HonestHick

I like the looks of it. But i am a Hardcore Diablo fan. 1000’s of hours in D2 and D3 and 760 already in Diablo 4. So this game play style isn’t for me. But i do hope the game does well as ARPG’s are one of my favorite genre’s and i welcome more to be made and do well. I am not into soul’s combat and i think that is what threw me off of this from the start. One thing is for sure tho and that is Moon is very talented.

@nomither6 again most of that games foundation has been laid by Bobby’s vision. In the future maybe Overwatch goes back to $70 dollars and leaves the free to play micro transactions format. Time will tell. But we can’t really say anything good or bad about blizzard games yet as there hasn’t been new made games to see the direction under MS. I am hopeful they get back to making some of the best games in the industry but if they stick to expensive skins and free to play, lock walls etc etc then there is no excuse and they deserve the backlash.

@Tasuki yeah thats awesome. I really should install WOW on my Mac again. It’s been 8-9 years since i last had it on there. Think i said this earlier but i used to play Diablo 3 on my Mac before it came to 360. Ran like a dream and i enjoyed it so much. Keep grinding levels my friend 😀

@NEStalgia Nintendo builds 5GB games that largely set’s a standard in fun and entertainment that 100GB games are not doing on a large bases for Xbox and PS. Nintendo understands its budget, its audience and what they want their games to achieve better than anyone in the industry by a long shot. Sony has turned to much to marvel games and movie like games that sometimes aren’t as fun to play as they are to look at for my taste. Xbox and i know some on here won’t like me saying this had NO GAMES. The ones they did were not fun, polished, well thought out and largely successful for any right reasons. To me it left the industry over the last few years in an odd spot for me. Red Dead 2 showed me gaming is the best form of media in the world. To this day i have it as the best single player big budget game EVER. Since then i have had little to say from Xbox or PS that has been worth it for all the money and time they are investing in it. I tell you all the time i don’t like windows all that much and it’s why i don’t build a PC and thats true. However if i did build a PC there is just so few games today that i would want to play on it. I have spent less money since 2020 on gaming then i ever had. There’s just so few games that i think are made well and push the industry to a place that Red Dead 2 did back in 2018. Games coming out broken, only to be decent in 2 years after launch. Nintendo don’t have the problem. So for all the dev costs they are enduring, what is the players getting from it outside of raised cost? Bad games, broken games and games that are selling in game content cause they are to broke to have them as a unlock. I’m on the soap box tonight with ya, sorry it’s been a tough week for me. But i hope PC development eases some of the struggles and i hope we start seeing better games. I own less games and i like even less games between both the PS5 and Series X in almost 4 years combined than i bought and enjoy in 1.5 years of Xbox 360. Before some one calls it age, i just want to say i have 700 hours in Diablo 4. I still play plenty of hours. I’m fortunate to have the time. But dev’s need to start making compelling titles again and not broken games that have no direction for me to take notice. Nintendo does that Better than anyone and doesn’t even have the power of my iPhone 15 Pro not alone a 4090.

@NEStalgia i played and beat Redfall once. I thought i seen a good game there being hit with massive amounts of non polish and direction. So i waited for 3 updates to come along and loaded up for another try to see if what i thought was there really there. It wasn’t. Sure it played better and ironed out a lot of what was in the way. But i just no longer seen the point in pushing forward and stopped. Yes everything you mentioned as a business decision is true and it’s why Bethesda is now team Xbox. Arkane will go back to doing what they enjoy and do best and we will get better games in the future for it. Yeah the PC thing is slowly unfolding in front of us. We seen it just this week with the trophies and menu skin from PS for PC. This is all the start and i think by 2028 we will see the vision of it much clearer. I do think it’s for the better.

@NEStalgia yeah that is a point for sure. It could just be old news at this point. But i think it does good for Xbox to cover all its bases with the ABK deal over time. I have no doubt WOW on Xbox would easily make its development time money back and more. PS1 had everything so it seemed. But yeah they had Diablo. Then we didn’t see Diablo on console for a long while. Man don’t even get me started on what Fortnite has done to the industry. Makes me sick as i am a shooting genre fan. Well was.. seeing as the shooters now make you build a house and wait for the grass to grow before shooting at someone. Battle royal is so boring to me I’d rather paint my fence or run the weed eater in shorts with no eye protection than play those games. I’d do a back flip if Quake or Unreal tournament style arena shooters made a comeback. Heck i would probably buy a PC for that. Cause i would want all the FPS i could get. I used to play Quake 3 on my buddy’s PC when i was younger. We shall see what happens with Blizzard but i do think they will be better without Bobby and the gang making them have money grab mechanics in their games vs just fun. MS get’s a bad wrap a lot, but they really do let their teams go to work. Outside of Redfall i think that it going to be mostly a good thing for us. Tho i will be here eating crow if they don’t.

