@MjJmediablogger The thing where that won't matter as much is IDK about UK and EU but in the US the average American is accustomed to $150-200 cable tv bills so $50 doesn't seem as weird. Which is bad. And I've never paid that....
@HonestHick "lazy or dumb". Introducing the Xbox Lazy and Xbox Dumb. Yeah has a good ring to it in certain that's the names of the next consoles.
I'm so mad about the gyros. I thought it was a given for this Gen. I was floored when they said it has none. Xbox is holding the whole industry back. Even valorant said it's because Xbox they aren't using gyro on ps. That's just wrong.
@HonestHick Yeah, I don't need the haptic triggers and the like but gyros? Really? They now own the #1 shooter ever in CoD and are holding the whole industry back without gyros.
@mcdreamer If "It's fun because its hard" was true, the game wouldn't let you grind and level to level 400 to make it easier, summon outsiders to assist, cheese bosses, or even upgrade gear and stats, it would be a linear story game with fixed battle difficulty kind of like FFXIII where everyone basically had the same XP stats and gear at a given boss so the difficulty was controlled. I don't buy the whole difficulty is what makes it good malarky for an instant, it's clearly not actually designed around that, that's just sort of a cult mentality that's formed around it and they're afraid to change it for fear of their market revolting.
The games are good DESPITE the unbalanced difficulty, not because of it. Some people enjoy that. Some people enjoy speed running. But it doesn't mean it's an essential component of the design except to the cult that's formed around that notion. They're just well designed environments regardless of the "difficulty." I still think it's a shame that the obsession with "must be frustrating to be fun!" keeps a lot of people from seeing their immaculately designed world. It really doesn't need to.
@HonestHick To be fair, lack of innovation on the Xbox controller to the point of just ignoring industry standard gyros probably is why Sony gets away with their shoddy batteries and drifting sticks...
@Kezelpaso @Titntin Yeah that's a huge pet peeve of mine across these sites for ages. I get the need for SEO, and that the family of platform specific sites has to differentiate the search and all but there really must be a better way, it makes the headlines sound really awkward, or "fanboyish", or even misleading when it makes things look like one platform is affected differently from others on a multiplat game. Not a criticism of this specific article, I know it's a Hookshot standard headline convention across the sites, and I know its practical and functional purpose, but it's still nasty!
Besides, wouldn't adding "PC, and PS5" to the headline really boost search rankings/SEO for an Xbox site by like 4000%? lol
I said it on Push but everything about this game from the look to the style, genre, scope, price, everything feels like it fell out of the year 2005, and I'm loving that it does. And it feels like it came right of of the era of peak Potter-mania, which helps it even more.
I'm sure there's at least 10 of the 30-something-million GP subscribers who haven't heard of this game yet will be very excited. 2K isn't a big fan of subscriptions though, they hurt sales too much, the game might drop down to 4th place in the sales charts if this happens.
Of course, historically, 2K only uses Game Pass as a glorified "free play weekend" and takes the game off days to weeks after putting it up, so I'm sure it'll be back to #1 for the next 20 or 30 years soon enough.
@Balie3000 What amazes me is Rockstar/2K could go out of its way to release patches on PC for no other purpose but to break mods they throw cease & desists at, but they can't be bothered to fix FPS, fix RDR2 HDR, or really do much of anything else. 2K may be the sleaziest company in all gaming, and that's saying something.
@Vaako007 IIRC a few years back they have a slightly different version of the sedans thing, not that there wasn't market share, but that they couldn't compete with Asian brands there and thus wanted to pull out to the higher margin, higher end SUV markets only. Not so much that there wasn't a market, but not a market for THEM because competitors did it better, cheaper, and won more market share. Though the idea that Ford and gm see themselves as "only luxury" brands is kind of funny. Champagne and Walmart dreams.
I'm not sure where gaming/hardware goes from here. There's a market for consoles, to a point, but it's not the market that it was. It used to be fueled by casuals buying it for some sports and fitness games, propping up and subsidizing the "hardcore" market. Those people left almost entirely, leaving the hardcore to pay for themselves as the industry tries to tell the hardcore that'll cost more and more and more. Meanwhile every day devices rapidly do catch up to gaming hardware. It's hard to not see the decline in total hardware sales, decline in software sales to the point most revenue just comes from iap for the big service games, and the fact that consoles never really held much market in the world outside a few key areas and see the investment focus in those other areas. IDK where hardware goes from here. On one hand there's a market, on the other hand if there continues to be decline in sales, there's only so much that market can afford to be catered to before prices balloon into something that kills the rest of the market.
It's kind of death by a thousand cuts to the industry both internal and external. I think the industry hasn't really known where it's trying to go for over a decade now, and it's all starting to catch up. It's not just Xbox, PS is hurting too. Sure they post impressive numbers and a lot of their trouble is overspending, but declining sales even as Xbox barely has a presence at the margins, isn't a great sign. The fact that it's landing at a time where hardware prices are now stagnant and hold value forever without big upgrades behind it, it's just crushing the whole business model of consoles, both in increased costs of mfr/reduced profits on hardware, and in inability to discount without taking losses still, crippling their ability to grow the install base. More a Sony problem than Xbox, Xbox cut to $350 and included Diablo 4 and still couldn't move the things, they've already hit their max market size for console, and it's not very large.
I don't see console vanishing overnight, certainly, but we're rapidly getting close to the point where console makers want to tell us their console is $1000+ plus expensive games and paid online etc etc, meanwhile mobiles are already there and getting much better, and work with any controller and PCs aren't much more, and are way better.
@Kilamanjaro The battery aspects I can definitely agree with, these things before the X have horrendous battery life for sure. Great for running low settings in power saver down clocked mode for "switch type"games, but yeah bigger games I think really would rather be plugged in. I can kill a battery in any 40 minutes if armored core 6 at 45+ fps so for truly cordless on the go play, yeah it's not ideal. (Then again neither was launch switch or og 3ds if we're honest. I ran those plugged in too....)
Though starting with x and the WoA snapdragons that battery issue might improve fast.
Disagree on setup though. I did just use the touch screen, no mouse, maybe spent an hour on setup except for a Microsoft account issue that I'd maxed out on Microsoft devices attached to the store, it still has my x1xs on there and all taking up slots. Using it as JUST a gaming box, was really just clicking through the setup, doing Windows and armory crate updates/drivers, and installing and logging into steam, Uplay, epic, Gog, that's the time consumer with all those stores, and done.
Game tweaking, yeah I get that sort of. I'm not bothered by it but I can see that as a bottleneck. Thing is for me, consoles have awful tuning out of the box to ne so ANY tuning is a good tuning in comparison. I'm not going crazy googling to min-max it, I just drop the settings until I get 45-60fps and go. The big thing to remember is you want your screen at 720p, then turn on RSR and let the upscaling take care of it. Stuff looks good. Not always easy to get 60 locked fps but 40+ is easy enough for most games. Even Elden Ring lol. I'm sure it can be better tuned to squeeze even more performance out of it, but, like you, I don't want to spend that kind of time dialing it in for perfection, and the fast and dirty way gets good results. That's the non extreme ally which is pretty impressive (my legion is extreme so that's quite a bit more capable of course. Right now it's just an FFXIV machine though 😂
Oh yeah I have a kishi too. It was ok. Then got g cloud and a retroid which was better before landing finally on the portable PCs. I admit though that pocketable is definitely not what these things do well lol
@Kilamanjaro Yeah, that's not an Asus problem, that's an Xbox problem. "Play Anywhere/Smart Delivery" seriously sucks in a major way. Not only can they not get most 3rd party publishers to do crossbuy, they can barely get 3rd party publishers to list games on Windows Store at all. And even Bethesda games aren't Play Anywhere yet.
