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@TheGiraffe Realistically how many people are going to switch from Xbox to PS though? There are undoubtedly a few that will, but if someone is already exclusively Xbox and has a library of games they likely won't switch. There's likely a reason they went Xbox over PS in the first place, so from that perspective, nothing has changed.
I think the people this will affect the most will be those that have both consoles - they might decide they no longer need both and just stick with PS going forward, but I think those numbers are relatively small compared to the number of extra users that releasing on PS brings in.

@TheGiraffe Sure, they're losing 30% from everyone that switches from Xbox to PlayStation, but they're also gaining sales from a much bigger player base (existing PS users) that are now able to buy the game.

@RetroMan71 I agree, the unpredictability of the CPU racers was great compared to most racing games, but it's just that the majority of races I did, I ended up as the last car standing and crawling round the track because I was so heavily damaged myself. I honestly would've been quicker if I'd got out the car and walked!

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I've even seen a couple of stores selling the PS5 Astro Bundle for under £400 with a code. My inbox has been full of PS5 deals these last couple of weeks, yet you can barely even find any Xbox's.

£380 refurb is a decent price if you are only comparing against the price of a new one, but when compared against the PS5 bundle, there's no contest. Who's going to buy an Xbox if those are your options?

I take it you still can't just use the controller to navigate like a mouse without 3rd party software though?

I tried Wreckfest while it was on Game Pass ages ago, but it didn't really click with me. I found the the CPU controller drivers would end up taking each outer out and I'd be limping round the track on my own at a snails pace because my car was almost wrecked too.
Picked it up in a sale a couple of months ago because I want to give it another try - it seems to have reviewed quite well.

I picked up a couple of faulty/untested 360s on eBay for next to nothing a few months ago. I really need to get around to trying to fix them.

I play Rocket League and a bit of eFootball when I'm 'between games' or just want a quick game of something without having to think about stuff like story etc.

The problem is though, that publishers all want the next big live service game, but don't seem to realise that there are only so many players, and dragging them away from whatever live service game they are already playing, (and have maybe invested a fair bit of cash into) is extremely difficult. No-one has time to play 4, 5, 6 different Live Service games, so they'll stick to what they, and their friends are already playing.

I keep forgetting Prime Gaming is a thing. Most of the PC games probably won't run on my potato PC, but I really should check it out and claim the games anyway.

I'm a bit behind the curve here - I only just started SE4 the other day. I do love a good stealth game, and I've spent hours on the first stage just camped out picking off enemies that have no idea who's taking them out one-by-one.

I've seen quite a few ads for PC Game Pass on YouTube recently, but don't think I've seen a single ad for console Game Pass. They obviously think they are more likely to be able to grow PC subs than than console.

It's hilarious that they didn't even bother putting the game name in the blurb and left it as "[Your Game Name Here]"

Game Pass on Switch 2

I wish there was an option to make the Series dash look like this.

@Enigk @Echtzeit Amazon have the digital version of PoP for £11.25. Guessing Pure Xbox filtered Deku Deals to 'Digital' prices instead of the 'Microsoft Store' specifically.

Score. Hogwarts Legacy at a price where I've got enough reward points to not have to pay any actual cash.

I wonder how much of an effect the PS5 ports have affected sales. Even non-gaming media were reporting the rumours of Xbox abandoning hardware and becoming a 3rd party publisher in the aftermath of those announcements. That won't have given the console-buying public much confidence to invest in the brand. The vague responses of "game-by-game basis" from MS regarding which games would eventually get ported (if any) haven't helped either.

I think its the 'Series' in the name that could be confusing to some. It's not a huge leap to imagine that a game for Series X could be compatible with a series of consoles with an 'X' in the name - including the One X - especially if you are not familiar with the (terrible) naming.

Judging by the comments and polls on the other articles, a(nother) price increase looks like a mistake.

I don't really see the logic in increasing the price if the service isn't seeing the growth. I doubt anyone is thinking "I wasn't subscribed, but now they've increased the price by a couple of £/$ a month, sign me up!". I can't see many people signing up for the new tier unless it's significantly cheaper than the current Ultimate price which I think is unlikely.

More likely MS are thinking that if they aren't increasing subscribers, the only way to increase revenue is to bump the price up and hope the extra revenue is more than the losses from users unsubscribing (or downgrading) because they can't or wont pay more.

I would've liked if they could've had the ability to split out the buttons as well as having them all on the same modules. My son has Cerebral Palsy and his main issue when using a controller (apart from actually holding the thing) is that he's constantly 'fat-fingering' buttons and pressing the wrong thing - hitting the pause/menu button rather than the 'X' is a particularly common one. Having them spaced out a bit more, or separate buttons altogether would help that greatly

I had plenty on the wish list that was on sale, but nothing that wasn't regularly on sale at other times, so I will just wait for the next sale (or the one after that). I did receive A Plague Tale: Requiem as a gift which was in the Amazon Easter Sale though, thanks to my daughter.

I mean, none of this is exactly news is it? I'd be amazed if bosses at EA didn't at least consider a scenario where the remake sold way above expectations and they decided to remake the second at some point (or a new game), but that's hardly the same as it's been scrapped because the first didn't sell.

From that last tweet, Grubb seems to have dialled it back a bit from his initial stance too which, to me, suggests he knew it was a non-story. Even the source in the Bloomberg piece said nothing had been Green-lit.

@PJOReilly Great review. Does this support Keyboard and Mouse controls? I never could get the hang of a controller for shooters.

Is it common for games to return to GP? I remember seeing GTAV briefly return a while back, but 2 out of 3 (not counting the Madden Cloud addition) returning seems a bit much.

