Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@KilloWertz The scary thing is that, without the Zenimax acquisition, they wouldn't even have had this to look forward to. Or Starfield. Or Hi-Fi Rush.

All my friends who I usually play these sorts of games with bounced when they saw the scores, so I decided to try Redfall solo and an hour was enough. It has a lot of stuff that I really like in games, but just feels genuinely unfinished. Some things like the weird power point slide show cutscenes you can write off as a style choice, but you can't really do the same for how bad the game feels, how poor the animations are or how the AI barely reacts to anything. Feels like its still a good year away from being ready, but I guess Xbox Suits didn't want to push it any further given Xbox is kind of a wasteland for first party stuff, but I dunno if releasing something that feels half finished is the better option.

I have no idea how true this is but apparently people have checked Phil Spencer’s Xbox profile and he played Redfall for 37 minutes before uninstalling. In fairness to him, that is 12 minutes longer that one of my work colleagues who had been excited for the game all year.

@colonelkilgore Just you wait, his final year stats will tell a different story.
Inb4 Gamer Phil leaves his machine on overnight, well over several nights to be exact.
https://www.gamesradar.com/even-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-cant-s...

@CaptD 😂 in fairness to him, there are measurable by way of the cheevos he popped on Vampire Survivors… he won’t be getting any of those if he just leaves Redfall running for 641 hours.

@colonelkilgore @CaptD Judging by the SkillUp review if he did leave it running for 641 hours he'd be ok to just leave it paused as no vampires are going to come and get him 😂

Its funny, because this has all reflected poorly on Xbox for obvious reasons, but the truth of the matter reflects poorly on Xbox in a completely different matter. I learnt from people like Jez Corden that part of Xbox's sales pitch when they hoover up things like Zenimax is that they take a hands off approach, this means even if Bootey and the rest of the Xbox leads saw the ship heading for the iceberg, they took away their own power to steer the ship away to safety. In contrast, Jim Ryan and his people apparently cancel a huge amount of projects every year, to protect that Sony seal of quality (whether you agree with that or not is a different discussion).

Xbox want to present this forward thinking, non hostile, brand so the idea that they would hoover up studios but not do the EA approach probably seemed like a great idea for all parties involved three years ago or whenever they were acquired and Xbox wasn't quite as much of a wasteland as it is today. However, Redfall is a disaster for Xbox because their output is so slim, so I wouldn't be surprised if Xbox try to rip up this contract and restructure this, and all future deals, with this in mind.

Whether it'll pay off in them having a heavier handed approach in future is also another question, but you have to think had they given themselves the power to do so, Redfall would have been either long cancelled, rebooted or just simply delayed.

After this Redfall debacle, I'm going to laugh my butt off if Spencer starts talking about how great Spider-Man 2 will be, like he did with GoW Ragnarok. Are we sure he's not actually just a really effective double agent who was turned by Sony at some point?

That explains quite a bit. Like why they allowed Rare to waste years on something like Everwild, lol.

Sony's tight managerial style doesn't surprise me at all. I know it has also been mentioned that Nintendo has turned down more than a few pitches from Monolith Soft, suggesting they're also on the stricter end of the spectrum with regard to their own developers.

This all backs up my feeling that the main problem with Xbox's first-party output problem is on a corporate managerial level. They can snap up the most talented developers in the world, but without providing proper oversight and direction, the talents of those people are being wasted.

Unfortunately for Xbox fans, this also means that, no matter how much money they throw at the problem, their output will remain inferior to Playstation and Nintendo.

The thing is though if Redfall was a critical success then Phil would be saying "We worked hard with Arkane to deliver this great game". All companies would spin this the way that it suits them.
Of course some people may say that they wished they took the same approach with Platinum and just let them get on with that 2014 game (I don't remember the title ATM).

Quite interesting the different approaches between Ms And Sony, just think if Sony hadn't said "This is awful" about Demon's Souls and just published it worldwide anyway then we could have been looking at From Software being a first party studio today..

Anyhoo they better be throwing everything they have (including part of that 69bln ) at Starfield to make sure it isn't a pup.

@CaptD personally I’m still in no doubt that Starfield will be a very good game. It probably will be only 30 fps and buggy… but those things can be somewhat mitigated if the gameplay loop is fundamentally good. It by no way means that all of the other games that the various Microsoft first parties are developing won’t go back to being Gamepass turds though, I’m just going off Bethesda’s previous single player output.

I was honestly under the assumption that eventually Gamepass would be getting awesome exclusives on the reg once they got their cadence clicking… I’m not as confident of that anymore though.

I think Starfield could be very decent, but there will inevitably be tons of meme worthy jank to go with it. I didn't realise things were so sour in MS land until recently.

I feel like Starfield has been kinda damned by Redfall. I know it sounds like clickbaiting, but I just mean that even if Starfield is like a solid 7 out of 10, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing in normal contexts, but the Xbox community is clearly looking for their 9+ out of 10, system selling exclusive banger and that just seems to be an impossible task for that to be your base level bar, and anything else would be considered a disappointment.

@Pizzamorg 7 outta 10 was never gonna be enough for a Bethesda single player rpg anyway mate. I will agree with you that the pressure is definitely on more than ever… but anything less than an 8.5 was always gonna be seen as not good enough for the evolution of Todd Howard’s single player rpg formula imho.

Yeah I suppose you are probably right, with the mixed reception to 4, then the disaster of 76, even if Xbox was a in a better place, I still think you're right that an audience would reject all but excellence.

That interview with Phil Spencer on Kinda Funny is pretty out there. He's openly saying that losing the Xbox One gen essentially crippled them in the console race and they'll never be able to compete with PlayStation or Nintendo.

@johncalmc Loser talk.

There's always room to expand your market share. Nintendo is on top of the world right now with one of the highest-selling gaming platforms ever, but that's following a console that sold... what, 14 million units? I think it sold worse than the Vita!

This just confirms for me that Phil Spencer isn't the one to lead Xbox. He doesn't have a fire in his belly. No drive to succeed.

@Ralizah wouldn’t draw that conclusion from one interview during what is obviously an off day, but the writing may be on the wall for you given everything that came before as well, which is fair enough.

@Kidfried I see what you mean. There is a lot of negativity with PlayStation fans too, though. But they do have a handful of exclusives that score well and lift spirits. I can see why Xbox fans feel they need that too, even though in reality I am not sure how much it really matters, coming from someone who doesn’t place much value in Horizon, God of War, Last of Us, Spiderman. It’s hard to speak for everyone, it really is.. I guess some people game on PS5 purely for the 9-10/10 exclusives, take them away and the console is nothing.

@kyleforrester87 It's a real slap in the face after years of overpromising and underdelivering.

I don't own an Xbox Series console, but I am subbed to Game Pass, and have played on multiple Xbox consoles in the past. I remember when they were great. Now the brand just feels like it's on auto-pilot.

@Kidfried This is not a fanboy post. It's just being honest. Hi-Fi Rush has been it so far in regards to quality first party titles this year that I can think of. What else is there other than hopefully Starfield?

As for Redfall, I agree that it never looked to be anything that special, but it was being positioned/marketed by Xbox as a major title. It's not very good at the moment, so people have every right to be angry and disappointed that it released in such a poor state when they've been waiting years for a true turnaround for the brand.

@johncalmc @Ralizah Pretty sure it's a case of appearing weak to try and convince the European Commission to approve the Activision acquisition.