InterceptorAlpha

@K1LLEGAL Your point is someone isn't allowed to express an opinion or debate a subject that has existed for some time previously.
Yes every article needs, conversation, discourse, even a debate about it. That's kind of the point of the comment and discussion sections.

Without that you wind up with gaming in the sad state it is.

Additionally, please kindly provide lists of consumer subscriptions that go up anually. Because I apparently don't use those and would like to avoid them.

But just for the ones I am familiar with

Netflix has raised prices 7 times over 14 year.

PSN, including when they went from free to a fee, has raised prices 3 times over 18 years.

Including the when they started charging Nintendo has only had 3 price increases over 12 years.

Disney Plus, 2 increases in almost 6 years.

Paramount Plus, 2 increases in 6 years.

Amazon Prime, 2 increases in 19 years.

Even Xbox doesn't have annual prices increases.

@ALK I'm guessing you're just being willfully blind about complaints about those to?

I went from personally paying 5 streaming subscriptions to 1.

@K1LLEGAL What is crazy in the least? The fact that different people have different criteral for what constitutes value?

With the amount I consume, the new price increase simply makes Gamepass pointless for me.

For example, prior to Kumitsu Gami, the last thing on Gamepass I played was Starfield.

The only reason I even have Gamepass right now is because it was cheaper than just buying gold because of the 1:1 conversion.

Meanwhile I can play anything on PC or VR for less, without cost of online to play

Hoping this launch is better than Battlefront.

I know this is single player, but Aspyr screwed the Battlefront launch so bad it single handedly killed the pretty decent online population it had after launch.

@ironcrow86 Plenty of issues to point out with the game. But this isn't one. A sarlaac is a type of creature. And there are multiples of them. Across different planets.

That's concerning. That makes me thing the entire formula of the game has changed given how well the same formula worked for both Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Unless of course this is just another case of a developer/publisher thinking they know what people want, but yet again, being out of touch.

Does the dialog feel off to anyone else? And the reading of the lines almost seems AI. Thoigh I don't see that being the case because of the backlash they'd get.

The gameplay itself looks like Ghost Recon Wildlands but reskinned to Star Wars. And that isn't really a good thing.

@nomither6 Wireless controllers work fine on PC as well.

@ZYDIO @JokerBoy422 That isn't true. There are multiple wireless third party controllers. Turtle Beach Stealth, Asus ROG Raikiri Pro. Even Power A has the XP-Ultra.

I don't t feel the price hikes wouldn't matter so much if online was free as it is on PC. But they know too many people would fall back on that.

But why deal with all that when I can just play all of Microsoft's games on PC, with free online. AND prevent them from getting royalties on thrid party software sales(as they get when I buy a game on Xbox) because I buy on Steam.

Had a blast with the demo. It is nice to see such an experimental game scoring so well.

From what I understand, Kawata had wanted to make this game for a while but had only got the greenlight in recent times. And it definitely shows he had time to think about what he wanted in it.

First Gamepass game I've been excited for in a while. And all because there was a pre-release demo to play.

Kunitsu-Gami is just about the only thing I'm looking forward to.

After playing the demo, reminds me of one of those games that would drop during the 360 days where everyone would talk about its. Things like Braid, Bastion, etc.

Between the music, the graphics, it reminds me of things like Otogi Myth of Demons. While the weird(but good) gameplay combination of a third person hack and slash, base building, and tower defense, are all blended together well.

No surprise. As I've been saying, much to many wanting to argue against, Xbox has one more console generation in it tops. Then it will be 100% publishing and cloud.

@OldGamer999 Same. Quite literally the only reason I have GPU until November 2025 was the 1:1 conversion, so I figured "Why not".

As far as the benefits go, I rarely use them. For example, the first thing to hit Gamepass to interested me since Starfield, drops on July 18th, Kunitsu Gami.

Worth mentioning as well is I play a lot on PC a lot and I couldn't not even begin to say the last time I used the PC portion of GPU.

Now that's a whole lotta time paying for GPU and not really using it.

My pre-orders stopped when everyone thought it was okay to launch broken games and take a year to fix it. If they were fixed at all.

I do make exceptions for physical copies that are confirmed to have the whole game. But I feel like that is almost too much of an outlier to even mention.

Oooh. This could be a fun one.

@Titntin Well, I guess Microsoft decided to redefine what a "core gamer" is. And by their new definition it seems I'm no longer one since I don't "love" Gamepass.

You know how to stifle growth?

