Cakefish

Split Fiction is my GOTY

Keeper is my runner up

Fable

Gears of War too I suppose.

Mostly Fable though because that’s much more of a mystery currently.

@Kaloudz oh did they? I guess this must be after SOTR then. I got so used to the younger Lara that’s it’s weird seeing an older version again. Going to take some getting used to!

With Lara looking older I guess this is supposed to take place years after SOTR? Or is this a complete reboot narratively?

Oh come on, don’t boast about value when console hardware gets price rises beyond the competition, piss poor discounts on BF unlike the competition, Game Pass price hikes multiple years in a row, and chatter that the XSX successor will be an ultra premium device.

@ozkrmz it’s only a 3 year gap from the previous game. Usually I’d celebrate such a quick turnaround, but given the previous game was blatantly rushed out the door before it was ready it makes me very sceptical about this sequel. I want it to be good, but we’ll see.

No idea, I was asleep. I’m just catching up with all the announcements now. Tempting to say F just for the hostile European timing but nah I won’t be that petty lol

I feel nothing. Create all the flashy trailers you want. Proof will be in the pudding when it launches. I’m waiting for reviews and player feedback on performance and bugs. I was burnt by preordering the original, which was nothing like the trailers at launch, and I’m not doing that again.

Speaking of the original, they released a 2.5 update today, the ‘final major’ update. Also seems to have reverted the icon back to the original which is minor win as I never liked when they slapped an ugly ‘version 2.0’ banner on it.

I just realised that’ll be 9 years after SOTR. That’s crazy!

@MaccaMUFC yeah good point, probably a blessing in disguise as we don’t have to deal with all the adverts and filler haha

@FraserG at the very least make it Saturday night, so it’s not during the working week! I don’t why they struggle with this when Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo are always able to find a sweet spot for both sides of the Atlantic.

@Kramlar yeah mine expires early March. Still a holdover from the era of 1:1 Gold to Ultimate conversion. Those were good times.

My inner pedant is irrationally annoyed by the fact this article omits it’s actually on Friday for Europe and further east regions.

I love these end of year wrap ups usually, the data is fascinating. The Xbox always ends up being mostly useless for me though as I partake in the Microsoft Rewards quests, which mandates 15 minutes of a Game Pass game per day. So I boot up a game every day and let it idle until the task is complete. So my playtime stats are completely borked. In previous years I’ve had Age of Empires take top spot back when ‘Play with friends on PC’ was a thing. So I'm expecting a bunch of reward quest games clogging up the rankings and skewing the stats.

It’s tangential; but why do they capitalise the word franchise?

@kmtrain83 best way I can describe it is that it’s a solid enough prologue chapter to a bigger story that was promised but ultimately never told. Thus it simply ends up feeling incomplete, unfinished, and unsatisfying. I was more positive on the game until the announcement of no story expansions, that’s the point I soured on it in hindsight.

@McL92 Psychonauts 2 definitely lived up to my expectations and then some. Still my favourite first party Xbox game this generation by a wide margin.

For sure, backwards compatibility is super important in the digital era. Panzer Dragoon Orta, my beloved, don’t ever leave me…

Nope. The story simply fell flat at the end. The villain just monologues relentlessly all the way through the game, then you just defeat him and that’s pretty much it. Except oh wait, here’s the real threat! Surprise! Except it’s just going to be retconned or resolved offscreen like with all the other 343 games. Any hope I had of an interesting narrative died the moment they announced they had no plans for campaign DLC. Further to this, I was not a fan of just one biome. There was just overground and underground, very little aesthetic variety overall. I had hopes more would be added in DLC but nope. The disappointment I feel came from finding out the game would never get the expansion it needed and so it just feels unfinished, both narratively and thematically. It’s not a bad game, it’s just disappointing and doesn’t live up to the potential I think the series still has.

Dead as the dodo. All voluntarily self-inflicted. Microsoft could’ve offered discounts if they wanted to actually sell inventory. They just don’t care anymore 🤷

Really all over the place isn’t it? A couple years ago it was all about the amazing value that Series X|S and Game Pass offered. Now it’s just nothing but awkward hold music as we wait for the next generation to be announced.