The new TB Pro’s are insanely good and i am an audio snob. Plus they have swappable batteries so you never have to worry about being out of juice. TB did a great job on that model. Sure it may be expensive for some. But treat yourself if you’re in the market for a pair.

@NEStalgia i talk about WOW on Xbox on here all the time lately it seems. I think it’s a major get for the console. Sure it would come to PS5 or PS6 a year later. But for a year MS could really push that WOW is on console and cross play across all the Xbox connected devices. Maybe i am just being nostalgic and the game has for the better part grown to what it is. But it feels like a selling point or at the very least just good PR for Xbox to have such big known titles on its platform. I mean you spent $69 billion to get all these IP’s and claimed without this deal you (Xbox) can’t complete with Nintendo and Sony. Well i say use them and let the players decide what sticks and what don’t. At least you gave everything you have to the player base. Again i might just be in my feelings about a game i think reshaped PC gaming and the MMO space like no other. Blizzard was my favorite developer for a long long time. Still is actually, if they get moving back in the post Bobby Blizzard world. One thing is for sure, if Sony owned WOW they would find a way to have it on PS. Not that thats a reason to do it, but that is who you are competing against and why they are so successful in many ways. I remember Diablo 1 being on PS1. I wish you lived closer to me so you could throw a rock off my head for trading that in.

@Markatron84 oh for sure. But if i am going to start gaming on the PC, i would built a killer rig and play most titles on it. I’m just not much of a PC user. For work i do. But at home i have all Apple products for the last 18 years of my life. I own all 3 consoles and a LG Oled and $4k in surround sound audio. So i have invested my money into this style over PC. So not sure i will ever make that switch. My MacBook Pro can run Wow. I just don’t do it. I used to run Diablo 3 on it and it ran really well. 😀

@Markatron84 sadly you are right my friend. But that would be really cool if it came over. I really should just built a PC and get it over with. But i love console gaming.

This game lost so much momentum that i hope the game can turn it around so it’s not DOA. At one point i was very interested in it myself. Now i am back to wait and see.

Now get rid of Battle.net and make it part of my Xbox account. Battle.net is awful and not needed. MS account is much better. I would like to see Blizzard go back to the studio that was my #1 favorite in the world at one point. They have the Ip’s to do so, only time will tell. Wow on Xbox would be a system seller tho. Especially if they did a limited edition console or controller bundle.

@Sol4ris Yeah i agree. I just think it would also be crushing to the Xbox and all us loyal fans to not only Xbox but Gears of War. Granted the extra player count would be nice and maybe by then we would be able to access PS games, unlikely of course. But 10 years in this business is a lot of time for changes. Heck at this pace 10 months is a lot of changes and updates. I am keeping my fingers crossed yet again for the June Showcase to show the Marcus Fenix collection. That is my most wanted game by far and i don’t even know if it’s real.

40 million players and they still wanted in on PS5? Seems odd to me, but i am sure it will grow even more with the PS5 user base. Wonder if we will really see more Xbox games make it to PS5 or not. If Gears of War goes that would be crushing to me as it’s like Mario to Nintendo for me. I think of Gears as Xbox more than i do Halo.

@nomither6 100% agree. I despise battle royal games. It had ruined my FPS genre to the point i don’t even have any to play anymore. Really want the fast paced arena shooters to come back at some point. But Fortnite isn’t about to not be the coolest thing around any time soon.

@awp69 Dear Lord yes! Now that is the type of shooters i am talking about.

I mss fast paced arena shooter. All these shooters today made you build stuff and just wait for mins on end to shoot. COD has gotten such big maps that for 6 vs 6 i can not see an enemy sometimes for over a min. I really hope we see a revival of fast paced shooters like Quake and others.