Price hikes. 😂

If they do anything to cause those of us that have prepaid, to lose time, I'm done.

Absolutely no way 'round that.

I see myself, unless something huge changes, unsubscribing from Gamepass all together when mine is set to renew in November of 2025.

@Ooccoo_Jr Calling their third generation console "One"

Releasing a One S and One X.

Then following that up with a Series S and Series X.

Confusion is the name of the game. I feel like that was their intention ever since the One.

I can't tell your how many people I see call the Xbox One the "original Xbox". Or having issues with a game like say, Palworld, and when asking their console type they say "The newest one, the Xbox S!" ask then to send a picture. And it is a freaking One S.

@WhiteRabbit
To be fair, gotta be pumping out some serious first party games for that to matter. And while I adored Starfield and have 200 hours in it, I understand it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

But everything else first party on there I want? I pretty much bought before Gamepass existed. And that itself is telling on how long it has been since they've had a catalog that commanded any attention.

I'm paid up to November of 2025. But I know I will not be renewing after.

@NEStalgia I still remember my first wakeup to this.

Playing Final Fantasy XIII, IE the hallways simulator. And SOMEHOW, like 15 hours in was still getting tutorials on what should have been a fairly straight forward JRPG affair.

The fact they were still doing tutorials that far in was really just impressive given how linear it was.

I actually have. And have been gifted some too.

I have the 20th Anniversary hoodie as well as the Halo ornament and playing cards for the same anniversary. Also have a few glasses and mugs.

Aside from the stitching on the hood of the hoodie being a little janky and off center, no doubt the child making it was on their 3rd 24 hour shift, everything has been nice so far.

Thinking about picking up the bomber jacket they have right now.

I played an absolutely obscene amount of Blood Wake. Was such a blast. I might actually still have my copy.

@Tasuki Playing off your point: Games now a days are still throwing tutorials at you 10+ hours into the game. And if you ever take a break, good luck remembering all the controls.

Back then your 10 minute control test was the tutorial and you knew everything you needed for the entire game.

Take a break and forget how to play? Look at the back of the instruction book and you've got the control scheme and what every power up does in 2 minutes.

You get better rewards from using a credit card TBH. They turned rewards into a chore. Used to would be able to rack up points naturally just from doing things I would normally do.

Now they've made the requirements so pointed, it is cheaper to just pay for things instead of earning up points.

Which was clearly the intention.

@ImperialOwl215
Time is not free. And in the time it takes to do the rewards. I make orders more at my job in the same time frame so going out of my way to do rewards is actually reducing my average pay because of how poor the compensation is for the time put in. Ultimately it costs money to pursue the rewards. And I'm sure of most actually did the math, that would indeed be the same case for them as well.

As sad as it is to see, of course GTAO took precedence. Once they realized the gold mine they had from GTA IV's online portion that is their big focus.

Expecting the same thing from GTAVI. Gonna run the story then probably never touch it again.

Well, those are definitely two games of all time.

I do very much like the idea behind the award.

@themightyant Then you'd also know, if you were using more than half the data, that the majority of games that release that are within those specs are indie developers with smaller budgets. And that, because of the obscene number of PC users, even the minority is a larger install base than any one console. Which is pretty easy when your install base in general is nearly all three consoles put together.

You also see a significant number of those are from countries developers don't typically target to begin with. So them getting to play is just a bonus if their hardware is up to snuff. But if not, it is of no consequence.

Developers do and will ignore larger portion of PC gamers because they don't need to cater to them for the sales. That's why you see pretty much every AA and AAA require higher specs than the average. Hope this helps!

@themightyant You're very confused if you think the Steam Deck, or anything in the PC space, is holding anything back.

Unlike Microsoft's idiotic parity clause for the X and S, Valve has no such thing.

Games aren't obligated to work on the Steam deck. Nor are they generally built for it. They're made for PC. If they happen to work on Steam deck then you can play it there.

You saying the Steam Deck is holding anything back is like saying someone using a GT710 is holding things back. When in reality, no. Nothing is made with that card in mind, and if something happens to work, yay, otherwise you're SOL.

@Bobobiwan Why would you think that?

At the end of the day Xbox games are only being released on Playstation because of how much it is outsells Xbox. Sony does not have a similar incentive.

If the roles were reversed, you better believe Microsoft wouldn't be putting their games on anything else at all.

Making it limited time, especially with the game going EOL is a poor decision IMO.

Given the only things I've played this year, aside from Starfield, have been backwards compatible games.

