themightyant

You don't use Whatsapp for video calls too? At least here in the UK it seems very popular.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I'm less "wait till it hits a sub-service" than I am "wait until the game is patched and complete". If it hits a sub-service during that time, it's just a bonus. I also have an insane backlog that is always growing.

But there are games I buy Day 1 at full price just to support, even though I know i'm not going to play them immediately.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner 60% of the time it works every time.

But I suggest reading the full article as it has more nuance than that and reasons vary based on developer and game. But when you put it all together it is a worrying trend.

For now it's not yet a MAJOR problem imho, thousands of games still come to Xbox, some don't come to Nintendo or PlayStation, but they don't want it to decline or that vicious cycle will get worse.

SkillUp (the youtuber) and his ever expanding team actually did a longer form investigative article on this earlier this year on his (Free) Patreon. They spoke to several developers annonymously, from solo devs to mid-sized studios. The main takeaway was:

"Developers are seeing very few people buy their games on Xbox consoles, that’s largely to blame because of a behavioral shift that Game Pass has caused, and it's created a vicious cycle."

I suggest reading the whole article, but a few other quotes were.

“Our Xbox sales have been the weakest, without a doubt,”... “With the exception of our Game Pass revenue, the games have sold less than 5% compared to our other titles.”

“You just aren't going to sell the same units as you would elsewhere,”... “It's a bit like trying to sell a DVD to someone who uses Netflix”

“If you need to spend USD $20,000 out of pocket to port and get on a platform, you have to hope to make more than that to just break even – and that’s not even factoring in time.”

“It’s really not worth shipping on Xbox unless you get a Game Pass deal, because that is where the majority of the players seem to be,”

"The bigger issue is that everyone is playing the evergreen games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, etc. Each one is soaking up a small percentage of players who never venture further out,"

Generally the issue wasn't the Series S as they were also targeting Switch or Steam Deck as their lowest optimisation target.

I've just loaded it up and have this. LMAO. Bugthesda strikes again.

EDIT: a restart seems to have fixed it.

@Lup To be fair most DLCs don't get early access and early reviews.

Just tested it on Starfield DLC: around 68Mbps on a 72Mbps ADSL line. Have yet to migrate to faster FFTP but to be honest there's nothing I can't do with this connection. Most importantly it's reliable.

Highlight of the show, looks incredible.

Personally preferred Chained Echoes to Sea of Stars.

I actually forgot this was coming out today, I managed to get a really cheap key so looking forward to it.

I think Sony have done a WOEFUL job of showing the benefits of the system. E.g. It was a mistake to focus on first party games which are usually VERY well optimised to run well at either 30fps quality, 60fps performance and often with a 40fps balance mode. The biggest gains will be on third party titles like Final Fantasy which struggles in all modes on base PS5. Most games are third party.

Additionally I think they made a mistake by not having a 1TB model with a disc drive for £649 - £699 instead of a just a 2TB digital version. That would have put it in a lot more people's spending bracket. But £825 with a drive and a stand is too much.

That all said I DO think it's a good piece of tech that will show many benefits for the next 3-4 years, it's just priced and marketed poorly.

@JoyfulFire you can reverse which button confirms and which cancels in the settings on Switch. Drives me barmy otherwise.

@Gkobz I hear people say this a lot but the reality is there are more new games coming out now than there ever has been in the history of gaming. While each game by each studio may take longer, there are considerably more studios than in the past.

Can you HONESTLY say hand-on-heart that there is nothing good to play? Personally I find there are more games that I want to play released every month that I know I can never get around to. I just can't ever keep up with the pace of releases.

If you think about it logically this is no surprise. Series X sold significantly more than Xbox One in Japan and though it's trending behind X360 Xbox is on far more platforms now. Hence this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone and next year should be their biggest again, and then the year after.

Trials Of Mana in particular is excellent, it's a remake of Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2 in the west), well worth a play.

@Jenkinss Fingers crossed, bro!

@Savage_Joe I didn't say it was BECAUSE of the live-stream quality, was just stating the live-steam quality is horrendous and does modern games no favours. You really have to watch the higher bitrate 4K versions that go up later to get a better impression.

Considering the blocky low-bitrate of live streams I'm hardly bothered, they don't do modern games any justice, you basically have to watch the 4K stream later which still has compression but is much, much better.

I still have my Collectors Edition of Lunar SSS Complete but will be getting this day 1. Love this series.

@DaddyDuder they haven’t announced days gone, only Horizon, though I expect it to happen.