I have an ok number of games that carried over, but not a ton. Of course all Game Pass games do.
What setup did you have to do that took so long though? IIRC I just charged it up, turned it on, logged in with my same MS account as XB and downloaded Persona 3 Reload. Not much else to do other than Windows/MS store updates but that's the same on XB itself. Lots else you CAN do, but not much else you NEED to do.
@HarmanSmith Yeah it would be nice if the X drove prices down a bit of the normal units. Not sure if it'll happen with Asus being Asus, though. Unfortunately Asus, and especially the ROG subbrand is kind of the Sony of the PC world these days. They unapologetically charge exorbitant prices over average sold on their brand image of superiority, yet often the inverse is true and they have more problems with their hardware than supposedly inferior competitors of late at least where mobos and GPUs are concerned.
I really like the Ally though. Annoyed they cheaped out and used pot sticks rather than Hall for an $800 (X) device though, and the price jump for the new and improved X really irks me. Rather than fixing their defective SD slot, they release a new model with a 20% price increase and 2 slots. But it's overall a nice device. I bought the Z1 cheap as an open box on a whim after deciding on Legion for my Z1E machine, and I don't really regret it, and sometimes wish it was the Extreme, too. It's great for JRPGs which is a lot of what my handheld use is for anyway. Also does great with Armored Core 6!
I have to laugh, I paid less for it than my Switch OLED and I'm just using it for Live A Live right now, and the game looks and runs soooooo much better than Switch
Legion....ok I paid $700 for the 1TB version, yes the battery sucks massively, but with the huge screen and removable controllers (@Lavalera Legion fans unite!) 1TB drive, hall effect sticks...... The $800 Ally X seems pretty lame other than the (huge) battery increase.
@lechugajr Yeah compared to consoles the price is extreme, and honestly compared to OTHER handheld gaming PCs the price is ALSO extreme. Asus went full Sony with the pricing of this. The base (non-extreme) model is $400 and you can get it cheaper than a SWOLED and it runs circles around the Switch. The X is basically a cheap laptop more than it's an expensive console.
Keep in mind the "extreme" versions are basically more powerful than a Series S, likely more powerful than a Switch 2, all in a pocket format. The noneextreme is more like "somewhere between Switch and Series S."
I still think $800 is too much for what you get though. It's the most expensive PC handheld there is and I don't think you get enough more to justify the price difference, unless you need the battery life, in which case they have you trapped and they know it. Price felt like a joke when they announced it, and it still does, but they have a target market, and that market is people who travel and need the long battery without plugging in, and they also figured those are the kind of people that don't blink spending $1000 for anything.
Ally X is kind of offensive as a product. An $800 upgrade to an existing product that's not actually any faster. yeah, ram, battery, other improvements, but ultimately it just seems like a veiled price increase.
I currently have the Legion (love it) as well as a non-Extreme (lower powered) Ally. Love them both for different reasons, but the $800 premium for this model just sits wrong with me, much like Asus pricing on most everything these days. It's the same SoC.
@kihaennem Err, G Cloud is a streaming device that can run light Android games, this is a PC. Radically different products.
@eduscxbox "Nintendo pick a different name every console generation and it is fine"
That's kind of the point. Nintendo picks a new name every time, and thus there's no confusion because there's only one product of that name. You know it's the right one. There's one time where they didn't do that. The WiiU. Which had the same confusion as Xbox naming to the point it catastrophically failed. "I don't need a screen controller for my Wii!" Xbox would have done better with unique names like Nintendo and Sega did.
I mean, Xbox naming is so confused, they're still using the project codename 20 years later lol!
Apple...well....apple people are special. They just need to know they bought an apple device. They don't really need to know they just spent $2800 on a $1200 laptop do they?
@HonestHick Series X1 and Series S1 will be so much more powerful than the One X and One S!
I guess it still makes more sense than PC where you have a 8900XT which is totally different from the 8900XTX but better than the 9050XT, all run on your "Intel Processor".
I still just love "Intel Processor." It's like naming your dog "Dog".
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah, and it makes sense, launching an Xbox 2 a year before the PS3 would make the PS3 seem much newer (and you can always get a second job to buy one lol.)
But.....at the same time....360 boxed them into a brand hole forever. It worked at that moment in time, but left them no actual forward strategy to go with the brand after that. It's kind of a metaphor for all of Xbox, isn't it?
Of course they could have stuck with the skater theme, the Xbox 720, 1440, Xbox 4k? It would have actually been PERFECT, though you need hindsight to know it. Instead they go to "One". Then expand it to One S and One X. And then deside to also make the successor X and S. Did they not learn from WiiU that you do not recycle names? Even XboxU would have been sadly better. And then when they have the Pro model it could be perfect, the Xbox Series F|U.
@themightyant The rare cases I'll defend Xbox decisions these days, but yeah I don't see a problem with a discount promo on their retail side for subscribers, because it's not a new feature but one that's always been part of their sub, it applies to many games not just theirs, nothing prevents competitors from offering the same promos or better, including pricing via brick and mortar retailers, and competitors also have subscriber-only discounts on things.
It only becomes a problem (and this we wouldn't know about) if they're playing games with the wholesale pricing/revenue splits of the currency when sold to retailers and competitors to incentivize their own digital store as an obvious advantage to purchase from.
@AccessibleDaydream @somnambulance TBF both GP and PS Plus and NSO have always included members-only discounts and offers (in NSO's case it mostly amounts to the ability to buy vouchers) where often the big sales (at least on PS, not even sure it applies to XB) have 2 sale prices, one for subscribers and one for non-subs. So this isn't anything new or special, access to special sale pricing is a standard feature of all the subs that's always been there.
It's actually always been an annoyance of mine. When scrolling the sale pages you usually just get like 90 pages that are just different bundle sizes of different currencies for a bunch of GaaS games and MMOs but with one game mixed in. But yeah, that's been a feature of the subs advertised since the beginning.
As for the Overton Window....the problem with gaming more than other industries is no matter what the industry says, the target is children/tweens/teens. "M Rated" has always meant "high school kids that want to feel mature" and "college kids that couldn't even pretend to be." And for them, whatever existed in their lifetime is the way the world has always been. So the industry knows every 8 years of so the past never happened and whatever forced new world they apply will, for the upcoming new generation of majority players, be the world that always was, accepted without question. It's also (and more notably) why politics targets the young, going back even to WWII and prior. If you acclimate the young to your new normal, you just have to wait for the old to die off (or exit the market.) At least gaming publishers haven't resorted to getting the young to kill off the old to accelerate the process though (yet.)
So gaming has an unfortunate turnaround where within about 8 years, the new thing everyone rejected is now accepted as normal, because if they force it in for long enough, the new majority population of gamers grew up with it and is used to it as normal, even while anyone with a clue was resisting.
Heck, the mainstream gamer now grew up with phone gaming. Even EA seems consumer friendly if that's the only world you know.
