themightyant

@mac_da_man @OldGamer999 I gave it a go this morning and found the framerate to be very choppy on XSX even with VRR, audio was also not always synced with the visuals, I found several items just floating in the air and the lighting was not always working as intended. Quite a few bugs really. Hopefully that will all be fixed.

But I also had other issues were more to do with UI and gameplay. E.g. the onboarding for new players was pretty awful, while I don't necessarily want it to hold my hand, not everyone has played a Stalker game before and dying to an invisible enemy in the first 15 minutes without a hints how to fight them seems a bit mean spirited. (or perhaps they were meant to be visible and it's a bug, who knows)

Additionally the inventory UI also isn't very user friendly on console e.g. the quick use items which only shows which d-pad button to use for medpacks not for the other three leading to using the wrong item (I was trying to use a bandage and used anti-rads instead, wasting limited resources). Usually on console designers make this a plus shape so it's very which d-pad button to use. And the inventory also feels made for mouse not optimised for controller.

All in all I liked the vibe of what I played but it felt unpolished and i'm happy to wait for it to be in a better state.

Not quite sure why they released it in this state and didn't delay, seems there's a good game there but it's mired with bugs.
Will wait on this one.

@MjJmediablogger I just don't understand why they didn't delay it considering the number of really bad bugs. Looking at some of the videos online they are pretty awful and immersion breaking. Even if they think many may be fixed in the day 1 patch the reviews are going to be low as reviewers don't get that patch in time. There's a reason I play many games after a year or two, but I wish I didn't have to just to have a good experience!

@mac_da_man Look forward to hearing how you get on!

@MjJmediablogger It's currently a 77 on Opencritic from 28 reviews, which all seem to mention performance and bugs. So I think it's safer to wait on this one, but it doesn't seem like a flop.

SkillUp said right now he cannot recommend it RIGHT NOW as it's simply unfinished, but he hopes he can recommend it later saying:

"right now would be the worst possible way to experience what I expect will one day might be a pretty great videogame"

Going to wait to play this one. Several outlets are all saying it's in a pretty rough state right now. The devs have said it will be fixed in a Day 1 patch, but considering the amount of bugs being reported that seems too much to expect. Want to have the best experience.

Missed all this drama. Logged into the game this morning and had a test flight around London, then crashed into my house. Traditions!

Patches to improve the game are always welcome. But why get us to predownload 146GB then a couple of days later overwrite it all with another 139GB. What was even the point of the predownload at that point? This isn't the first game to do it.

@BAMozzy I was mostly joking, hence the emoji. I accept that hot swapping these is one of the few benefits. But in reality how many are doing that at these prices?

Meanwhile in your case you had the money for a 1TB and a 2TB drive on Xbox, but you could have just got a 4TB m.2 drive for PS5 and had more storage, for LESS money and not have to change? Yes there isn't the option for 'unlimited' storage but who really needs that other than a tiny handful of users.

Meanwhile a massive number of users just want a bit more storage than 360GB on Series S and 802Gb on Series X at a reasonable price, which just isn't available. I think they should have catered to the masses here, rather than the few.

Best price yet, still far too expensive.

@BAMozzy Mr big bucks! Hot swapping multiple expansion drives

@JoyfulFire Destiny is ALWAYS in a love/hate relationship with it's players (to be honest it's the same with a lot of live services... we know we should quit... and yet...). But Final Shape is regarded as one of the best Destiny expansions ever and seems to have delivered a satisfying conclusion to a decade long story. That seems like a good fit to me.

It's a very short shortlist and a LOT of good ongoing games are going to miss out.

But most of the big new content in Forza Horizon 5 was added years ago. Expansions were in 2022 and 2023, not sure it deserves an award in 2024 specifically.

Meanwhile Genshin Impact isn't on the list and adds more new content and mechanics every year than many full games, i'd have that well before Forza for 2024. But the reality is not everyone can be nominated. Tough choices, some worthy games will always miss out.

Looking forward to Fable immensely, but it seems like a weird thing to focus on Witcher 3's COMBAT as it was one of the worst elements of that game. Writing, world design, quests, etc. were all top tier, but combat was weak.