Meanwhile since their last remaster (tlou pt 2 re) they have released Astros playroom, MLB24, Concord, (okay it failed, but it still was anew game/ip) plus Helldivers 2, stellar blade, rise of the ronin we’re all SIE published games partially funded by Sony.

Between that and the previous two (tlou pt1 & uncharted legacy) they released Spider-man 2, GOW: Ragnarök, Horizon 2, Rachet & Clank: RA, Returnal, Gran Turismo 7, Sackboy, MLB22 & MLB23 etc.

How is that “their main focus”? I think people are massively over exaggerating the amount of these remasters.

Can’t decide if it’s kinda cool or hella ugly. Would need to try in person.

@Nic-Noc20th-C They seemed to suggest it might come to Xbox at some point. But in the latest dev diary it was clear PC is definitely their focus right now so I wouldn't expect it any time soon.

@Retron FYI CO2e means Carbon Dioxide Equivalent which is a measure to show how green something is by equating it to CO2 emissions but it may not be Carbon Dioxide itself.

Good on Microsoft for pushing this, there’s a lot of steps that can be made by big companies to reduce waste and energy consumption that have massive impacts when multiplied by tens of millions of units and users. 👏👏👏

Amazing game! But bizarre DLC timing two and a bit years after release.

@DaddyDuder Sorry completely disagree. The fact is you don’t need ALL the staff the whole way through game development and the way it used to work was half the staff would get sacked in between projects and many would leave the industry. It was a brain drain.

Remasters (and DLC) allows more junior staff to keep working all year around and gives them a way to cut their teeth on less vital projects that don't require much of the top talent who are busy in pre-production on the next game or polishing off the current one.

In that regard it allows junior staff to improve and stay in the industry which in the long run will keep the industry more creative.

It’s more complicated than that but it is one angle.

@Vaako007 perhaps, but “a lot of headrooom” means EXPENSIVE which isn’t going to help them grow market share. It may suit us enthusiasts but the majority buys less expensive products, which is why Series S is their most popular platform this gen.

@Jenkinss I didn’t say good games would regain market share THIS gen, but they need to gain some momentum with good games FIRST before embarking on a new one, otherwise the new generation will start off as this one is going. Momentum is important going into a new generation.

I’m hopeful this will be a return to form for the series but concerned it may just be more of the same tired formula. Additionally I’m worried this may be another Xbox title that was announced years in advance and we won’t see for a while. I hope not.

@NEStalgia Going early with the 360 worked because it was LEAP YEARS ahead of the competition at the time. The gap between PS2 and X360 was HUGE.

Assuming this isn't "the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation" (sorry Sarah Bond, though I'd love to see it) we are FAR more likely to get an iterative jump elevated by AI/ML. But it's not likely to blow our minds like the X360. Diminishing returns.

As I said in my post above, why do you think new hardware would change Xbox's fortunes when the Series X, which is brilliant, didn't. Microsoft don't need new hardware they need top games, consistently for a long time to change the narrative and gain back market share.

They need to build momentum with great games - like Sony did at the end of PS3 gen - and THEN, but only then can they consider taking that momentum into new hardware. Too early and no one will leap across, it will be the same old story.

@Jenkinss What makes you think a new console will change that course for them when Series X, which is brilliant, didn't?

Microsoft don't need new hardware, they need top quality games. And not just the occasional one, they need to do it reliably for years upon years and, ideally, have them all in Game Pass. If they can do that then they will regain market share.

@Fiendish-Beaver What makes you think they would advertise all those games years in advance during this generation and then pull the rug out and make them next-gen exclusives? That would be some AWFUL PR. (More rake-stepping, so perhaps it's on brand!) Not to mention they would almost certainly make a loss with so few next-gen consoles sold.

IF it's 2026, which I don't believe, the smart money is almost all the games would be cross-gen anyway.

But as we discussed on another thread if it is you can tell me I was wrong in a year or two

@OldGamer999 They spent a LOT on Halo: Infinite and while it was OK it also wasn't all that. As Amazon have found out with a lot of their games just throwing money at game dev doesn't make a top game.

I played this at launch and thought it was very average, with a lot of gameplay that felt outdated even back then. I can't imagine what that would feel like almost 15 years later. But perhaps others will enjoy it more.

@HonestHick That's an interesting approach, but not without it's own problems. e.g. You could introduce a lot of PC specific problems (like Shader compilation & stutter related to it) as it's not fixed hardware.

You'd also lose some of the major advantages consoles have over PC like being able to optimise for fixed hardware, and to subsidise hardware costs. Lastly many think Series S holds back Series X, if you had an even wider set of hardware wouldn't this be amplified?

