themightyant

@GuyinPA75 Absolutely not. The price of gen3/4 nvme's has come down a lot in 4 years. At launch another 1TB would have been at LEAST £100 more expensive but likely more making a 2TB XSX around £600+ in 2020.

@SodaPop6548 Several YouTube videos seem to be confirming 60fps and it looked super smooth in the little I watched. I tried to find a bit where a lot was going on and it was still smooth.

@Rog-X You are right it is £550 not £600, I was thinking dollars, have fixed it. Mea culpa.

Preaching to the converted on Game Pass Ultimate, i've been a GP Ult. subscriber for years. Was just suggesting this will likely/hopefully be included on the Ultimate tier as @Ricky-Spanish had initially suggested it might be an additional payment.

@OldGamer999 Almost certainly one of two things, likely the first.

• Lack of stock. They probably sold out of the first batch and that is the date they expect new stock. For £600 £550 (corrected) it was likely a very limited run until they saw some sales to gauge interest. It might still come sooner if they manufacture quicker.
• Website error. Somewhere in the chain there is a problem, but the date may be sooner if it's a mistake. (less likely)

Either way good luck mate.

@Ricky-Spanish Like Cloud it will most likely only be part of Ultimate and another reason to be on their highest tier, they likely don't need to charge more... until the next price hike.

You have to be trolling… right? But let’s assume you are for real and look at it objectively:

• $69 billion spent but just 3 ABK games added to Game Pass.
• Game Pass price hike including removing Day 1 games from Game Pass for console, effectively doubling Day 1 games from $10 to $20 in 13 months.
• Over 2,500 Xbox devs fired and studios closed
• As for the Xbox games released this year… it’s been underwhelming highlighted by Hellblade 2 (81 on Opencritic), Starfield: Shattered Space (60), and COD: MW3 (58)

How is THAT “Xbox’s best year”? My grip on reality is fine thanks.

But don’t misunderstand me, unlike many here I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom, I think Microsoft are positioning themselves quite well for future success in gaming, only more as a publisher. Like you I also think there’s plenty of games on the horizon and I believe things will pick up, there is some light on the horizon. BUT the question was about year one, and it’s been woeful.

@S1ayeR74 FYI as @Medic_alert said they weren’t ads, this was misreported. Instead it was pulling the image from the “latest news” for each game not the “cover art” and other game images that are usually used in different situations. In a couple of cases these latest news images, much of which was very old, contained data that could appear like an ad.

The information is out there if you’re willing to look for it, but too many news sites jumped on the story quickly and misreported it before having all the facts.

@jesse_dylan Yes! Pixel art looks great on smaller screens. I actually buy a lot of indies to play on Steam Deck in part for this reason, they feel more at home there than on a 65" TV

@ironcrow86 Different titles and roles.

• Phil Spencer is CEO of Microsoft gaming
• Sarah Bond is President of Xbox
• Matt Booty is President of gaming content and studios
• Jamie Leder is CEO of ZeniMax / Bethesda
• Craig Duncan is head of Xbox Game Studios replacing Alan Hartman

Microsoft have around 10,000 staff and 30+ studios they need a larger leadership team to manage all that effectively, it can't just all be on Phil Spencer.

Disappointed. $69 billion spent yet gamers have so far seen less than a handful of games added to Game Pass, but subscription prices have gone up twice in two years.

Meanwhile many of the ABK studios have been gutted since the takeover: Arkane Austin gone, Tango Gameworks shuttered then sold. Microsoft added over 15,000 employees but then have sacked around 10,000 in that time, 2,500+ in gaming.

All in all a wet fart would have been more pleasant.

This has seemingly been rebooted so many times, it started development in 2014, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

Always seemed like madness to announce a game based off an art style rather than a decent gameplay loop. But I hope they find their way and eventually deliver a great game.

@jesse_dylan thanks for the heads up on Netflix. Might be a good fit for that game. The controls on console were pretty bad in Golden Idol imo, touch might be more intuitive.

Starfield Shattered Space: coming back to this after getting distracted by other games. It’s not bad, but there are so many small frustrations with it too that add up.

