Markatron84

Oh good. More rumours.

Wow, so NetEase rewards the studio contributing to arguably the most successful new live-service game in recent years by shutting it down? Cool, good work NetEase.

@BacklogBrad Blinx Tactics.

The 1+2 remaster was brilliant. A 3+4 remaster would be my ideal next game (barring a completely new one, of course) but I'd take most of them, to be honest.

@LogicStrikesAgain back in the day, we used to call games published by platform holders but developed by external studios "second-party games". I like this.

@Ricky-Spanish word

@FraserG I know the data you have in front of you is what you have to act on but, speaking personally, I'd like to see more news articles about, y'know, games.

I understand the need to "cater to the audience", get the maximum amount of clicks/engagement, etc, and that Pure Xbox has a small staff, but I seem to get more information about games that are coming to Xbox by reading Push Square and Nintendo Life.

This isn't meant to sound snarky, mean spirited or anything like that, but - and I've brought this up before, as a reader on the outside looking in - but it's kind of irritating and off-putting to see the same sorts of articles over and over about every little thing Phil Spencer says/does/plays/wears or the latest bit of nonsense some rumour mongering "insider" is spouting this week.

Again, I don't mean the above to sound mean in any way; just a bit of (hopefully) constructive feedback.

@Ricky-Spanish you'll really get a kick out of this then 👀

Xbox has a good lineup of games coming and seems to be finally set up to release them at a decent cadence.

Not being funny though, but does this graphic really need to include all the previously released games, especially when that list includes such bangers as Bleeding Edge and Redfall, and Hi-Fi "it was successful by every metric but oops not successful enough for us to keep the studio open" Rush?

It's amazing how much console owners are against changes to the status quo. It's not 1995 anymore; a platform holder's success doesn't have to hinge on what games are exclusive to its plastic box.

I personally believe that there will come a time when Microsoft is releasing all of its games multiplatform, day one. It might be later this year, it might be next year, it might be five years from now, but I firmly believe that it'll happen.

Whether I'm right or wrong, time will tell. But Microsoft's multiplatform strategy, whatever form it takes in the future, will bring in more money than simply relying on hardware sales and Game Pass subscriptions ever could at the stage in the game and will benefit everyone. Players will have more choice regarding where to play Xbox games. And if releasing games on Sony and Nintendo platforms means more money for Microsoft, surely that means more money available to be invested in future Xbox games and third-party Game Pass additions and - most importantly of all - more money available to keep developers employed?

@Coletrain I don't think that Days Gone Remastered is even a test to gauge interest in a potential sequel. Wolverine and Saros aren't coming out this year, and who knows when Fairgame$, Marathon and project Gummy Bears will see the light of day, or if they won't get cancelled before they even release.

So I think Days Gone Remastered is a barrel-scraping last-ditch attempt by Sony to have something come out this year because its push into live-service has gone tits up and anything else they might have in the pipeline is either years out or in pre-production.

What has Hookshot got against Roman numerals?

From a quick cursory search, Obsidian's games (on Opencritic) have scored anywhere between 78 and 89. I reckon Avowed will settle on 81-85.

@AverageGamer true, it probably wouldn't have gone well for Activision. Although, THQ had no IP of its own to speak of under its belt until late in the company's life. Activision at least had IP/games beyond licensed software prior to its focus on Call of Duty. We might have lived in a world where Hexen, Singularity, Pitfall, True Crime and Soldier of Fortune set the world on fir... No, sorry, can't finish that sentence with a straight face 🤣

@AverageGamer it is a crazy what if situation. Without Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Vivendi/Blizzard, would Activision have instead doubled down on licenced games? Could Tony Hawk's Pro Skater been their key pillar? They wouldn't have had Crash or Spyro, so Skylanders wouldn't have happened either. Wild to think about.

@Kilamanjaro i haven't used it in a while, since I let my GPU lapse last year. I think it was October I last used it, when I got it up and running on Steam Deck. It worked great. No noticeable input lag, and on a screen that size you wouldn't know it was being streamed from looking at the image.

@Scirius that's an in-game feature though.

@trev666 @Kilamanjaro really? I tried Stadia when Google was so desperate to get people on board they were sending out the controller and Chromecast Ultra for free. It was bunk. I've had a far better experience with Xbox Cloud Gaming.

