blinx01

Just need God of War Ragnarok to be delayed and then that's the big top 3 most anticipated games delayed until 2023 (BOTW 2, Starfield)!

EA aren't stupid here.
People are addicted to Ultimate Team. They retain all player likeness and and club licenses, so it's just a simple job of having a big marketing campaign to raise awareness of the name change.

@Grumblevolcano
It's almost always May to capitalise on the Ultimate Team TOTS Fifa Point sales.
I'd highly expect it to be 2nd half of May.

@Ralizah
It's quite as clever move from MS really.
It's a digital console, so any loss made on Series S console sales will be made up ten fold with people buying digital games and subscriptions to stuff like Game Pass.
Whereas with Series X, people could be buying 2nd hand games which gains MS nothing.

I think it's about as likely as when SEGA sold off it's arcade business.
It doesn't mean they are prepping to be sold, just they are selling off part of the business they deem unprofitable in order to balance the books.
It also makes little sense for Sony to buy up Square Enix, as they already have timed exclusive deals for the most appealing games anyway.

300m seems like an absolute steal, but then apparently for 2021, the SE western division only made 200m revenue and only 8m of that was actual profit. So you can sort of see why they've gone so cheap.
Still, some crazy IPs that have been sold here and nice they will at least remain multiformat.

Just to be clear, even if the MS deal goes through by November, that doesn't mean this will be day one in Game Pass.
PlayStation has a deal for marketing and exclusive content for 2 more games.
If the leaked marketing deal for RE Village is anything to go on, PlayStation could have a clause from preventing the game going into any subscription service until the marketing deal expires.
Obviously pure speculation at this point, but worth pointing out non the less...

I personally use Energy Saver mode on my Series X as the boot time is extremely fast vs last gen and I have 900Mb/s download, so updates are no issue.
Obviously if you want remote features, or have slow internet, it might be worth the £2.65 a month to leave it with Instant On mode.

Great news.
Real competition pushes all platforms to greater heights to fight for our money and benefits us as gamers in the long run.

Can't see MS doing any more deals until the Activision-Blizzard deal crosses the line.
But still nice to see they are looking for the future.

Sounds fun.
Could scratch that BR itch for people until the real thing launches end of the year.

The competition is still there.

Sony pays for timed exclusivity to keep games off Xbox while also directly impacting future sales of such games due to arriving later on the platform.

Xbox is busy buying up studios and publishers to bolster their Game Pass offering, creating games exclusive to their platform and/or exclusive to their subscription service.

It's business at the end of the day.

Problem for them now is if they release this later in the year, it will just get lost in the crowd of new games.
Spring/Summer would have been an ideal drought to release during.

The reality was roles got reversed from the previous gen.
Sony came out on form for PS4 and MS dropped the ball big time with Xbox One.
It's situations like these that bring the other company back down to reality.

Not a smart move in terms of creating fan unrest.
For best PR and userbase growth, I'd scrap the notion of that multiplayer paywall and focus on more options for Game Pass tiers.

1. Cloud-only Service = $4.99/£3.99 a month
2. Game Pass Console Service = $10.99/£7.99 a month
3. Game Pass PC Service = $10.99/£7.99 a month
4. Game Pass Ultimate = $14.99/£10.99 a month
5. Game Pass Family Plan = $24.99/£20.99 a month

I think they highly underestimated the amount of work involved to not only successful launch a popular F2P game, but then the even harder work involved to keep people engaged in it.

@armondo36
This is a quote from the guy in response to someone being concerned;
"Nothing to be concerned about, just internal shifting of positions! Our previous Lead LD is still with us"

@Rmg0731
Because at the time Xbox "had no games", so they wanted to show they had stuff in the works and build hype for the future.
It's also a great way to attract talent, since it's easier to advertise 'come work on the new Fable' than 'come work on unannounced project'.

@Dezzy70
I think that's a bit dramatic.
Xbox has Redfall, Deathloop, Starfield, Forza Motorsport and a bunch of timed exclusives.
Bare in mind PS5 only has GOW: Ragnarok and Forspoken announced left for the whole remaining 9 months of 2022.
So unless both studios have big unannounced projects set for release in 2022, it's not all doom and gloom.

For me, the only real value is in the PlayStation Plus Extra tier.

I'd be happy to pay £10.99 for 1 month to play Returnal, then cancel and wait until another decent game hits.

Obviously with no day one games, that puts me off paying the £83.99 yearly option, as you have no idea what is going to get added to the service.

The key for me is Jim Ryan said things could change.

I expect the long term template to be the big blockbuster linear story games will remain out of the service until sales dry up (aka Returnal) and the live service games they have in development such as Fractions 2 could hit the service day one to drive engagement and they can feed on the MTX element combined with subscription growth.

Would have been more if the app was available in more countries.
Nothing for the UK until the summer.

As someone who also owns a PS5, price will be key for me signing up to this service.
No day one games means it NEEDS to be cheaper than GPU.
Needs to be less than £10.99 a month to be competitive or at least other a cheaper 12 month sub like they did/do with PS+ and PS Now.

So no Evil Within 3? That makes me very sad.

