themightyant

At £800 I'll wait to see what Microsoft have before committing, but it looks great. For now i'll stick with Steam Deck OLED and the Cloud which suffices for enough of my uses.

Despite loving LoK and Soul Reaver 1 I never actually played the sequel or any others. I blame the fade to black and To Be Continued at the end of the first game just as it was heating up to an epic finale.

@FraserG small FYI. I thought “5-star reviews” was bad based off the headline as games are usually a 10 point scale. Almost skipped.

@Dan1283 Plenty of non-indie games are added:

COD MW 3 was yesterday, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess were last week.

Last month there was The Callisto Protocol, Octopath Traveller 1 & 2.

May had Lords of the Fallen, Hellblade 2, Immortals of Aveum, NHL 24 & Tomb Raider: DE.

That's JUST the last 3 months. Game Pass has plenty of variety.

@Titntin I don't think it is a major issue at all. I just though it was interesting and worth highlighting that this IS a difference between COD on Xbox and other platforms which seems counter to what they said to regulators repeatedly.

@Godot25 I'm sure they are covered legally, didn't suggest otherwise, but like the Game Pass increase it seems against the spirit of what they said to regulators, even if they are legally covered.

That all said as an Xbox Game Pass subscriber I like the 10% off DLC/MTX & Game Pass games, even if COD coins have no interest.

While I am happy for Xbox users I wonder how this tallies with their statements that there would be no advantages for COD on Xbox vs other platforms. This seems counter to that.

It doesn’t have to be this hard. Most major tech/product companies I can think of use some sort of numbering system to easily identify generations of a product, sometimes combined with letters or other differentiators.

Phones (Apple, Samsung, Google etc.) Computer parts (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) many cars (Volvo, BMW, etc) it’s an easily understood system. I just don’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t do the same.

Define “AI”. Fact is what we now call “generative AI” has been used in games for decades, it was just called different things like “procedural generation” and wasn’t as advanced as it is now. Technology advances, devs will use these tools. This is normal.

YES PLEASE!!! Make it so Bethesda.

@Romans12 Indeed... yet what they actually meant was everyone has been laid off. Even the most ridiculous PR spin would struggle to turn that into "restructuring". And the X post looks like it was written by AI. Shameful all around.

Does the story carry over from MW1&2 like the original trilogy?

@johnK Probably (not so) Smart Delivery™.

ALL these tiers make sense for some demographic. The trouble is it's already confusing for the average customer with 4 tiers (Core, Standard, PC, Ultimate) so I don't see them adding more soon. For starters Microsoft hasn't done a good job of highlighting the differences in a clear simple manner - it took Xbox fan Klobrille to make a comparison chart for example - but this should have been part of the official announcement and game pass page.

Perhaps once they launch their mobile store they will add to the tiers.

@IOI These are the sort of figures that are hard to comprehend.

For comparison Sony's whole Game & Network Services division bought in around $27.2 billion USD in 2023 (¥4,267.7 bn Yen) yet they only made around 6.8% profit margin ($1.86 bn USD / ¥290.2 bn Yen)

@FraserG @Vordus Wasn't aware of Diablo 4 not working either. Thanks for the heads up. Not a big deal for COD imho as the experience would be sub-par in a FPS, but a bigger shame for Diablo 4 that you can't just pick up and continue playing when away from home.

@FraserG Why? By my understanding that deal only said they could not release ABK games exclusively to their cloud platforms, it would not prevent them releasing on theirs or others at all.

I was going to complain about it apparently not coming to cloud. But to be fair twitch games like first person shooters don't work well on cloud for too many people. They likely don't want that to be people's first experience of cloud.

@Lucylu1983 @Sol76 @Aidax89 That's a tough position to be in. Fingers crossed you get the token asap.

@K1LLEGAL I think most rational people can accept that prices might go up, and they did rise $1 - $2 (About 15%) last year depending on the tier you are on. But they have now literally doubled the price of Day 1 Game Pass since acquiring ABK with this restructuring from $10 to $20. That is much harder to argue it wasn't a result of ABK, when it never doubled before in one year.