The plucky Squire: loving this fourth wall breaking adventure so far.

Genshin Impact: Version 5.1 just dropped with two more main story quests.

In other news I just saw leaks that suggest Xbox is going to allow cloud gaming for basically ALL games in our digital libraries later this year, not just select game pass titles. If true that’s a pretty huge upgrade to the service. They did mention this a while ago but it’s radio silent since.

@OldGamer999 I’ve also had some problems with Quick Resume. Especially games being buggier, or crashing more (Starfield especially) and achievements not unlocking.

It’s absolutely brilliant when it works but needs work as when it fails it can be really frustrating. E.g. I’d have to play the whole game again to get some missable achievements that should have unlocked.

There are some interesting quirks listed on here e.g. Borderlands 3

Atmos is ONLY available on the last-gen version of the game. The Xbox One version is NOT installable on Xbox Series X|S due to Smart delivery

Weird choice.

I have browsers on almost every other device and can cast to my tv so don’t really use Xbox for TV. Additionally it’s an exceptionally power hungry way to watch tv.

I didn't realise Botany Manor reviewed so well (87) I really enjoyed that game.

Probably Halo 4. It had an awful advertising campaign, but the gameplay was solid and the story was interesting if poorly delivered! Music was great too. Didn't play the MP.

@Fiendish-Beaver Thought they were a step down from the Bungie ones I replayed Halo 4 & 5's campaigns multiple times on different difficulties. I felt absolutely no desire with Halo Infinite. I think a part of it was the open world nature made it more dragged out on first playthrough, and imo ruined some of the series magic of going set piece to set piece.
But we all like different things.

I'm enjoying Shattered Space in places, but also it feels like a massive missed opportunity in many others. But the fact I haven't actually played that much this week is probably the most telling thing. Instead I finished Case of the Golden Idol and was playing The Plucky Squire, both pulled me back more than this DLC.

Microsoft have owned Activision for a year now (deal closed Oct 13 2023) why have we only seen the last COD: Black Ops game so far?

@OldGamer999 I’ve seen you say this before but here in both London and Manchester their big releases are plastered everywhere. Halo: Infinite, Starfield, COD, etc. adverts online, in print and all over billboards and buses

Immortality at just over £8 at 50% off was an insta-purchase.
Have my eyes on a few others.

Slightly better, but still overly expensive. At £114.99 it's still twice the price of the PS5 options. You can get 2TB for this price with a standard gen4 m.2 drive, or pay a little over half for 1TB.

@BAMozzy Agree with almost all your points. The only thing i'd add is it is likely some parts of UE5 are also ancient and have been pulled in from UE4 and before, this is pretty normal in game Engines, both for compatibility and due to the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

@BAMozzy I think you misread my post. I was arguing FOR using Unreal over a bespoke engine like Slipspace for many of the reasons you mentioned and more. Agree with all those.

@SodaPop6548 Unreal Engine can run games at a buttery smooth 60fps just fine, they don't even have to have that Unreal Engine look, just look at Hi-Fi Rush which ran at 60fps AND had a very unique graphical style.

But it HAS to be on developers to design around this from the beginning and not try and push graphical fidelity FIRST and then try and shoehorn it into a target frame rate last minute. The more practiced developers get with UE the more they will able to get out of it.

@Fiendish-Beaver 100% It was particularly a problem with Halo Infinite because they had so many contractors and short-term staff. Not being able to work productively also likely exacerbated this and made people want to leave. Unreal Engine has it's flaws but the pros outweigh the cons and the more devs experienced with it will be able to mitigate or sidestep most of those flaws. Very sensible decision.

Box art often looks great until you plaster over all the brand logos, age, ratings, price tags etc. then they just look busy and incongruent. For that reason i've always liked dual sided reversible covers where the interior one is pristine, free from all that gunk.

So best box art? Any that has a reversible cover.

This will be the biggest reason for the change. All the debriefs we saw on Infinite said onboarding new devs was a massive problem. Similar for Cyberpunk and many other games with troubled development built on bespoke engines.

