Cikajovazmaj

Well, in all honesty, it is a damn good show everybody should watch.
It might make few people think about getting PS5, but hey.. what can you do. Phil plays his best games there too 🤣

Format always should have been just gameplay and devs, minimum cinematics, no hosts and fillers!
Honestly, if they mess this up, I'm selling the console and cutting my losses.

Pleasantly surprised that there in fact is a curation process and it serves it's purpose.
Game probably wasn't worth what they wanted to charge per download.. (keep in mind people try almost anything that gets added, and MS pays smaller fee even in such cases)

@Lup agreed, this should be a case of justified praise. And it is a bit sad Sony did not mention MS when they released adaptive controller.
However, it has to be said, MS is really not giving anybody a lot of material to praise lately.

@IOI oh, I did not mean that as GP specific problem. My point was that they would release incomplete game that will only become whole once "ultimate edition" gets published.
Calisto Protocol is a great example of a game that would have been smart to exploit GP/PSP route, because at 70$ it is rubbish.

Extensive DLC plan makes me a bit cautious. There is a risk GP release might end up being just a demo/trial, with 1/5 of campaign content..

You are missing none/neither option in the poll.

It has been very interesting to see how fellow gamers think about last 2 years, broken down into detailed categories.
Just wanted to say how refreshing such article was! 👍

I feel like I read the same thing every year. Next one is going to be The year of Xbox. But Godot never comes..

Hardware: B (Series S had some challenges)
Subscription service: C
First party games: E
Brand management and confidence level: E

Somewhere between D and C overall, I opted for C. But yeah, wasn't 2 very good years unfortunately.

@BBB pretty much my experience with Elden Ring. Not sure what all the fuss is about, but since everybody seem to love it.. I guess I'm just too old.
Anyway, topic of the day, indies are great, but I love myself some AAA games. Also, there is this tiny little company called Nintendo doing all these fun and experimental AAA games. So it's not like nobody risked through 2022 it just wasn't MS or Sony (predictably).

Haven't bought any games on my Series S. It was always just going to be a GP machine, so no surprise there.

Awesome result, given there are very few first party games for it. MS is taking a serious loss on S + GPU conversion combo, but they are grabbing market like there is no tomorrow.

Decent list of games, but also constantly on sales.. so I'm not as worried.
Would be nice if additions followed similar quality.

With High On Life specifically, I have a feeling I'm just so distanced from reality. It is getting all these decent reviews, and the game is just plain bad for me. Literally no redeemable qualities.

How can anyone seriously make this argument? MS is only embarrassing themselves with such angle.

@Doublecell it's not, as you do pay for it. Hook for players was that they would get more quality content for less money.
Actually, the selling point for developers is that people will pay for their game, even if it wouldn't sell on the open market because they blindly prepaid for it.
There is an overlap between the two. It's just that I don't believe bunch of junk counts as "more" or "anything" really, if I ain't gonna enjoy it.

Tried High On Life for about an hour. I find it to be an extremely bad game, with so many technical problems it's not even funny. Enemies are shimmering and stuck behind covers watching in opposite direction. Just a mess.
And even the humor I had very high hope for, doesn't really click with me (doesn't feel organic at all). Shame

Absolutely, I'm all in for no filler pure content approach. Unfortunately, it has been mostly opposite with cinematics and hype propaganda.

@Tsushima what does perfect for Game Pass even mean? Does adding it to GP library make it OK for the game to be bad? Most people will just try this out for an hour or less, because R&M author is connected to it.
That is not perfect for GP, that is perfect for demo convincing you not to buy a game.

I'm just gonna wait to try this out myself. Big Rick & Morty fan, but I won't be able to put up with poor or blend gameplay if it ends up being the case (I really hope it doesn't, I've pre-downloaded this game like 3 times with all the patches).

Phil is starting to sound ridiculous to me with these "they made me miss class and shoved me in my locker" beggings. You are sitting on top of gaming division in a Top 5 richest software company, trying to close 70 billion deal. You ain't no underdog, no weakling, you are not being bullied. You are just in a dirty business race, you yourself made as dirty. And people are actually eating this up (just as they did great 2020/2021/2022 year for exclusives on GP).

Very disappointed by lack of any first party MS content.
My guess is they are holding out for their own show, wanting to do MS yearly announcements event. Wouldn't surprise me, MS has seen what works and copied it before (with great success).
Would be poor form move though, as they buddied with Geoff while it made sense for them, and this year just ignored his show completely. We'll have to wait and see I guess.

