Elbow

@Brigurugi There are earlier years where it's 100% clear they already had winners picked before the event, but I don't think this update is. This one can easily be argued as a goodwill update for Christmas that happened to coincide with the award.

There were earlier years, I think when it was on Spike TV, where they had characters "in-game" (mocapped and all in a cutscene basically) accept the award and talk about it and everything (it was one of the Black Ops games, but I don't know which. 1 or 2 for sure.) The amount of dev resources and time it would take to do something like that is 100% not something they'd do if it was just a "maybe" to get the award.

TGA absolutely is rigged/pre-determined, that's not up for discussion, but this update can definitely just have lucky timing.

@themightyant Unironically, if those in charge just talked like that and were honest, I'd respect them so much more. Phil Spencer revealing their internal yes-man butt kissing review setup for Redfall and how internally it reviewed well was insane, but refreshing to see the honesty.

I'd love more of that. Humility is way more appealing than drooling PR speak.

@bert0503 Mega Man Legends was pretty good, I think that worked. Also I love your cat

E33 cleaned house. Haven't played it yet, been waiting for a big sale, but wow.

Did anyone else think Dan Houser coming out was going to be related to his Absurd Ventures works? Didn't expect him just to show up for the best story award/E33 and dip.

Also a moment to throw out that Dan Houser has a comic book he's writing with Lazlow Jones (yes, that Lazlow from the GTA games) called American Caper. Not quite GTA, but not far away from it either.

Better than expected. Though I have to dock as many points as humanly possible for putting the mental image of Geoff Keighley and Miss Piggy having a romantic mattress mambo in my head.

Six years of therapy undone in a few minutes.

I actually thought this was a big shiny HD remake of Racer on the N64/PS1/Dreamcast at first. Some segments looked familiar, but to be fair "giant frozen racetrack" isn't very original. I hope it has some levels from that first game included.

Not really a Star Wars guy but that game was amazing. Keeping my eye on this one.

The footage and synopsis gives me the impression this is building off Mega Man 11 and the double gear system. That game was pretty easy so I'm not too jazzed on that, but I'm also glad to just see Mega Man return.

Pac-Man and Mega Man both get announcements this year? Man it feels good to see.

Also available on Xbox One! Only a handful of people (myself included) who care about that, but worth it for us!

@Sol4ris I was thinking about Alpha Protocol just yesterday. I think Sega owns the rights? Not sure. Would be cool to see it again, even if it's just to remake the first one to improve all the glaring faults.

Fingers crossed for this one. The original Nightdive remaster was a rare botch by them, (look up Civvie11's "BLOOD: Pink on the Inside" video on YouTube for a great rundown) so I'm hoping this second attempt is much better.

And to be fair to Nightdive they DID patch the problems with the original remaster, but it launched in a terrible state.

@themightyant Counterpoint: GOG does this with a service called GOG Connect, or they did. If you had a Steam copy of a game, logging on with connect would give you a GOG copy as well. Publishers/indies had to opt in to do this, of course, but it's been done. I know of at least two games that took part: Hedon (indie boomer shooter) and Witcher 3, because I used Connect to get GOG copies.

Microsoft and Phil could put their money where their mouths are and do something similar... but they won't.

They did exactly what I expected. Nothing. Couldn't even keep the 360 storefront open one more year to end it with a 'bang'. Didn't even put their own 360 games on sale during that.

They don't care.

I wish the Dragon Age DLC ever went on sale...

I dont know much about Bond's background so I can't say much there. She at least is good at PR. Reggie from Nintendo worked at the corporate side of Pizza Hut before Nintendo, so I won't turn my nose up at her credentials.

That said, actions do speak louder than words, she even said that herself. It's very hard to give her words merit when Xbox's actions as of late have been the exact opposite.

Edit: Of course I fatfinger submit before I'm done. Dammit. She at least called out Play Anywhere and that it was shelved, while a major focus now. That is one of their huge plusses as of late.

@Questionable_Duck I hear a lot of people argue TowerFall was. That one got news posts back when it was ported elsewhere.