@HonestHick Yeah, the 360 seems like a great name now, because it's a a famed product in hindsight, but yeah, when everyone expected "Xbox 2" and they came out with "360" it sounded dumb and "faux edgy". I think ,what, at the time skater/snowboard culture was all the rage with the kiddos, and I always assumed they were trying to channel that whole skater lingo with 360's and 720's and all that. Which sounded dumb because 360 is....right back where you started. And they followed it with the One...
LOL on Android! To be fair, unlike Xbox, Android versions actually have real numbers officially, its just that the food-themed internal codenames became sort of their own legend, and are memorable enough that that's what everyone (nerds) started referring to it as instead of the numbers, and then sometime after that, Google marketing got ahold of it and ran with it for actual consumer facing marketing. That's where it got dumb. But it really is numbered versions, but you never notice that, you just remember the food names.
Of course, Apple's the one that stopped using numbers or names at all and just started calling everything "product". So sellers had to have parenthesis (2024 ver.) I should sell my old TNT2 GPU from 1999 on Ebay "Nvidia GPU - Used - $550." Yeah I know they started using numbers again on the phones at least, because even Apple eventually figured out their naming was even worse than Xbox.
Sony, well, they figured it out for consoles, but then we get into their cameras, TVs, audio.....yeah....they're pretty bad too.
@HonestHick Lol yeah. I really don't know how scuf stays on business, their stuff is absurdly priced and horrendous quality. But esports wannabes keep paying for it. Probably because esports pros are paid to look like they use them without showing they're using a new one every single match lol
All kidding aside though, I can't tell if this is a mistake or done on purpose. Has anyone seen the new Intel naming scheme? It's like it was designed by Xbox. To make it simpler for consumers, instead of 3 families, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 (+Celeron/Pentium for budget) they're splitting it into SIX families and removing the i, Core 5, Core 7, Core 9 + Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, Core Ultra 9. Then they're ending the Celeron and Pentium names and rebranding all the trash chips "Intel Processor". So, where does a Core 9, and a Core Ultra 5 line up? Does anyone actually know? If Ultra is better, but there's 3 tiers of each, where does one meet the other?
On top of that they're removing the generation from the branding, so you don't know what generation it is from the product name without reading the exact part number and checking on their website.
Why are they doing this? "To make it simpler for consumers."
Why are they REALLY doing this? So they can build frankenchips out of old dies and not have to say they're old, while their large builder partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) can sell ancient chips at full price in prebuilds to unsuspecting consumers. "It's got a Core 7 in it! (From 2012.) $350 please."
I myself am looking forward to the next generation Xbox 365 SX. It's supposed to be 50% more powerful than the rumored Xbox Series One XS. Shame it's digital only but it's still a great value with the day 1 games on Game Pass for $15, and it's such a great system since the games are compatible with the Xbox X1 handheld!
I can't believe people are still confused about this. Now Playstation, that's confusing. PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5...how are you supposed to know which one to buy? There only difference is a number, there's no way to know which one is which!
@Dan1283 I guess the new Game Pass Standard subscribers need something to get excited about? To be fair, it's still a better Naughty Dog game than TLoU2.... 🥷
@Feffster Yeah, that's practical and fair, but it's kind of my point. It's one thing that it's interesting to try "because it's there", it's another thing using it as a dripfeed to get people excited to play Xbox One remasters of PS1 games for $20/mo.
$20/mo and people are getting excited for an 8th gen remake of a 5th gen game that's been on sale for years and years? Does everyone laugh at sitcoms whenever the laugh track plays, too?
@HonestHick PS5 seems to be the winner of the stick drift this gen, I've never seen so many reports of drift other than the early Joycons. I have not had my stick drift yet on it, but that's because 75% of my PS5 play time has been VR with the VRSense, and I switched to the Edge part way through for non-VR so it only got shared wear. I really fear for the VRSense though, as you can't replace those controllers, they won't sell them, so if the stick drifts, you throw out the whole $550 kit and buy a new one. And you thought Edge was overpriced! Switch, I have a box full of drifting sticks. Like 6 or so Joycon, and a Pro controller. Xbox....I fear for my Elite 2. I have a dozen drifting 360 controllers a few Elite v1's. My Elite 2 has, knock wood, held up, despite so many reports of issues, even out of the box, even as my most used controller. I fear that can't last much longer, and that one was somehow the lottery winner of luck. It's absurd to pay those prices for controllers guaranteed to drift in time (to say nothing of Scuf.....they're just shameful.)
@HonestHick IDK they're even making money off them, they never have them in stock even if people want them. Like everything else is seems like a checklist product to cash in on the early adopter rush, summarily abandoned once that passed.
It just astounds me that the higher end the controller, the less chance of hall. Scuff, elite, edge, Asus Ally...200, $800..... No hall effect. Turtle Beach, 8bitdo, KRCJGIRA, JiBestGameGood, $18 CONTROLLERS HALL EFFECT!
I bought Legion Go first over Ally due to the big screen and the hall effect. Ally and Edge have hall effect TRIGGERS. Wtf?
It's a cool idea, but by the time you're done overpaying for a controller you could buy an Elite, and by the time you're done paying for an Elite without Hall Effect that can develop drift anyway, why pay more than minimum, it's disposable.
Why are we still stuck with graphene potentiometers in high end controllers when cheap Chinese generics have hall effect now?
@HonestHick Yeah "friendly" security software. Thank goodness for their protection. Without them hackers could take down your network.... Oh wait. And you pay thousands for that!
Yeah Xbox was half down here. Got the warnings on the Xbox PC app when I went to remote play my xsx. Logins I think are what was down.
@WhiteRabbit But 5 purified souls of sacrificed maidens, 3 putrefied imp hearts specifically from the banks of the river Styx, 7 truths from gaming executives, and 1 MSRP 4090 are almost IMPOSSIBLE to gather! I can get the souls and hearts easy enough but the rest, I don't think that's even possible! And I STILL can't find the corrupted soil on which to build the summoning circle. I'm sure it's somewhere on the MSDN. Surely there must be another way!
@WhiteRabbit I think it's doable in a Microsoft way.
So you can have a cloud only tier, that you must buy ultimate, then go into the settings, disable cloud and console, then log in on a PC and activate your subscription, then submit a request to change to cloud only. After you confirm the change on both PC and console (you must own an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X linked to your account to approve this request) you can then convert from Game Pass Ultimate to Game Pass Cloud, the price change will appear on your statement as of the next monthly billing cycle.
Is that better and much more practical for Microsoft to do? Will Phil hire me now?
Game Pass tears. We all have many, many Game Pass tears. Far too many now....
Much as I'm against too many price packages, I think they actually DO need to break out cloud. Right now it serves no one. Ultimate customers aren't really the target customer for cloud streaming, if you're buying Ultimate you probably have console, or PC, or most likely console AND PC. You're probably not too interested in cloud. If you're interested in cloud, you probably don't have a console, OR a gaming PC, and aren't interested in any of what it offers, you just want cloud. This isn't hard. Cloud should have been its own sub and always should have. Additionally, console full day 1 game pass without PC and without cloud should have been available - not having that is a huge signal that console doesn't matter.
PC should be PC. Cloud should be cloud. Console should be console.