@AstraeaV most truthful words spoken here. Ofcourse they are hiking prices just now, they haven't released anything worth a 40$ price tag in over a year and a half.

Is there anybody still out there that still believes they can turn thia around?
Please hand the franchise to somebody competent, I used to love Halo franchise, but it has become horrible boring mess.

@Savage_Joe I really don't want to participate in these arguments, I was just stating a fact that XSS performance was below what should be acceptable for a dedicated console.
Switch is a separate story, it's mainly a handheld, and people who purchase Switch for TV play of third party games primarily "are doing it wrong".

In all honestly, what it seems happened is that a new generation of consoles was released BEFORE it was actually needed. A large group of people seems to be happy playing games that would be right at home on XOne or even older hardware (of course if optimized properly).

XSS is the worst offender here. The rest of the pack (XSX and PS5) seem to provide a decent, if not current-gen, experience while targeting 1080p.

Might actually like Soccer Story, seems fun. I'll also probably try NFS Trial. All in all, not a bad bunch.

"joys"
Been a challenging few months for Series S and game optimizations.

All I want for Christmas is.. not this? Nothing for me here..

Feels and plays like a PS2 game, and I mean that literally, not in a nostalgic type of way. Would rate it as 3/10 (really disappointing).

I guess me and few other people are waiting for Atomic Heart, gameplay seems to be right up my alley. And it has been too long since last Bioshock.
Zero interest in Starfield for first 2 years post launch.

@Dsswoosh agreed, not all are bad. As for a great deal, GPU which I'm subscribed to, costs 15$ a month, and means I would have to play 1 day one release AAA game every 3-4 months for it to make sense. I have played none in 2022.
There are people getting great value out of the offering. I'm just not it.

@FraserG I have reacted in anger a bit, but at least in my particular taste it has been just niche games or indie releases for a while now. And every time a game not following that pattern gets pumped before a day one release, it turns out to be a dud.
I would just like some proper AAA games, spectacles. (gaming version of a Marvel movie)

GamePass has really become a showelware platform. People just try these "games" for a few hours and quit..

A bit disappointing, I loved the first 2 episodes and hoped second 2 would be even better to justify me getting the season bundle when they inevitably release it.. oh well, might still do it.

That is just not a very good list.
I would maybe vote for Psychonauts 2, but not because it's a AAA release, it's just that the rest is worse..

Honestly haven't even tried it yet, I'm mostly just playing current games. But it's cool option exists

No idea. Probably Game Pass. It's a very good offer for your first 3 years.
A lot of features listed by people here are just confusing in use to me (quick resume - I had 7 games in it, now I have 4, the ones I ran first, no idea why the more recent 3 got closed; smart delivery - I own Series S and if possible would rather use old versions of most games anyway)..

@Would_you_kindly because it's an option in the menu, and implies XBOX side upscaling to 4K output instead of TV side. Seems like a pretty standard thing to support.
It is but a bug... Happens.

To be honest, he's not wrong. Theoretically GP is getting big AAA releases day one, but that has not been happening in reality. Advertising aside, that is not the applied model for now. (feel free to hate, I'm just calling it like my backlog looks)

Glad future is looking bright.

Not a bad week, none of these really affects me. Art of rally is a decent game, but I've played it as much as I realistically will..

@Fenbops
"They look forward to PlayStation games more than their own 🤣🤣"
That is very true and unfortunate..

Can't wait to get my copy. Nice to see mutual respect, hopefully SM gets to return the favour soon.

Just wanna say I've enjoyed Prodeus way more on GP compared to Halo Infinite, and it does not have RT or anything... Maybe fix the game first?

I feel like I've already read somewhere that Eidos Montreal was used as helping talent. I guess it's honest work.
Having PGG work on Fable was and still is a weird choice. Wouldn't be surprised if the game development is progressing alarmingly slow.

Omg, Return to Monkey Island addition caught me of guard (was waiting for a physical on Switch). That basically makes up for November to me, everything else is just a potential bonus.

7/10 for me, playing on XSS. It somehow feels laggy, and it's rough around the edges (small stuff, like having to position yourself perfectly to see the action button to open door, and such). I played it 40Hz and it felt like 25.. but it seems to just be me, it might be better on "big" consoles.