Cikajovazmaj

I believe this is a standard since forever. Typically consoles become profitable by mid generation lifespan.
Probably casually mentioned in interview to justify incoming price hike.

2022 has been a slow year for AAA gaming on Xbox, not in general. If anything, there were some fantastic games out this year.
Not a big COD fan, but I agree that even during Open Beta it felt like a best COD in last 10 years at least.

Hopefully not the full list, these games are not worth 15$ a month (and I've already played a lot of other games I wanted on service).

I actually predict worse results for next year, as those 3 year conversions start to run out. With upcoming price hike, maybe they should reconsider strategy.. it might backfire, even with AAA games coming out, and they could have a Netflix year (one of the strongest years content wise, but still declining in subscription numbers).

@Fenbops true, except no real new exclusives on GP for a while. But in theory true

Not playing nice Mr. Phil, not at all. It's hard for me to believe MS didn't plan a price hike already, just a couple of months back when Sony did..
Anyway, this is exactly what is wrong with all subs out there. They go from decent value proposition to expensive habit.. and then you stick with it until they get an ads tier.

Playing on XSS, and I just don't see it. At 900p sub 40 FPS, there is just a lot of artifacting (upscaling techniques specifically don't have enough data to work with, which results in a messy hair and edges), shimmer and muddiness.
Artistically it's a masterpiece, presenting not often seen vegetation and terrain very naturally. And there are details that are tech demo worthy! But for every one of those, there is another sticking out like a sore uspcaled eye.
Also, framerate is distracting and immersion breaking.

5/10 for me, just not very good at "game" part of the video game. On to the next one..

Would be fun to compare number of people calling for further graphic scaledown on XSS, with number of people calling Switch trash because it is too weak and limiting to developers.

It's a bit ignorant saying optimizing for XSS is just being lazy. If you were to target top of the market you would have to use all the latest techniques to attract average user. So things like different versions of ray tracing.
With promised feature parity between Series consoles, that is a huge ask to optimize for, with implementation restrictions on the X. If you are doing cuts, you need to develop alternative shadow techiques.. not to mention XSS as a target is starting to be at or below minimal PC requirements (which last time I checked, games played on those machines with low settings looked like X360 generation products).

Just what I wanted to read, as a proud Series S owner..
More seriously, I've expected and predicted this, but counted on MS pressuring teams and demanding quality through the lifecycle of the platform. Unfortunately, second part has not panned out.

So late it is actually impressive. Seriously, takes some lack of skill to c**k it up this hard. Year late and with one of the big selling features cancelled. Maybe just cancel the whole thing and start from scratch with a better team, while there still are Halo fans out there (see myself as fan, but I won't blindly advocate mediocrity)

Just a reminder it's all just harsh business at the end of the day. No nice guys in this field.
But also, pretty standard move after failed initiatives evaluation.

@somnambulance Sony exclusive games are pretty great, and I don't feel like bashing them is the right move. Instead of trying to devalue, MS needs to step up and provide similarly engaging alternative.
Reviews are bought all the time unfortunately. Good proof would be that producing demos and/or trials lowers the sales
Lastly, first PT had a bunch of good gameplay ideas (at least in my opinion) somewhat artificially stitched together inside of an overwhelming engine for the dev team. That resulted in the game being rough around the edges on many levels. My hope (still haven't tried it) was that sequel would mitigate that, but user comments online and 30fps target are making me cautious.

Sorely missed on Xbox, hopefully it becomes standard to include this mode.

@somnambulance not sure about TLOU comparisons, but first Plague Tale is an excellent budget game, punching above it's weight.
Seems like sequel is even better.

Can't wait for release, but won't spoil it for myself. Might be one of the first games I'm eagerly awaiting for GP release (I'm old, it's hard to get me involved).

I'm not sure if this is as impressive as people make it out to be. It's 11 million people buying GP ultimate for a year on a regular price.. given that it's a no-brainer on a Series console, I would expect whole platform user base to be in there.
Again, it's revenue (pure sales), not profit. Also, profit is still less important to MS, and taking a $ loss is still ok, while increasing market share aggressively.

@NEStalgia I thought they just partnered with Sony, but where not an internal team (sort of like Nintendo does). Well, no bueno (not a bug fan of consolidations).

Anyway, you are 100% spot on with inFamous. They are remaking/remastering left and right, stuff that is 5 years old, adding Series/PS5 enhancements to whole last generation, and inFamous is just getting skipped.

Bethesda games are non factor for me personally, but I do know a lot of people enjoy them.
They just seem to take forever to develop, polish, and by the time they are "truly done", are already obsolete. At the same time, these games are a carrot on a 3 years long stick dangled in front of gamers faces, selling a service that will one day host them

GoT basically revitalized the whole "samurai" genre after it lost it's appeal years back.
Great team, great games, and ideally they don't get acquired by MS. MS should strive to level up teams they have to SuckerPunch quality!

Not available at my country, but would order immediately if/when it becomes available. I'm sucker for special/unique controllers, and default XSS is so boring (it's just good, all so reliably good).

