish they would go back to one of the weird ones (blood dragon/primal). Not necessarily a sequel to either one but way outside the box.

Far Cry is one of my favorite series. I think a lot of people dont understand that its up to you to make it fun. Approaching every outpost and mission with the same weapon setup and play style is not the ideal way to play.

What a world we made where making an average game means the studio might be shut down while others are intentionally making bad games.

I didn't like part 1 of the remake. It's doubtful I ever play parts 2 or 3. Loved the original though. It's tough to watch such a great 30 hour experience get turned into a 100+ hour bloat fest.

Licensing is one area where the videogame space can improve. Especially from a music standpoint. Do the musicians or record companies really care if a song can be heard in a game from years ago. It's not like people are thinking I want to hear 'Flirting with Disaster' by Molly Hatchet, I better fire up Nascar '98 instead of just streaming it or spending the 99 cents or whatever to own it.

I wish ip holders realized the value of what is essentially free marketing at this point. Is it the worst thing in the world if someone new stumbles onto your music, car, or IP from a retro videogame? Maybe they become a fan and seek out more of your stuff. It's not like Microsoft is going to be laughing all the way to the bank by selling forza 1 or PGR.

I want a dlc that expands on the base building and resource farming. That was so close to being an awesome feature. They could even have a story dlc around building your galactic mining empire.

I liked building the bases and connecting them but didn't feel there was enough reason to go through the trouble of doing it. I only really dug into it on the first playthrough and mostly ignored it on all my new game+ runs.

I won't knock it without trying it (probably wont be trying it). I dont mind the blatant knock-off clone games, more power to them.

I love the franchise and look forward to playing it but waiting them out for a decent sale, probably $20-30.

I plan on playing mindseye when it is in the bargain bin (like $5). I usually end up wondering why everyone hated the game so much when I buy in at that price.

Hopefully the docked experience is better than the launch version of rog ally. If you ever want to raise your blood pressure and get extremely annoyed/frustrated try to play a rog ally docked.

It's my one major complaint with the OG device. Windows in handheld is totally manageable with room for improvement. Docked mode is a nightmare that needs major improvement.

@Martsmall getting the rewards points for not doing anything has been nice. But I might start getting wellness checks since it looks I've been playing grounded 2 for the last 200 hours.

1.3 million downloads is still only 3 to 4% of gamepass users. I dont know how successful it is if the game is essentially free to those 30+ million people who already pay for gamepass and less than 5 percent are downloading it launch week.

I made the same argument about hi fi rush, 3 million players when 30+ million have "free" access to play the game of the year contender is not very good. Then if you look at the fall off rate of achievements unlocked, a very small fraction of those 3 million are actually playing a substantial amount of a relatively short game. (30% unlocked achievement for beating track 2 of 12)

Maybe its a symptom of gamepass but player counts and download counts are not very impressive to me. I wonder how many are like me and have gears reloaded downloaded but haven't played it yet. I am also only looking to get a taste of the improvements made before bouncing off (unless I am wowed by the improvements). I feel like counting me as player or one of the downloads isn't really representing an actual player.

I am really excited for outer worlds 2 but keeper is a wildcard for me. I love double fine and there is a real possibility that anything they make will be a 10 in my book.

The bug i have been seeing for more than a week is the xbox app saying I'm still playing the last game I played when it is not running. When I boot up my pc, I get the reward points for playing a pc game and a gamepass game without opening the xbox app or a game. It also adds to the time played for that game whenever the pc is on.

The positive takeaway is that xbox still values the IP enough to keep it and is likely to try again someday. Hopefully the next attempt won't have the rocky, bloated dev cycle.

I'm looking forward to this one. My young nephew loves these "play with large machinery" games and I have grown to appreciate them as well. This looks fun.

The call of duty license is clearly just for name value. I bet they had a military movie all lined up and someone in marketing suggested sticking a licensed ip on it. There really isn't a call of duty story that demands the movie treatment.

This is why we need low spec systems to remain popular. We need developers to be targeting those rigs and let the higher end pcs and consoles run the games really well.

"Pushing" the high spec systems to their limits is not beneficial even to those who own the high end systems.

AAA exclusives are no longer sustainable. Sony was openly complaining about the cost of their big titles like Spiderman vs the revenue they make. Xbox showed that multiplatform works without harming the brand at all, if anything it boosts the brand.

"I saw some analysis or estimate of one same franchise released during PS4 era and PS5 era generation double the budget, and that has reached... the point that we cannot recoup this investment. So this generation, PS5 generation, I think is the first time that the industry really, truly believes that you know there has to be something that has to be done," Shuhei Yoshida

It would be interesting to see how many of these are gamepass users. With 30+ million having access to this game, I would expect higher totals than we have seen.

Peak player count on steam is under 5,000. It's safe to say it didn't sell squat on that platform. I would be surprised if playstation has much more than 100k sold.

1 million player count could also be seen as less than 3% of gamepass users even booted this up in the first week.

