Richnj

I enjoyed the first two games, but this is an entirely different team and has spent nearly a decade in development, so I have no idea what to expect.

It will be interesting to see how it's changed from the original gameplays. It would also be cool to get a vidoc about what happened with this game during its dev hell.

If you needed proof that everything Xbox did during Pride Month was hollow...

I think 50+ million units is quite decent.

It's above the SNES, N64, and Gamecube, and it's twice as many as the OG Xbox, and I personally consider these to be some of the best consoles ever made.

I think the Series should easily pass the Xbox One in unit sales. But I'm still under the impression they'll release multiple generations of series consoles, and we have the cross platform strategy, so while I don't think any individual series will get more sales than the 360 did, the Xbox Platform will have a lot more active players.

Gaming has very unique position for us. Firstly, it is just a great way to entertain you. Secondly, You can build communities that are online and active. Thirdly, it's an active medium. You can put music or movies on to fill time, but games force you to take an active part in what you are doing and create a sense of achievement, Lastly, it can be used to tell stories and spread awareness.

No other medium has the pure potential of video games.

You can argue til the cows come home about specifics or individual examples. But games can, when pushed in positive ways, return postive outcomes. To degrees that haven't been reached, and to degrees that the general public just don't appreciate yet.

@Banjo- "This is the opposite of rose-tinted glasses, negative people need to remove their UHD glasses"

I really agree. I don't get this 'recent bias' or 'recent snobbery' that goes on in gaming circles.

The Last of Us was called a masterpiece 9 years ago. Today, it's ugly and unplayable and in need of a total remake (which isn't even happening). I can almost guarantee what gets called a masterpiece, based purely on looks. There was a game shown, and all we really saw was some cool snow tech, and without fail, people called it a future masterpiece.

The standards by which people judge games is a joke.

@Would_you_kindly Probably, but what I don't see is MS doing a thing, and then complaining about the competition doing it too, just to cripple them.

I don't know what we're doing with this "so you think... Lol" gotcha BS that deflects from the issues I'm bringing up, but I am bored of it now.

@Would_you_kindly yes. That would be implied with the glass house analogy.

And I've seen a lot of "well, well, MS do it too!!" but that's not the issue. Hell, timed exclusives can be completely justifiable since plenty of timed exclusives (GTA 3, Titanfall, Tomb Raider, Stalker 2) may never have come to life if not for the support of the platform holder.

And that's not even what we are talking about in this case. Sony (the market leader) paid to keep COD (long established money making franchise) off of, not xbox, but Game Pass. They are spending money to hurt a rival service instead of pouring it in to their own service. They are actively paying to worsen both services. And that's still not the issue at hand here.

The issue here, is that MS is doing what MS and Sony have always done, and because it's COD and game pass (because you'll notice that Sony wasn't concerned so much about anything else, even the ones that went exclusive, and Sony's terms specifically blocked Game Pass), Sony have pants'd themselves and tried to make a case for why COD should never be allowed to be made exclusive, and all MS did was turn around and go "but that's what you do". Pointing out Sony's hypocrisy and people have dog piled MS for it.

I mean, if Sony weren't paying to hobble Game Pass, they may have to actually compete with it and provide and better service for PSPlus subs, and it's Sony being the hypocrites in this case, but I still have you out here insulating Sony from genuine criticism.

@Would_you_kindly I wouldn't expect it even if they wasn't, as well. Sony were paying for full and timed exclusives for decades and I don't recall MS whining about it.

Xbox seems to know better than to throw stones in glass houses.

The irony is that Sony have a glass house twice as large as Xbox and they started launching stones.

@UltimateOtaku91 https://www.purexbox.com/news/2022/02/xbox-boss-phil-spencer-congratulates-sony-on-bungie-acquisition

No, Xbox and Phil would congratulate them. Destiny 2 is one of the most played games on all platforms. Sony bought the parent company, and said they'd keep it multi. It's the most direct comparison we have and MS didn't do what you said they'd do.

Honestly, COD is big. It's a big deal. It has a huge audience. Its purchase is meaningful, but it's not the only big dog in today's world. It's not even the kind of franchise it was 10-15 years ago. Games like GTA, Fortnite, Rocket League, and so on, beat it quite easily for pure numbers of active players.

COD isn't the entire games market. Even if COD was made totally xbox exclusive, there'd be a lot of big(ger) players still in the game.

Any concern about COD can be said about Destiny. Both are being bought by a platform holder. Both chart really well in the most played games. Both are being said to remain multiplatform. Hell, even Minecraft is the top 8th most played game on PS5 and that is all of the above already. But Sony isn't bitching about these.

The key difference is this. Sony knows that as soon as MS are free to launch day release COD games on Game Pass, they will, and Sony does not want to compete with that, because they make a lot of money off of launch day £70 games. They want to keep that yearly big pay day.

"no friends"

"rank 2"

The real story is, Dude wiped his friends be top of the monthly GS list, and is still losing.