I have no doubt they are covered legally with all the slippery language they use and creative accounting, but that doesn't mean we have to suck it up. There is also the intent of what they were saying, which they have NOT stuck to at all.

@ALK they didn’t promise regulators, several times, that they weren’t going to raise prices in order to get a deal approved. Microsoft haven’t just raised prices they have doubled the cost of Day 1 games.

It’s impossible to deny they said they weren’t going to increase prices to regulators and then have effectively doubled the lowest price point to Day 1 Game Pass games in the last year from $10 to $20. The rest is scuttlebutt

Never watched it, and I heard it got better in season 2 and set things up nicely for Season 3. But that is a HUGE problem in itself. You can’t have 2 seasons of buildup to get to Halo in a Halo TV show.

This is potentially BIG news. GeForce Now is much better quality than Xcloud. Will have to test it to see if this holds up in practice, but if it does streaming to becomes much more viable.

Not having to download the multiplayer component, that I’ll never use, would be amazing. But I doubt this will happen much.

@Arcticpandapopz Yeah none of the DLC i've seen is on sale it's full price. I wanted to pick up a few but not at that cost. Not going to be swayed by FOMO.

Nice touch MS!

Not sure where you pulled that factoid from, it really isn't. Skyrim SOLD 60 million copies, Fallout 4 shipped 12 million copies in just the first 12 hours. Even Fallout 76 has more players. Compare that to 14 million players total and join the dots. (We'll also quietly ignore that Fallout Shelter was downloaded 170 million times)

It's true that Phil Spencer said it's the "most played next-gen (Xbox Series X/S) exclusive game from Microsoft"... but against what competition? Redfall? There really aren't many. He chose his words VERY carefully.

Hell Skyrim (24k), Fallout 4 (26k), & Fallout 76 (17k) all have more than double or triple the players in the last 24 hours on Steam than Starfield (7k) does today. Those are approximately 13, 9 and 6 year old games respectively vs less than a year. Most played Bethesda game ever... lol.

It didn't perform badly, but it certainly wasn't "a roaring success for Bethesda on every level"... sorry, that's flat out nonsense.

@MjJmediablogger I agree if looked on from OUR perspective as Xbox enthusiasts. But if you look at the wider market to people who might only play games on their very average phone then xCloud could be an upgrade.

@BAMozzy You're conflating sales and players, they aren't analogous. I'm didn't say 14 million PLAYERS was bad, it's not, but I did say Xbox would have wanted more considering Bethesda's status and pedigree. I stick by that. This was meant to be one of their biggest games this generation, so far it isn't and only just scrapes onto the list.

@FatGuyInLilCoat That's absolutely true. But 14 million still seems low for their flagship game of the last few years.

Some strong numbers, but Starfield being less than everything except State of Decay 2 is not the result Xbox will have wanted.

@HeavyHoggJP To do screenshots you have to first upload them to a service that allows sharing to third party websites like imgbb.com and then when you upload it should give you the BB code (Bulletin Board code) to add here. e.g. [ img ]url-of image[ /img ] (without the spaces)

Hardly surprising it’s cloud and everyone’s mileage will vary based on their internet infrastructure. Plus people have different tolerances to frame skips and lag.

Worked fine for me in slower paced games, but basically unplayable for anything fast paced. It’s a nice addition to the service in a pinch, but not a replacement for me.

@Medic_alert while I personally wouldn’t want it I think choice is good and an ad-supported tier makes sense to get more people on board, especially on things like Fire TV.

This could in fact help us on higher tiers, as more people on the service means more money in the coffers to stay profitable. The alternative is to keep raising prices, reduce value or both.

The trouble is they already have too many tiers, it’s confusing for the average consumer.

@HeavyHoggJP Bizarre. I just checked and it’s still 15,000 here with a 1,000 Level 2 discount. I can only assume that they have different regional pricing OR they have already increased this in some region. Are you 100% sure that is for CORE and not standard or something else?