@Xbox_Dashboard It's true that some devs do this, but it seems to happen on Xbox far more than other platforms. e.g. look at the latest AC: Syndicate update which is getting a free 4K 60fps patch after almost 10 years.

• PS5 = 0.75GB
• Xbox = 31.8GB

There's SOMETHING about the way Xbox is configured that makes this happen far more often over here. It's not the end of the world but it is a little annoying, not everyone has super fast connections, and some are still metered.

Really looking forward to seeing how well the streaming tech works and if it's comparable to the full 160+GB previous version. I'd love to free up that space on my Xbox.

Also worth noting that a large part of this deal is likely about Anime, Kadokawa makes a lot more money off Anime than Games and Sony is growing their Anime portfolio.

@Markatron84 @freddones Looking at their latest financial reports, despite Concord and other public failures Sony made record profits last quarter, the quarter Concord released.

Their Games & Network services division (i.e. PlayStation) made 138.8bn Yen in profit last quarter alone, that's around $900 million, which was up a staggering 183% YoY. While Concord was a huge flop, no doubt, you also can't win them all, but they had far more success than failure overall.

Regardless I think it's unlikely they buy FromSoft and make games exclusive which is the concern from an Xbox perspective.

EDIT: @Herculean SNAP! posted at the same time. Quite right about Astro Bot, it was a team of around 70 and in development for 3 years. Small budget and not expected to sell 5+ million units.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner it’s true there are MANY GOTY awards, and this is just one more. But I think what makes TGAs a little more unique is it consolidates hundreds of those awards into one. I.e. The jury is comprised of over a hundred different YouTube channels, news outlets and gaming websites/magazines etc. most of which each have their own individual GOTY awards already, plus a 10% audience vote, to decide any close calls. That means it canvasses a much wider jury than almost all the other awards.

But at the end of the day it’s just meant to be a bit of fun, and a celebration of games, but people always take it FAR too seriously. Then platform warriors often take up their pitchforks and ruin the fun. Just look at some of the comments. 👀

What was even the point of the pre-download if they are just overwriting most of it.

Glad you had "My backlog's just too big to be honest!" that accounts for most games to be fair.

Its one of the largest games i've ever played. 100GB+ is expected.

3 great games, well remastered, what’s not to love

Continues to look excellent, hopefully ends up better than Atomic Heart, which similarly wowed prior to release but ended up a bit disappointing imo.

I agree a Pro model doesn't make much sense for Xbox right now. They have the smallest market share in terms of consoles sold, and already have two different console profiles to develop for. There's no need to further complicate this for devs for a unit that would not sell big numbers.

I wish they would allow thumbstick calibrations for ALL controllers. Could easily fix minor stick drift on a system level.

I have no problem with this... PROVIDED they keep making a high end console. Choice is good.

Additionally Xbox's market share in terms of consoles sold is dwindling despite making a pair of brilliant consoles (Series X & S) they need to do something else to have a unique selling point, because Xbox + Game Pass isn't working fast enough alone.

@Medic_alert I could previously had seen a change from the 'Xbox' name, as it is tied to the box itself, but this campaign seems to be trying to change that, so it seems Microsoft want to keep it. But some of that will depend on whether they can convince consumers that an 'Xbox' is not just an Xbox console.

It reminds me of a situation with Paypal who for years TRIED to convince consumers that they could pay on 'Paypal' with a credit card, that you didn't need a Paypal account which was the entrenched perception, but despite spending many millions they had very limited success. In the end Paypal just bought Braintree instead and made that 'Braintree by Paypal' which is their more card focused payment gateway.

I say all that because whether or not the Xbox name remains will depend on whether consumers can start to think of 'XBox' as something wider than the console box. Changing entrenched perceptions can be hard and if they can't they might just go with Microsoft Gaming or something else.

I also understand the fears about a future box but they've said they are making one next gen so it's around 10+ years away if you were right, that's too far to be worried imho.

But i'd finish by saying Xbox's financials don't suggest their piece of the pie is small.