@PhileasFragg yeah something definitely needs to change at WB Games. Other developers and publishers would be falling over themselves to make games based on WB's various IP, so licencing them out to other companies would definitely be the way to go. Disney cottoned on to this and games based on their IP have generally been far better than anything they ever put out themselves.

@PhileasFragg who knows, if they play their cards right, WB Games could double the amount of money they lost on Suicide Squad. Never say never 👍

No, mainly because I don't think it's going to be my sort of game. But also, I'm in the same boat as @GoldenPants; I've accumulated so many PC games in the last two years, it's ridiculous. So I'm being very selective about what - if anything - I buy this year, and instead look to actually play some of the games I've amassed. I'll be honest, it's not going great so far because Helldivers 2 has been all encompassing for me.

Warner Bros. has so many IP at its fingertips, yet its output in recent years has been mediocre at best. And the one good game they've put out recently, I won't play out of principle.

Shoulda called it E4.

@Ricky-Spanish Shake 'n' Bake!!

@fatpunkslim we'll agree to disagree then. But I truly think that Xbox's strategy, nuanced as it may be right now, will end in no console exclusive games.

Cracking conversation.

@fatpunkslim

Xbox is on a case-by-case strategy and temporary exclusivity for the games they decide to port, as the facts show. Why aren't Avowed or South of Midnight coming out day one on PS5? Because it's not their strategy!

Not yet it isn't, but it will be. This case-by-case strategy you keep mentioning? Funny how it disregards the many times Spencer has said there are no red lines in regards to what they'd release on competitors' platforms; no games that they wouldn't consider bringing over.

You can continue to repeat the same things based on speculations

I only made one post.

80% of Game Pass subscribers are on console.

Yes. And how many consoles have they sold? What's 80% of bugger all?

Why continue to sign third-party exclusives (Stalker 2, Ark 2, etc.) if they don't care about exclusives?

Because they're trying to up the perceived value of Game Pass, even more so after several price hikes and forcing people into Ultimate if they want day one releases.

Why not announce Avowed and South of Midnight directly on PS5? Maybe they'll come out in 3-4 years, but who wants to play a game 4 years later? A temporary exclusive is still an exclusive.

Because vocal fanboys are getting vocally butthurt about their precious box's games being available on another person's different precious box. They're being eased into it. Think of this slow and measured approach as lube for fanboys.

I'm not saying this as a fanboy,

Never called you a fanboy. I said fanboys are the only ones upset about Xbox games coming to rival consoles.

but simply with common sense and based on the facts.

Debatable.

Good chat.

@fatpunkslim I'm assuming the message directly under mine is directed at me? You didn't "reply" to my comment so there's no real way to know, but:

How many years have we been hearing that Xbox is going to stop making consoles, that Xbox is going to die? Yet they've never been doing so well. Sorry, only trolls say that, or those who don't understand Xbox's strategy.

I never once mentioned that Xbox would stop making consoles or that they were going to die. What I said was that the model of relying on the combo of console-exclusive games and Game Pass subscribers isn't enough to gain the profits the company wants to achieve. Their consoles are selling drastically lower numbers than Sony, and guess what: if 80% of Game Pass subscribers are on console and hardly anyone's buying those consoles, Game Pass subscribers won't increase. They'll stagnate. 80% of not much is still not much. Microsoft clearly sees this, or else they wouldn't release games on competitors' platforms. Sony begrudgingly sees this; they're releasing games on PC and will eventually cave in and release games on competitors' platforms.

No need to mention you, you've already lost

What?

Xbox is not going to stop making consoles

Correct.

or exclusive games

Incorrect.

We're talking about old games and service games here; Sea of Thieves is the only game that really worked on PS5, so it's normal they prioritize these types of games, and it's the same for FH5 and Age of Empires. It's logical for Xbox to seek money elsewhere after several years.

Correct. They should be squeezing any money they can from the increased player bases gained by putting existing live-service games on PlayStation. Other games - non-live-service games - will follow suit. Eventually they'll all release day and date on PlayStation.

Don't talk to me about Doom, which is already a multiplatform game, or Indiana Jones, which is a Disney license already signed before the acquisition.

I mentioned none of these.

@AlwaysPlaying fair; they did put out Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor. Except, oh wait, neither game was at all polished at launch, and on PC Survivor is still somewhat borked. And the less said about the Battlefront games - especially II - the better.