If they want ultimate then they can have ultimate with all 3 and no sane person should buy it because realistically who's playing on all 3 regularly?
It's all reminiscent of Windows Vista Home, Pro, and Ultimate. If you want media features you buy Home. If you want security features, large RAM support, or quad core CPU support you buy Pro. If you want meda AND large ram quad core you need Ultimate. Basically everyone needs Ultimate and the other options exist just to make the single all in one flat price look like a "bargain."
@HonestHick Yeah I looked it up after you mentioned it, technically it was not a Microsoft issue at all. There were two issues an Azure/365 outage at a major US datacenter took big cloud services offline for a while. But the big one wasn't an MS issue, it was CrowdStrike pushing an update to Falcon, and like most "security" software, it basically works like a virus, and embeds itself as a driver and replaces parts of the OS with their custom version....and they pushed a garbage system file that rendered the OS unbootable.
This is the rare case these days I'll defend MS. Not their fault. If some self important security company starts replacing Linux and BSD kernels (including MacOS), the same thing would happen.
The lesson here is if you're going to mess with OS system files and push them out in automated updates, maybe, don't update every single customer on the planet all at the same moment? They did the Russians job for them all in the name of stopping the Russians, and charged customers fortunes to do so.....they'd have been better off with the Russians, at least it would be cheaper!
@shoeses The WiiU wasn't really bad though, and it did some things better than Switch. It was poorly marketed, undesirable, and had the misfortune of launching just before PS4 and X1 so that as soon as it came out, 3rd party support vanished and 100% of all marketing from all publishers went to PS/XB, with several (EA) actively sabotaging WiiU with negative commentary.
"By Nintendo standards" WiiU wasn't bad hardware. And "By Nintendo standards" Switch isn't particularly special hardware, it's another Nintendo handheld, but without the unique gimmicks of the DS era, just a return to the Game Boy form. With a TV out.
It's not so much a matter of bad hardware and good hardware, just marketing and perception. The Switch is actually similar power to WiiU, just a touch more powerful in some areas (but by sacrificing others), yet where WiiU was "not good enough" in 2013, Switch is somehow top tier in 2024. Just marketing and perception.
@TakeItEasy I only disagree with the last part. I jumped back to Xbox after skipping x1 launch because Sony didn't respect fans or communicate anything. Xbox deciding to suck doesn't make Sony suck less, it just makes it seem that way. They both suck now. Sony just has more third party support.
@InterceptorAlpha "Now they've pretty much pushed me off to PC and VR exclusively barring the occasional Ninty or Sony game."
100% exactly heading the same place. Though to be fair it's mostly possible because PC is basically just Super Xbox. It's clear they want Xbox to be a Windows service. Which is fair that's was it was originally too. But I even just bought a quest 3. I'm actually choosing a Zuckerberg platform.... I swore I'd never touch anything Zuck related. Thanks Satya and Amy!
They point blank told foc no price hike for call of duty. Then hike the price and cite call of duty. What exactly is ftc misrepresenting?
We all knew there would be a price increase eventually but I overestimated Microsoft and believed they'd wait until the next call of duty for optics and to make good on the claim. They didn't even care about optics. That's how far they live the spreadsheet.
Gaming By Excel 36 - 404 Not Found
@Jenkinss I still don't think they've decided anything really. That's their problem, they can't decide what they actually want the business to be so they're trying to be everything at once, and that's good for one direction is bad for another direction so they just alternate between what gets priority.
They want gaming to be a subscription but then they compete against that with retail. They want gaming in the cloud but then compete with that with hardware and PC software. They want to be on all screens but then they want to sell subscriptions to partner and own devices.
@BAMozzy Totally agree about it not being long before mobile can do rt and upscaling etc. That's kind of the same point I was making really. General purpose computing is moving at a pace where dedicated graphics machines are begining to be fast irrelevant the same way low end discrete gpus are irrelevant and gone. Every mid range CPU comes with a GPU better than the expensive gpus we had 15 years ago. Thus I see consoles having a limited future. Having graphics nothing else could touch was their claim to fame and that's ending as general compute rivals it me and more and the high end is hitting roadblocks if that's practical to develop for.
Physical retail is it's other unique selling point but that's not demanded widely anymore. I thought maybe going full HBO and locking all exclusives to them forever would be it, but even Sony isn't going that route with more PC releases and probably mobile when viable.
This generation is especially weird. People keep saying we're 4 years in. No we're not it's 3.5. and the first year they weren't even available widely. And yearly the 2.5 after we've still been waiting for it to feel like the generation started. It feels like we're still in launch window waiting for the big games. I don't think this gen counts as "average" when the first 2 or 3 years was just waiting for the launch to stabilize. Yet games kinda feel like they skipped the hardware.
@BAMozzy problem is if consoles are replaced so frequently to catch up, they're not actually any cheaper than extreme PCs which kills its whole purpose. And the PC really outlasts it because the mid range cards didn't even jump that much anymore between a few gens only the elite cards do. And it's the rut consoles are stuck in. I just don't see the console market going for non stop upgrade cycles then most only buy a few games over years. Frankly I see pc getting off the non stop upgrade cycle.... The leaps every 2 or 3 years aren't close to what they were 20 years ago.
But you're taking more going into the PC or mobile upgrade model instead of generations with long compatibility. That i definitely see. I expected that's where Ms was going starting with 1x. I was disappointed when they announced Scarlett and it was just another generational console.
@somnambulance Yeah, I really don't know exactly how they're positioning their handheld strategy. It has great potential but they're going to be head to head against Nintendo at the present rate and that can't end well. They're always too early or too late. Wizards, they are not.
Comments 6,665
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Better than Xbox Zero? That was the launch model. It upgraded to Xbox One with the day one patch that removed Kinekt.
Re: Samsung Now Selling 'Select' TVs Bundled With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
@MjJmediablogger The thing where that won't matter as much is IDK about UK and EU but in the US the average American is accustomed to $150-200 cable tv bills so $50 doesn't seem as weird. Which is bad. And I've never paid that....
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick "lazy or dumb". Introducing the Xbox Lazy and Xbox Dumb. Yeah has a good ring to it in certain that's the names of the next consoles.
I'm so mad about the gyros. I thought it was a given for this Gen. I was floored when they said it has none. Xbox is holding the whole industry back. Even valorant said it's because Xbox they aren't using gyro on ps. That's just wrong.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Yeah, I don't need the haptic triggers and the like but gyros? Really? They now own the #1 shooter ever in CoD and are holding the whole industry back without gyros.
Re: Elden Ring Patch Makes Sweeping Changes To Difficulty Balance On Xbox
@mcdreamer If "It's fun because its hard" was true, the game wouldn't let you grind and level to level 400 to make it easier, summon outsiders to assist, cheese bosses, or even upgrade gear and stats, it would be a linear story game with fixed battle difficulty kind of like FFXIII where everyone basically had the same XP stats and gear at a given boss so the difficulty was controlled. I don't buy the whole difficulty is what makes it good malarky for an instant, it's clearly not actually designed around that, that's just sort of a cult mentality that's formed around it and they're afraid to change it for fear of their market revolting.