I’d probably try and maximise my games with

• Skyrim
• The Orange Box
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition (or maybe Halo: MCC)

@Scirius there is actually SOME replayability, as you unlock different narrators for future playthroughs, adding more depth to the story. While personally there isn’t quite enough there to compel me to replay it in full (I tried) it will be for some.

I enjoyed it, but it didn’t live up to the hype. In most respects it’s a less memorable game than the original. Still a solid 7.5 for me.

@Bluerangervegeta I didn't know that, but how do they stop you using Xbox credit through rewards, as it just gets added to your account balance same as any money?

@FraserG Always appreciate the transparency, thanks. It's also why I mentioned SEO above, headlines are really important and hard to get right.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner While that's true, we know it's coming to Xbox, that's a given as it's on the site. I think stating Game Pass is important.

@FraserG Thanks. It's all a mess really. Previously we all knew exactly what they meant if they said something was coming to Game Pass. Now it will have to be something like "coming to Game Pass Ultimate, PC and legacy Console tiers, but not Standard or Core, at least not immediately" to accurately convey the information and not mislead.

What a messy situation they have created. Non-enthusiasts are going to be so confused.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Agreed, though it will make titles even longer, which is already a struggle to keep them short and fit + SEO friendly.

@FraserG Perhaps a middle ground would be making it clear in the body of the article where you have more space.

Also worth noting that the auto-redeem wasn't the cheapest way to get Game Pass Ultimate through rewards as it cost 10500 points or 350 points per day. Whereas renewing 3 months Game Pass CORE for 15000 points would get converted to 50 days GP Ultimate which is only 300 points per day. This won't last so use it while you still can.

It was inevitable that they would raise prices, that it why i've always tried to keep 3 years stacked. I actually did this again last week before all this hoo-haa.

But taking away the ability to redeem Game Pass directly would suck, if true and not another poor bit of communication. Though surely it should be possible to redeem Xbox credit and pay for Game Pass that way, but no doubt at much higher rates.

All in all Rewards have been being nerfed for a while now, I no longer do the dailies on Bing etc. it's just not worth the time anymore.

You can actually get a month for around 9,000 on MS rewards by using a combination of things you mentioned. It's worth noting as it isn't obvious. To do this you have to specifically redeem 3 months of Game Pass CORE for 15,000 points, which surprisingly converts to 50 days of Game pass Ultimate. That is 300 points per day or 9,000 / 9,300 a month, based on 30 or 31 day months. This is the current cheapest way as far as I know.

To compare other options this is how many reward points it costs to convert to Game Pass Ultimate per day. For now anyway.

• 1 month Core = 340 points per day
• 3 months Core = 300 points per day <-- BEST VALUE
• 1 month Ultimate ≈ 400 point per day
• 3 months Ultimate ≈ 389 points per day
• 1 month Ultimate auto-renew ≈ 350 points per day

(based on 30 day month)

@theduckofdeath Thanks for clarifying. BTW if you still have points left I believe the best deal you can get for Ultimate through Rewards is to redeem 3 months Core (15,000 points), which surprisingly still converts to 50 days Ultimate which makes it 300 points per day as opposed to 385ish per day for 3 months Ultimate (35,000) and 350ish a day for auto-renew 1 month Ultimate (10,500). But I don't know how long that will still last, grab while you can!

I feel you on not maximising rewards points on Bing etc lately. But I don't see it as laziness. Since they changed this it is much more time consuming than it used to be and not worth the time spent any more for me.

I almost never pre-order on any platform. There are a few exceptions like Zelda but it's 0-2 a year max, but only from studios I am 99% convinced won't dial it in and won't have a poor day performance. That is very few studios.

I can't remember the last Xbox game I pre-ordered, certainly would have been before Game Pass, maybe even as far back as Halo Reach on the 360.

@Arcticpandapopz Thanks for the added insight, wasn't aware of that movie. Perhaps it looks better once you get used to it, but first impression is urgh! Still interested as I liked the last game, was fun.

What is up with that art style? Weird boggle eyed look and looks like they've been moulded from Play-doh!