In typical MS fashion it’s cluttered and bloated. Why is there 2 places for the store? The ad’s are still a joke when Sony and Nintendo don’t have them. You can’t customize the underneath stuff to your interest. It needs a lot of fat trimmed off. Needs to be 4K HDR like the PS5 and they need a new refreshed page to the achievements tab. The foundation of it is good, just needs some spring cleaning and updated content and it would be very very good and fast.

@NEStalgia i agree. I think this is the way forward. It makes the most sense on every end. The only thing the video i watched said that could be issue for software is licensing. I am sure they will figure that out as i am not well informed on how all that works. Otherwise this is a slam dunk move cause like me and you have said on here before this is what they wanted Xbox to be. Windows in the home entertainment area of the house. Well this would put windows front and center. Now i just hope we see the handheld they are working on at some point. That is a day one buy for me. The tech and market has matured perfect for it. MS will hopefully cut out the few headaches that market has and if it’s powerful enough, i think it’s a home run device. As for the console. Just make it Zen 5 and don’t skimp on the CPU and it will be fine for console players. If not we can build a PC. Either way it’s all Xbox.

@NEStalgia ok so it finally clicked with me what you were explaining the next Xbox strategy to be. I just watched a video and somehow it made it go this is close to what NES was telling me. They build the Ui to run on windows and the games would be just PC games that would run on Xbox, Pc and handheld with the slight adjustments needed. You buy say Diablo 4 and you can run it across all platforms with cross save and achievements etc etc. so it’s mostly what we have now as a Xbox Series X and PS5 is already just a PC. But it’s more of what windows and the back end of the dev teams would benefit from and of course this fits MS’s mission of games on all devices, play anywhere with anyone. Not that most of this was over my head but i am just starting to see the impact it would have more behind the scenes, and of course the player. Hmm this seems really good actually. I mean why would you even play on PS if it’s locked to just that when you could buy it for windows and use it on 25 different devices of your choice? If and it’s a big if this catches on. Sony would have little to no answer for this as they don’t control the PC software side. They would just have you buy a PS6 game and run it on console and their rumored handheld but no way are they including a PC and PC handheld access or mobile if the title could run there. This seems like the perfect answer really for MS. It will be a win win for them on a software (games & OS) standpoint. Am i missing something?

@RetroMan71 thanks buddy. Yeah it’s my go to shooter and it’s not even close. Would love to see 1-3 cranked all the way up. Players would enjoy it I believe. Oh yeah i remember the Mad World Ad. It was really well done. Would love to see MS advertise aggressively for its games like that again.

@stefan771 cause i like remasters of great games that are on older hardware. It will bring them to the PC and get new gamers into the franchise.

Can we get a feature to delete games we didn’t like and have 5G Score on? That’s all I’ve been asking for since late 360. I’ll gladly take the 5G off my achievement score to have my list narrowed to what i enjoy and plan to play and progress.

I just want more control over my Profile. Achievements and trying game demos is great and all but if i hated it. I want to be able to permanently delete it from my profile to keep my organization in control.

@Fiendish-Beaver thats awesome. Co-op gaming on 360 was so far ahead of the competition. Done right all the way around. I really hope the rumor of a new Halo game using Unreal engine 5 due out in 2025 is true. Plus i hope we get a great gears game and you and i will be all set for a while.

@Fiendish-Beaver thats awesome. Yeah you and i are the local Gear Heads around here. Gears of War is just Xbox to me. Like Mario is to Nintendo. Me and my friends back in the 360 days did weekend Gears and Beers. We would drink beer and just grind hours and hours into Gears on 360. I think that plays a part of why i want the Marcus Fenix 1-3 trilogy so bad. It was just a special time in my gaming life where games were fun and online was new and exciting and fun over took coming online and talking business strategies for the console makers. There was nothing and i mean nothing in gaming at the time like chainsawing a locust. That was as satisfying move in gaming as it got. Gears of War, Red Dead and Diablo is the reason i still play video games today. They just moved me in ways other games didn’t.

Hope it’s good this time and is made in a way new players and older players that haven’t played in a long time (Me) can get back into it and have a feel for it. No missing content and story that makes zero sense.

