themightyant

I still think GTA6 might get delayed which would really put the cat among the pigeons and could leave us with a slightly barren autumn/winter. That said my backlog would welcome it! More games released every month than I can ever play.

@Fiendish-Beaver Again I think all that is POSSIBLE I just don't think it's likely. But we've had this conversation many times before in different guises, and probably will have it many times again. At the end of the day we'll just have to wait and see.

Totally agree. Ubisoft is currently just under 20,000 devs

All Microsoft Game Studios, including Zeninmax/Bethesda and ABK is just under 20,000 devs.

If Microsoft purchased Ubisoft one of the first things would be massive job losses.

Nope. But you do you.

@Fiendish-Beaver I agree there's a tipping point and I'm sure you've seen me argue the same point here.

But I don't think we will hit that. I think Game Pass is just too good right now, look at the back to back to back releases with the promise of even more to come. If it's 50% - 80% as you posit (i'm not sure I buy that, but lets go with it and not get stuck in the weeds) I think most of those users will go Xbox again, especially when they also offer a handheld (or cloud/mobile) to keep playing on the go, just like Switch. I think Xbox will have a lot of MOMENTUM going into next gen, which they didn't this gen. A lot of success is driven by that.

Phil Spencer said (I paraphrase) "we lost the most important generation to lose...etc. ... where people built their libraries (on PlayStation) and they aren't going to drop that"... and that is true. But people ALSO built their libraries no Xbox and the same rule applies.

Ultimately we will have to wait and see, but if I had to bet on it, i'd bet on largely the status quo. Xbox remaining between 2:1 and 3:1 behind PS but growing elsewhere and making a LOT of money from publishing and Game Pass. That is enough.

If i've understood this right this introduces another button press to play the game. Press A to select and bring up the hub, Press A to play. It's not a big deal at all, but personally not a fan of that UI ethos. Don't get in the way of the primary task, playing games!

Aside from that I like the layout and info, I just wish it was selected a different way.

@Fiendish-Beaver Maybe, it's possible. But I don't think it will be that catastrophic. It's a worst case scenario. The reality is console Game Pass subscribers had basically stagnated already, Microsoft are more worried about growth in other areas. (edit) Importantly, and commenters online often miss this because typically we are older, they are also looking at the next generation of gamers and how they want to play, which is on any device. We're more stuck in our ways.

I think if Microsoft keep the Game Pass release cadence up, and most of those games are good, and they have compelling hardware, i'd expect the status quo to remain and most XBox players to stay on Xbox and it to be fine. It's not like PlayStation is doing a stellar job of saying we're so much better, come here.

@Dalamar73 My bad, I tagged the wrong person.

@TheGiraffe Steam and PlayStation have a MUCH bigger market than Xbox. I have no doubt it Microsoft had sold 75 million consoles this gen and PlayStation had sold 32m they would be be far less likely to go multi--platform, but that's not the reality of the situation.

I agree 30% becomes a lot quickly but so does selling to 75m + extra PS customers + Nintendo. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

@TheGiraffe Sure. But not every Xbox owner will buy MS games either. It's their POTENTIAL console market that increases. I don't think Microsoft would be taking this strategy if they were going to make less money.

@TheGiraffe Perhaps losing that 30% is an issue for them… or perhaps increasing their potential console market by around 230% (32m vs 74m units) by publishing on PS5 will massively offset that loss and make them much more in the long run. And that’s before you add Nintendo into the equation. Microsoft is a multi-platform publisher now.

Old news. At this point it would be easier to expect every new Xbox game to go multi-platform at some point. It will be bigger news when they don’t.

@Kaloudz Yes it's called 'misophonia'. I used to work with someone who always complained about "noisy eaters" among other irritations that drove her crazy, she later found it was a full blown thing.

@TheGameThrifter That's a fair point. But I don't think Nintendo is in direct competition with PlayStation in the same way Xbox is. I think Nintendo have slightly different demographics and when they cross it's most likely people will have BOTH a PS5 and Switch or Xbox and Switch. Only a small niche of weirdos like me have an Xbox and a PlayStation

@Flugen It's not accurate to say Epic won, the judgement wasn't really in their favour, it was FAR more in Apple's favour, 9 of 10 counts Apple won. But while Apple have to allow links to other stores (that was the 1 of 10) it doesn't work as Epic wanted because Apple will STILL take a cut of that currently. And BOTH Apple and Epic's appeals were denied, so this isn't changing anytime soon.

But more importantly that judgement was for mobile phones which with over 7+ billion smartphone users worldwide is virtually seen as a basic human right that is used in everything from business to life organising to pleasure. The same rules might not apply for a store on a purely entertainment device like consoles with a relatively tiny 250ish million users.

@Coletrain Agreed. Stupid comment by Jez, which is unlike him, he's usually pretty knowledgeable. Also silly from Colt, but that's expected, he's a tool.