The games are good DESPITE the unbalanced difficulty, not because of it. Some people enjoy that. Some people enjoy speed running. But it doesn't mean it's an essential component of the design except to the cult that's formed around that notion. They're just well designed environments regardless of the "difficulty." I still think it's a shame that the obsession with "must be frustrating to be fun!" keeps a lot of people from seeing their immaculately designed world. It really doesn't need to.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick To be fair, lack of innovation on the Xbox controller to the point of just ignoring industry standard gyros probably is why Sony gets away with their shoddy batteries and drifting sticks...
Re: Elden Ring Patch Makes Sweeping Changes To Difficulty Balance On Xbox
@Kezelpaso @Titntin Yeah that's a huge pet peeve of mine across these sites for ages. I get the need for SEO, and that the family of platform specific sites has to differentiate the search and all but there really must be a better way, it makes the headlines sound really awkward, or "fanboyish", or even misleading when it makes things look like one platform is affected differently from others on a multiplat game. Not a criticism of this specific article, I know it's a Hookshot standard headline convention across the sites, and I know its practical and functional purpose, but it's still nasty!
Besides, wouldn't adding "PC, and PS5" to the headline really boost search rankings/SEO for an Xbox site by like 4000%? lol
Re: Digital Foundry Investigates 'Bricked' Xbox One Consoles That Can't Update
@Steel76 I miss when PCs didn't require Internet and accounts to set them up 😔
Re: Here's Your First Look At Gameplay For 'Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions'
@trev666 $29.99 USD all platforms standard edition. $39.99 deluxe/preorder.
Re: Digital Foundry Investigates 'Bricked' Xbox One Consoles That Can't Update
Over a decade later and the Always Online #dealwithit Xbox DOne is STILL a disaster.
Q: How many Matricks does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one as long as you only need it screwed up.
Re: Here's Your First Look At Gameplay For 'Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions'
I said it on Push but everything about this game from the look to the style, genre, scope, price, everything feels like it fell out of the year 2005, and I'm loving that it does. And it feels like it came right of of the era of peak Potter-mania, which helps it even more.
Re: Rumour: GTA 5 Is Coming To PC Game Pass For The Very First Time
I'm sure there's at least 10 of the 30-something-million GP subscribers who haven't heard of this game yet will be very excited. 2K isn't a big fan of subscriptions though, they hurt sales too much, the game might drop down to 4th place in the sales charts if this happens.
Of course, historically, 2K only uses Game Pass as a glorified "free play weekend" and takes the game off days to weeks after putting it up, so I'm sure it'll be back to #1 for the next 20 or 30 years soon enough.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Strange! I hadn't had any problems, but maybe I missed an outage. Or mAybE thEyRe oUT tO gEt YoU? Just blame Xbox.
Re: Two More Games Strongly Rumoured For Xbox Game Pass In August
@Balie3000 What amazes me is Rockstar/2K could go out of its way to release patches on PC for no other purpose but to break mods they throw cease & desists at, but they can't be bothered to fix FPS, fix RDR2 HDR, or really do much of anything else. 2K may be the sleaziest company in all gaming, and that's saying something.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@Vaako007 IIRC a few years back they have a slightly different version of the sedans thing, not that there wasn't market share, but that they couldn't compete with Asian brands there and thus wanted to pull out to the higher margin, higher end SUV markets only. Not so much that there wasn't a market, but not a market for THEM because competitors did it better, cheaper, and won more market share. Though the idea that Ford and gm see themselves as "only luxury" brands is kind of funny. Champagne and Walmart dreams.
I'm not sure where gaming/hardware goes from here. There's a market for consoles, to a point, but it's not the market that it was. It used to be fueled by casuals buying it for some sports and fitness games, propping up and subsidizing the "hardcore" market. Those people left almost entirely, leaving the hardcore to pay for themselves as the industry tries to tell the hardcore that'll cost more and more and more. Meanwhile every day devices rapidly do catch up to gaming hardware. It's hard to not see the decline in total hardware sales, decline in software sales to the point most revenue just comes from iap for the big service games, and the fact that consoles never really held much market in the world outside a few key areas and see the investment focus in those other areas. IDK where hardware goes from here. On one hand there's a market, on the other hand if there continues to be decline in sales, there's only so much that market can afford to be catered to before prices balloon into something that kills the rest of the market.
It's kind of death by a thousand cuts to the industry both internal and external. I think the industry hasn't really known where it's trying to go for over a decade now, and it's all starting to catch up. It's not just Xbox, PS is hurting too. Sure they post impressive numbers and a lot of their trouble is overspending, but declining sales even as Xbox barely has a presence at the margins, isn't a great sign. The fact that it's landing at a time where hardware prices are now stagnant and hold value forever without big upgrades behind it, it's just crushing the whole business model of consoles, both in increased costs of mfr/reduced profits on hardware, and in inability to discount without taking losses still, crippling their ability to grow the install base. More a Sony problem than Xbox, Xbox cut to $350 and included Diablo 4 and still couldn't move the things, they've already hit their max market size for console, and it's not very large.
I don't see console vanishing overnight, certainly, but we're rapidly getting close to the point where console makers want to tell us their console is $1000+ plus expensive games and paid online etc etc, meanwhile mobiles are already there and getting much better, and work with any controller and PCs aren't much more, and are way better.
Re: Asus ROG Ally X Reviews Suggest It's The Best Xbox Handheld Yet
@Kilamanjaro The battery aspects I can definitely agree with, these things before the X have horrendous battery life for sure. Great for running low settings in power saver down clocked mode for "switch type"games, but yeah bigger games I think really would rather be plugged in. I can kill a battery in any 40 minutes if armored core 6 at 45+ fps so for truly cordless on the go play, yeah it's not ideal. (Then again neither was launch switch or og 3ds if we're honest. I ran those plugged in too....)
Though starting with x and the WoA snapdragons that battery issue might improve fast.
Disagree on setup though. I did just use the touch screen, no mouse, maybe spent an hour on setup except for a Microsoft account issue that I'd maxed out on Microsoft devices attached to the store, it still has my x1xs on there and all taking up slots. Using it as JUST a gaming box, was really just clicking through the setup, doing Windows and armory crate updates/drivers, and installing and logging into steam, Uplay, epic, Gog, that's the time consumer with all those stores, and done.
Game tweaking, yeah I get that sort of. I'm not bothered by it but I can see that as a bottleneck. Thing is for me, consoles have awful tuning out of the box to ne so ANY tuning is a good tuning in comparison. I'm not going crazy googling to min-max it, I just drop the settings until I get 45-60fps and go. The big thing to remember is you want your screen at 720p, then turn on RSR and let the upscaling take care of it. Stuff looks good. Not always easy to get 60 locked fps but 40+ is easy enough for most games. Even Elden Ring lol. I'm sure it can be better tuned to squeeze even more performance out of it, but, like you, I don't want to spend that kind of time dialing it in for perfection, and the fast and dirty way gets good results. That's the non extreme ally which is pretty impressive (my legion is extreme so that's quite a bit more capable of course. Right now it's just an FFXIV machine though 😂
Oh yeah I have a kishi too. It was ok. Then got g cloud and a retroid which was better before landing finally on the portable PCs. I admit though that pocketable is definitely not what these things do well lol
Re: Asus ROG Ally X Reviews Suggest It's The Best Xbox Handheld Yet
@Kilamanjaro Yeah, that's not an Asus problem, that's an Xbox problem. "Play Anywhere/Smart Delivery" seriously sucks in a major way. Not only can they not get most 3rd party publishers to do crossbuy, they can barely get 3rd party publishers to list games on Windows Store at all. And even Bethesda games aren't Play Anywhere yet.
