Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

I'm definitely playing Hi-Fi Rush this weekend, that looked great!

@ManifoldCuriosity same thing happened to me, mostly played old games and just sold it, congrats on the Series S though.

@LiamCroft I've just had a quick go through Xcloud and it's great fun, kind of like Crypt of the Necrodancer but you time your attacks to the beat and it looks fantastic. I can see this being a popular one

@LN78 @Bentleyma From what I've understood the Nintendo version is the N64 rom. And the emulator has multiplayer baked into it. The Xbox version is a new version and therefore doesn't have that option.

Don't know if that is true, but thats what I've read from multiple sources around the time when Goldeneye got officially announced again.

@Bentleyma I'd argue its worth it just for the games available through backwards compatibility, plus it's very easy and great to use for emulation should you want to

HiFi Rush looks very cool. Otherwise - I liked the format and general execution of the Developer Direct but none of the other games shown are interesting to me (although Forza looks excellent from a tech point of view).

@Bentleyma I believe Nintendo own the IP and Rare own the Assets/code - so unless they came to some mutually beneficial solution to 'BOTH', the game would be stuck in Limbo hell.

Nintendo are using the 'Original' N64 game code/assets and using their 'online' system to bring online to the game - as Switch Lite for example isn't really designed for Split Screen co-op. No disrespect to Switch, but its not a 'high' res console and running '4' instances of the MP - albeit at 'quarter' resolution, maybe too much for the Switch and definitely not 'ideal' to play on its built in tiny screen. It perhaps makes more sense for Nintendo to switch to Online MP.

Rare/MS are using an 'updated' version and keeping to the 'Original' couch co-op MP suite the game was designed to offer keeping that authentic Goldeneye 'couch co-op' MP experience that made it so popular back in the day and Xbox certainly has the 'horsepower' to run up to 4 instances of the MP simultaneously in high res on Large 4k TV's at a decent frame rate. It doesn't 'need' to add Online to something that never had Online.

Nintendo can now offer the 'Original' Goldeneye made by Rare with a 'new' way to play the MP, Rare offer the Original Goldeneye 'experience', inc the authentic couch co-op, but with a 'new' make-over. Nintendo are offering 'Goldeneye N64', and MS are offering 'Goldeneye Remastered' and 'neither' can 'sell' to make money off the other's owned licenses. If Nintendo sold Goldeneye, they'd owe Rare money for their code/assets and if MS sold it, they'd owe Nintendo for using their IP - so both (I believe) are ONLY available on their Sub service - as well as through purchasing Rare Replay as that isn't 'selling' Goldeneye specifically but a collection of Rare made games.

It was a case of negotiating a way to bring Goldeneye back without 'screwing' over the other and 'profiting' directly from anothers License. If you 'sub' to Nintendo or Xbox services, you are subbing to access a 'collection' of games, you are not 'buying' a license for 'Goldeneye/Goldeneye: Remastered' and therefore some money has to go to License holders etc - same as those who play through Rare Replay as you buy a 'Rare Replay' License, not a Goldeneye specific license.

@LN78 sadly its not that version, it just looks to be an emulated version of the N64 game

@LN78 As far as I know, NO its not the XBLA one that was at one time planned - that had 'online' MP support too. I don't know what they are using - just that it supports 'modern' control schemes, 4k, 16:9 support etc and obviously no online support.

I don't know that I'll bother playing anyway. I am thinking it maybe better to keep my Rose tinted memories intact of the countless hours I spent playing MP with friends/family - often until stupid o'clock in the morning, beating 'every' mission on 00 agent to unlock 'every' cheat/bonus/extra etc, instead of being 'disappointed' as it hasn't aged well. The amount of hours I spent playing Jet Pac, Knightlore, Sabrewulf etc, even games like Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark etc but when I bought Rare Replay, it wasn't a pleasant 'nostalgic' trip back so maybe better to keep the memories intact.

Its great that 'old' games are still playable on modern Hardware, preserved for new generations interested in the 'history' who missed out first time around, but I lived through it all and experienced them when they were 'fresh', cutting edge and nothing else like it around, being 'blown away' by how every character was recognisable as the 'actors' face but now looks terrible because graphics have moved on a LOT.

@BAMozzy no its definitely not the XBLA version as it looks nothing like this (below). Looking at the trailer it seems to be the N64 game emulated with some plugins for widescreen etc. The telltale signs are the hud text which is very low resolution, you can see the character LOD models when further from the camera and there's been no mention of 60fps from what I've seen.