The Push side is big fun right now. Everybody is angry at MS for being hypocrites, when MS isn't condemning the practice, they are just pointing out that Sony are doing the thing that they are complaining about MS doing.

Sony have money to burn, and rather than spend it on their PSPlus service, which still needs a lot of work, they are spending it to hold Game Pass back, and the fans got angry at MS for it.

Sony are screwing over Xbox fans and PS fans. All, to make sure (not that PS fans get good games but) that most of the profits of these games go in to Sony pockets. People should be upset with Sony.

@NEStalgia Stock price of 'Edison' dropped following the announcement. Do not pass Go, do not collect $100bn.

@PanFriedSoup @Dezzy70 There's also power consumption to consider in portable devices. And the fact that high detail can't really be seen so much on a small screen.

Unless it's a Dreamcast 2, I really wouldn't be interested.

PS. I like how it has to come to something as silly as video games for Musk to have a sound and thought out opinion. Good for him, I guess.

This is why BC is great.

Also, I still think an MCC style legacy COD collection with a combined MP mode would be a massive hit.

The forge could be the best creative mode of any game, but nearly all of the 20 million people that gave the game a chance at launch will never see it now.

Especially for a game where the most repeated comment is "the gameplay is great but it has very little content to keep me playing", I can only wonder what kind of difference having this feature at launch may have made.

The problem with the current UI is that it is useless, and the NXE shares that problem. So there's no point in trading one for the other. There's nothing on them. They show a few games, try to sell you some things, and that's it, and you go straight to the guide to navigate options and use features.

The blades and current 360 dash at least have utility.

@Titntin @RadioHedgeFund Halo Infinite MP is also F2P. A sub to game pass, and even gold, is just not required.

"creative benchmarks" = vague phrase that can not be claimed to be misleading investors if something goes wrong.

@themcnoisy "Please stop calling for GwG to be scrapped. On that service you get 4 games a month. If the games are scrapped they will disappear, MS won't replace it with anything"

Good. The game selection has been really poor lately, and since stuff like cloud saves and party chat are all free on xbox, it means people are paying just for that poor selection and online play.

People who are calling for GwG to be scrapped are happy to give up those games in favour of free online play, which is by far the bigger reason to pay for that service. And free online would be a big win for xbox owners and the xbox platform.

I don't know, maybe we could convince MS to take online play out of the gold subscription. So that we could make online free and you could be free to pay £50 a year for the GwG if you want. Kind of like how it all was on the PS3. But honestly, I think we all know (MS included) that without online play, those gold subs are going to drop to the point that Gold gets scrapped altogether anyway.

@Royalblues

Subscription service, Live Service games, cross gen releases, backwards compat, probably other stuff I've forgotten about.

There's been a lot of Sony u-turns in the last couple of years. The fanbase seem to get whiplash every other week trying to change direction so quickly.

Netflix = 220.6 million subscribers
HBO Max = 74 million
Disney+ = 87.6 million
Amazon Prime = 200 million

What Patcher is talking about isn't about all the millions of COD players rushing to buy a game pass to play COD. Warzone is F2P. There won't be a jump from 25m to 100m when the deal closes. He's saying that MS finally has the internal studios to create enough content to make Game Pass an attractive subscription service.

And subscription services, when they have enough content, and they are able to stream to any screen in the world, can, on average, get around 100m users.

He's not making a bold prediction, he's stating the end goal of MS' strategy.

This could take years to come to fruition, and there are more complicating matters with streaming an active medium like games rather than a passive one like film/tv and music. But it is currently an untapped market that only MS is in a position to succeed in.

@themightyant "Though a part of me hopes hardware IS limited by cost sooner so we stop concentrating on graphical fidelity so much"

I love every word of this. If we got Xbox Series level fidelity and just stopped there, I'd be happy.

This is why I loved the Switch. It's small, quiet, cool, and portable, but still produces more than passible graphics when a dev knows what they are doing. I'd much rather see all console producers put more effort in to shrinking their consoles down to actual console like machines.

At the very least, I'd love to see a publisher come out and say, "guys, the current model of pushing graphics is hurting the industry overall, and we're just not going to do it anymore."

I appreciate Sony putting peach fuzz on to Aloy's face, but it doesn't make it a better game. A good artstyle, gameplay, and smooth performance will always be what makes the experience.

Edit: Also why I've been praising the Series S more than the X. MS was very brave for releasing a budget, lower end spec console, and it should be applauded.

I've not bought a series yet, but it's the S I want. The only reasons I haven't bought one already is 1) I want a black S with a disc drive, 2) I want a series S2, which I expect to launch in the next couple of years.

£20 for 4 people would be a done deal for me.

This is the sort of thing that would make me sign up to Game Pass. I've cancelled my NSO and PS Plus, and I only have gold for the online. I find it hard to find value in the services.

Being able to pay for all my family's online and games' need in one service sounds great.

I'd argue Bethesda games are more unique and closer to 'must haves' .

The success of actibliz games have ensured many copies, and some successes.

How many big publishers are creating games like Prey, Dishonored, Doom, Skyrim, or Fallout?