I must be on Phil Spencer’s naughty list because I didn’t get one 💔

I’m surprised. Hollow Knight seemed like one of those forever games like Deep Rock Galactic.

Finished the main campaign of Borderlands 4 with my brother yesterday. Still have a few bits of side content left to tidy up though. The little Christmas themed DLC mission they recently released for example.

On the Switch side I’m also trying to get as much Kirby & the Forgotten Land done as possible before Metroid Prime 4 arrives next week.

December is Metroid Prime 4 month!

I’ve preordered Code Vein 2 on Xbox though. That’s a January release. The deluxe edition is currently selling for same price as the standard release so I thought heck why not preorder then.

I’ve never been hit by the suspicious search accusation by Microsoft but I’m a little nervous I may be if I try to max out these doubled caps. Risky gamble!

It’s clearly a Switch 1 version at its core. At least it got 60fps support on Switch 2. It’s probably best to ignore the Switch 2 label and treat it as Switch 1 game with better framerate. From that viewpoint it’s pretty decent. I think the mistake was labelling it as a full fat Switch 2 game because it’s just not.

Presumably saving all the fanfare for next year’s quarter century annniversary and that makes sense to me.

@BAMozzy I’d say these niche features are important. Not everyone will use each individual one, but when you add enough you start to please a wide audience. Look at Steam. They have a cult following on PC, they are so widely beloved precisely because Valve cares about these little quality of life features. The customisation and personalisation options are far beyond any other competitor. It shows in Steam’s domination of the PC market.

I agree the PC app needs a lot of improvement. It’s woefully behind XSX let alone Steam. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation though. Microsoft is big company and the Xbox division alone is much larger than Valve. They have enough resources to show consoles TLC as well as PC.

@BAMozzy Quite a lot on my wishlist. Firstly fixing the annoying store bug where it keeps repeatedly asking ‘do you want us to give you notifications?’ pop-up everytime you open the store app. I tick ‘yes’ and the ‘don’t ask me again’ boxes and it just ignores this and asks again on every console boot! Secondly, implement the ability to custom sort the store wishlist as you can on Steam. If I want to reorder my wishlist right now my only option is to remove and re-add games manually. It’s so clunky! Thirdly, add the ability to replace ugly game icons with custom artwork as you can on Steam. Fourthly, add the ability to pin more than two custom groups to the dashboard as you used to be able to and let these be the first things that show up when you scroll below the Home Screen. Those are just the low-hanging fruit! There’s always room for improvement.

Echo the backlog comments. I have too much on my plate already to justify buying even more right now!

@TheGameThrifter I haven’t had an insider update for a while. I’m on beta ring. The last one was on the 6th November and before that 17th October. This time last year was way more active for October and November. There is a definite slow down in console OS development right now, they are being neglected. I hope the console updates pick up again next year.

Let’s get Stellar Blade on Xbox then yeah?

XSX is going to meet price parity with PS5 Pro before long if things keep heading in this direction 💀

If memory serves me correctly, nearly 20 years ago I actually got my original Xbox for Christmas 2005. I came from a poor household so getting a second hand original Xbox from CEX was actually huge for child me. Before this I just had a GBA SP (which I remember fondly) and my only exposure to home console gaming was around my cousin’s and friend’s houses. My younger brother got a second hand GameCube the same year. We were a generation behind the cutting edge. I never got a 360 because when I went to uni in 2010 I got a laptop with a dedicated GPU and started using Steam.

It’s a really nice bonus to have but if I buy a game on Xbox it’s because I want to play it on Xbox. My PC is for: games that don’t come to Xbox (so Sony first & third party exclusives as well as some indies), games that can’t run at 60fps on XSX (Plague Tale Requiem, Hellblade 2, Keeper etc.), and games that were designed for mouse & keyboard (Stellaris, Cities Skylines etc.). These games I always buy on Steam, unless they happen to be on Game Pass. So while I’m very supportive of Play Anywhere it’s not really influencing my purchasing decisions to be honest. Xbox is already my default platform.

