Bdbrady

Agree with the others above, the trailer told me nothing about the game. Girl, crown that attacks, and some baddies. If the gameplay is good, why wouldn't you show it?

These don't get my excited, but hopefully I'm just uninformed about these titles.

What a waste of money that could have gone to making a new IP. Hindsight is 20/20, but yikes!

This is going to be big news in 2028.

@GamingFan4Lyf unfortunately. Though my neighbors still waive when I drive-by, so I'll take that as a win.

@GamingFan4Lyf they are all corporations that only act in their bottom line's best interest. The idea of the friendly corporation is an act, regardless of if it's Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. They are duty bound to their shareholders. Part of making money is having that "I'm your friend" image.

If they can extract more money by being anti-consumer, they will.

Does Gamepass get too big to where discoverability becomes an issue? I think Xbox will do a good job curating the list of games, but we will see.

Looks like another great game. Hopefully it's a Summer release and avoids the Feb/March flood of games.

@FatalBubbles any specific rumors you've heard? Obviously just rumors of turmoil and dev he*l. I'm wondering why they would wait outside of major issues to hide.

Perhaps he should clean his room.

Fantastic game. Most fun I've had in a long time. I can't imagine playing this without keyboard and mouse support.

@Zochmenos while I agree with that to a point, coming weeks or months later is not that big of a deal. Could this foreshadow a campaign delay or is it evidence that no delay will happen as here is where they would have announced it?

**My ignorant game design take**
I think this will be good because rendering two worlds for couch coop will result in more issues for the game and bad press. They have good momentum and this hopefully won't slow them down.

Staring Norman Reedus.

@Trmn8r How was ReCore? Is it a metroidvenia too? I love the genre.

The game doesn’t get me excited, but I hope it delivers for those who are. Gamepass so I’ll check it out either way

Great gameplay, story, animation, and game loop. Can't wait for y'all to try it.

Might want to leave that one off the resume.

@SplooshDmg Why Grid? I haven't heard anything about it.

@Doctorwhoooourgh Outer Wilds is fantastic, if you haven’t tried it.

Interesting, about 165-185k sales if they made five million in total sales. I'm curious to see how many were on Xbox compared to Steam. It seemed Death's Door had less pre-release fanfare and sold approximately 100k. It would be impossible to tease out if the 65-85k sales were mostly due to extra marketing or gamepass availability/talk.

Happy for the developers. How does everyone like the game? It seem many either love it or hate it.

It looks good. Anyone have experience with it? Is it fairly balanced and are the upgrades done well?

@Vertpin The Show on Xbox, Death Loop on PS.

I'm hopeful this pushes PlayStation (and Nintendo) to have comparable offerings. Hopefully a rising tide lifts all boats.

One of Xbox's biggest games of 2021 is a PlayStation game and one of PlayStation's biggest games of 2021 is an Xbox game. Everything is as it should be.

I hate the trolls on both sides of the console war. Finding the one frame of Alloy's face, Chad (even if that footage didn't look amazing), or random offline flight sim pictures. It is not a good representation of the quality of the game or the moment-to-moment gameplay.

That said, I hope they do have some attention to detail to make this game special. The fruit guy looked like an idiot when he didn't know what it was being compared to, but it would be another detail to help immerse yourself in the world. Last of Us 2 had those special touches that immersed you without you realizing. I hope Halo can offer some of their own special sauce.

I'm excited for 12 minutes! I've never tried, or seen images of, Katamari. I'm excited to see what it's all about.

@Chaudy it’s amazing. You level up your character after each run and your skills drastically improve as well. Have fun!

Outer Wilds is an amazing game. If you haven't checked it out, do so. Don't look up guides until you are frustrated. The sense of discovery in that game is unparalleled.

This review is at odds with some of the other reviews I've seen. Sitting at a 64 on Metacritic isn't getting me too excited. Maybe I'll jump in a few months from now when it's patched up.

Glad to see they are having success. I plan on buying it later this week if/when I have a free moment to play something.

@BlueOcean @Mr_Ditkovitch I'd argue for two scores. An overall to let someone who doesn't play the genre if it's worth it and a score for in the genre. A great fighting game for someone heavily invested into them may not be as good as a casual fighting fan.

Though this approach is harder to distill to metacritic and to the average consumer.

Undermine is a great game and pretty quick to beat. If you like Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells, Hades, this may scratch that itch.

@SplooshDmg Have a good day. Sorry if I hurt your feelings about your profession. We just disagree. Have a good day.

@SplooshDmg name calling lets me know you've lost the argument. No need to take it so personally; no need to be a corporate defender. Again, Microsoft gets a benefit — you just disagree with me about the degree of the benefit. Believe it or not, you're not an expert on accounting, PR, advertising, gaming, corporations, and every other subject matter you think.