@LN78 At the time, I had no issues with the N64 Trident and actually had more issues with my DS1 in terms of Comfort, but my 'Golden' N64 Goldeneye Controller was my 'number 1' controller for that era.

The last time I played N64 though must of been around 2005-ish as I had given it to my 'youngest' to play (he beat Mario 64 at around 3yrs old) and played a couple of MP matches on Goldeneye but even that has 'positive' memories because it was 'fun' times with my kids.

Now, my youngest is gaming on PC's, has his own place too and being over 50 now, not so interested in 'couch competitive MP' or tarnishing the memories, most of which are 'better' due to the company, the era etc more so than the game itself which was the catalyst that brought people together to build great memories.

@carlos82 As I said, I don't know for definite what version they are 'releasing' but I do know it isn't the XBLA version that leaked. Difficult to always tell from a trailer as you don't know how it was captured and/or what compression may be used for example. No trailer on my laptop ever looks as 'good' as playing Natively on Series X/PS5 on my 4k HDR TV - especially if the video is only 'HD' Youtube Quality!

Whether it 'looks' better/worse than the 'leaked' XBLA version is almost redundant as we won't get to play the XBLA version, just like we didn't get the 'visuals' promised by Watchdogs, or the 'Puddle' quality in Spider-Man in that one area - things can and do change. Its still up to you to decide whether you still want to play the 'versions' you can and if so, which platform you want to play on - if you have a Choice..

Just played up to St.Petersburg on Goldeneye. Seems weird playing it on an Xbox. Haha.

Hi-Fi Rush is sooooo addicting and such a brilliant gem. It feels like a mix between Devil May Cry and a Rhytm game and all in a cool cartoony art style. You don't even have to be good at it to play the game. The attacks will always land on the Rhytm you just get bonus points. I would higly suggest trying it if you guys have gamepass.

As suspected and confirmed by the developer, Goldeneye is the N64 rom emulated using RARE Replays existing N64 emulator.

I had a quick go this morning and by an large its pretty good, it does have some minor slowdown here and there and is 30fps, plus the very low resolution text is a disappointment. Oh and weirdly it reminds me of a PS1 game as the environment kind of wobbles.

On the plus side the controls have been adapted well, much better than the Switch version and by default the aiming locks in the centre of the screen if you like that

@LN78 yeah its certainly better then playing it on an N64 game these days and by and large does look nice and they did a great job with the controls on this version, though I'll probably turn the sensitivity up a little up.

Overall its great that modern audiences are getting to play it and us older folk have a convenient way of doing so again

Played a bit of GoldenEye on my Series X and I have to say this game looking back is frustrating as hell. I understand that this game is a pioneer in console FPS, and I did play it back in the day but after playing modern FPS games the past few years Borderlands, CoD, Halo, Doom age hasn't been kind to this game. The first level alone has some annoying points. The fact that visibility is so bad in the distance yet enemies can see you and start shooting you as clear as day from the same distance. Then as I am sneaking around taking out guards, one of them hits an alarm in the distance alerting the whole camp to my location. Don't get me wrong I understand game design was what it was back then.

However the Multiplayer is still a blast. Played it for several hours with my son and we were just having fun I can't wait till I have the guys over for some GoldenEye madness.

I also like how the controls feel with the Xbox controller now, more along the lines of modern FPS games, that was one main reason I couldn't get back into it on the N64 that single stick controller just felt wrong with a FPS but again I realized that's what they had at the time.

Overall though I am enjoying my time with it, I just hope they fix the achievements.

@Lavalera alright you convinced me.

Attacks landing outside the rythm has sold me. Will make it more playable at my own pace.

Desperately wish I had Hi-Fi Rush, looks brilliant. Dare I say it… Xbox has games? While their ecosystem is still more open than Playstation and their output is also on PC, I can totally see the appeal of the Series X. If Starfield sticks the landing then even ignoring ActiBlizz, they seem to be back on track. It’s genuinely impressive how much of an impression Hi-Fi Rush seems to have made on the community given it released the same day it was announced and had both Forspoken and Dead Space in its vicinity.

@nessisonett Yeah I really hope this is the win they needed to get back on track. After Halo Infinite which disappointed on the mp part and a pretty empty 2022, except pentiment and the full release of grounded.