I have an ok number of games that carried over, but not a ton. Of course all Game Pass games do.
What setup did you have to do that took so long though? IIRC I just charged it up, turned it on, logged in with my same MS account as XB and downloaded Persona 3 Reload. Not much else to do other than Windows/MS store updates but that's the same on XB itself. Lots else you CAN do, but not much else you NEED to do.
Re: Asus ROG Ally X Reviews Suggest It's The Best Xbox Handheld Yet
@HarmanSmith Yeah it would be nice if the X drove prices down a bit of the normal units. Not sure if it'll happen with Asus being Asus, though. Unfortunately Asus, and especially the ROG subbrand is kind of the Sony of the PC world these days. They unapologetically charge exorbitant prices over average sold on their brand image of superiority, yet often the inverse is true and they have more problems with their hardware than supposedly inferior competitors of late at least where mobos and GPUs are concerned.
I really like the Ally though. Annoyed they cheaped out and used pot sticks rather than Hall for an $800 (X) device though, and the price jump for the new and improved X really irks me. Rather than fixing their defective SD slot, they release a new model with a 20% price increase and 2 slots. But it's overall a nice device. I bought the Z1 cheap as an open box on a whim after deciding on Legion for my Z1E machine, and I don't really regret it, and sometimes wish it was the Extreme, too. It's great for JRPGs which is a lot of what my handheld use is for anyway. Also does great with Armored Core 6!
I have to laugh, I paid less for it than my Switch OLED and I'm just using it for Live A Live right now, and the game looks and runs soooooo much better than Switch
Legion....ok I paid $700 for the 1TB version, yes the battery sucks massively, but with the huge screen and removable controllers (@Lavalera Legion fans unite!) 1TB drive, hall effect sticks...... The $800 Ally X seems pretty lame other than the (huge) battery increase.
@lechugajr Yeah compared to consoles the price is extreme, and honestly compared to OTHER handheld gaming PCs the price is ALSO extreme. Asus went full Sony with the pricing of this. The base (non-extreme) model is $400 and you can get it cheaper than a SWOLED and it runs circles around the Switch. The X is basically a cheap laptop more than it's an expensive console.
Keep in mind the "extreme" versions are basically more powerful than a Series S, likely more powerful than a Switch 2, all in a pocket format. The noneextreme is more like "somewhere between Switch and Series S."
I still think $800 is too much for what you get though. It's the most expensive PC handheld there is and I don't think you get enough more to justify the price difference, unless you need the battery life, in which case they have you trapped and they know it. Price felt like a joke when they announced it, and it still does, but they have a target market, and that market is people who travel and need the long battery without plugging in, and they also figured those are the kind of people that don't blink spending $1000 for anything.
Re: Asus ROG Ally X Reviews Suggest It's The Best Xbox Handheld Yet
Ally X is kind of offensive as a product. An $800 upgrade to an existing product that's not actually any faster. yeah, ram, battery, other improvements, but ultimately it just seems like a veiled price increase.
I currently have the Legion (love it) as well as a non-Extreme (lower powered) Ally. Love them both for different reasons, but the $800 premium for this model just sits wrong with me, much like Asus pricing on most everything these days. It's the same SoC.
@kihaennem Err, G Cloud is a streaming device that can run light Android games, this is a PC. Radically different products.
Re: These Are The Top-Selling Games In The Xbox Ultimate Game Sale 2024
Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty........
Suicide Squad (!?!?).....Call of Duty.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@eduscxbox "Nintendo pick a different name every console generation and it is fine"
That's kind of the point. Nintendo picks a new name every time, and thus there's no confusion because there's only one product of that name. You know it's the right one. There's one time where they didn't do that. The WiiU. Which had the same confusion as Xbox naming to the point it catastrophically failed. "I don't need a screen controller for my Wii!" Xbox would have done better with unique names like Nintendo and Sega did.
I mean, Xbox naming is so confused, they're still using the project codename 20 years later lol!
Apple...well....apple people are special. They just need to know they bought an apple device. They don't really need to know they just spent $2800 on a $1200 laptop do they?
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Series X1 and Series S1 will be so much more powerful than the One X and One S!
I guess it still makes more sense than PC where you have a 8900XT which is totally different from the 8900XTX but better than the 9050XT, all run on your "Intel Processor".
I still just love "Intel Processor." It's like naming your dog "Dog".
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah, and it makes sense, launching an Xbox 2 a year before the PS3 would make the PS3 seem much newer (and you can always get a second job to buy one lol.)
But.....at the same time....360 boxed them into a brand hole forever. It worked at that moment in time, but left them no actual forward strategy to go with the brand after that. It's kind of a metaphor for all of Xbox, isn't it?
Of course they could have stuck with the skater theme, the Xbox 720, 1440, Xbox 4k? It would have actually been PERFECT, though you need hindsight to know it. Instead they go to "One". Then expand it to One S and One X. And then deside to also make the successor X and S. Did they not learn from WiiU that you do not recycle names? Even XboxU would have been sadly better. And then when they have the Pro model it could be perfect, the Xbox Series F|U.
Re: Call Of Duty Currency Now Discounted On Xbox Thanks To Game Pass
@themightyant The rare cases I'll defend Xbox decisions these days, but yeah I don't see a problem with a discount promo on their retail side for subscribers, because it's not a new feature but one that's always been part of their sub, it applies to many games not just theirs, nothing prevents competitors from offering the same promos or better, including pricing via brick and mortar retailers, and competitors also have subscriber-only discounts on things.
It only becomes a problem (and this we wouldn't know about) if they're playing games with the wholesale pricing/revenue splits of the currency when sold to retailers and competitors to incentivize their own digital store as an obvious advantage to purchase from.
Re: Call Of Duty Currency Now Discounted On Xbox Thanks To Game Pass
@AccessibleDaydream @somnambulance TBF both GP and PS Plus and NSO have always included members-only discounts and offers (in NSO's case it mostly amounts to the ability to buy vouchers) where often the big sales (at least on PS, not even sure it applies to XB) have 2 sale prices, one for subscribers and one for non-subs. So this isn't anything new or special, access to special sale pricing is a standard feature of all the subs that's always been there.
It's actually always been an annoyance of mine. When scrolling the sale pages you usually just get like 90 pages that are just different bundle sizes of different currencies for a bunch of GaaS games and MMOs but with one game mixed in. But yeah, that's been a feature of the subs advertised since the beginning.
As for the Overton Window....the problem with gaming more than other industries is no matter what the industry says, the target is children/tweens/teens. "M Rated" has always meant "high school kids that want to feel mature" and "college kids that couldn't even pretend to be." And for them, whatever existed in their lifetime is the way the world has always been. So the industry knows every 8 years of so the past never happened and whatever forced new world they apply will, for the upcoming new generation of majority players, be the world that always was, accepted without question. It's also (and more notably) why politics targets the young, going back even to WWII and prior. If you acclimate the young to your new normal, you just have to wait for the old to die off (or exit the market.) At least gaming publishers haven't resorted to getting the young to kill off the old to accelerate the process though (yet.)