Would've played SoT if it had gone to Switch. Not interested in Grounded and I think Pentiment is actually more suited to playing handheld, so I'll likely pick that up on Switch at some point. More likely to play Hi-Fi Rush on Xbox than Switch.

What next gen hardware? According to last weeks rumours, they are abandoning Xbox hardware and going the way of Sega as a publisher only....Can't both be true 🤔 Proof if it were needed that most of these 'rumours' and 'leaks' are, in fact, nonsense.

I can't tell if I like them as they're mostly covered by all the ads 😛

231h total for me over only 12 games which apparently puts me in the top 20%

Rocket League alone was 140h.

@Grackler There can't be too many left though. Daytona USA and Jet Set Radio were the two that seemed to get mentioned the most, and they were delisted from the 360 store earlier this year along with a number of other games - mostly stuff that wasn't available on the 'modern' store if I remember correctly. FraserG commented in another post saying he couldn't find any games on the BC list that were not on the current store.

@Grackler There are some games that are (were?) only available via the 360 marketplace, but it's hardly "constantly" needing to use it. Daytona USA couldn't have been that recently as it was delisted from the 360 marketplace about 6m ago.

Wasn't planning on buying anything for a while due to the ever-increasing backlog and my Analogue Pocket apparently shipping at some point this month, but got an email last week that my promo balance was due to expire this week. I've no idea where it came from, but it's £5.99 free, so I'll happily take it! Redeemed £5 worth of reward points and picked up Super Hydorah and Vampire Survivors for free in the sale.

Hmmm. Some great games there, but can I really justify adding 1400+ games to my already massive backlog in one go?

@Kaloudz Full list on the website: https://www.antstream.com/games

@evan23 I don't think that's the case, as Online Console Multiplayer is listed in Core and Ultimate tiers

@NorthwestEagle I'm surprised they got anything for Nintendo platforms at all to be honest. Were you seriously expecting to see the series you mentioned previously on this collection? There's no way any Nintendo games were going to be available on rival platforms especially when the Nintendo Online Sub exists and the others have collections that you can already purchase in one form or another (FF Pixel Remasters, Castlevania Collections etc.). Seems to be aimed more at the Home Computer gamer rather than Console gamer TBH.

Some serious nostalgia hits for me in the full game list. Sensible Soccer, Wizball, Speedball, Cannon Fodder, Pinball Dreams/Illusions... and that's just the Amiga section.

Some of my absolute favourites missing though - Stunt Car Racer, Rainbow Islands, Chase HQ...

Probably not going to pick it up straight away due to the backlog, but looks like a really good collection for me at least.

@themightyant Yeah, I was sure they had grouped Xbox and Bethesda together last year - the graphic on the Pure Xbox article last year had Deathloop on it as well as the other Xbox titles - but apparently not as they had Bethesda as #5 last year.

Not sure how they didn't scrape together the 5 games. According to Metacritic, Xbox Game Studios had As Dusk Falls, Grounded, Pentiment and Somerville. Also listed Ghostwire:Tokyo (PC) and Deathloop for XSX by Bethesda.

They counted the PC Port of God of War for Sony, so I guess they should include those Bethesda Games?

@themcnoisy
1 - Nothing will happen to them as it's not closing.
2 - If they they are in your Library, you wont lose access to them.
3 - It was the specific 360 marketplace they were referring to, NOT the current store which will still have the relevant backwards compatible 360 titles.

@themightyant I'm not saying I agree with it, just pointing out that account-specific deals are not uncommon - although the extra discount is quite big in this case.

I think part of the problem is that the criteria for receiving the extra discount isn't clear, so might seem a bit unfair to those that didn't get it. If they'd come out and said "you bought X recently so here's a discount on Y" then I doubt anyone would've cared.

@themightyant The text for the offer said something along the lines of being offered the deal due to a previous purchase. I got Just for You deals on a couple of the Ghost Recon editions and nothing else. My latest Ubisoft purchase was Immortals in the sale a couple of weeks ago and I do have a few AC games already.

Amazon occasionally do deals for selected accounts - not so much just cheaper prices, but usually something like adding credit to your account if you buy a movie on Prime, if you ship to a locker or buy gift cards etc. I've had quite a few over the last few months.

Smyths seem to have it for the same price for those that don't want to use Amazon

Nice easy one this month - missed a couple of previous ones as they had a 'Top 10' task where you have to earn an achievement of one of the specified Game Pass titles from a separate punch card.

"...average match only uses about 11mb....After each match the main menu retrieves about 300mb...Which after about 2 matches results in over 1GB of network traffic..."

Er, no it doesn't 😕

@IronHammersFC Yeah, I understand why players want cross play in that mode. It's more the level of outrage that I don't get and the mentally of those 'demanding answers'.

I get that its popular to hate on EA, but I don't really see what the problem is here. It's not as if they've removed something that was already in previous games or stuck it behind a paywall.

The community "demanding answers" just makes them sound like entitled brats. If it's possible (or worth the effort to implement), I'm sure EA will patch it in later and the same community will be patting themselves on the back for 'forcing' change

Remember to check the rewards app for the punch card. 4000pts for £30 spend (in the UK at least).

@FraserG Of course - had it in my head it was 20-somethingth of June. Probably getting the date muddled with the Capcom Fighting Collection... and the last time I checked it didn't seem to be available to pre-order anywhere so assumed it was a few weeks off.

@FraserG Wasn't Pac-Man Museum+ confirmed for Game Pass for June?

@Hexamex-Tex You're not having to pay for crap games, you're paying for online - the 'crap' games are a bonus 😛

@Xiovanni The games voted for are all on game pass so you don't really need to 'pick up' anything (as long as you have game pass obviously).