Wow, i beat insane on all of them but without cover just seems impossible. Gears 5 multiplayer i was at one peak ranked in the top 5%, then i took a break and lost most of those skills. I am still hoping we get the Marcus Fenix Collection at the June Showcase with a Gears 6 trailer.

@TruestoryYep I’ll throw in a bonus. If the collection is real and it goes to PS5, that would draw in more than 2 million players on its own. Rumor has it it could go there to expand the player base for the upcoming show. Not saying it would happen, but i have read a lot of PS5 fans say they hope it’s true.

@TruestoryYep there’s a least a million players on PC alone that would buy them as they aren’t on there. Plus every Gears Forum i read and it’s most of them cause I’m a Gears fanatic. They are asking for it. Saying 1-3 is the real GOW and the heck with 4 & 5 with many saying what i am and thats they want the collection over Gears 6. As for if the player count would die after the excitement wears off i can’t comment on. Player counts come and go without much notice. But plenty of real gears players want 1-3 on unreal engine 5.

MS has to know that there are millions and millions of fans like me asking for the Marcus Fenix collection in UE5. All the multiplayer and modes. Not to mention it will pull in new players for the upcoming show. Gears 6 can take its time and we all win.

@Grumblevolcano their messaging has been poor on a lot of things i would say. I am just saying MS want’s to sell GP and they aren’t bringing GP to PS, so they need to be careful giving away the bigger franchises to Sony. Not saying it won’t happen cause well MS does MS things. But i think they are going to be very case by case games and not just here’s everything. But at the moment there is still very much a reason to have a Xbox for their games. We can’t just turn on our PS5 and play every Xbox game. 😀

@NEStalgia agreed on both fronts. One the value of the digital Series X is great for gamers but hard to create marketing buzz around and two the PR speech of Sony and MS aren’t great. This is an industry where talk is cheap tho. Let the games do the talking and i think MS has the edge in June. I will throw my $1300 dollar iPad Pro to the ceiling in joy if they announce Gears of War Marcus Fenix collection in June and show Gears 6 both in UE5. Sony don’t have a game that i would be that excited for.

I think Pro’s sell ok for who they are marketed too and also due to the fact they are more expensive and have half the lifespan. Not saying they are a catch all do it right. But i ran with the One X and PS4 Pro and found them to be better for me and my style. Not sure about PS5 Pro tho. If it can’t hit 60 across the board i will be half as excited for it.

Pushing 700 hours on D4 and still haven’t beaten Uber Lilith yet. Still a top 3 favorite franchise of mine if you can’t tell by the hours played 😀

Please say they are going back to Intel and NVIDA. AMD is trash with machine learning and AI. Let Sony and AMD play with that tech and jump back into the real power. That alone would make them more powerful and explain the comment about the team making sure games work well on next gen Xbox’s.

@Grumblevolcano thats strange i just booted up my PS5 and i didn’t see Halo Gears or Forza on there. Silly me but i guess i need to turn on my Xbox to play those. Joking aside we still don’t know what exclusives will or won’t come to PS and we for sure don’t know what benefits this new gen console will bring to games.

@NEStalgia i fully agree that i like to hear MS doubling down on backwards compatibility and game preservation. Thats such a strong part of Xbox. I am excited and confused on what their next console looks like. But i hope we get to see that handheld soon. However i really hope the leaked pics of a white digital series X isn’t true. I don’t see that doing anything positive for the brand. Digital foundry ripped it and many others are saying whats the point. However i like Sarah Bond continuing to say big leap next gen, i think that is MS’s way of saying forget about the Pro console we don’t have and other’s do. Next gen is going to be the place to be and if it is coming in 2026 then all the better. Interesting times ahead. I am hoping they nail the June showcase and really start to flex all those studios and show they have loads of games in development.

I hope we see the revised controller. I really want to buy a few of them. Hope it’s more premium feeling and of course quiet.

@Grumblevolcano they might go with an external add on disc drive for a while. As disc drives get harder and harder to get it’s going to be a problem at some point in time. Digital going forward should be fairly easy to manage. Good to see them trying as it is important 😊

@NEStalgia the moment i seen Switch i was like this works cause i think it’s what they sort of had in mind for Wii U but there were some limits in tech or they just didn’t have the idea and vision fully ironed out. Now i won’t say i knew it would sell 140 million. I expected upper 80’s to 90’s seeing as it plays into their strengths with handheld. Plus not having to develop separate games.