Battlefield: yet another franchise that falls under the "EA is going to balls this up or abandon it completely" banner. I mean, were Dead Space, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Titanfall and Need For Speed not enough?

I hope it's good, I really do, but in the last 5-10 years, what's EA done to earn the benefit of the doubt?

@fatpunkslim sorry, but in a few years time, there will be no Xbox console exclusives and all XGS, ABK and Bethesda games will launch simultaneously on whatever will run them. You can quote me on that.

Microsoft wants gaming to stay profitable for it as a company, and clearly Game Pass and console exclusives alone aren't cutting it; nor have they been for about a decade.

It's not a bad thing. Only die hard fanboy idiots would see it that way. More games in more places is a good thing.

Hang on. They actually took access to Starfield (and presumably other games) away from people who weren't subscribed to GPU when they changed to the new tier system?

@Guru_Larry come on now, EA isn't in the business of customer satisfaction.

How many times has EA put NFS on ice and brought it back now?

"Well-known Xbox leaker" or not, how is someone saying something evidence? Phil Spencer being spotted playing Gears of War 3 again, wearing a Gears of War t-shirt and wiping his arse with Gears of War toilet paper? Now that's evidence 🙄

@abe_hikura and even if they did have the time to grind or the inclination to spend money, chances are they're already doing that on the regular for another live-service game. The sort of Fortnite mega-success these companies are chasing can't happen for every live-service game; there's a finite amount of time and money available from a finite number of people.

@abe_hikura and this is what publishers still don't understand. Many people

1. don't have the required ridiculous amount of free time to grind in a game like this to unlock things
2. don't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money to unlock things

So those people most likely tried it out and noped out of there. I certainly did.

I didn't play it because it looked like a shambles from the moment they first showed gameplay. I don't feel like I've missed out.

Edit: I actually completely forgot that I played one of the closed tests they did for the game prior to release 🤣

Well when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I would gather from this announcement then that a Forza Horizon 6 isn't coming for a good few years yet.

Great game, hope PS5 players enjoy it.

@FraserG Nintendo is also a factory owner, also built shells for the Nazis, BUT THEIRS WORKED DAMNIT!!!

At the end of the day - whether that be on their own hardware/storefront or someone else's, local hardware or cloud, through sales or subscriptions - success is success.

@Millionski yes. But until that was cleared up, that was the main point of contention, even though anyone with half a brain could have seen the stupid amount of money Microsoft would be leaving on the table had they made Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox.

And people were concerned that Microsoft would choose making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox over making a s**t-ton of money.

This is the funniest thing I've heard in ages.

When I said that Spencer playing old Gears games very likely had nothing to do with anything relating to a new game or re-release, @Kezelpaso replied:

@Markatron84 As we said in the post, it seems most likely to be something to do with E-Day, maybe a revisit of the old games after a meeting with the dev team or something?
Either way, we think the timing is intriguing... the man hadn't been on Gears 2 since 2009

Look, I don't like to toot my own trumpet, but toot toot.

@Sol76 I know right? Absolutely wild how you playing old Gears games also had nothing to do with anything

@Lup me neither. I know that there are bases and balls.

@abe_hikura he popped up out of nowhere like All Might. "I AM HERE!!!"

@Kaloudz

Lego City has always caught my eye. Is it any good?

My wife said to say, "No, and I have definitely not played a ridiculous amount of time 100%-ing it on multiple platforms."

So there's that.

I noticed Bleeding Edge there. I didn't realise that game was still going. I remember reading that Ninja Theory stopped supporting/updating it pretty quickly and just assumed they'd shut the servers off since then. That was an interesting game but I lost interest in it soon after it released. Plus its aesthetic and characters were ugly as sin.

No.

And so this comment is long enough for Pure Xbox to let me post it:

No.

Can't complain. I only played a little bit of the multiplayer in Doom and Doom Eternal. I didn't much care for either of them.

I have one word for this presentation: bangin'.

A shadow drop, so the people harping on about those will be happy. We got dates for three very cool looking games. I'm even kind of hyped for Ninja Gaiden 4, a series I've had no interest in previously. Good stuff.

This game looks phenomenal. However, I have two questions:

1. What the hell is that thing flying around over the water?
2. Why is its arse hanging out?