Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@BAMozzy The games didn't just start being developed only when Microsoft came in and bought them. A developer doesn't just sit there waiting on somebody else to buy them before they start making a game. I have a hard time believing Ninja Theory wasn't already making Hellblade 2 at worst right after Hellblade released 5 years ago. Same goes for others they acquired.

It was 3 years in between Gears of War 4 and Gears 5. Even if you go by your theory that every single game now takes longer to make, there still should be something to show by now, and it's not like they are foreign to the Series X since they upgraded Gears 5 and developed the Hivebusters DLC.

I'm not expected Microsoft to churn them out faster than Sony. I never said that. But to churn out something more than a handful of substantial games per year, or in this case a handful of substantial games in at least an 18 month period since they will have released no major titles this year on their own. I'm not counting Deathloop or Ghostwire Tokyo as they are games already made a while ago that are just being ported.

The biggest issue I have is we were saying the same stuff last year. They have a bright future. They are planning for the long haul. These games will come out eventually and things will be great. Maybe, but eventually it would be nice to play even a handful of them and have any idea about any of the others coming out instead of continuing with blind faith. What's to say we won't be saying the same things again next year?

The fact that none of the major games outside of Redfall and Starfield are coming out within the next 12 months leaves you wondering when they will ever come out. Basically having very little in the way of updates (outside of a nice trailer for Hellblade 2 earlier in the year) for any of those games is disappointing to say the least. These timed exclusives (some laughably only 3-9 months) and third party titles can only be bandaids for so long before Xbox needs to step up and have their now 23 developers release a substantial amount of games. I'd possibly be a little more lenient if they didn't have so many.

@colonelkilgore Honestly, I was only half paying attention by the middle of the show. Once it got to that point, I had a good idea we weren't going to see anything substantial until Starfield closed out the show. Even the beginning had me concerned when they jumped from Redfall then shortly after to a game with talking guns.

Do I think the extended future for them is bright? Sure, but I also don't think they deserve praise just because they had almost all gameplay in the trailers this time around. They have 23 developers and we're still in almost the same place we were last year with Xbox aside from a few games. I don't have that issue with Sony and my PS5.

@KilloWertz totally agree… there’s very little doubt that the future of Xbox is strong, it’s just still in that waiting period at the moment though.

I don’t think the Xbox team had a good show. It isn’t because Xbox is a bad console brand. Everything is easier.

The current Xbox presentation looked boring compared to the showcases they made during the 7th generation (Xbox 360).

The modern presentation looked like a teenager who grew up and exchanged a pair of jeans and t-shirt to an ordinary office suit.

There isn’t anything bad about being an adult, but video games are all about youth and energy. When I watched the showcase I always thought: ‘Oh, ok, the next world premier is coming, but why is it so boring?’

I watched the early Xbox 360 showcase soon before and it is still amazing.

@gotDvamp yeah they struck absolute gold back in the 360 days. It just so happened that they picked a load of absolute killer new IP’s within 2 or 3 years of each other… and either locked them down as permanent console exclusives (Halo, Gears of War etc.) or timed exclusives but with no indication of a PS3 release (Mass Effect, Bioshock etc.).

As a result I pretty much exclusively gamed on my 360 for a good few years that gen… I just have no idea how they completely 180’d by the end of the 360 and for the whole of the xbone.

@colonelkilgore

I was amused like hell when Microsoft decided to repeat Sony’s behavior soon after Xbox One was announced.

Oh, dear gamers, we are making not just a console, but the whole media center with TV and Kinect in one box. It was funny because at the same time Sony refused to do that with PS4.

As a result, PS4 looked like the Xbox 360 during the launch if we are talking about marketing. But the Xbox One looked like PS3 at its early age. That’s a joke!

@KilloWertz Those studio's were working on Games that released on Playstation too. Outer Worlds, Wastelands 3, Psychonauts 2...