It’s going to be up to the dev’s to make sure games like the last of Us don’t launch on PC in a bad state. They need to stop thinking the brute power of PC will iron out the lack of optimization consoles need. Plus games like GTA6 in the future need to be there day one and not locked to a PS console. That game is going to be such an attraction for consoles as it will be the only place it’s at. I said it once and i repeat i am just a little confused how all this is going to look. I like the sound of it, i think it makes sense from what i can get my head around. But i want to see what consumers think. What dev’s do to make sure games are running well across the board. I mean the Series S upset so many dev’s, yet PC has 100’s of configurations if not a 1000. Maybe i am just getting old and tech is starting to take a turn on me that i need to see and feel to say yeah thats the one i want and like. As always i enjoy our chats, your knowledge and insight. I always learn something talking with you. Sorry i am out on a limb on this at the moment. I guess i just need to see more of what MS has in store. If the Xbox Deck is real, i buy that day one but the rumor was they would also have a under the Tv console to go alongside it. That is what i want to see what it is.

@NEStalgia i agree with some of that. My push back would be if Sony can still sell close to 100 million units and we don’t know yet if they can or not or for how long. They will be making good money and have plenty of support for the console from dev’s. Same with Nintendo, another 100 million switch 2’s and they will get some kind of support. MS selling launcher skins on PC might work but only if it has Steam of course cause thats where that player base has 100’s of games at. Hence the Steam Deck was a good idea. I do agree that the time is now for MS to bring out a handheld, i actually think it could do fairly well for them. But in the console space or PC with a Xbox skin over the Ui, i am just not sure about that. I guess i like the idea so i want to say yes to it. But i am not sure the console experience purists won’t just go to PS or an actually PC running Steam. You are talking from the business side of it and i largely agree, i am more coming from the consumer side and i have questions on that strategy. Hope it works out. I like Xbox and would hate to see them not pushing something forward in the industry. I know the CEO wants no exclusives and to stop losing so much on console unit sales. So this approach seems to fit that.

@NEStalgia ok Beer goggles off and my mind is still thinking the same way, only had a few. Haha let’s dive in. I want to say first that MS has done such a poor job with their messaging that every week a leak or a game release rumor on PS5 is making it harder and harder to see the road forward for a Xbox Console. I get what you are saying they can just rebrand Xbox as a PC but that would just lump them into the crowded PC market where Steam is king and still having MS fighting for table scraps. Something i think that is true is the console market isn’t growing but it’s not shrinking yet either. PS5 will still hit over 100 million and likely so will switch 2. The only market shrinking is MS’s cause of no games at launch. Then a messy release of Halo. Then a dud with Redfall and since then i feel like it’s been swimming up river. Down almost 50% in Europe. PS is 5.7 million ahead in USA and while i do like the whole play games anywhere. Gamers like us think thats great but 7 out of 10 gamers see that as weakness and MS needing PS to succeed going forward so why not just stick to PS. I even seem some on this site say if such and such games go to PS5 they are selling their Xbox and just playing on PS. At what point does MS look at Xbox and say we are out of toes to shoot off? Let’s say the future of PS shrinks some and it’s only 75-90 million consoles worldwide plus PC day and date. That would be enough with smart budgeting to make it more than worth sticking around. I agree with a lot of your points but a lot of good things would have to happen for MS to make that even worth it and for gamers to care. Steam on Xbox would be cool, not sure the legal implications to make that work. Would that be a court case as well? I don’t see Nintendo going mobile only cause of how much Nintendo values making their hardware a certain why that impacts the characters they develop and how the games are played. Plus Nintendo sells loads of consoles at a profit. Think that is safe for a long while for them. Throw in the extra money they are getting with the movies and theme parks and they seem to be the last one standing if i had to bet. I get what you mean about the hardware runs the store but spitting store money with steam seems odd if they go the windows PC Xbox. I guess i am just confused on this change coming to the industry. Normally i can understand the industry changes better. This one just seems like MS trying to hang on and of course i want them to right the ship and find their groove. But the market just seems to cast them aside outside of the 35-40 million hardcore fans like ourselves. Which at the moment would have Series consoles performing worse than Xbox One. Which i never seen coming. I’m just babbling now, but overall i am just confused as to how this is going to look, work and go over with players. If we see Halo, Gears and Forza on PS5, i am not sure any PC skin looking to be a Xbox moves the needle for them that much. Keeps them in the hardware game sure. Just trying to think if I’d support that or not. Probably.

