Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@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).

Unfortunately I'm in a bit of a gaming rut lately. Haven't played any large game recently, and my PS5 has been collecting dust a bit. I'm hopeful regaining some of that joy again soon enough.

However, it's been kind of a blessing in disguise. During the pandemic year I played and beat so many games, so I was keeping up with game releases lately. I remember thinking to myself half a year ago that if I were to continue gaming this much, I would need to branch out and buy an Xbox to keep me playing.

Flash forward to the present and there are just too many games to play, my finances have taken a hit too, so I put the plan to save up for an Xbox on the backburner. And with the year being this bleak for Xbox, I'm glad then whenever I'll invest the video game console (hopefully) is in a better place.

Most businesses don't operate in terms of a 'Calendar' year - a year from Jan 1st to Dec 31st. They tend to operate within a 'Fiscal' (Financial) year. Any 12 month period can be considered. A Gaming 'year' for example could start in early June and run from E3 to E3 as E3 is often the first big Game event of the Financial year. EA are known for promising games in a Financial year and releasing them in that year regardless. BF:Hardline and ME:Andromeda both got a 'small' delay from their Holiday release to the 'new year' but still released in the same 'Financial' year as promised to Shareholders.

If we take E32021 to E32022, Xbox Studios released quite a few games - obviously not all were 'Exclusive', and 2 not released on their Console. These were MSFS, Age of Empires (PC), Psychonauts 2, Deathloop, Halo: Infinite, Forza Horizon 5 and Ghostwire: Tokyo. 4 for Xbox Console gamers. Unless I have missed any, Sony's output was 'nothing' new until Horizon: Forbidden West and GT7 - at least from their own studios. Looking ahead from E32022 to E32023, Sony have God of War: Ragnarok - nothing else 'new' confirmed from their own studios compared to Grounded, Pentiment, Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsport, Redfall & Starfield (and likely Deathloop & Ghostwire too which maybe 'new' to Xbox, but not 'new' games).

Now whether all/some/none appeal, that's down to personal preference. But in a '2yr' window from E32021 to E32023, I don't see a lack of releases or anything to indicate that Xbox Studios aren't creating games. Not all are 'exclusive' - some of that is MS's choice, others down to honouring agreements made prior to acquisition but are still releasing a range of titles varying in scale/scope. 2022 as a Calendar Year won't go down in the History books as a great year (not just in Gaming) for sure...

In the 4yrs since MS started expanding their portfolio of Studios, we have had a Pandemic and now 'war' that is impacting gaming. Compulsion, Undead Labs, Playground, Ninja Theory and the initiative were announced at E3 2018 with Oblivion, inXile and Double Fine joining later that year. Zenimax Media only joined in March 2021. When you consider the issues over the past few years, and the fact that games are taking longer and longer to make, these studios haven't had the time to build and release AAA games to the scale and quality we 'expect'. Ghost of Tsushima released 6yrs after Infamous 2nd Son, Horizon: ZD released nearly 5yrs after Killzone and another 5yrs between Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. Most of those studios have released games since joining Xbox - even if they were multi-platform games they were in the process of making. They still had to finish off those!

This is just the 'year' ahead and just first party - not including all those other games we know are coming at some point after E3 2023 - Not including anything from the 'Activision/Blizzard' deal which may well be completed before E3 23. Diablo IV could be on Game Pass day and date if the deal completes before it releases as MS would own the Publishing rights...

As for Game Pass, I see new games added every week. OK so they are not always the latest, greatest AAA games but there is always something new to try. Also not always 'day 1' releases but still 'new' to me. As I have a Laptop too, Game Pass Ultimate lets me play games where I want and without additional costs, carry on my progress etc and of course, also play PC only Game Pass games (like AoE4). I can't jump between God of War on PS4/5 and my PC, keep my progress, not have to buy multiple platform versions etc. Even if Game Pass didn't offer 1st Party AAA games day 1, its great for 'me' as I would never buy 'indies' and would forget about games I wanted to 'try' but when the price dropped. So having access to all those on both Console/Laptop is worth it for me. I'm not paying a great deal more than on Gold (especially with MS Reward points and other ways of earning GPU subscriptions - I basically get 1 month every quarter 'free' and occasionally buy months with 'reward' points to reduce the 'actual' cost to me even more.

There is always something 'new' to try, not always as 'exciting' as some big budget AAA game expected in a 'few' months or so, but always something 'worth' trying. With some getting enhanced via BC too, even some of the 'older' games are worth revisiting (or trying out for the first time).

