Grumblevolcano

@somnambulance I think it's more the live service model that's the issue. With almost all Xbox Game Studios games nowadays being live service, the similarities between them are amplified. Forza Horizon 5 also has a content problem when compared to Forza Horizon games that weren't live service for example.

@Bleachedsmiles Another key thing Nintendo does that I feel is important is heavily focusing on the next 6 months and that stuff after that is the odd tease here and there. Look at Nintendo E3 2021 for example, the stuff releasing 2022 or later present was:

• Life is Strange Remastered Collection (release window in the Direct was 2021 but got delayed)
• Two Point Campus
• Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp (release date in the Direct was December 3rd 2021 but got delayed)
• Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
• BotW 2

The narrative event was cool, having a cutscene both at the start and the end of the event pass makes it feel more like your multiplayer matches contribute to the story.

Last Spartan Standing on Breaker is fine though I do think it'll be more fun once the other maps enter the rotation. I did stay in the lobby after losing all lives as I heard about the progress glitch if you leave early so waiting for the match to finish was sometimes very boring.

I played around with some of the other modes and they're ok but I feel mostly done with Infinite until the Fracture event starts.

@Zucaritas FIFA is PS+ for May so I could see it added to EA Play in June.

It feels believable given how some would be upcoming games and others would be upcoming content for existing games. For example with Playground Games, I really doubt we'd see anything on Fable but it's extremely likely that we see the first expansion for Forza Horizon 5. Similarly with Obsidian, the most likely thing to appear is Grounded leaving early access.

I remember someone saying in July 2020 that Microsoft removed traces of a XB1 version of Forza Motorsport and Everwild shortly after the showcase that happened that month perhaps as a response to Jim Ryan's "We believe in generations" comment. Maybe Microsoft decided to do the same as Sony and then we find out that all the non-Bethesda games get XB1 versions (Bethesda pushed for new gen only with stuff like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo).

A remaster where the game plays the same but a few very specific songs from the soundtrack are removed would be fantastic.

This is a fantastic feature, I remember playing through Tomb Raider 2013 and I got all the single player achievements except a secret achievement which after beating the game at 100% map completion, I noticed I would've had to start the game again from the beginning to earn it so I didn't bother.

Redeemed Hydro Thunder Hurricane the last time it was part of Games With Gold and not particularly interested in the other 3. Will probably redeem Viva Pinata Party Animals to complete the collection (have the other 2 via Rare Replay).

@BAMozzy The 1 year timed exclusivity might be regarding talking about a Xbox release too so we may not hear about Deathloop Xbox version until September for example.

I hope it's a strong showcase. So far the E3 2015 press conference is still by far the most impressive Xbox showcase of the past decade, would be nice if a newer showcase got close to that.

On an offtopic note, I wonder what's happening with Games With Gold as May starts on Sunday yet an announcement hasn't happened yet.

My prediction:

• A bunch of 3rd party games being Xbox day 1 on Game Pass
• Forza Horizon 5 Expansion 1
• Grounded leaving early access
• As Dusk Falls
• Age of Empires Definitive Collection and Age of Empires 4 for console
• Halo Infinite Battle Royale
• Gears Marcus Fenix Collection
• Forza Motorsport reboot
• Redfall
• Starfield

Where the show starts with Redfall and ends with Starfield (basically reverse of last year).

@NEStalgia Xenoblade, Splatoon and Bayonetta franchises all got dedicated Directs for the previous new entry so I think it may be the only things that'll happen in June for Nintendo are a Pokemon Presents, a trailer for MK8 Deluxe DLC wave 2 and a Xenoblade 3 Direct.

Was hoping for May given all that's happening before that showcase for Xbox as far as we know is Halo Infinite Season 2 but it's still nice that we have an event confirmed to exist.

@FraserG Sonic 3 & Knuckles have been delisted early.

https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sonic-the-hedgehog-3/c59c8g9pqn1d

https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/sonic-knuckles/bxpk5k67dlj4

Makes me further think there's a Gears collection coming this year. This kind of setup reminds me of 2018 when 343 ditched Halo 5 in favour of fixing up MCC.