For the unfamiliar, Amazing Frog? started life as an Ouya game. I think it was one of the better known games for the device at the time because of how silly it was. It made the jump to Steam and has trucked on ever since.

Not the kind of game you want to play if you're looking for a serious story, but if you just want a goofy sandbox to play around in and have dumb laughs, it's worth a look.

Well I've said for awhile they NEED to push Play Anywhere... though with everything else going on it's still hard to ignore the overall sour feeling with Xbox lately, but it's good they're finally getting on it.

Well at the very least hearing that another console is coming from the head honcho of Microsoft itself is reassuring. Silver lining of some kind.

@JayJ They don't, but people jump to conclusions on it being official or endorsed just because it's used.

Egging On and Routine might be of interest, I need to see more of the latter. Dome Keeper also has potential, and I need to play Darkwood...

@JumpingJackson Not Xbox/Halo studios official, but Homeland Sec really did post it. 99% likely they did it without permission/approval, if that's what you're concerned about.

The big confirmation will be if Xbone, 360, and Series consoles will also get free online. Which would be good, however that would all but guarantee Xbox 360 servers are on the next inevitable big chopping spree.

So a lot of purists don't quite get that devs generally make do with limited resources of the time (especially back then) and they fill in the gaps with their own interpretation of why things were made the way they were. Sometimes the purists are right (Halo is meant to a party game in PVP, not competitive esports drool.)

And then sometimes they completely invent their own stories in their mind about why XYZ is the way it is and SHOULD be.

I'm not intending to come off mean. I've done it before, but I stepped back and realized I was acting like that and had to chill out.

I wouldn't be surprised if Forza Motorsport was a once-a-generation game. Or something close to that.

Maybe it will stay dead, I don't exactly have faith in anything Phil says.

I've never really cared about Halo outside of a super casual passing interest, so I don't care. It does, however, signal the Xbox consoles are done for.

Sea of Thieves already did that, but it was just the opening shot. This is the death blow.

@HeavyHoggJP Not all of these games are bad, for example Vambrace was a game pass title years back and it's actually really fun (if not soul crushingly hard).

There is definitely some junk in here, but not all of it is bad. I just don't like tossing out the good with the bad.

I don't want to admit how many games in this list I just added to my cart. I'm a sucker for JRPGs-- I might not be any good at them, but I like 'em.

It's hard to spend time on their platform lately. I still buy games, but basically it's down to Play Anywhere and/or purely backward compat titles.

Glad I've just been putting my points into the recent DC/Halloween movie redemption they've been offering. What a let down lol

Brutal Legend released in 2009, not 2007.

So just bringing up this side of the argument for people who look down on digital libraries: I have a small apartment. I don't have room for physical media. Much, at least. A couple books, some old DVDs from back when that was the only option, but those DVDs are all in my closet. As is my 360 collection. I just don't have space for much of anything.

I'd like to, sure, but I can't just snap my fingers and bump up my income and housing automatically. Digital libraries are a godsend for things like that.

Now I'm not saying digital is better, just that sometimes, that's the only option.

A bigger surprise at this point would be if it wasn't coming.

@Grumblevolcano Honestly it sounds exactly like Xbox back in 2017-2018. "Charm offensive" for not having much to offer, so they'd sneak codes for $5-$10 Microsoft gift cards into emails and stuff.

@Nalverus I remember playing with a guy so up his own (expletive) that he was smug about playing PUBG on Xbox One with one of those adapters to use KB/M. He was still awful and in the short time I played with him, I saw him always get slaughtered by controller players-- and not once ever got close to a chicken dinner. Still makes me laugh when I think back on it. (Also to give context, I didn't know he was using one of those until just about near the end of when I stopped playing with him.)

Video isn't doing much for me, it's kinda just reinforcing the "meh" vibe the game gave me when announced, but I hope people that play it love it.

@Kaloudz Dusk is very good. Great soundtrack, great level and art design, nothing feels overdone or cliche. Has love for the past without taking the warts from old game design.