I understand that not everyone has the same budgets, preferences or even time to play games so maybe not interested in 'trying' something new, different etc and want to spend their 'limited' leisure time on new AAA, 90+ metacritic scoring, state of the art graphically rich games (the 'best of the best') so Game Pass isn't for them. There are perfectly valid reasons why Game Pass isn't 'worth' it to them. There are however games being added every week from indie to AAA, from 1st party to 3rd party, from exclusives to multi-platform covering basically every genre from the past 20yrs+ of gaming so I would be very surprised if a gamer can't find 'something' to enjoy. Works great with Quick Resume too - not having to swap discs...

Each to their own of course and I'm sure that the year ahead as we think it will be now, could be 'quite' different in hindsight. Sony may well have a couple more of their own studio Games releasing before E3 2023 - maybe some of those 'Live Service' projects they have in development. A/B deal could go through and Game Pass be 'boosted' by an injection of A/B titles added. Both consoles could see games they expected get 'delayed' beyond E3 - not just their own, but from other Studio's/Publishers too. Point is, there is a constant supply of games - even if a particular publisher or even Studio has 'nothing' in the next year, there is still 'new' games releasing so there is always something new to play...

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

Kinda surprised at how positive the reviews are for As Dusk Falls. The game didn't look that interesting to me, but maybe it's better than it looks. Either way, I know what I'll be playing next!

@LtSarge I can understand the art style certainly isn't for everyone. I'm a big fan of those narrative style games so it was always high on my radar. Tough thing is that Stray also releases tomorrow guess I'll have divide my time between both consoles then

@LtSarge Only seen one negative review and that was fairly damning. Seems to be an outlier.

I have no interest in As Dusk Falls as I don't really enjoy these 'interactive' story book experiences. I wouldn't even class it as a game when all you are literally doing is 'choosing' which narrative path the story will show you.

I can understand why this may divide opinion - the fact that the Game-play aspect is pretty 'weak' at best and the artstyle too doesn't exactly need to be 'performant' with its more of a slide show presentation style. Its really whether or not the story itself is interesting and whether or not those choices you make feel impactful - which is 'subjective'.

To me, it seems a bit of an evolution of the Telltale games (Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead etc) - not episodic and with perhaps more impactful choices - as well as making it more into a 'party' experience too with up too 8 players voting on decisions...

Telltale 'experiences' were often popular (at least initially until they seemed to over saturate the market) but were often reviewed positively. To me, this seems like its following in those footsteps and therefore I can see why its reviewing 'similarly' to those and likely to appeal to those that also enjoyed Telltales experiences too. Like I said, they don't appeal to me so even if it was at 100 on Metacritic, I'd still not bother trying it despite having Game Pass Ultimate. There are many other games I would rather spend my time in than this but at least I could try it if I wanted...

cant judge a book by its cover but these days its generally i dont like the way it looks must be rubbish.

As dusk falls has the flow chart at the end of every chapter like Detroit did to actually show you choices and its made by ex Quantic dream devs so im interested

Played the first hour of As Dusk Falls and it's pretty good. The lack of animation does feel a bit jarring but the story became so engrossing that I stopped thinking about that. There are definitely a lot of choices and different outcomes like you'd find in a Quantic Dream title, and the flow chart at the end is neat. Looking forward to playing more of it.

I got to help set-up and test an Xbox Series X this week, one which had access to Game Pass.

My initial impressions were mixed. I hate the controller, in a way which goes beyond the basic "this is new and therefore strange" feeling I had about the Switch Pro controller. The shoulder buttons are too close together up top, meaning I'm having to overreach to hit them, and they're poorly defined in relation to the triggers. Makes quick action almost painful to play, and I died several times during the prologue of a game which A: I've played five times before, and B: I'd set to the lowest difficulty. I'm not sure it'll ever feel natural to hold, honestly. I do think the D-Pad is infinitely superior to that of the DualSense, but that's not saying much, considering how big of a crime against humanity the DualSense's D-Pad actually is.

Downloading games, updates and patches seemed to take a little longer than on PlayStation, as well. Not to any alarming degree, I hasten to add, but it was noticeably slower. Once I'd waded through the console's convoluted interface (which is such a Fisher Price Windows hangover, it's not even funny) I did like how available games came with "press here to install, or try via cloud gaming right now before committing to a 100Gb download" options. Even with major installs going on in the background, being able to take a quick peek at something and then add (or not add) it to the download queue was a godsend.

