electrolite77

What an absolute waste of time. Any commission that exists to prevent monopolies and anti-consumer takeovers that finds itself arguing in favour of protecting the industry leader is bound to fail.

@Fenbops

“Doesn’t everyone talking about a PS5 pro realise that market is a niche? Enthusiasts on the internet may buy one but the vast majority don’t.”

Exactly. But the enthusiasts never realise how much of a niche they are. The vast majority of standard PS5/Series Consoles are in the future, the number that will jack it in for a Pro is minimal, as sales of PS4 Pro and XB1X showed.

This is like when a vocal minority on the Internet thought the Steam Deck was going to be the death of the Switch.

@InterceptorAlpha

It would be typical of Sony to resort to the old timed exclusivity thing that’s good for nobody. But it’s far more likely they’re going after marketing rights than actual exclusivity. GTA V had sold 4.7 million copies on Xbox One by August 2020 in North America alone. To make it worth skipping Xbox sales, even for a short period, would mean a very very large amount of money.

Presumably that will come down over the next few years as they fill the service with first party content and the amount needed to pay for third party games decreases.

Good to hear. Nice to see a single-player only game getting such success, Xbox needed this. Finally going to start playing it soon now I’ve nearly done with my Switch backlog.

Leaked? Sigh.

Anyway doesn’t tell us much but what’s there looks very good.

Get on with it. This should have happened a long time ago.

It was a total overreaction over nothing, like so much with ‘big bad evil nasty’ Xbox these days. Of course they’d like to put GP on PS and Nintendo. Of course they’d like to buy Nintendo. I’m sure they’d like to own the moon. It doesn’t mean anything though. It’s just an aspiration, something that they would do if it was a possibility. Most corporations and indeed individuals will have these, it doesn’t mean they’re going to happen or even being pursued.

Shame for Starfield, but this is a very strong year. RE4 is the only one I really have an issue with, being a remake. I personally would rather have seen any of Hifi Rush, Starfield, Diablo 4, Pikmin 4 or Street Fighter 6 get that slot. But ultimately it’s an awards show, who cares?

Fingers crossed. One of the good things about XBox last few years has been the variety. Along with the obvious Halo and Forza they’ve launched stuff like Grounded, Pentiment, Psychonauts 2 and Gears Tactics. They’ve brought Flight Sim and Age of Empires to Consoles. Their biggest launch this year was a new IP, as were two of their other 2024 exclusives. Avowed is set as a big new IP next year but I really hope they get behind the smaller projects.

It’s a weird role reversal for me. I never got a 360 and when in the later part of that era they shifted to just pumping out Halo/Gears/Forza/Kinect I had zero interest. PS2/PS3 era Sony were mixing it up with games like Amplitude, Flower, Sly Raccoon, Puppeteer, Tearaway, Journey etc, but now they’re the ones fixated on safe sequels and big name blockbusters. Where’s Nintendo went from the late Wii era and Wii U disaster to huge success with a great system. How things change.

Good stuff. Long overdue too.

Wow, three years!! I’d love to know how many games I’ve played on my XSX and how many thousands of hours. Bright future ahead too. I just hope they keep pushing the variety we’ve had this generation. Along with all the third party blockbusters it’s been nice to see a platform holder putting out niche stuff like Gears Tactics, Flight Sim, Grounded, Pentiment and Hifi Rush.

Not sure why people think MS will stop making Consoles. Being in third place sounds bad but it’s a very nice place to be when even a system that has as disastrous a start as XB1 can still sell over 60 million units. That’s 60 million people buying peripherals, subscriptions and the major revenue stream of third-party games. Abandon hardware and they run the risk of those users abandoning the ecosystem altogether.

Good to hear they’re at the stage where they’re looking to release a big game every 3 months. They almost managed it this year but that needs to be really consistent in the future. No excuse with the number of studios under the Xbox umbrella now.

Don’t like this. When you think even Nintendo are allowing pretty much any Bluetooth Controller to work on the Switch it’s not a good look. The only good thing I can see here is the possible (and it’s only possible) expansion of third party Wireless Controllers.

The Gunk was really good. Wouldn’t have played it without Game Pass but really enjoyed it. That applies to quite a few games really.

A new Spyro

A new Tony Hawks

An Xbox Mario Kart style game using characters from across all studios. Easily done using the CTR engine.

The return of Guitar Hero and Skylanders. Both totally lend themselves to a subscription model.

Reboot of Wolfenstein 2009.

I don’t think they will release one as I think Xbox sees themselves as totally digital in a few years. I would be all over one though.

Gaming discourse on the internet at its finest. A few people discussing the improvements and what they liked about the game, then two posters saying anyone who claims to like it is talking ‘BS’ and a ‘fanboy.’ Stay classy guys.

@PixelDragon

That reply does not make any sense. I’ll try again-“ Microsoft are interested in consumers to the extent they want their money. Same with Nintendo, Sony, EA, Sega, Apple, LG, Meta and all the other multinational corporations”

@Titntin

It’s hard to see a scenario where Sony don’t have a lot lined up. Their sales momentum is such they have no need to rush announcements.

@GuyinPA75

If you’d have read the CMAs report on the takeover* you would know just how right you are that they have no idea what they’re talking about

*to be clear I’m not in any way recommending you do this. It won’t improve your life in any way

@PixelDragon

That’s quite the hysterical overreaction. Microsoft are interested in consumers to the extent they want their money. Same with Nintendo, Sony, EA, Sega, Apple, LG, Meta and all the other multinational corporations. There are no mental gymnastics required to explain it’ll justify anything.

@RealFrowns

Why would anybody have to justify anything? Microsoft (and Nintendo) only exist to make money.