So gaming has an unfortunate turnaround where within about 8 years, the new thing everyone rejected is now accepted as normal, because if they force it in for long enough, the new majority population of gamers grew up with it and is used to it as normal, even while anyone with a clue was resisting.
Heck, the mainstream gamer now grew up with phone gaming. Even EA seems consumer friendly if that's the only world you know.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Yeah, the 360 seems like a great name now, because it's a a famed product in hindsight, but yeah, when everyone expected "Xbox 2" and they came out with "360" it sounded dumb and "faux edgy". I think ,what, at the time skater/snowboard culture was all the rage with the kiddos, and I always assumed they were trying to channel that whole skater lingo with 360's and 720's and all that. Which sounded dumb because 360 is....right back where you started. And they followed it with the One...
LOL on Android! To be fair, unlike Xbox, Android versions actually have real numbers officially, its just that the food-themed internal codenames became sort of their own legend, and are memorable enough that that's what everyone (nerds) started referring to it as instead of the numbers, and then sometime after that, Google marketing got ahold of it and ran with it for actual consumer facing marketing. That's where it got dumb. But it really is numbered versions, but you never notice that, you just remember the food names.
Of course, Apple's the one that stopped using numbers or names at all and just started calling everything "product". So sellers had to have parenthesis (2024 ver.) I should sell my old TNT2 GPU from 1999 on Ebay "Nvidia GPU - Used - $550." Yeah I know they started using numbers again on the phones at least, because even Apple eventually figured out their naming was even worse than Xbox.
Sony, well, they figured it out for consoles, but then we get into their cameras, TVs, audio.....yeah....they're pretty bad too.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@EVIL-C There's always the XS Xbox. Like what they send to the liquidator, the XS ones.
I still think the NL mod Eel had the best name. The Xbox SEries X. XSeX. They'd be number one 😂
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick Lol yeah. I really don't know how scuf stays on business, their stuff is absurdly priced and horrendous quality. But esports wannabes keep paying for it. Probably because esports pros are paid to look like they use them without showing they're using a new one every single match lol
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@EVIL-C Xbox 1.1 - Done!
Microsoft history math:
3+1 = 3.11.
+1
=95
+1
=98
+1
=2000
+1
=7
+1
=8
+1
=8.1
+1
=10
+1
=11
+1
=11
+1
=11
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
All kidding aside though, I can't tell if this is a mistake or done on purpose. Has anyone seen the new Intel naming scheme? It's like it was designed by Xbox. To make it simpler for consumers, instead of 3 families, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 (+Celeron/Pentium for budget) they're splitting it into SIX families and removing the i, Core 5, Core 7, Core 9 + Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, Core Ultra 9. Then they're ending the Celeron and Pentium names and rebranding all the trash chips "Intel Processor". So, where does a Core 9, and a Core Ultra 5 line up? Does anyone actually know? If Ultra is better, but there's 3 tiers of each, where does one meet the other?
On top of that they're removing the generation from the branding, so you don't know what generation it is from the product name without reading the exact part number and checking on their website.
Why are they doing this? "To make it simpler for consumers."
Why are they REALLY doing this? So they can build frankenchips out of old dies and not have to say they're old, while their large builder partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) can sell ancient chips at full price in prebuilds to unsuspecting consumers. "It's got a Core 7 in it! (From 2012.) $350 please."
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@WhiteRabbit You missed the Xbox DOne.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
I myself am looking forward to the next generation Xbox 365 SX. It's supposed to be 50% more powerful than the rumored Xbox Series One XS. Shame it's digital only but it's still a great value with the day 1 games on Game Pass for $15, and it's such a great system since the games are compatible with the Xbox X1 handheld!
I can't believe people are still confused about this. Now Playstation, that's confusing. PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5...how are you supposed to know which one to buy? There only difference is a number, there's no way to know which one is which!
Re: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Xbox Game Pass Date '100% Confirmed' By Reliable Leaker
@Dan1283 I guess the new Game Pass Standard subscribers need something to get excited about? To be fair, it's still a better Naughty Dog game than TLoU2.... 🥷
@Feffster Yeah, that's practical and fair, but it's kind of my point. It's one thing that it's interesting to try "because it's there", it's another thing using it as a dripfeed to get people excited to play Xbox One remasters of PS1 games for $20/mo.
Re: Humble Games Announces 'Restructuring' Plans As Employees Get Laid Off
"But gaming hasn't kept up with inflation! Everything must cost more!"
Meanwhile: Customers stop buying everything even at current prices except for high income whales.
Nope, no recession here, best economy ever!
Re: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Xbox Game Pass Date '100% Confirmed' By Reliable Leaker
$20/mo and people are getting excited for an 8th gen remake of a 5th gen game that's been on sale for years and years? Does everyone laugh at sitcoms whenever the laugh track plays, too?
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick PS5 seems to be the winner of the stick drift this gen, I've never seen so many reports of drift other than the early Joycons. I have not had my stick drift yet on it, but that's because 75% of my PS5 play time has been VR with the VRSense, and I switched to the Edge part way through for non-VR so it only got shared wear. I really fear for the VRSense though, as you can't replace those controllers, they won't sell them, so if the stick drifts, you throw out the whole $550 kit and buy a new one. And you thought Edge was overpriced! Switch, I have a box full of drifting sticks. Like 6 or so Joycon, and a Pro controller. Xbox....I fear for my Elite 2. I have a dozen drifting 360 controllers a few Elite v1's. My Elite 2 has, knock wood, held up, despite so many reports of issues, even out of the box, even as my most used controller. I fear that can't last much longer, and that one was somehow the lottery winner of luck. It's absurd to pay those prices for controllers guaranteed to drift in time (to say nothing of Scuf.....they're just shameful.)
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick IDK they're even making money off them, they never have them in stock even if people want them. Like everything else is seems like a checklist product to cash in on the early adopter rush, summarily abandoned once that passed.
It just astounds me that the higher end the controller, the less chance of hall. Scuff, elite, edge, Asus Ally...200, $800..... No hall effect. Turtle Beach, 8bitdo, KRCJGIRA, JiBestGameGood, $18 CONTROLLERS HALL EFFECT!
I bought Legion Go first over Ally due to the big screen and the hall effect. Ally and Edge have hall effect TRIGGERS. Wtf?
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
It's a cool idea, but by the time you're done overpaying for a controller you could buy an Elite, and by the time you're done paying for an Elite without Hall Effect that can develop drift anyway, why pay more than minimum, it's disposable.
Why are we still stuck with graphene potentiometers in high end controllers when cheap Chinese generics have hall effect now?
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick Yeah "friendly" security software. Thank goodness for their protection. Without them hackers could take down your network.... Oh wait. And you pay thousands for that!
Yeah Xbox was half down here. Got the warnings on the Xbox PC app when I went to remote play my xsx. Logins I think are what was down.
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@Stormrage995 Nobody asked for a 25%-50% price increase in a year. Value was not added
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@WhiteRabbit But 5 purified souls of sacrificed maidens, 3 putrefied imp hearts specifically from the banks of the river Styx, 7 truths from gaming executives, and 1 MSRP 4090 are almost IMPOSSIBLE to gather! I can get the souls and hearts easy enough but the rest, I don't think that's even possible! And I STILL can't find the corrupted soil on which to build the summoning circle. I'm sure it's somewhere on the MSDN. Surely there must be another way!