@nomither6 thats what i would think also. Plus at this point it might be the only Gears game we get on Series, if Gears 6 really is closer to 2026 or 2027. Then it could launch on the newer hardware. So clearly it would make sense to have something for Gears fans. I am even hoping the collection comes out this year or the latest early 2025. Plus i want that new controller so we can hear the chainsaw in the controller.

Just announce Gears of war Marcus Fenix collection and i am head over heels for the showcase. The other stiff seems fine and will live on GP and do well. But Gears of War collection is my game of the generation any console hands down. A Quake reboot wouldn’t hurt my feelings but i am sure ID is working on the next Doom game.

@NEStalgia I’ll do my best to tackle your well made points. One i don’t think Sony would raise the 30%, cause they were built on mostly good relations with 3rd party. To do that would surely damage relationships. Yes MS has a few bones to chew on to stay in the console market. But it’s seeming more and more like table scraps at this point in time than the meat and potatoes they are chasing. Sure kids will buy expensive graphics cards cause they can stream and work and play and do all sorts of things with it that they can’t do on a console. Outside of Apple closed walled gardens are being left behind for do it all devices. As for AAA gaming i think it will live on for years to come but become less risky and of course much slower to market. Sure PS and Xbox want a few AAA games at launch or console end to start and end on high notes. But i am not sure we will see a ton of AAA as MS once said 4 a year. This year is already at the 1/4th mark and we have seen nothing of sorts from MS. This industry changes all the time as any other tech industry. But for as much as it changes it stays the same. Gamers want to be where the games are and they flock to the most golden egg games. It’s no longer Mario vs Sonic or Halo vs Killzone. Mascot’s no longer lead the platforms. It’s where do i get my best bang for the buck and what does my neighbors and friends play on. At the moment that is Mobile, PS and PC. Xbox needs to figure a way to become that next golden egg that people seek after. HellBlade and Avowed aren’t the games that move that needle. Put Gears of War and Halo on PS5 and there’s no turning it around. Unless they want to be the masters of turning table scraps into 5 course meals. Funny how beer makes me use analogies that i feel we have built a friendship into understanding. 😀🍺

@NEStalgia Meanwhile Apple will be leading still in games revenue on Mobile as not even the PC out gain’s mobile gaming. I still think the future in 1-2 gens is Mobile, PC and cloud with consoles being a niche thing for people that prefer it or need it due to cloud infrastructure being an issue. No one under the age of 25 hardly wants to buy a $500 dollar box that only plays games. 80’s-90’s and some early 2000’s kids are keeping consoles going. Kid’s born after 2005 or so are not into consoles like we were as kids and Phil has lightly touched on this. Apple and Google products are just way more desirable to kids and young adults than MS products.

@NEStalgia over on Push they have a article that says leaks are saying that if Sea of Thieves does well on PS5 , MS will be bringing over more game to the PS5 including possibly Gears of War and Starfield. Well if they are going to do that than i am not sure why they would even make more hardware as PS would be the console version of a PC, that runs all games from all companies. The only games Sony and PC would be missing is Nintendo as i see world peace before Nintendo brings Mario Kart to other consoles.

@Weapon_Wheel same here. I will play Gears 6 when it comes out of course. But i want the Marcus Fenix Collection first and way more. I love the first 3 games and to have the online multiplayer back with full lobbies is my dream Series X game. Hope it get’s revealed with a release date and then they can say something cheesy like but wait there’s more and go into the Gears 6 trailer.

I like this one a lot but i am waiting for the rumored new controller.

World of Warcraft even tho i know that is HIGHLY unlikely to ever happen. I have all the Diablo games and i sort of play COD online until it makes me so mad i have to sit it down and lose all the skills I’ve gained.

@Sakko yeah it’s normally the same old games on sale. I suppose there isn’t much new games to discount. Only thing i am excited for in gaming is the Xbox June Showcase and i want to see if they release the updated controller. Otherwise I’ll just stay the the games i am grinding on now. Well… unless that Final Fantasy 16 to Xbox rumor is true. I would get that even tho i have it on PS5.