While there are some possible concerns about using the same engine, the pros far outweigh the cons, and the more devs who are experts in Unreal the more they can know the engines’ shortcomings and sidestep those potential problems. E.g. Plenty of Unreal games have unique graphical styles and no stutter.

Fingers crossed they get to actually reset and Halo Studios can turn it around, because 343’s era was a huge backwards step.

Out of all the updates and changes they could do to Infinite… that definitely wasn’t on my bingo card card. Lol.

Would have thought split screen co-op on Series X (which was working) would have been well ahead of this. But 343 gonna 343

@FraserG Thanks. I appreciate the link, thought it doesn't answer any of my questions. Weird marketing imo to only focus on one feature.

Wondering what the additional face buttons are for and if it's only wired. Hall Effect is nice but need more info on the whole package.

@Actionhank89 That sucks. Sorry can't think of anything else. Except do you have a recent earlier save to try? (make a backup first)

@WildConcept6 There are certainly more last gen consoles out there, but are there actually more players on last gen than next gen? Probably not. Why?

Most of the people who bought next gen already had last gen consoles and no longer use them. Moreover someone who recently invested in a new console is far more likely to still be an active player than someone that bought a decade ago. Far more likely that older console is gathering dust.

The most recent stats we had on this (on PlayStation anyway) was it was 50:50 between PS4 and PS5 with 49 million active consoles on each as of April 2024, despite the PS4 selling 117.2 million and PS5 being less than half that at the time at 56 million. i.e. only 42% of PS4s were actively used, whereas it was 88% of PS5s

Since then PS5 has sold another 6 million, almost all of which are likely to be active, whereas some would have upgraded from PS4 or fallen off making more PS4's inactive. This in turn would have made PS5 overtake PS4 in terms of players. Xbox will be in a similar boat.

But there are still a lot of last gen players, who shouldn't be ignored. I agree something like GTAVI might be the game that makes a lot of gamers jump. But for other games I prefer this route of focusing on next-gen and then a year or so later bringing it to last-gen IF they can make it work, this was last gen doesn't hold back next-gen.

@Actionhank89 have you downloaded the Shattering Space DLC via the store? (It’s another a 10gb download on top of the 18gb update) This tripped me up, the quest wouldn’t start for me, there is no DLC section on the menu. It’s bad UX. (Unless it’s “creations”, but that won’t open, is bugged, and says can’t connect to Bethesda.net)

I already bought it, but got it cheap as I had a Microsoft friends & family account access, so it cost me about £8. At £30 I would wait for a sale. I'm about half way through and it's OK, nothing special, which is disappointing considering Bethesda's brilliant expansion history.

Oh wow! This should be epic.
Wishing the devs, and the game, all the best.

Please be good! Every Avatar game, including Platinum Games Legend of Korra, has been 5/10 or less, this series deserves better.

@Titntin I understand that point of view, and I'm definitely not for just blindly increasing shareholder profits. But I also think the "line must go up" is a gross oversimplification that people use as a catch all, basically because they aren't happy with late-stage capitalism (neither am I btw). But I do think it's far more nuanced than that.

Having run a company (granted only around 50 people, not thousands) where we were the stakeholders, you are always looking at longer trends and trying to react to market conditions especially things outside your control. Even if the company has done well this year, that may not be enough if there's a cloud on the horizon. You are trying to prevent getting into tight positions in several years that would ultimately impact MORE staff and more negatively affect both the company plus morale in the long run, than if you were to make tough calls today.

Whereas most gamers simply look at the last financial years profits and wonder why jobs are lost now, the executives are trying to play several years ahead. Do they always get it right? No of course not, especially when looking at the future you should be overly cautious but also have less sight. I don't expect that to be a popular view or evoke sympathy for the people making those calls, but I believe it is usually the reality.

As for Nintendo I absolutely applaud Satoru Iwata for halving his salary, and for making some other executives cut 20% - 30%, it was a great gesture that also sent a powerful message of solidarity and belief in Nintendo at a time where they were really struggling.