They got me on the Bento box. lol.

@Medic_alert I don't understand why people think we won't have a box AS WELL for those that want physical hardware.

30GB! I am very interested to see how well the cloud streaming tech works (especially at home rather than some YouTube channel with a 1,000MBps line.) I would love to delete the last version which is taking up over 160GB now on my console. I might even be able to download COD

That's sensible... however they have now moved it into a SUPER busy period between some massive games: Assassin's Creed Shadows, Monster Hunter Wilds, Like a Dragon: Pirate, Civilisation 7, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Lost Records, Tomb Raider IV-VI all come out within 1-2 weeks of Avowed in February.

I was hoping the extra 3 month delay might allow them to optimise and push for 60fps.

I very much hope so... but at the same time don't set expectations too high!

@NEStalgia I agree in theory with the last point on the half step feeling like a half step and price being in line with launch model, but I think we are no longer at that point in tech where this is possible, you can’t make a meaningful upgrade 3-4 years later and charge the same. The obvious answer would be not to make one then… but as the early sales seem to show, which are above PS4 Pro, there is a market for it. It also likely stops as many graphics enthusiasts creeping over to PC later in the generation. Something Sony is understandably more worried about than Microsoft. There is a place for it.

@NEStalgia But I think that was more because MS made mistakes with the timing and price rather than the hardware, which was brilliant. As a result PS4 Pro was more of a success. It helped that it launched a year before Xbox One X giving it 4 whole years to shine, and when it launched everyone wasn't talking about next gen already unlike when XOX launched... which was premature granted, but still rampant. Most importantly Sony supported the Pro well with a lots of new games and upgrades to existing games.

I'd argue that while XOX was undoubtedly the better piece of hardware, PS4 Pro was probably the better purchase, Sony got more out of it, for longer, and it was £100 cheaper. As ever ymmv.

We will have to see whether PS5 Pro follows the same path, I ended up caving and picking one up as there was a trick to get 20% off and after selling my PS5 it only cost £265 net, which as an enthusiast is fine for less compromises for the next 3-4 years.

@GamingFan4Lyf Perhaps, but Obsidian's schedule looks pretty full they just launched Pentiment on Switch and PS5 and are working on Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2. Still they would get to Fallout 5 sooner than BGS.

12 hours long is perfect for this sort of game imo. Looking forward to this, though I wasn't wholly impressed by the gameplay.

Yes. Very successful in their own niche. Making record record revenues and profits... but that isn't the same thing as what gamers want. But I think there's some positive things there, more first party games coming to Game Pass, more studios etc.

@Vaako007 Perhaps, but then why have 343 Industries sorry, Halo Studios, changed to Unreal? Why have CDPR. I agree that there are definitely Pros to having your own engine but the Studios seem to think they are outweighed by the cons... otherwise why did they change?

@Ricky-Spanish In short the old Slipspace Engine created delays with development on Halo Infinite because they needed to get new devs up to speed with that engine and it slowed everything down. It became a vicious cycle as all the delays and problems on the project led to staff leaving and they had to start over training new staff constantly.

CyberPunk 2077 was the same and CDPR have switched to Unreal for similar reasons, using their own engine caused too many issues during development.

There are certainly pros to having your own engine, but also several cons. It takes thousands of hours to attain mastery in new tools, to understand the limitations, quirks and how to avoid pitfalls. In theory moving to Unreal should make it much easier to bring in new staff who are already experienced with it which should outweigh some of the cons of not using your own bespoke engine. But only time will tell.

I think this makes sense. 2025 is going to be dominated by Switch 2 don't launch against that, you'll likely lose.

Additionally we are right on the cusp of AI/ML technology advances that are changing rapidly (DLSS, PSSR, etc) but those currently require desktop sort of power. If they wait a couple of years this should start to be more viable in the handheld space. I'd expect it either to launch in 2026 - 2027.

@Ricky-Spanish Why wouldn't the Halo Slipspace engine run on PlayStation? Decima, the PlayStation Studios engine used in Death Stranding works beautifully on Xbox, as does the bespoke in-house engine used in MLB the Show.