It was my personal GOTY for 2021.
I never played the original and didn't know what to expect. Safe to say I was blown away.

I haven't personally purchased a physical game on Xbox since Fallout 4!
I'm fully digital and mix with purchased games and Game Pass offerings.

On one hand, hats off to them from updating a game from 2015 for FREE.
On the other hand, it's not a next-gen version.
They just made the game 'Gen9Aware' which means it's still the last-gen version, which probably explains the lacklustre improvements.

@Stocksy
No. Paramount+ isn't launching in the UK until the summer, so if we want to watch the Halo TV series, we either wait until then or sail the high seas.

Obviously Starfield will be Game Pass day one on Xbox, PC and Cloud.
The numbers FH5 and Halo Infinite did were crazy. 18m+ and 20m+ respectively during launch.
Hogwarts Legacy won't come close to that due to being a full priced retail game, regardless of the IP popularity.
I can see this doing VERY well on PS5 though, since I think the reason PlayStation is marketing this game is to try and push it as their big holiday release, since they don't currently have anything announced for that period.

No rush now anyway.
FPS is covered BIG time on Xbox, with Halo and Bethesda games, plus with COD once that deal is cleared.
Take all the time they need.

Now we can see why it's always better to buy an established studio rather than try make one from the ground up.
If the game is a success, don't be surprised to see MS buy Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix and merge The Initiative with them.

They had a nice stint last year with 1st party stuff from July-December, but the first 6 months of 2022 is looking barren.

Obviously we've had big 3rd party releases such as Mass Effect Legendary, Rainbow Six Extraction, Hitman Trilogy and Guardians of the Galaxy so far for 2022, but it's day one stuff that makes the service the most attractive, not so much the older games.

Gameplay is spot on.
The issue is they launched the multiplayer with a lack of content to keep it fresh and keep people engaged.
We need more game modes and more maps and less cosmetic crap being the main focus.

@uptownsoul
I think you are pulling at straws and seem salty to actually say anything positive about Xbox.

For Forza and Halo to be #4 and #2 respectively during the most competitive months of the year in November and December, while being day one in Game Pass, throws your whole narrative out the window.
Even MLB The Show 21, day one in Game Pass, was the #2 game in Xbox's Top 10 for April.

@uptownsoul
Halo Infinite was #2 on the US NPD software sales for December, despite being day one in Game Pass and having a F2P multiplayer.
Forza Horizon 5 was #4 on the US NPD software sales for November, despite being day one in Game Pass.

I'm more interested to see how the Steam Deck performs now Valve have released drivers for Windows.
Not really interested in buying my Xbox games again on Steam...

Series X/S was also #2 in the UK for February according to Christopher Dring from GamesIndustry.biz.
#1 = Switch
#2 = Xbox Series X/S
#3 = PS5

Imagine that. They've got the Series S working at 60FPS when even a GTX 1060 could run it at 1080p 60FPS with optimized settings on PC. Shocker...LOL

My 2 guesses;

1. The rumoured xCloud streaming stick for TVs
2. A discless Series X console

Well Sony did a good job showcasing games coming to Xbox yesterday. LOL
That was a prime example of if you don't have anything decent to show, best to wait it out.

They ruined it for me with the horrid PS4/5 triggers.
Yuck.

Batman is 'dead'? Of course he is...
Definitely not infiltrating the Court of Owls as a Talons.

Crazy to think no Xbox port.
1st party is dead as a dodo right now on console, and this would have been a relatively easy port to fill the blanks.
Even an early access port with keyboard and mouse only while they work on controller support would have been better than nothing. LOL

@MaccaMUFC
I understand that.
But the GTA Online for free offer is only included with PS+ for 3 months, whereas if they pay £8.75 now, they get the full package.

If all they have is these 3 games, 2022 is going to be a bit of a let down vs 2021.

Forza Motorsport being a sim won't be to everyone's tastes compared to Forza Horizon.
Redfall being an online 4 player game outside of Arkane's comfort zone could be hit or miss.
Obviously Starfield will be HUGE, but that's a November game.
I'd imagine we will also see Deathloop around September/October.

I'd rather an Elite Series 3 with gyro support along with haptic feedback similar to on the DualSense.

Why is the PS5 version £8.75?
Are Sony soaking up some of the cost hoping to make it back on GTA Online MTX?
Might just grab it on PS5 in all honesty.

@PhhhCough
You basically stand the Series S on it's face ports, so it looks like the speaker meme, and the screen can stand up right, so you have a bit more height in terms of being level with you face.
The issue with this is you then get blasted with all the hot air coming from the fan coming straight at you.

Making the multiplayer F2P has got to be the biggest double-edged sword going.

On one hand, F2P means a much larger audience, but meaning the game demands constant content and updates to keep people engaged. Something they have failed to do.

If it wasn't F2P, they could focus on maps and game modes without the huge focus on battle passes. Obviously the negative would be the player base would be lower.

The cross-platform cloud save feature is much appreciated.
What isn't appreciated is no upgrade path. Not even any mention of an upgrade 'fee'.
No chance I'm buying GTA V for full price AGAIN.