And, despite being a grumpy old man about the fiddly menu system, the range of its customisable settings is very impressive. As horrible and as off-putting as it all seemed at first, the back-end options were actually clear and easy enough to follow. Kudos to Microsoft for not locking everything down and allowing for as much flexibility as possible in this regard.

Disc drive is pretty loud, to the point of being a distraction if you're trying to watch a 4K Blu-Ray.

Game Pass has a heck of a lot to offer newcomers, and there are some surprisingly big names on there, but it's not the unbeatable library I was expecting. Without the integration of EA Play, I think it'd be kinda weak, but maybe that's just me. Again, the presentation of its content and ability to just randomly try stuff at the touch of a button (internet withstanding) is a major plus, but I think I'd end up getting frustrated by the selection's limitations if it was my primary method of picking games to play.

But, all in all, I reckon I can understand how some folks might have a preference for Xbox.

@RogerRoger I think the Series X controller is the best Xbox controller since the 360 one. It's such a massive improvement over the Xbox One controller, which had even worse bumpers. They had a plastic clicky feel to them and it felt absolutely awful pressing them. Not to mention that the bumpers and triggers had a glossy finish to them, while the Series X controller has a matte finish, which is so much better. When it comes to the D-pad though, I find the DualShock 4's and the Vita's to be infinitely better than Xbox's. The face buttons on Xbox are also concave while the ones on PlayStation and Nintendo controllers are more flat, which makes it harder to play games that require you to mash the buttons a lot, such as beat 'em ups or hack 'n' slash titles, on Xbox.

In terms of Game Pass, I think the reason why you find it underwhelming is because the overall quality of the offerings has gone down drastically this year. If you had looked at the output from January this year, it would've looked much more impressive. But sadly, more good games have left the service than have been added since the beginning of the year. It doesn't help either that Microsoft doesn't have many new first-party titles to add to Game Pass this year. But yes, Cloud Gaming is awesome and being able to test out titles before downloading them is such a great feature.

I'm surprised you didn't take a look at Xbox's backwards compatibility of original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles considering you love retro games. I think you would've been pleased with the titles available to purchase, like Sonic Generations (which I believe has 60 fps support on Series X) and Unleashed to name a few. It's definitely one of the better aspects of Xbox compared to PlayStation even though you can play PS1 and PS3 titles now through PlayStation Premium. But at least you're able to play games you already own or purchase them individually on Xbox.

I also would've liked to hear your thoughts on Series X's exclusive feature Quick Resume, which I adore. Not to mention the fast boot-up of the system. I don't even need to put it on rest mode, it boots up so fast and thanks to Quick Resume, I can continue playing right where I left off with up to five games of my choice.

On a side note, I've definitely come to enjoy my Series X more over the weeks since I purchased it. It's nice to have a good Xbox system along with my PS4 and Switch now. Will be playing a lot on all three of them for a long time to come.

@LtSarge i need to get a series X soon , had an S but that obviously ain’t enough

xbox is killing it this gen ; they’ve always been the better brand when it came to software and hardware (minus the RROD debacle ) . my ps5 feels useless , barren & outdated compared to series X . i don’t mean to come off as a fanboy , the ps5 is just really disappointing.

plus they acquired those game studious and all playstation has is …bungie

@LtSarge I'm glad the controller is an improvement as far as Xbox's lineage is concerned. My last experience with an Xbox controller was indeed with an Xbox360, many moons ago, and I remember it feeling better than this latest one did, but it's been too long for me to draw a direct comparison (and I've adapted to a DualShock4 and a DualSense since then, as well). I quite like the concave design of the D-Pad, but then I didn't play anything that relied on it, so I take your point and will reserve judgement. I do agree that, in terms of greatest D-Pads, the DualShock4 and PS Vita would be contenders, for sure.

Perhaps that's why I was underwhelmed by Game Pass, then. Thanks for explaining! Honestly, my only real exposure to the service has been via grass-is-always-greener articles and salty comment sections, so I was obviously going in with some very skewed expectations. It's interesting to note that this year, just as Microsoft have started placing a renewed emphasis on developing first-party games, things have been drained from Game Pass. Hopefully things'll pick up once said first-party games arrive!

Well, the simple answer to that is, it's not my Xbox. I was the "hey, you're a gamer, you'll know about these kinda things" hired help, so to speak. When picking games from Game Pass to download and test, I was told to deliberately pick things I'd played on PS5 before, so I could accurately judge how well they ran, controlled, how good they looked, etc. but beyond that, I wasn't calling any shots. I'm grateful for the thought, though, and the personalised recommendation regarding the Sonic games! I've seen Sonic Unleashed running on a Series X and it's phenomenal, so I'm more than a little jealous, if I'm being honest. If I'm polite about doing so, I'm sure I'll get to try it eventually. Same goes for a lot of other older games; there are some choice Star Wars titles from the sixth and seventh generations that are apparently supported, as well.