I wouldn't read too much into everwild. It's a game that just never came together. They shouldn't have even teased it. There probably isn't any crazy stories there or wild details, it just didn't work out. The craziest thing will always be giving it a slot at a showcase when it didn't have a concept for what it would be.

I think Rare has a long future of sea of thieves development and more live service games.

Haven't tried it yet but I notice that it is still sitting as "mixed" on steam user reviews. 740 positive versus 636 negative.

If I have time, I might boot it up on gamepass but there is no way I would pay $40 for this.

Kudos to xbox for not delisting the previous remaster or original game though.

Ue5 has shown to be a very good engine in the right hands.

Hopefully their solutions will make it easier to get to where we know it can be.

I have a rare 3 day weekend with very few responsibilities. I am prioritizing finishing spiderman 2. I have struggled to get into it and have dragged it out for months now. Hopefully I can get through it.

I will also probably sneak in some Advanced Wars 2, dragon age veilgard, and nascar heat 5.

Dragon age and heretic/hexen were easily the best for me. Little bit of a slower month.

I am much more likely to buy/play DLC when I am playing the game for the first time. Since I am done with the original story I have thoroughly moved on for now.

If/when I replay the original story I will consider buying the dlc but for now I am not buying it. I typically wait for the game+dlc package to be on sale.

Categorized as "Mixed" on steam 549 negative reviews versus 525 positive.

Definitely not going well for some, the mixed outlet scores seem to reflect the community on this one.

I can absolutely see hating the $40 price tag on the second remaster of a 19 year old game. Glad I got gamepass, but will still probably buy it when it gets to $9.99.

It's hard to stay optimistic about tomb raiders future under embracer's crystal dynamics.

Hopefully it gets revealed soon to get a sense of what it will look like.

I dont mind the crossover skins (I also dont buy them). It doesn't make it any less fun for me, if anything it is a net positive for me. It helps me to identify different players. If I realize the person with the rhea Ripley skin is killing me often, I can spot them easily and play them differently. I can also assume that the people buying skins are playing the game more and likely good players.

I prefer this model to just having the generic character models that have little to no difference between them. That is boring and just adds to the monotony of fps multiplayers.

Need for speed rivals might get better without server support. The always online aspect is the worst thing about that game. I have been playing this over the last couple weeks and it seems like I have to migrate hosts a couple times per session (always mid race).

Plus other players seem to only want to wreck other human players even when there is no reason to. For example, I was a cop and they were a cop and there is no reason to ever wreck another cop. They just wanted me to have the worst experience with the game possible.

One of the worst need for speed games I have played but closing the server and switching to an offline mode would actually fix a few of the biggest issues I have with it.

He is right. The performance increase will be microscopic but the price will be astronomical. Plus, the popularity of the low spec Nintendo products will keep the majority of games well within the current gen's range. Convincing people that a $700-$900 xbox or ps6 is necessary when the ps4/xb1 could run most new games will be a really hard sell.

There is also the likelihood that streaming will continue to improve and get nearer to perfect performance.

This might be the last true generation as we have known them. The next xbox will live alongside the series s and x instead of replacing them. There won't be any effort to force you off the current devices.

Have some confidence in your game. If you need to get 2.5 months out of the way of a single indie game from a different genre then you probably realize your game isn't that good.

Does early November somehow make a better window? Literally all the holiday games will be coming out or already in players hands. Way less players will have free time in November than early september.

Seems like a bs excuse and they needed an actual delay.

I probably won't play much of either but its cool to see sony ditching exclusivity.

I have heckdivers 2 on pc already and have recently replayed all the gears games.

I'm passing on this one. It would be redundant to buy another handheld pc. I'm waiting on the next generation to come around.

It will be interesting to see what the docked situation is like. The current ally docked experience is brutal. Easily the worst thing about the device.

Grounded 2, Ghost recon wildlands, splatoon 3, spiderman 2, and need for speed rivals

Has to be around 10 times.

I'm not sure if I will do a full playthrough when it launches. I might just play for a few hours and move on. I'm not expecting to be blown away by any improvements but im still curious. The 360 version still holds up and the ultimate remaster is great.

Tropico 7 is an exciting addition. I love that series. I will definitely dive into that the second it becomes available.

Very niche product. The handheld pc market is small, and this is another iteration of a rog ally (not a new generation). I know the discourse will be around sales estimates being low but we should not be surprised when this sells well below 1 million units. The steam deck is the runaway leader in this small market with under 4 million.

They aren't planning on this thing selling "well" relative to traditional consoles. It's a proof of concept that windows can be portable and rival steam's os and a proof of concept for the "xbox on pc" experience or whatever they are calling it.

I will wait for the recap articles and check out the trailers that sound interesting.

Some studios have to close because their games were only okay while others intentionally release bad games. What an industry.

Not much for me. Maybe Antarctica 88 or Shantae Advance

Valkyria chronicles 1, splatoon 3, forza motorsports, and need for speed rivals.

Deleted battlefield 6 for space. I doubt I will check back in on that this weekend.