"Call of Duty is so popular that it influences users’ choice of console"

Considering that neither xbox or PS has had an exclusive COD game, I find this to be one hell a statement.

Man, imagine if we were all subbed to Blockbuster instead of half a dozen video and game services right now.

@Sol4ris Yeah, the toxicity of the platforms during those days were just unbearable. Some of it remains today, but I stopped visiting certain PS websites because the comment sections were just pure hate towards Wii and 360 regardless of subject of the article.

It really tainted my enjoyment of different systems.

I was going to say that I look forward to the reveal and people calling GTA 'woke', but it looks like we've already started.

The sad part is that if this is the GTA that breaks the franchise, people will blame the presence of a female protagonist.

@NEStalgia Yeah, the PS360 was a great gen. Hardware was poor, but the software is absolutely the best.

Cancelling smaller products to focus on the larger ones that are having trouble being developed, seems to be a very common trend. Especially with larger companies selling off their assets.

It's almost as if the pressures of maintaining ever increasing profits on ever increasing production sizes isn't sustainable and it's all starting to collapse under its own weight.

@Leo_ascendent Level up has nothing to do with it. And if you are using this game to justify your new console purchase, I have bad news for you. This game is playable on Switch. So it's hardly a shining example of games that wouldn't be possible on Xbox One.

The point of buying a new console would be to play the better versions and to future proof yourself against new releases.

Really should have released Xbox One and PS4 versions.

@Kaloudz IIRC Campaign MM was in Reach.

I wouldn't use the feature, but it sucks for those that use it. Hitting MM seems much easier searching discord.

Reviving the MP for PSO 1 is pretty dope.

He went spear fishing and "fly" fishing. This game would have rocked.

@NEStalgia I quite enjoyed the first Watch_Dogs. I think I just picturing the old Splinter Cell Conviction beta expanded in to a fully fledged modernish Assassin's game, with a greater deal of focus on the current state of the Assassin-Templar war, and templar control of society.

@PhhhCough If that's what you want.

I think I'd be more excited by a modern or futuristic AC game at this point.

@Cherip-the-Ripper Nah not yet. The way I game, like playing just one game for a full month until completion, or coming back to a game years after it launch or I started playing, doesn't really fit well with subscription models.

I've tried all three, and I just spend far too much time playing content not on the services to feel worth it.

@GuyProsciutto of course it's a safe bet, until it's not.

They'll put everything in to this game, and in order to make the next game, they'll have to put everything in to that one too. GTA 5 cost over $250m, and Rdr2 cost about twice that. GTA6 will have to cost at least $500m, especially with dev troubles. GTA 6 has to sell twice as many copies, or sell twice as many micros to see the same kind of return on investment as the previous game.

The company is going to put itself in a no-win situation. Maybe not with GTA 6, maybe the next game. It's output of varied titles will go down, and the revenue is going to be from one place, and if that one revenue stream falters in anyway, investors will get spooked, budgets get reduced, quality drops, gamers declare Rockstar to have lost their ability to make games, game sells less, investors get spooked more, and continue.

The fact that they dropped everything to focus on GTA 6 kind of tells me that they are already scared of the next GTA failing for this very reason. If GTA 6 sales were guaranteed, then why is it all hands on deck?

@Geezer MS should have just kept Bungie and supported them in building their next franchise, like a good publisher.

All Bungie wanted to do was build Destiny, and MS couldn't see beyond the money that Halo was printing. Shot themselves right in the foot. Imagine being MS and letting Bungie go, losing the chance to own Destiny, and ruining Halo by giving it to completely clueless corporate heads, all in one go.

They're putting all their eggs in to the GTA 6 basket.

Sure that won't backfire.

@Carck @Cherip-the-Ripper Imma petition the Duffer Bros to put Goldeneye in Season 6 of Stranger Things just to get Gen Z to go crazy for it.

If Russia has been cut off from access to this kind of trading, why would a game about Russia be a problem?.

@Bruvas Don't worry, it will be one of a kind, because I'll make it myself.

Remove microtransactions and start releasing DLC content for free and I'll be fully on board with £70 games.

@palahniukslaughter I find it hard to believe that 20 million people tried the game and went "Yeah, this is the most fun game, but these others are more relevant, so I'm going to play those instead".

All the major changes to the series have come out of trying to appeal to that larger audience and make Halo relevant again. If they wanted to maintain a small core audience, they could have done so without making the negative changes, and could have used a lot less time and money to do so.

@GuyinPA75 Halo 4 MP is "harder" because it's completely chaotic. 343i and Certain Affinity designed the game to be more casual friendly. So if they made Halo 4 the most skilled game, that's an impressive fail. They made weapons easier to use, widened their effective roles, threw in spartan specific rewards, had almost all weapons be destructive against vehicles, weapon and ability spawn notifications etc.

"Most skilled" could mean a few things. Halo 4 and 5 require more twitch gunplay skill. The Bungie Halos required more tactical skill, and that's what I liked about them.