But people often forget the context of this, which is important. This was during the Wii U failure, they had literally just announced that they has massively missed ALL their targets... and not just by a bit. e.g. they reduced annual Wii U sales estimates 69% from 9 million units to just 2.8 million and even the popular 3DS was down 27% from 18.5 million units to 13.5 million. All very costly mistakes.

My point is Iwata and the executives also did this in order to keep THEIR jobs, it prevented most executive heads rolling. But people completely forget that side of it and reframe it to a purely "for the people" act. Hogwash! and a gross retelling of history. It saved their own bacon as well as saving other jobs. Granted it was a masterstroke, and the smart thing to do, i'm taking nothing away from Iwata here, but lets not pretend it wasn't also self serving.

The fact Iwata and most of the execs even had their jobs after the Wii U debacle says plenty. For comparison what happened to Dom Mattrick after XBO or Ken Kutaragi after PS3, neither of which were remotely close to the Wii U's utter failure.

EDIT: Sorry for the long post. You were right, too big a topic for here!

I still don't quite understand why Amazon give out so many GOOD "free" / included games every week with Prime. There doesn't seem to be an end-game strategy yet. But i'll take it. Feels like they are positioning themselves for something though, not just Luna. Amazon Handheld or Console?

Not yet, but I will if it's in a sale, loved the original, but also played it to death. Was still in the era when I could only afford a few games so played the ones I did have multiple times. Games were also generally shorter and often more replayable.

@Titntin completely agree they bought those profits, didn’t say otherwise. Was just making it clear to OP that ABK doesn’t make more money than the rest of Xbox, that’s false info.

As for recouping 70 billion, it doesn’t quite work like many assume. They traded cash and bought an asset that is added to their share price. SOME of the returns will be through added stock value, and other business metrics, it doesn’t need to be 70 billion made back through ABK games back to cash.

The layoffs are a complex topic, because even studios with huge profits and strong financials were doing it. The reality is the cost of making games has vastly increased, not just the scope of games but if you were to make the identical game to 5 years ago it would cost considerably more, well above inflation.

For a company, and for divisions within a larger company, you need to stay on the right side of that, and to do that you typically don’t look at profits TODAY you look at forecasts years ahead and make strategic decisions based on that. Microsoft’s Xbox division were in a particularly tough spot as they had just increased their wage bill by 15,000 - 20,000 employees with Bethesda and their intent to buy ABK when the financial crisis hit. That isn’t consolation for anyone losing their job, nor it is meant to defend the layoffs, but it is the reality of how multinational business are typically run, because those who don’t run it like that are often in a worse place in 5+ years as they didn’t make hard decisions and cuts today.

That’s not quite true. While Microsoft don’t always give full financial breakdowns their Xbox revenue was up 44% Year on Year in Q4 FY2024 after the ABK merger (likely with plenty coming from the Mobile based King part of the equation).

But the Year on Year part of the statement is important as it has been a slow quarter the previous year, in reality ABK has increased their gaming revenue from around $14 - $15 billion a year pre-ABK to $18 - $21 billion after, according to analysts. Still sizeable, as it should be for what they paid, but not nearly half.

@StonyKL DLC has never really been part of Game Pass, other than the odd exception, so I don’t think it should be expected.

That said £30 does seem steep to me though for what I’ve played so far, feels like half that would be fairer.

@BrandNewOldSchool an exploration buggy was added in a recent update, before this expansion. Just speak to any shop services technician.

But it’s not great imo and doesn’t change the fact there’s little of worth exploring on each planet- if you’ve done it once you’ve done it a hundred times. But it’s better than nothing, choice is good

@Shalooda I was thinking the same about load times, they seem longer than I remember. Some are shorter than others but loading into the game takes an age for this gen. Had a few crashes and bugs too, but had those in the base game.

So far I think it’s been OK, but nothing more, which is a real shame. But the biggest issue is it’s £29.99. At that cost I was hoping for a proper meaty expansion, something like Far Harbour, Dawnguard or Shivvering Isles, but it’s not remotely close to that so far. £14.99 would be far more fair for what you get.