@TrollOfWar I'm talking people who play the games. Not sure if there will be an overlap of people that, without play anywhere, would play on a console and then jump to PC or vice versa of the exact same game. I think most games that have cross-platform play even if they don't have play anywhere already transfer sava data.

@abe_hikura Play Anywhere has it, I think, but this is adding on so that non-PA games can have it. Not quite sure on how many people will jump on it, but it's nice to have still.

There are certain games that I'm mad are unlisted, like some of the Assassin's Creed games. AC4's 360 edition is unlisted, and a few others. There might be some extra 360 COD games that also are unlisted but got BC support? I'm not exactly sure if those are disc-only or not though, if so then I can't complain since they were never on the next-gen marketplace.

There's a good few games, not related to licensing, that got yanked. I'd really like them back.

(also for the handful of people who saw my comment earlier, I removed it because upon doing research I was getting conflicting information on how some of the 360 COD games work with BC + was coming off too whiny about it.)

Good on them for keeping their heads down and just working hard on fixing it. Not blaming anyone (that I'm aware of) and just trying to make it right.

I'll buy this and play it when they've wrapped up the fixes.

I question why a remake of Rayman 1... I guess I understand if they want to streamline it and make it a bit easier (it was ridiculously difficult), but it would be strange to go from a remake of 1 and hop right into 4.

Not that I'm saying I want them to remake the other two games, just that it's an odd choice.

So there's two ways this can go.

They give it to Michael Bay, which perfectly suits the over the top, silly summer blockbuster film type stuff that COD leans in to with its marketing. Which is fine, those are fun.

...Or they go the weird route and try to make it a mix of slow political drama with tiny bursts of action here and there. Considering it's Paramount and they seem addicted to weird choices, it's very likely we're getting the latter option.

Either way, this will be uh... interesting.

If it's not the end, it's definitely the sign of the end being near. I was skeptical, and still sort of am, on this favoring Xbox with its lower userbase, but so far so good.. so hopefully my pessimistic view on it is proven wrong.

PSA: I Am Alive, a Ubisoft game, was recently purchased by Atari. I do not know if the rights purchase includes Ubisoft delisting the 360 game, but if you have even been remotely curious about the game, I Am Alive is currently on sale for 70% off. It went from, USD prices here, $14.99 to $4.49 for this sale.

There is no confirmation on the game being delisted, and unless Atari is fine with them continuing to sell these old-gen versions (which we don't know about), there is a possibility it will get delisted within a year or so.

TL;DR - I Am Alive is currently on sale, the 360 edition may or may not continue to be sold in the future. If you've been on the fence or just want to grab it before a POTENTIAL removal, here's a fair warning!

GOG is really good. I'm surprised Xbox would team up with them when their whole thing is to rail against the system of DRM, but it's still cool. Lot of hidden gems and old favorites on GOG. Just wonder how certain games will perform, unless they've sorted out an issue with keyboard and mouse I'm not aware of. Able to plug them in to the Rog Ally or something?

@Tasuki It's the first one I've played since World at War, a friend gifted it to me. I honestly didn't care about the MP because of how generic the characters were up until the collabs.

I dunno, just saying how I feel.

@darkswabber James Gunn confirmed Peacemaker & Vigilante are coming to Fortnite, he announced it around the time Superman released in theaters, at San Diego Comi-Con. (Personally more hyped for Vigilante, but I've got affection for neurotic weirdos.)

@darkswabber Yes, I was hyped as hell when the leak for Gorillaz dropped. B&B too. It's like this update was tailor made for me.

Edit: Peacemaker (DC Comics) was also confirmed for Fortnite recently, too. This whole update looks specifically designed to just do unspeakable things to my wallet.

I'll be honest. I wouldn't have played nearly as much of Blops 6 as I have if it wasn't for the crossover skins. Playing as the TMNT, Jay (of & Silent Bob fame), and B&B is what brought me in.

I'm tired of generic military characters, though I imagine I'm in the minority here.

Cold Fear is huge. I Am Alive is also shocking.. I better buy that 360 edition now, then.

Grow Up was a very fun, relaxing game. Absolutely worth a look.