Undead Labs and Playground have only made Xbox games anyway but Playground had to build up their '2nd' Studio to make Fable as well as make Fable and we know State of Decay 3 is coming from Undead Labs. Compulsion haven't shown anything yet since joining. We know the Initiative is working on Perfect Dark with Crystal Dynamics but all these are NOT expected in the next year.

InXile, Obsidian and Double Fine were all working on Multi-platform releases when they were acquired. That's why you got Wastelands 3, Outer Worlds and Psychonauts 2. Its obviously too early to announce what inXile or Double Fine are working on because whatever they are making is not expected within the next year. Ninja Theory may well of been making Hellblade 2, although would still of been contracting most of their Staff team out to complete 'contracted' work (how they funded the 'small' team making Hellblade). Hellblade 2 would of started development on UE4 before being switched over to UE5 which only 'released' this year out of Preview (Early access started May21 and 'Production ready' build entered preview in February 22). Whether or not this has caused issues to resolve, moving from 'old school' methods of game building to Nanite/Lumin based methods isn't a 'simple' conversion.

As for the Coalition, they released Hive Busters and Gears Tactics in 2020. Gears Tactics still counts as a full Game release. Since then, they have also been involved in the development of UE5 and the Console Versions of that UE5 Matrix demo. They are supposedly working on a new IP and Gears 6, but whatever they are working on, its clear that they are not expected to release a new game before E3 next year either.

In the last year, we have had MSFS, Halo Infinite, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, Deathloop & Ghostwire: Tokyo - that's roughly a quarter of Xbox owned Studios released a game in the past year. I appreciate that for 'Xbox' Console gamers, it hasn't benefited them because of 'pre-acquisition' agreements but that's still 6 MS made games. In the next year, we have Forza Motorsport, Redfall, Starfield, Minecraft RTS, Grounded and Pentiment (the last 2 by Obsidian) - as well as potentially Deathloop & Ghostwire to Xbox Console. That's nearly half of the Studio's. On top of that Zenimax Online (an Xbox Studio) continues to work on and expand ESO and Fallout 76 is getting an Expansion and Rare, who may well be struggling with Everwild are still supporting Sea of Thieves and its 30m players...

That's half the studio's have released something within the last year or about to release something in the next year. We know that Perfect Dark, Fable, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, Hellblade 2, State of Decay 3, Everwild etc are more than year off but still in development, still coming to Xbox/Game Pass Day 1. We don't yet know what Compulsion or inXile are making but everyone else has either released something within the past year or so and maybe too soon to 'confirm' their next project or has something coming in the near future. Nothing that would be at a Show focussing on the Games we can actually play within the 'next' year.

I don't want Flashy CGI trailers that tell you nothing about the Game other than give you a Title to let you know what that Dev team will be working on for the next 5yrs, keep seeing the same games at E3 year after year until eventually it releases.

As I said, I have a much clearer idea of the year ahead now from Xbox and a good idea of what's to come beyond that. We still have little idea of Sony's future content - apart from comments about all their Live Service games in development and plans to release on PC.

Another aspect to all of this is that MS have another Show today with all new Content to show. That could mean they intend to show things and give updates on some projects that are more than a year off or just alternative looks at the games coming this year, I don't know - I expect a bit of both. Maybe today you'll get some of the info you seem to 'need'. Over half the 23 studios have released in the past year or will release content in next year and we still know about a lot of games in development to come mid 2023+

Bought Far Cry 6 and Cyberpunk 2077 on Xbox Series X.

Oh and I also bought a Series X.

It honestly doesn't feel like anything special. It's also so stupid, you buy a new console in order to play older games better. Game Pass is still mediocre. I haven't subscribed since like March and they still haven't added anything that I really want to play.

Obviously this is a long-term investment, but I think it still goes to show what an absolute disaster this year has been (and will be) for Microsoft. You buy a new console and there's literally nothing to be excited about.

Hopefully either Cyberpunk or Far Cry will at least entice me to use it more during the coming weeks.

@LtSarge Oh to have the money to make such a large purchase and then moan about it 😂

@nessisonett I'll be sure to revise my behaviour for next time.