I don't think Sony will care one bit about the 2025 Xbox PC handheld. The reality is this market is around 6 million devices right now 4 million Steam Decks and 2 million others including ROG Ally. It isn't major competition for them.

The 2027 Xbox handheld console might be, especially if it's a PC/Xbox hybrid.

@Flugen I don't think this will happen, but protecting your market position isn't petty, it's just sensible business. If it did happen it would be because Sony was worried Microsoft would be getting a leg up on them. They don't have to allow their products where they don't want them.

But my money would be on:

• Xbox handheld PC (2025) - no problem it's just a portable PC
• Xbox handheld console (2027) - not applicable as I don't think it will run Steam, just the Xbox store.

GeForce Now is a horrible comparison. That is about CLOUD delivery and Nvidia didn't get specific permission from publishers to distribute their games this way. It's not the same.

An Xbox branded PC handheld would just be a handheld PC, downloading and playing games natively (assuming you can play Steam / Epic Games on the system) should be fine.

That said it theoretically wouldn't be impossible for Sony to block specific hardware, but it would be hard, and likely not worth the extra effort, but it depends how successful this is and if Sony thought it might be taking a chunk of their market share.

But considering the RELATIVELY small amount non-PlayStation gaming makes Sony - currently about 3.5% of all their revenue from game sales, or 2.2% of ALL their gaming revenue - Sony might just stop selling on PC first if it were to happen and they didn't like it.

It's getting better review scores than I thought. The first review I saw was Push Square's 6/10 but 80 on Metacritic is considerably higher than I thought it would get. Maybe on a sale, or Game pass i'll check it out.

@Kaloudz Oh God! I just watched a bit of a Mukbang video for the first time. Gross. Definitely not for me. Though I am now hungry and craving fast food. And I was amused by all the "watching during Ramadan" comments. Why would you do that to yourself. Self flagellation. lol.

To be honest I don't watch the ASMR videos, just close my eyes and listen. But I can see how some would hate it, as I said I did before. Yet it's an acquired taste, and i'm very selective, some voices or actions are a hard no... add Mukbang to that list... thanks mate! lmao

@Ricky-Spanish Never listened to an "eating one"... that sounds really gross tbh. Whispering, finger sounds (get your minds out of the gutter people. lol) and suchlike are oddly effective for my brain, putting me in a state of deep relaxation really quickly. I can't really explain it - and had you told me this a few years ago I frankly would have laughed - but it just works for me. White noise is OK but not quite as effective for me, ymmv.

Regardless I don't want an ASMR slicing game! lol

@Dalamar73 @Ricky-Spanish @Kaloudz Different horses, different courses I guess. We all like different things.

I really did think ASMR was a hoax for a long while - there's certainly a lot of bad ASMR out there. But after a spell where I slept really badly I was recommended ASMR to relax and now I do find it strangely relaxing. I can't quite explain it, it just does funny things to my brain, especially if I just lie down and cancel out other noise with headphones. I couldn't get on with guided meditation, which was also suggested, but ASMR helped me sleep well again.

Yet I can understand it grating some people, I was one of them before

Brilliant announcement ad. Got a few hearty laughs.
And a brilliant game, enjoy PlayStation fans.

Trying not to get too over-excited for this one, but it's one of my most anticipated games of the year. Praying they pull it off.

Brilliant work well done to all involved.

Deja vu? Feels like we've been here... more than once... I'll believe it when I see it running on my own hardware.

The trouble with such a large quantity being added daily is games get lost and too many good enough games fail to find an audience often leading to studios closing and people leaving the industry. They need better discoverability.

Additionally there are too many black hole games (Fortnite, COD, GTA, Genshin etc.) eating up players time, as does losing potential gamers to other forms of entertainment like TikTok and YouTube. Either way a lot of smaller games and devs are struggling.

Ideally i'd like to see the better ID@Xbox games get more than one day of press often all squeezed together, with the best will in the world I can't try 30 demos of games. Perhaps they could have an ID@Xbox game of the week or do deals to highlight one at a time or get more on Game Pass. Either way discoverability and how quickly they are lost in the store is a problem.

There's a pretty wide range of reviews, with some enjoying it far more than others. That makes it a perfect fit for Game Pass in many ways because you may not want to risk £55 on it just to find out if it's your jam, but with Game Pass you can give it a try risk free.

But one thing that all the reviews seem to agree is that it captures the essence of England and Englishness brilliantly. My favourite sound byte so far is:

Atomfall might not get everything right, but by St. George it gets England right - and that might be enough.

360 & OG Xbox “backwards compatibility” already runs via emulation, it’s not true backwards compatibility. The downside is that only a small percentage of those game libraries are available, around 22%.

I assume they won’t want to do the same with XBO & XSX as you would lose too much of the library, so it’s more likely to be some sort of PC compatibility layer similar to Proton / Linux / Steam Deck to run Xbox games on PC. It will still have some failures but likely far fewer.