Not the hottest IMO.

Install base is the reason.

PC has the largest. Followed by Switch. Followed by Playstation. Which itself then outsells Xbox roughly 2:1.

And then to deploy on Xbox they have to develop for two SKUs which is more dev time for the smallest install base.

I don't expect any Sony owed IPs like this or Helldivers to ever hit Xbox for that very reason.

And before someone says "But Xbox is putting their stuff on Playstation". Yes, because they need to. Because of the aforementioned install bases.

I'm just confused how they manage to make Frank look uglier each iteration. From Case West to Project Cross Zone and ultimately Dead Rising 4.

Yes.
But not because I have gotten older. But rather the state of the industry.

I've got money to spend now unlike when I was a kid.
However, everyone and their mom wants to make a live service game. And on that very fact alone the number of games I've bough has dropped.

For example there was a time I bought every Ubisoft game the day it came out. And now Ubisoft is a gross word to me. I remember always getting the newest Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Assassin's Creed, etc.

Now you'd have to pay me to bother playing 90% of their games.

And you have other ex-giants like Bungie that just give you the middle finger and lock content, that you paid for, up.

@NEStalgia This applies to all platforms using the Creations page. Not just Xbox.

You will be able to still download mods from places like Nexus on PC though, where you should be getting them anyway, to bypass this.

Oh man. I was just getting into Boltgun. But this looks like an even better scratch for the itch I have. Will definitely be checking it out.

@Cikajovazmaj Not really.

At this point, this beta was nothing more than a network test for the multiplayer component as it is too far in the cycle for it to be for proper game changes.

For an example, when I was paid to test AC Unity, and most games I test, are done so over a year prior to release.

It is an absolute blast. I recomend it to anyone that liked simpler games like Spyro, Jersey Devil, Crash, etc, but also enjoys shooters.

Playing couch coop is like I'm chilling on the N64 or OG Xbox with a bunch of friends.

I just want achievement friendly mods. I've found like 3.

@GuyinPA75 Original. Aspyr re-released the original Battlefront and 2 from 2004 and 2005 that came out on the Xbox, PS2, PC.

It released back in March.

@GuyinPA75 Pandemic's Star War Battlefront 1 and 2 are some of the most loved video games out there. So much so they still had players on PC using the original and modded version before this release ever came out.

Picking it up day one.

There really is nothing like that 90-2000's Star Wars videogame aesthetic.

The backwards compatibility enhancements.

@Pastellioli Same. Only reason I knew it existed was this website. Then, very shortly at release, a multi box ad for it for maybe a week or two?

@Pastellioli Yea. Microsoft is starting to feel like Square Enix tbh. Setting games up for failure then moaning about it.

@OldGamer999 Couldn't have said it better myself. One thing is for sure, I save some money now with how much pickier I am due to all the "same ol'-same ol". Buying the same game with a different coat of paint, name, and different developer, 3 times a year gets old after all.

@OldGamer999 I can't say I've ever just been a one console person. They've pretty much always had their ups and downs.

But I definitely agree from my perspective as well. Previously, particular PS3/360, both had banger after banger and it was hard to keep up. So you could just have one and always have some new, amazing, first party, AAA, thing.

This gen though, I feel like owning them all was just kind of a waste. I was all into it at the beginning, but now it just feels like I should have just stuck to one+switch and get everything else on PC. Most things are just kinda commercially ruined and devoid of heart resulting in bland games.

They're just not even trying to hide it anymore. Turning everything into mobile games with pretty paint and tons of microtransactions.

This has been the least exciting generation overall by a mile. 😢 I'm honestly feeling like VR is starting to beat out regular gaming for me. Especially now that I have got one of them new fangled VR treadmills.

Now imagine how bad it is when you have 12k followers. I've turned off notifications completely. Not sure they can really do much so long as you can sent messages from PCs and phones.

@BBB May I direct you to Bombrush Cyberfunk? FutureGrind? Sunset Overdrive? Butterflies? Hover?

New IPs in this type of genre tend to be flops. Better to use an established IP or sequel to try to move some copies.

At least with a remake, a proper one at least, it sticks very closely to the original. So people like myself, who have been wanting a Jet Set Radio Future remake, unlike the Jet Grind Radio remake we got, would be all over it.

@Cikajovazmaj You're correct. Nothing about this video indicated this worked out positively in any way. And given we know the Series X struggles to hit 60FPS in cities, sounds like it would be a bad experience on the Series S.