@JetmanUK I don't think this is a "first world problem" at all, and that might be because I am a software developer. Getting software on your platform into an unexpected state (meaning with unhandled errors; erroneous states can and should still be expected) is a proof of bad design.
The solution around that should never be for end user to learn when unexpected errors might happen in runtime and quit program in prevention! Just think about what it would look like if one of the spreadsheets you use at work crashed when you copied C13 to D12.. and instead of that being a terrible bug, your whole company just learns not to copy between those two cells in that particular document.

@JetmanUK not everything has to be automated, I completely agree.
But this is a half-baked feature in beta being deployed to general users. Personally, I don't think it's about automation, it's about cognitive load (having to remember which games will go bonkers), and extra clicks/interactions (having to close aforementioned games).
There are 2 possible solutions I see:

• allow developers to flag their games as Quick resume incompatible, and that will allow Xbox to shut them down automatically
• slightly worse, allow user to only have to shut these games down once (creating a local Quick resume incompatibility list)

Anyway, I don't see it as automation problem, I see it as poor UI/UX problem.

That is one poor offering, no way around that. Gold has ran it's course, just merge 2-4 more older games into GP monthly and call it a day.

Moonscars might be interesting, I'll check it out.

I'm happy for people who can enjoy these. I'll just stick with Grid: Legends for little longer.

Feeling like a pleb with my standard Series controller..

@everynowandben nothing can really be done about that, it's a platform limitation. But in all honesty, how many people actually use gyro aim?

Ambitious list... I don't believe most of those games will be ready for 2023. launch, and I'll adapt my GP subscription habits accordingly
Hopefully, I'm wrong and they make a fool out of me.

Another game, another ray tracing skip for S. I don't mind no 120fps mode (that would probably target sub720p), but it would have been nice to have a 30fps RT option, just for parity sake.

Got the game soon after the initial PS release (it almost instantly went on sale), and while it is a good game I don't feel it is a masterpiece reviewers keep on calling it. If anything, I feel that might be damaging its user rating and first impressions in general.
With tempered expectations, it is very enjoyable and a great addition to GP.

@ZeroOverOne it's not about what you wear, it's about what you bring to the table.

Shame about AI: The Somnium Files, I was planning on playing that. Oh well, the never ending backlog..

Phil innovating by doing a 70B acquisition.. technically it's an innovation, never been done on that scale.
And if we are being honest, Sony is not fussed about CoD on GP because we are still riding out a 30USD to a year conversion loop holes. When those run out, games on GP will be less of a problem (live service game like CoD intended to be played over a year or more will cost you same to buy as 4 months of GP).

I didn't even know this was renewed.. why??? Only way S2 could deliver is if they rebooted the whole thing, with new cast, direction, and probably genre.

They really need to change the format and move from hosting, interview, chatting stuff to just games. Info graphic + gameplay. Nintendo and Sony have it nailed down, just copy their blueprint.
These just become so boring and long, with maybe 15 mins of interesting content stretched over hours..

Unfortunately bought it (and sold it) so GP wasn't much of a factor for me, but 9/10, awesome game. I hope they do a sequel.

Does not seem like a good month, but I get to play through a couple of games a month in general and there is one here I had on my wishlist (GRID: Legends) so I'm ok. There were far "stronger" months that offered zero games to me individually.

@Tharsman what I feel is rushed is splitting existing Elite 2 controller into multiple packages and branding it a new product. Not the white color option.

Feels like rushed reaction to PS5 Pro controller.

Well, on a bright side, it can only get better. Been tough couple of months for GP.
If I was paying 15$ a month I would be pissed (and cancelled).

Seems reasonable.. games that make sense for the service (and therefore games MS is willing to pay a lot for) are the ones that provide longer engagement, keeping subscribers hooked for longer period of time..

I rather liked Victoria 2 in it's time.. seems like a business deal falling through, happens all the time. Maybe they announced GP release on a handshake deal.
Anyway, wouldn't blame it on either side or devalue anyone without further context.

@XxEvilAshxX well, prompt works fine on a case by case basis. If you add number of games to queue for overnight download, you'll get stuck on a next download.. not great.

Good addition, but what I would really love is the ability to choose which version gets installed (some current gen versions only provide minor loading time improvements and are not worth primary storage in my opinion).

Tried Telling lies and Her story before.. it was not my cup of tea. But I can recognize general praise and accept it is me who is on the outside
Maybe I give it a go down the road, just to test myself against such gameplay mechanics with a perfect example of the genre.

It's nice, but what it really needs is a complete redesign. UI is very confusing and I get lost in it often. Also, some stuff I use regularly is not accessible, rather it's buried under multiple layers of menus.

It's been a long time since I've deleted this from my Series S to save space. Much better games out there on GP. 9 months post release they are still trying to catch up to regular season cadence.. embarrassing

Dirt rally 2.0 is as close to perfection as racing games have come for me, so DiRT gets my vote..