@UltimateOtaku91 I think the Switch outselling both is a case of both hardware availability and strong software lineup. Series X|S doesn't have the latter (e.g. yet another drought for the 1st half of the year) and PS5 doesn't have the former.

@PhileasFragg Price, the 4 360 games combined is £12.06 meanwhile Origins is £32.99. It's the same reason Nintendo delisted the Wii U version of Tropical Freeze back in 2018 (and Pikmin 3 in 2020 but that got reversed over massive backlash).

So it probably changed direction around the time Hero Shooter didn't work for Gears 5 (there were gigantic content droughts in Gears 5 until the Hero Shooter side was dropped).

@RevGaming Yes there are exceptions like Nintendo acquiring Monolith Soft massively benefited the studio and Bayonetta 2/3 wouldn't have been made without Nintendo funding it but big acquisitions like Microsoft acquiring Bethesda and Activision serve only 1 goal and that's to take games away from competing platforms/services.

@RevGaming On the Xbox side you have the absence of games like FFVII Remake, FFXVI, Forspoken, Deathloop, Ghostwire Tokyo, etc. due to PS timed exclusivity. Meanwhile on the Playstation side you have Microsoft's constant acquisitions meaning plenty of games aren't coming to PS because Microsoft forces Xbox exclusivity.

So because Microsoft and Sony can't agree to ditch exclusivity and let platforms be judged by true 1st party games (rather than acquired 1st party games) and the ecosystem, you have Xbox and PS players wanting more acquisitions before the other one acquires and blocks games from releasing on their chosen console.

It's a huge shame, the future of gaming would've been a lot brighter if instead of Microsoft's acquisition sprees they bolstered their existing studios instead such that for example Halo Infinite exceeded the height of Halo 3's popularity.

It's probably Microsoft and would explain the recent increase in Ubisoft games on Game Pass. The FTC would be complicit in the acquisitions because they let Disney do acquisitions that were even more monopolistic.

Is this the 2nd time we've seen a Series X only game case? I know the first was Flight Sim and that was a better design than this.

Nice to see more clarity on campaign mission replay, the open world isn't interesting enough to justify replaying the campaign from the beginning but I'm missing a bunch of skulls from the linear missions. I'll do the same with playing the campaign on higher difficulties as just playing the linear missions counts.

As for the multiplayer side of things, it seems to still be rather rough especially with the 6 month long season. While the new modes seem interesting enough, I doubt it'll keep my attention for long though.

@uptownsoul Agreed, 17 months into the 360's lifespan would be April 2007 which was before the gigantic system sellers like Halo 3 arrived.

I do think we'll get that rumoured BR announced during Summer Game Fest, it fits the atmosphere of Geoff Keighley events.

@Bdbrady @KilloWertz With E3 cancelled, I'm starting to question whether Xbox will even have a showcase this year. Microsoft always puts a lot of focus on E3's existence but they had to do a showcase back in 2020 (first time E3 was cancelled) to showcase Series X as it was an upcoming console that year. This year it doesn't feel like Microsoft has any sense of urgency, they seem happy just drip feeding info on their live service games meanwhile there's the usual Game Pass info drops on the first and 3rd Tuesday of each month.

@RevGaming Seeing the Netflix news, it does seem like the future of gaming will skew even more towards the Fortnite model once the cheap Game Pass tricks (e.g. 3 months for $1, Gold to GPU upgrade being $1) are gone.

@Richnj Given Xbox's primary focus is Game Pass, I think they're adding ads to FTP games so that no ads is a Game Pass perk.

I think all future Xbox consoles will be under the Series branding in the sense that if Microsoft wanted to start it with the Xbox One branding instead, the Series X and S would've been called the Xbox One X2 and S2.

@GuyinPA75 Back in July 2018, 343 said the only BR they're interested in is the Battle Rifle. That was in the early days of battle royale games, Fortnite Battle Royale for example was less than a year old so battle royale could've become a very short term fad. As time went on, battle royale became gigantic and it's still very big even today so at some point 343 will have changed their mind which is understandable.

You're playing the new Halo Infinite expansion and there's a cutscene setting up an epic battle between Master Chief and Atriox, then suddenly a McDonalds ad appears.

Infinite is a free to play game after all...