Each to their own of course, but I vastly preferred Keeper. Both have relatively simplistic gameplay so that wasn’t my issue with SOM. I found it had a very repetitive formula, whereas Keeper was better at keeping the gameplay feeling fresh despite the simplicity. Additionally, the story of SOM underwhelmed me. The best character (Catfish) was majorly sidelined in the last quarter or so of the game. I guess they wanted to tell a more human story overall and focus on the adoptive grandma’s trauma, whereas I was enjoying the fantastical folklore side of things and simply wanted much more catfish. Keeper also has superior art direction and music in my opinion. Again, each to their own of course.

This looks absolutely stunning. Wow 🤩

I hope this is a 2026 release!

Probably a long shot, but could that orange one be Stellar Blade?

I don’t see any reason to doubt it currently. It’s already been delayed twice.

How times change! Now they actively support and encourage the Sony domination of the living room lol

What happened to the achievements overhaul? Phil mentioned it years ago. I like collecting achievements though am by no means a completionist, but I do know an overhaul is one of the most frequent community requests by Xbox fans. Do Xbox still know this?

Déjà vu!

They keep getting asked these questions in interviews because actions speak louder than words. And everyone can see the recent actions they have taken. XSX is significantly more expensive than the PS5 in the USA and even here in UK where the gap isn’t quite as large it’s still notably more expensive. The marketing encouraging gamers to move away from consoles. Huge Game Pass Ultimate price rise, a tier mostly used by console gamers. All these things paint a picture of a company that clearly could not care less anymore about selling XSX and XSS.

I personally don’t doubt the next gen Xbox will exist for a second, but I also don’t blame the wider gaming community for having deep scepticism about future hardware. Xbox blatantly doesn’t care about their existing hardware and so that’s not going to fill people with confidence about future hardware. Only the hardcore enthusiasts follow every little hardware rumour, most gamers will only see how Xbox is treating their current hardware and base their confidence on that.

Clair Obscur will steamroll the GOTY. I haven’t played it myself, but the chatter I’ve seen online makes it very predictable. Which isn’t to say it’s not deserved, just very predictable!

I personally will be voting for Split Fiction in every category that it’s nominated in. Love that game.

Oh I am SO ready to see more Tides of Annihilation!!! 😀

He’s not wrong. Healthy competition is good for consumers. Steam Machine will keep Xbox on their toes, so to speak.

No, as you say Fraser, Microsoft have demonstrated that they couldn’t care less about Series X and S. And next gen Xbox is confirmed to be fully backwards compatible anyway.

And even playing devil’s advocate and hypothetically imagining a fantasy world where Microsoft does still care about hardware sales then still no. Sure GTA is the biggest game franchise, but I don’t think even it is big enough to change up entire hardware launch strategies.

As the article points out they’re still competing by default by offering a product aimed at living room, TV-orientated, controller-friendly gaming. That directly overlaps with the console gaming market. All companies bend over backwards these days to insist they aren’t competing with other companies operating in the same market as them, but the reality of a mature market like video games is that time and money aren’t infinite.

No poll option for those who still have time on Ultimate stacked up via the old Gold-to-Ultimate conversion offer. Mine expires in early March next year and I’ll have to make a decision then on whether I’ll renew at the new, less generous conversion rate or downgrade to essential. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do.

@Weebleman yeah it’s a good point you make. Microsoft need to tread carefully, because having Xbox digital libraries isn’t the impenetrable barrier to switching platforms as Phil Spencer once said it was. We saw how many gamers switched from away Xbox to PlayStation and/or PC this generation regardless of existing libraries. And Game Pass has probably resulted in Xbox gamers building up libraries at a slower rate than in previous generations too.

Personally I’d much prefer having everything in one box for simplicity and minimalism, so that rumoured Xbox still has huge appeal to me. My loyalty to Xbox is not set in stone though. If Valve put out an upgraded Steam Machine that’s competitive with the next Xbox in hardware specs I will be paying very close attention!

This model doesn’t pose any threat to rumoured future Xbox because of the limited hardware, but a hypothetical more powerful version really could bring the heat to Microsoft.