The alternative would be some sort of dual boot / dual OS system. That perhaps can boot into Xbox games on the fly. That would likely guarantee the highest chance of working next gen, but presents a number of problems, not least they’d theoretically need to do the same again the following gen.

Strong initial numbers for less than 24 hours & not on the weekend.

I'll believe it when I see it, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

Very sensible direction to go in, an app that consolidates all your launchers games into one, like GoG Galaxy but better. Smart move

@LogicStrikesAgain it’s far more than 4 years they have Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2017), Gears 5 (2019), Bleeding Edge (2020) and more.

It made a lot more sense when “Xbox had no games” (it did, I’m just using the expression that people said) and they were trying to over emphasise that, but now juts looks a bit weird tbh.

@OldGamer999 There are hundreds on ebay too, FB marketplace and others. If you REALLY want one, they are out there, but not ideal for most retail to be in and out of stock. Though Amazon has stock (only 5 left)

One of the biggest games of the year. The last two have been nearly flawless.

It depends what you want from Xbox. If all you want is games from them, or play on PC, or you only care about their share price then they are in a VERY strong position imo.

But the trouble is if all you care about is playing on console then Microsoft is playing with fire and risking the Xbox (console) legacy. Already we see XSX|S losing out to XBO, what if the next console sells even less? At what point do third party publishers start delaying Xbox ports, or even stop them altogether. We ALREADY see this for a lot of smaller games, and some larger ones. If they struggle to sell 10 million consoles in the first few years that trickle could easily turn into a flood (see WiiU, which third party shunned), which would get outside their control.

While I think this is unlikely, it is POSSIBLE with the strategy they have taken, and the obvious solution to this is to merge PC and Xbox in some way which has a lot of benefits, but also, potentially, some large drawbacks. Either way I am fascinated to see how it plays out, similar to Game Pass it could be a massive disruptor to the status quo.

@Weebleman @Kaloudz enjoyed this exchange gentlemen. Between the two of you you covered virtually everything I was going to say about the pros and cons of Xbox . They are doing some things great (steady flow of games, game pass, etc) and others not so great. I am fascinated to see how the next few years play out for Xbox.

I understand some people feel this gen has hardly started due to lack of next gen exclusives, but the reality is cross-gen is here to stay. That won’t change with a new console, we will still have multiple years of series x games and you won’t see many true “next-next gen” exclusives till around 2029/2030 even if it launched in 2027

Assuming it’s around Nov 2027 that’s OVER two and a half years away, it’s a long time, this gen is only just over 4 years old. 7 years is about normal. Additionally there should be a significant technological upgrade by then between raw performance but also, crucially, AI upscaling like DLSS, which will require newer hardware.

Shame. XSX is a brilliant machine, would have expected it to sell better than XBO. But obviously Microsoft has switched strategy and console sales aren't everything anymore.

@Fiendish-Beaver It does, if you have that option, but the Series X and base-PS5 are still lovely looking games that perform well.
40fps FTW too.

Brilliant. Keem the devices coming. No one adaptive device covers all disabilities and impairments, but each one makes gaming more feasible for more players. Love to see it.

@jesse_dylan I rarely do! Enjoy games a lot more this way

Strong reviews, higher than Odyssey, Valhalla and Mirage. Will be interesting to see if it resonates with players

Guardian Heroes vibes from this!!

Is this the third or fourth time? It’s usually 6 months

@dskatter obviously if it has not enough sales AND not enough subscriptions, like Veilguard, then that is a big problem.

But the point is some games on Game Pass won't sell that well compared to games that aren't on it, but will be a success. Sales isn't the only important metric nowadays.

@dskatter Sales numbers aren't everything anymore now we have subscriptions. Game pass in particular skews this a lot.

At the end of the day it matters to publishers if the game is profitable whether that's via game sales, subscriptions, dlc, mtx etc.

@Fiendish-Beaver @Titntin OOF! You guys are brutal... Series Finale though, can't be unheard.

@HonestHick "Surface" was originally called that because it was a touch-screen tablet/pc hybrid. Doesn't make much sense for the home console... the handheld, maybe.

They always seem overpriced compared to the quality. You hear far too many stories of issues from triggers breaking, rubber grip coming off and of course stick drift.

Obviously this is a product for enthusiasts who likely play a lot more, so you would logically expect more wear from more use, and they are a more vocal audience, BUT you would also expect a better built product for the cost.

I expect them to wait for the new 2027 controller and have all those same "Sebile" features. Lift to wake, wi-fi, haptics etc.

@Astig they can’t. Xbox series consoles use USB 3.2 Gen 1 (edit) which is 625MB/s (5Gbit/s) max whereas the built in storage is 4 times faster at 2.4GB/s or 4.8GB/s with compression.

You can still play Xbox One games off a USB SSD or USB NVME

@Weebleman absolutely. “Smart delivery” isn’t always so smart.