With Persona 4 Golden released for PC in 2020, I could easily see a Persona 5 Royal port on PC happen. Increasingly in recent years PC has become this middle ground where console exclusive games come to.

I do wonder if there's more to it though given Persona 5 is leaving PS Plus Collection on May 11th:

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/03/persona-5-leaves-ps-plus-collection-in-may-for-unknown-reasons

It's all about content, MCC got a massive update this week (Flood Firefight, Halo 3/ODST crossplay campaign co-op, Customs Browser for Halo 2/2 Anniversary/4, etc.) meanwhile the last significant Infinite content was Attrition being a limited time mode back in January for 2 weeks which completely disappeared after February 1st.

People will return to Infinite when new content arrives (Season 2 in May).

Probably at the point where Game Pass is guaranteed to be a long term stable success.

@BAMozzy It sadly does feel like the future of Xbox is Don Mattrick's vision of the XB1 but this time with a lot less resistance. Back in 2013, the gigantic pushback existed and was successful largely thanks to the PS4 used game video in Sony's E3 conference and Geoff Keighley's interview with Don Mattrick.

Fast forward to recent years and there isn't that resistance anymore. Sony's using Azure for cloud based Playstation stuff, GT7 has always online single player, people mostly seem ok about the Series X DRM issue where the first time you load up a game (even physical copies) has to be connected to the internet, etc.

From the trailer, it does seem like Last Man Standing is one step closer to Battle Royale.

EA did a similar thing with the transition from 360/PS3 to XB1/PS4. 2 years of crossgen and then afterwards the only games 360/PS3 got was 1 year of Madden and 3 years of FIFA.

Given the massive backlash in January 2021 for trying to almost double the price of Gold, I'd imagine there'd be a similar backlash if this happens.

With everything Xbox related that isn't Halo Infinite Season 2 seemingly delayed, I wonder if all attention this summer will be on that given E3's cancellation.

Not that much though a lot of this is to do with Switch getting lots of 3rd party ports and remasters from OG Xbox and 360. Most recent situation was a bit before the February 2022 Nintendo Direct I considered getting the Portal games via backwards compatibility on Xbox but when the Portal collection was announced for Switch in that Direct, I decided to wait for the Switch version.

I do think backwards compatibility is extremely important though.

@SolarSailor Forge has always been Season 3 which'll be around August if Season 2 isn't another extended length season.

Almost digital only for Xbox given physical games on Xbox are generally just physical DRM keys (this issue is even more true since Series X launched). The rare times it isn't digital only is when peripherals are involved.

Switch on the other hand is physical where possible as it's an actual physical copy.

@TheSilverFalcon Sadly Microsoft already confirmed back in November that no more original Xbox and 360 games are coming to XB1/Series X|S backwards compatibility.

Given Microsoft had already officially announced the streaming stick last year, that would be something expected so I think it's something else. Going with Kinect 3.0 as my prediction with full backwards compatibility for Kinect 2.0 games.

I'm honestly concerned that GT7's approach regarding online only and microtransactions will be how the Forza Motorsport reboot ends up.

The game's 25th anniversary is in August so perhaps an E3 reveal.

The fact that Microsoft had it as one of the main games in the ID@Xbox showcase blogpost was a massive hint it was coming to Game Pass. It sadly feels like if a game isn't coming to Game Pass, Microsoft doesn't care about it.

@themightyant One of Microsoft's big problems is they are so tied to tradition, namely about E3 and the holiday season. If you look at what Xbox Game Studios games have released since 2020, they could easily have delayed a load of those games to create a more consistent release schedule. For example there didn't need to be Grounded early access, Flight Sim PC, Battletoads and Tell Me Why all release in the space of a month.

Even just looking at 2021 releases, the most obvious delay that would've helped both a more consistent release schedule and improved the game itself is that Infinite should've been delayed to 2022.

It's a bit of both. It's been reported that Microsoft don't allow their studios to hire for permanent positions and instead use only 18 month contracts which would explain why longer projects like Halo Infinite are having big problems.

Meanwhile live service is also problematic, most of the time it leads to limited content at launch and the equivalent of normal base game content being reached year(s) afterwards instead of just delaying the game until its ready.