I doubt the engine change has anything to do with PlayStation, instead all the issues they had onboarding devs to their custom engine, which led to long delays on Halo: Infinite, are far more likely to be the cause.

One X was always a beast bit of hardware, ahead of it's time. But it fell into an odd space where the enthusiast market would be upgrading from it in 3 years or less, and it arrived when people were talking next-gen, which limited it's market. There also weren't that many games to highlight it's power. Glad to see it's still getting support though.

@WildConcept6 It was just over half a year until the first Compatible NVMe drives were usable on PS5 (July 2021), some drives that worked were actually available earlier but Sony only released a patch that enabled them then. But that was for the slightly faster proper gen4 drives that PS5 required. There were slower drives available at launch that should have been usable on Xbox which is significantly slower (2.4GB/s vs 5.5GB/s) and potentially cheaper.

You could also argue that in the first 6 months how many REALLY needed extra storage for next gen games when the console had just released there simply weren't that many games to fill the drive, this is something that became more needed over time.

I like the idea of having both in theory... but that will add to the cost of the console.

As for whether the current Xbox cards will be compatible next gen... I don't know. One trouble with Xbox going with the slower speeds is that it will be slightly outdated by then, the 2.4GB/s will be very slow compared with Gen 4 (up to 8GB/s) and Gen 5 (up to 14.5GB/s) speeds. Do they want to put yesterday's tech in tomorrow's console?

I accept that some users like you hotswap the drives between multiple consoles, but I would suspect that is a severe minority of users, most likely plug it into the back as extra storage ONCE and then never touch it again. Should they pay twice the price to accommodate users like you? It's a tough one there's pro and cons on each side, I just think these are prohibitively expensive and so cost should have been the key factor. ymmv

@Major_Player As I said they can’t please everyone and some people will like hot swapping and being able to carry it around. But the cost of that is literally DOUBLE the price or more on a very expensive item for what it is.

I suspect the vast majority of players install it ONCE and then never touch it again and hence would prefer this to be cheaper over that small convenience, but not all, some like you like it as is, that’s fair enough.

@VisitingComet1 It was a bit of a joke comment but the Noise Cancellation makes perfect sense, thanks for the added insight!

That's pretty significant. Among MANY flaws in this remaster changing the whole colour tone, especially in San Andreas, but also Vice City was a huge downgrade.

I haven't kept up with all the updates, what state is the rest of the game in now? Anyone got any insight?

Series X is a brilliant bit of kit, but this is the one thing I think they got wrong on the hardware. Because of the price of high-end expandable storage they should have gone with off the shelf m.2 nvme gen4 drives which are half the cost or less. They could have still had Xbox branded ones for those who didn't want to do the research.

I get there are a few people who might prefer this as they can unplug them and plug it into a second Xbox Series console, or hotswap, but you can't please all and a lower price would have been more welcome than the few benefits. Perhaps next gen they will take a different strategy.

For a headphone called 'Stealth' they look MASSIVE

@Scrubchub I suspect had I played it as a kid I would have persevered, but frustrating gaming like that just isn't fun to me anymore. I don't mind hard, but it has to feel FAIR.

One of the troubles is you had so few lives and if you failed more than (was it 3?) times it made you restart the level rather than starting from a checkpoint. After I quit someone said it was notorious back in the day and many people went and farmed extra lives before to make sure this didn't happen, had I known at the time I might have tried this, but I ain't going back now.

Spend as little time as I can to create a character. Like @GamingFan4Lyf i often go with the stock character. There’s several reasons for this, but the big two are

• just get me to the “playing” part of the game asap
• when I watch video of the game online I can relate to the stock character. There’s few weirder feelings in games than watching videos of something like Mass Effect and seeing these “impostor” Shepards. It feels so wrong, like a bad b-movie clone.

@LaurenceJ1987 Go to Games and Apps and then Sort by Size, you should see what is taking up space. Also remember you don't get all the usable storage XSX only gets 802GB of the 1TB, the rest is used by the system for quick resume etc. Lastly videos, screen captures etc. also take up some space.