Re: Analyst Expects Xbox Game Pass To Bring In 'Almost $5.5bn' In 2025
@AlwaysPlaying I've said quite a few times that Xbox is run like it's a Kickstarter. Glad I'm not the only one that sees it!
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Pure Xbox needs to sell "WWSD" bumper stickers.
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@WhiteRabbit I think it's doable in a Microsoft way.
So you can have a cloud only tier, that you must buy ultimate, then go into the settings, disable cloud and console, then log in on a PC and activate your subscription, then submit a request to change to cloud only. After you confirm the change on both PC and console (you must own an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X linked to your account to approve this request) you can then convert from Game Pass Ultimate to Game Pass Cloud, the price change will appear on your statement as of the next monthly billing cycle.
Is that better and much more practical for Microsoft to do? Will Phil hire me now?
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
Game Pass tears. We all have many, many Game Pass tears. Far too many now....
Much as I'm against too many price packages, I think they actually DO need to break out cloud. Right now it serves no one. Ultimate customers aren't really the target customer for cloud streaming, if you're buying Ultimate you probably have console, or PC, or most likely console AND PC. You're probably not too interested in cloud. If you're interested in cloud, you probably don't have a console, OR a gaming PC, and aren't interested in any of what it offers, you just want cloud. This isn't hard. Cloud should have been its own sub and always should have. Additionally, console full day 1 game pass without PC and without cloud should have been available - not having that is a huge signal that console doesn't matter.
PC should be PC.
Cloud should be cloud.
Console should be console.
If they want ultimate then they can have ultimate with all 3 and no sane person should buy it because realistically who's playing on all 3 regularly?
It's all reminiscent of Windows Vista Home, Pro, and Ultimate. If you want media features you buy Home. If you want security features, large RAM support, or quad core CPU support you buy Pro. If you want meda AND large ram quad core you need Ultimate. Basically everyone needs Ultimate and the other options exist just to make the single all in one flat price look like a "bargain."
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick Yeah I looked it up after you mentioned it, technically it was not a Microsoft issue at all. There were two issues an Azure/365 outage at a major US datacenter took big cloud services offline for a while. But the big one wasn't an MS issue, it was CrowdStrike pushing an update to Falcon, and like most "security" software, it basically works like a virus, and embeds itself as a driver and replaces parts of the OS with their custom version....and they pushed a garbage system file that rendered the OS unbootable.
This is the rare case these days I'll defend MS. Not their fault. If some self important security company starts replacing Linux and BSD kernels (including MacOS), the same thing would happen.
The lesson here is if you're going to mess with OS system files and push them out in automated updates, maybe, don't update every single customer on the planet all at the same moment? They did the Russians job for them all in the name of stopping the Russians, and charged customers fortunes to do so.....they'd have been better off with the Russians, at least it would be cheaper!
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@shoeses The WiiU wasn't really bad though, and it did some things better than Switch. It was poorly marketed, undesirable, and had the misfortune of launching just before PS4 and X1 so that as soon as it came out, 3rd party support vanished and 100% of all marketing from all publishers went to PS/XB, with several (EA) actively sabotaging WiiU with negative commentary.
"By Nintendo standards" WiiU wasn't bad hardware. And "By Nintendo standards" Switch isn't particularly special hardware, it's another Nintendo handheld, but without the unique gimmicks of the DS era, just a return to the Game Boy form. With a TV out.
It's not so much a matter of bad hardware and good hardware, just marketing and perception. The Switch is actually similar power to WiiU, just a touch more powerful in some areas (but by sacrificing others), yet where WiiU was "not good enough" in 2013, Switch is somehow top tier in 2024. Just marketing and perception.
Re: Microsoft Says FTC Is Being 'Misleading' In Response To Xbox Game Pass Criticisms
@TakeItEasy I only disagree with the last part. I jumped back to Xbox after skipping x1 launch because Sony didn't respect fans or communicate anything. Xbox deciding to suck doesn't make Sony suck less, it just makes it seem that way. They both suck now. Sony just has more third party support.
@InterceptorAlpha "Now they've pretty much pushed me off to PC and VR exclusively barring the occasional Ninty or Sony game."
100% exactly heading the same place. Though to be fair it's mostly possible because PC is basically just Super Xbox. It's clear they want Xbox to be a Windows service. Which is fair that's was it was originally too. But I even just bought a quest 3. I'm actually choosing a Zuckerberg platform.... I swore I'd never touch anything Zuck related. Thanks Satya and Amy!
Re: Microsoft Says FTC Is Being 'Misleading' In Response To Xbox Game Pass Criticisms
They point blank told foc no price hike for call of duty. Then hike the price and cite call of duty. What exactly is ftc misrepresenting?
We all knew there would be a price increase eventually but I overestimated Microsoft and believed they'd wait until the next call of duty for optics and to make good on the claim. They didn't even care about optics. That's how far they live the spreadsheet.
Gaming By Excel 36 - 404 Not Found
@Jenkinss I still don't think they've decided anything really. That's their problem, they can't decide what they actually want the business to be so they're trying to be everything at once, and that's good for one direction is bad for another direction so they just alternate between what gets priority.
They want gaming to be a subscription but then they compete against that with retail. They want gaming in the cloud but then compete with that with hardware and PC software. They want to be on all screens but then they want to sell subscriptions to partner and own devices.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@BAMozzy Totally agree about it not being long before mobile can do rt and upscaling etc. That's kind of the same point I was making really. General purpose computing is moving at a pace where dedicated graphics machines are begining to be fast irrelevant the same way low end discrete gpus are irrelevant and gone. Every mid range CPU comes with a GPU better than the expensive gpus we had 15 years ago. Thus I see consoles having a limited future. Having graphics nothing else could touch was their claim to fame and that's ending as general compute rivals it me and more and the high end is hitting roadblocks if that's practical to develop for.
Physical retail is it's other unique selling point but that's not demanded widely anymore. I thought maybe going full HBO and locking all exclusives to them forever would be it, but even Sony isn't going that route with more PC releases and probably mobile when viable.
This generation is especially weird. People keep saying we're 4 years in. No we're not it's 3.5. and the first year they weren't even available widely. And yearly the 2.5 after we've still been waiting for it to feel like the generation started. It feels like we're still in launch window waiting for the big games. I don't think this gen counts as "average" when the first 2 or 3 years was just waiting for the launch to stabilize. Yet games kinda feel like they skipped the hardware.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@BAMozzy problem is if consoles are replaced so frequently to catch up, they're not actually any cheaper than extreme PCs which kills its whole purpose. And the PC really outlasts it because the mid range cards didn't even jump that much anymore between a few gens only the elite cards do. And it's the rut consoles are stuck in. I just don't see the console market going for non stop upgrade cycles then most only buy a few games over years. Frankly I see pc getting off the non stop upgrade cycle.... The leaps every 2 or 3 years aren't close to what they were 20 years ago.
But you're taking more going into the PC or mobile upgrade model instead of generations with long compatibility. That i definitely see. I expected that's where Ms was going starting with 1x. I was disappointed when they announced Scarlett and it was just another generational console.
@somnambulance Yeah, I really don't know exactly how they're positioning their handheld strategy. It has great potential but they're going to be head to head against Nintendo at the present rate and that can't end well. They're always too early or too late. Wizards, they are not.