This is never going to happen. And in context it isn’t that dramatic. It’s really brought out the latent fanboy in some though. There are people who get very emotional about their profit-driven multinational that only exists to make profit and generate value for shareholders of choice.

@XoBiiDoS

I doubt it. There isn’t a demand for Frame Rate parity between the two so there’s nothing to stop a game being 120FPS on SX and not on the other.

@XoBiiDoS

Was 120FPS a big part of the marketing? Surely it was blindingly obvious to anyone back in 2020 that 120 FPS games on current gen hardware were going to be very few and far between.

@Princessmadllama

Every developer is lazy? That’s a, to say the very least, Interesting take.

Or it could just be the hardware isn’t up to what is a very resource heavy task.

And Zelda on the N64 wasn’t 30FPS

Some gamers are an embarrassment to the industry and everyone else who plays. This applies to anyone review bombing anything.

@Knightmere

I don’t know, who did?

@GuyinPA75

Rage 1 and 2 were completely unplayable for me. Made me want to puke. I’m holding off on Starfield until I finish TOTK but I’m worried that I won’t be able to play it.

@Cashews

I’ve had motion sickness from some games for over 20 years, nothing to do with DF. All the way back to XIII and the original Timesplitters on PS2.

Excellent, great reviews

Of course they aren’t. Did anybody actually think they would? That would be insane. They may have to think about the feature parity clause but they were never going to drop it.

This actually seems a pretty sensible solution. No point letting concerns over the cloud market which is currently tiny stop the whole deal. I bet if MS were told a year ago all they’d have to do to placate regulators everywhere was a few temporary Cloud deals they would have jumped at it. If Cloud Gaming does become big, well, they’ll have all the right back by 2038….

Pretty sure that guy is just another attention seeking troll. Don’t give him the oxygen of publicity for his stupid comments.

GTA for me. Not really into the cowboy setting. Both very good series though.

I don’t mind it as an adjunct to ‘proper’ gaming and use it to try games out sometimes without downloading. But it just doesn’t run well to be a serious alternative to running games natively.

At home I have all sorts of systems including a Series X. When I’m on the go or can’t access a TV I have a Switch.

Absolutely not. Think it’s a bit cheeky TBH, the selling point of GP was to get these big exclusives Day 1.

@S1ayeR74

Agreed. The Cloud market is the one where there are legitimate concerns, and only the CMA and EU tried to fix that. The FTC went all in on ‘well Sony said it would be bad’ and scored a massive own goal.

@Kaloudz

😀 I’m British as well and you’re totally right. As soon as this verdict was handed down you knew the CMA would be looking for a way out. They know their arguments have been ruined by the EU and Japan approving and then the FTC getting shot down. They can now make the case that ‘the situation has changed, for us to block it alone would damage U.K. consumers so reluctantly we will remove our objection (they won’t say approve) as long as MS proposed remedies are signed.’

@Nickhyazaki

Given that a couple of Xbox execs swore under oath that they wouldn’t take COD off Playstation they’d be very foolish to attempt to go back on that.

The CMA now have the perfect justification to back down. There were accusations that they and the FTC had colluded on blocking this deal IIRC. They just didn’t bargain on the FTC making such a dreadful job of the PI hearing.

Now it would be easy for them to back down saying that the situation has changed and U.K. consumers stand to lose out.

As a Manchester United supporter, it’s hard to tell which incredibly tedious and long drawn out takeover saga is the most mind numbing now.

Oh great. Just great. Why?

@EvenStephen7

Absolutely 100% spot on. Well said. Publisher A will like the subscription model, Publisher B will think differently. Some publishers will use it for Game A but not Game B. There’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here

@NorthwestEagle

Sorry for the late reply, don’t k ow how I missed this.

Yes it was Mattel and I don’t think they had a clue what they were doing, though I gather the eccentric and often very late selection of games that got sent over to Europe was down to NOJ. It then went to a long-defunct distribution company called THE who did a bit better with the SNES and N64 but still lagged way behind the competitions presence.

I totally agree that the Wii was where NOE got their act together. They were now much more in control. The system was almost simultaneously released, well priced and they did a really good job with the release schedules and unexpected translations. The result was a massive success. They’ve done a superb job with the Switch too, never seen Nintendo so aggressive over here. And again the results are there for all to see.

@Tharsman

“ The Xbox one sold 2m faster than the 360? The Switch selling 2m slower than almost anything?”

That I think just shows the effect of momentum from previous gen, the 360 was huge over here. Whereas the Wii U was basically non-existent, possibly explaining the Switch starting slow.

“And let’s not forget picking Mega Drive over SNES back in the day!”

That was largely down to Nintendo. Whereas you guys in the US had a huge NES presence, Nintendo Power, hotlines, big ad campaigns etc the U.K. didn’t even have Nintendo. They farmed out their distribution to third-parties until the early 00’s. Games and systems were regularly very late if they released at all (Mario RPG never came out here).

Sega saw an opportunity because they were struggling in the US and Japan and threw a lot of resources at PAL territories. Megadrive launched in November 1990, the SNES not until April 1992 and then only with 4 games whereas the MD had a huge library by then and was firmly established as the ‘cool’ console.

@UltimateOtaku91

I thought that. Especially as 140 weeks from the Switch release date is late 2019, probably near to the release of Luigis Mansion 3 and Sword and Shield.

@Sakai

“the older you get, the less enamoured you are with AAA”

I’m 46 and totally agree with you. I’ve played so many games this year but it isn’t the supposed AAA stuff. I’m the same with films. Glossy big budget action films get less exciting as I get older.

I’ve been having a great time playing games last few months but it’s not been COD or God of War or Hogwarts or Jedi Survivor. It’s been Kirby, Hi fi Rush, Pentiment, Metroid Prime etc