This is a missed opportunity from Microsoft. Big indy game that's exclusive and the hype that could have brought is a missed opportunity. I think that warrants them bumping Quantum Break for a week or two from the featured section. Call me crazy all you want, but it's a bad call on their part IMO.

@SplooshDmg so is your point that there is a marketing agreement by pointing out the examples above? They wouldn't do that for free, right? So they should have done more and further back to point it out. It's a missed opportunity. Perhaps they can jump on after release, it's not too late.

And it's not promotion for free. Microsoft gets something. First, money from additional sales. Second, more people buying into their system and generating hype about their brand.

I figured an accountant would know Microsoft gets a cut of the sale and would have other non-monetary benefits. Guess not.

@SplooshDmg "You are crapping on them when you have no evidence to support your claims." They have a 10/10 game, the current hot indy game out, possibly winning many awards at the end of the year as an exclusive. Yet there was barely a peep out of Microsoft about this game. Little to no promotion.

That's evidence of a missed opportunity. Yes it requires deals, moving other things off the store, a slot at a presentation, and/or promotion on social media/the Xbox store. But they didn't do that.

It's not rocket science, but you keep going to the success of the game, when I'm talking about Microsoft missing a big summer indy game. You're missing the point . . . again.

Great! Keep the games coming

@SplooshDmg It's not a "huge assumption" to say Devolver would say yes to free marketing of their game. Yes, that typically takes place weeks, months, years before a game comes out. Microsoft should have seen this game was a good one and marketed it better.

Additional marketing would help the game, but, as I'm arguing, would help the Xbox brand's argument about having good games. This is the point I'm most concerned with. I'm not crapping on anyone, but expressing disappointment in a comment section about a missed opportunity. No names being called to you or them.

@SplooshDmg you're missing the point. I am more concerned with Microsoft missing the opportunity to show they have great games to play exclusively on their console. It's a win/win for them and Devolver, but they didn't recognize this as a game to push.

@SplooshDmg Your contention is word of mouth marketing will result in the same sales as word of mouth marketing plus the promotion of the game by Microsoft?

Essentially you need proof that marketing by a two trillion dollar company helps sales verses no help. Yeah, you win. That's not an obvious answer.

@SplooshDmg it's a missed opportunity and unfortunate. My feeling, yes, but factual as well. Hopefully they do better scouting games and promoting them in the future.

@SplooshDmg point still stands. If they dumped money into the game, they would/should have had prior knowledge of the quality of the game and should have negotiated that long ago.

The fact that they didn't is disappointing and a big miss from them.

@SplooshDmg my point stands. Xbox knew or should have known they had a great game here and should have marketed it/arranged a marketing deal. It makes no sense why they wouldn't other than they weren't paying attention. Devolver isn't going to turn down free front page advertising by Microsoft.

Your position is Microsoft goes to Devolver and says, "we want you on the front page of our store, marketed heavily to drive sales, and pushed as our big Summer game." Devolver says, "no, we want to spread via word of mouth."

Yeah, it could happen but it makes zero sense. And if Microsoft just missed the fact that this was a good game and now needs to go to them for approval, it just proves my point. They should have been on top of this much sooner.

@SplooshDmg I’d agree with you except for the fact there is a exclusivity agreement. Promoting the game benefits Microsoft (more money, prestige for ecosystem, etc.), the game (money, notoriety, etc.), and the publisher (money). Surely marketing was thought of and it benefits all.

I go on the Xbox app and don’t see it. Microsoft software page — which promotes quantum break — and it’s absent. Strange.

I'm excited after this review. Sounds like my kind of game! A few things that bug me:

1) The box art turned me off and I never even looked at the game until I saw a clip on twitter that caught my eye. The box art doesn't look like the game or genre at all IMO; and

2) The art style, style of game, and apparent quality make this a must play for many and I wonder why Xbox was so silent on it.
Why didn't Xbox push this game during E3 or before? Did they not know they had a great indy? Makes me question their ability to judge a good game and/or manage this many studios.

Begun, the streaming wars have.

@Richard-92 Ditto. I'd prefer less talk and more games with gameplay and release dates. Makes me fearful they will not come for years and years.

Ugh, cross code leaving. I know it’s been a year, but feels like it just got here. Wish we had more lead time for the 30+ hour games.

@Doctorwhoooourgh not disagreeing with you, but genuinely curious on which studios you think are well managed?

I hope they beef up the mismanaged ones too.

Can Microsoft manage these studios? I feel like all we get are CGI, in game cutscenes, canceled games, major delays, or mediocre offerings.

Why? It seems to happen more with Microsoft than other companies. Maybe it’s time to spend money on better management.

@VisitingComet1 Agreed, even more so with ES6 being more like a 2026 game. Show me some Halo, some things for the fall, something in January/February. They are setting themselves up to disappoint when they overhype. Look at Hellblade II. Even if it comes out looking great, it wont be like that CGI trailer from the Game Awards 2019.