Reminder: Force myself to be content with every purchase I make.

Oh darn, I shouldn't have bought a Wii U then.

Or an Xbox One.

Hmm.. it's almost like the products you buy won't always make you happy. Who would've thought.

@LtSarge Not looking to argue or anything, as it's your money and you can make whatever choices you want, but I will say what I thought before when you said you were buying a Series X over at Pure Xbox. It is cheaper, but it sure seemed like you were much more interested in the PS5 given that you had soured on Xbox, so I would have thought it would have made more sense just to put that money for the Series X towards a PS5. You also made it seem like a big reason why you were buying a Series X was so you can be more active in the Xbox/Pure Xbox community again, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Again, not looking to argue or anything. Just finally typing out my thoughts I had from the weekend. I do hope you end up being happy with your purchase in the end. I just figured you would have gotten a PS5 first since you seemed a lot more interested in PlayStation right now. Also, there's no guarantee there will ever be a PS5 Pro even though the internet likes to throw out the rumor on occasion.

As for Cyberpunk, it is what it should have been at release. I highly enjoyed it. I haven't played my copy of Far Cry 6 yet.

@LtSarge i think Xbox is gonna pass playstation this gen. . the PS5 isn’t good either .

@LtSarge I think the biggest thing it highlights is how Halo Infinite being delayed another year would've fitted in well. Honestly in hindsight it feels like Halo Infinite's release timing was solely to destabilize CoD and Battlefield for a short enough time that Activision became part of Game Pass and EA stayed in the Game Pass deal.

theres lots of games on xbox to play now if youve already got them on playstaion or you dont like them thats different.

It doesnt mean they dont exist

@nomither6 What’s not to like. Games are plentiful. They play well, look good and load fast.

@KilloWertz Well the thing about me is, which you probably already know, is that I change my mind quite frequently. Sometimes I love Xbox, sometimes I hate Xbox. Sometimes I love PlayStation, sometimes I hate PlayStation. And I don't think that's weird because new stuff occur all the time which will change your view of the brand.

But you're right, I would've most likely enjoyed playing on a PS5 now. It's just that I'm still using my PS4 a lot while my Xbox One hasn't seen much use at all lately, so I figured why not buy a new system to incentivise me to play more on Xbox. Not to mention that Series X was cheaper and I really wanted to have a modern console to play games well on without having to worry about performance. So in the end, it made more sense to get a new Xbox now and a PS5 later. I'm definitely not buying both around the same time. Even if a PS5 Pro doesn't come out, hopefully the availability of the standard PS5 will increase and in turn the price will go down. That's also acceptable to me.

@nomither6 I don't know if that will happen this generation, but all the building blocks are definitely there. It's just going to take a long time for Xbox to pass PlayStation, but that's why I'm looking at Series X as a long-term investment. I'm probably going to enjoy it a lot more a couple of years down the line with more frequent first-party releases.

@Grumblevolcano Yeah I mean, we did get a fair amount of first-party releases during the second half of 2021 so it would've made sense if Microsoft had delayed Halo Infinite. But obviously they couldn't have known that most of their exclusives this year would get delayed. Otherwise they probably would've let 343 taken a bit more time with Infinite.

@trev666 Of course but there haven't been any new first-party releases this year or any noteworthy additions to Game Pass since March. It's been absolutely dry. Typically when I buy a new console, I want to play new games and not old ones. I would've loved to have booted up my Series X and played Redfall now, but that's sadly not the case.

@LtSarge Infinite and Starfield could've easily coexisted, they're very different games. The Activision stuff is what would've clashed (MW2 and Overwatch 2).

Personally I like my series X it allowed me to play Forza horizon 5 and Halo infinite at launch and many other games as well on gamepass.

And most of all i didnt pay a penny for any of it Microsoft Rewards paid for everything and its still earning me money

@LtSarge xbox has a lot of releases coming in the future compared to playstation . they’ve acquired so much as well , and the series X is more powerful and has more storage space before you’d need an expansion .

so the futures looking like it’s in xbox favor so far