All that would likely mean you would be paying more for less relative performance, even if it was more powerful.

It is an interesting concept but it also has a lot of potential problems.

@abe_hikura I'm not sure upgradeable will be cost effective UNLESS they use off the shelf parts (see Xbox Series 1TB SSD expansion as an example, it's twice as expensive as a standard 1TB nvme.) but then you're basically saying build a PC Lite.

But I think it might work if they instead move to a more fluid model rather than fixed generations, more like phones. The downsides being you will always be "held back" to an extent; some gamers will be irked when their box can play some games but not others and others will be annoyed about their hardware being superseded so quickly. But we're basically there anyway in everything but name on Xbox already.

I'm not completely convinced on next gen as early as 2026. I think there are several problems including

• Many feel this generation has barely started, yet you want to replace hardware in 2 years time?
• You would likely only have a hardware advantage for 2 years, which is likely to be a cross-gen period anyway, then you would be behind the competition with inferior hardware.

Expect Halo NeXt to launch a year late on the 26th Anniversary (feature incomplete)

@Darylb88 Totally agree 28+million consoles isn't bad and other metrics are more important for them nowadays. But console sales are still important. There are limits whereby third party devs will not support your console as much, this will change game to game, but you can already see this with some niche titles.

The fear is that if Xbox loses more ground, even if Xbox is doing well financially, then this will only happen more and more in future which could lead to a vicious cycle and further dwindling numbers. Sales are fine for now, but they need to do better in future imho else Xbox might start to get left out more often.

WOW! I think the current version, with all updates is around 150+GB

@Bionic-Spencer They will be bound by NDA agreements but several developers have hinted on podcasts that Series S has significantly outsold Series X, I don't think we will ever have official numbers on that. The only kinda official stat we had was in the ABK leak which said as of early 2022 Series S was around 74.8% of sales this gen.

@Fiendish-Beaver I believe the figures ARE worse right now. i.e. it has been suggested they are being outsold at least 3:1 currently, but they started the gen well and that initial 15 million-ish is making it look better than it is imho. I'd expect that 45% to shrink over time.

They came into this gen with some momentum, but their biggest failure was having almost no first party games or exclusives for the first year or so. Literally the worst console lineup vs the competition I can remember. Despite that it sold well initially but then dropped off and PS5 never looked back. It always comes back to great games.

But momentum is still important and Microsoft now have 2-4 years to RELIABLY get out great games again and again to convince people that Xbox, and Game Pass, is the place to be when the next generation starts, else I can only see them losing more users to Sony, which wouldn't be good.

Comparison is the thief of joy

Yet we all do it.

It IS hard to live up to those expectations, but they don't always help themselves, setting expectations too high through their own marketing efforts. There's a balance to be had between selling your game and OVER-selling your game, just ask Peter Molyneux.

I don't buy so many games as I'm working through my backlog and have Game Pass & PS+ but still bought around 5 titles.

Best Xbox game I have played this year? Probably Chants of Senaar.

For me Ultimate is till well worth it for the value it offers. But I play a lot. However this may change in future if any of those change e.g. how much I play, how much value they offer or how much they charge.

Tim Lamb still wearing the golf visor indoors I see. It's an old meme, but it checks out.

Looking forward to this.

Came to say a similar things to others. How can they be confused by a strategy that doesn't really exist, it flip-flops every 6 months.

The combat looks a bit janky but other than that I love the vibe. Shame it's not coming to Xbox, though they seem like sensible business decisions.

@smoreon Ah! thanks. It's part of FPS Boost, that's why I couldn't find patch info. Though i'd still like an official patch as they can up the resolution from 900p as boost mode uses the OG XBO settings.

@Balaam_ I kinda know what you mean but i'd also say that a large handheld screen like the the 8" in PS Portal can be comparable to watching on a big TV in terms of how much it fills your view. Obviously depends how close you sit to to your TV and screen size, likely not 77" but still big maybe 55" or 65".

Also mobile controls don't have to be that cramped as ROG Ally, Steam Deck and PS Portal prove. I agree it's not quite up to the big screen and controller experience, but it's not far off. Handhelds aren't the tiny pocket sized devices of yesteryear. We've come a long way recently.

While I prefer to play on TV, playing in bed on handheld is still great.

@evan23 I probably missed it!

EDIT: I can't seem to find news of a 60fps patch only people playing the unpatched 1.0 version at higher framerates. But perhaps my googling skills aren't up to snuff.

Would be nice. Do Unity next, it was a technical travesty at launch that rightly got called out, but behind that was a solid game that deserves a bit more praise.