Didn't even know Quick Resume was a thing (so much for my expertise, eh?)! Whilst testing the games, I'd shut them down on the dashboard and restart them from scratch. That's just how I'm wired to operate, because I'm not the biggest fan of features like suspend and resume, but I'll pass along word of Quick Resume to the console's owner, thanks. I was impressed with the boot speed; not that I've ever minded waiting, but it definitely felt a few seconds faster than my PS5 in that regard.

I'm real glad you're enjoying your Series X so much, and hope you have fun working your way through Game Pass and playing the best, most technically advanced versions of current releases!

personally i find the xbox controller fine it works and i like it takes batteries better than internal rechargeable. The user interface is fine and it allows you to do what you need and frankly i think its better than ps5 interface but worse than ps4 interface. I also think gamepass is still great and still years later im never short of something to play its the only way i get my games on xbox

Also and the best thing is microsft rewards an easy £20 a month given you you bargain

@nomither6 Yeah I definitely like the comfort of buying physical and digital games as well as subscribing to Game Pass. Can't imagine being restricted to a digital-only system.

Series X should be more widely available now at normal retail price. Could be worth getting one once more worthwhile titles are added to Game Pass. Maybe this Autumn when Game Pass will get the new A Plague Tale and Scorn games in October.

@RogerRoger Ah I see. Hopefully you get to more freely explore the system if you ever get to test one again.

I picked up a Ps5 recently after gotta Series X in January. I have had an Xbox since late 2014 to fill gaps where Nintendo was lacking. And I was really impressed with the Forza series.

I enjoy all three systems for different reasons. There’s sentimental value with both Sony and Nintendo. I grew up in the 80s and both Sony and Nintendo are iconic brands from that decade, albeit Sony obviously not with video games yet at that time. And while Microsoft isn’t an endearing brand, they are an American company and I like to see them do well.

I am partial to Nintendo if for no other reason I loved Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior in the arcades and later the Gameboy and SNES. But I like how Nintendo as a company takes risks with innovation, focuses on fun and generally makes games approachable for gamers of all skill levels. But with the Switch, it’s hard to beat the portable aspect of the system- this is absolutely huge for me, in spite of the system lacking in specs.

Right now, I am ranking Ps5 slightly higher than Series X. Maybe it’s because it’s my new toy and things feel fresh. I personally like Nintendo exclusives better, but Sony’s games are nothing to sneeze at. While I love the extra features and functionality of the Dual Shock, I am not sure a
enough games take advantage of the said features to make a huge difference. Since I missed the PS4, I have a ton of games to choose from. Astro’s Playroom was a really nice freebie with my only “complaint” being that I want more, even if paid DLC.

As I mentioned above, I am a big Forza fan. I find Gran Tourismo Sport to be a more responsive game as far as controls. Thoroughly enjoying and feel as tho the two games somewhat cancel each other out. I have plenty to do before I even think about booting up GT7.

Series X. I find the controller more ergonomic, especially when compared to the elite series. It’s also pretty cool that expanding memory I so simple and it does get some bonus points for having a slightly larger internal drive. Quick resume is really cool. For a casual gamer, which I mostly am in spite of having all three systems, GamePass is a hard value proposition to beat. Forza Horizon 5 is a great mindless escape for me. Not the biggest Halo fan (just not very good at shooters in general), but it’s a cool series to have access to.

I use both systems as an entertainment hub. Since my TV is also a Sony, it’s pretty cool that when I turn on my controller, the TV turns on and goes to the correct input all in one stroke. It’s pretty cool too that Sony gave me six months of Apple TV even tho I already have it. Only downside Is no Paramount app.

At least from my perspective, I don’t think you can go wrong with any system this generation.

@rockodoodle I'm in the same boat as you, have all three systems and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Leave the console wars begind! I'm a big fan of the dual sense when it's used correctly though like in astro or returnal, cracking controller. Id love to see a nintendo take on adaptive triggers for whatever replaces the switch. If you never had a ps4 and you're new to ps5, the spiderman games are some brilliant fun and come in a bundle for 70 I think. Some amazing fun whilst still being pretty amenable to casual gaming sessions. Enjoy your new toys 😀