I play on both consoles, my wife also has a switch which isn't really my thing, so I want all consoles to do well. And 2023 seems to look like the year Xbox should finally take off and all the acquisitions made in the past years should pay off. It seems to be the Bethesda acquisition which will set it all in motion. Hi-fi Rush, Redfall and Starfield are all from Bethesda. So for Microsoft and Xbox fans it was a great buy.
It sucks for people who only game on Playstation or Nintendo who are Bethesda fans though.

In the end I think it's beneficial for us gamers that all brands are successful. This kinda forces Sony and Microsoft to keep improving things and make things as consumer friendly as possible. A good time to be a fan of gaming

@nessisonett I think some of the issues over the past couple of years is that a good number of 'Xbox' games released were either not on Xbox Consoles (Age of Empires, Deathloop, Ghostwire) or were 'multi-platform' releases (Psychonauts 2, Minecraft Dungeons/Legends) so 'actual' Console Exclusives, especially AAA, were 'light' on the ground. When people 'discuss' Xbox in 2022, they only tend to only think of Pentiment and even Grounded often gets overlooked as it was in Beta for quite some time before full release. But they did ship Ghostwire and then Deathloop to Xbox later in the year.

If you go 'E3 21 to E3 22, MS shipped quite a few games - just the majority released in the first half of that year, and it looks like E3 22 to E3 23 has a number of big releases too - just the latter half of the Year - over that '2' yr Period, they could release over 10 games. I know Sony had a 'good' 2022 with H:FW, GT7 and GoW:R, but they didn't have anything 'new' (not counting 're-releases' of older games now on PS5) whilst Xbox had games like MSFS, FH5, HI etc - although they did get 'Deathloop' and of course could play Psychonauts 2. They also benefited from Ghostwire in 2022 - another 'Xbox' game, so of course that didn't help the perception but its still another 'release' from an Xbox owned Studio.

I haven't even counted Goldeneye and AoE2, both of which are playable on Xbox consoles this month because both are 'old' games originally built for and released on a different generation hardware. Something 'different' to paying a Studio to keep a game off a 'current' gen console for a set time before releasing. But even though 'Deathloop' released first on PC/PS5, its still a 'brand new' game released by MS in the previous 18months or so.

Since E3 21, not even 2yrs ago, MS has released MSFS (console version), Psychonauts 2, FH5, H:I, Deathloop, Ghostwire, AoE4, Pentiment, Grounded, As Dusk Falls, Hi-Fi Rush (11 games) with at least Minecraft legends and Redfall expected before E3 23 - not counting Goldeneye, AoE 2 etc also released for the 'first' time on Xbox consoles - certainly 'averages' over 1 game per 'quarter' and more like a game every other month on average...

I know that if you 'only' have a Series S/X console, the fact that some games weren't playable and still not playable doesn't help you feel like MS is releasing games and with some on Playstation too, that doesn't make you feel like you are getting a 'traditional' first party game as they are expected to be exclusive...

It was clear from the start that MS's acquisitions would take a 'while' to actually start Producing games Exclusively for Xbox. Most, if not all the Studio's that MS acquired had games in development and had 'promised' to release on PS - if not timed exclusivity (like Deathloop, Ghostwire etc) then at least simultaneous releases like Psychonauts 2, Wastelands 3, Outer Worlds etc. As those studio's had to finish off those projects first, it was always going to take 'time' for those to even start making games 'exclusively'.

Bethesda/zenimax hasn't been a MS owned group of Studio's for 2yrs yet - only officially taking over in March 2021. At that time, the 'next' 2 games expected were timed exclusives to PS5, so obviously wasn't going to make a big difference to MS for a 'few' years at least. It does 'benefit' Game Pass owners of course as they can play Zenimax Studio's back catalogue - Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishhonored, Prey etc - but 'new' releases were always going to take 'time'.

Sony Studio's don't all pump out games every couple of years. Ghost of Tsushima released 6yrs after 2nd Son, Horizon:ZD was nearly 5yrs after Shadowfall and most seem to take at least 4yrs between games, yet somehow expect MS to make games of 'equal' quality/polish in much less time. They only started adding Studio's in 2018. At E3 2018, they announced Compulsion, undead Labs, Playground, Ninja Theory and created the Initiative from scratch - not yet 5yrs ago, then added Obsidian, InXile and Double Fine later that year. Also as some are developing games with UE5, that didn't release until 'relatively' recently so may impact development as the Engine gets updated through its development...