Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

Xbox lay off 650 staff, mostly thought to be Activision Blizzard. So they keep on breaking that lie-filled agreement that they 'weren't merging the companies in a way that would affect staff numbers at Activision Blizzard' in order to get the deal through 👍👍👍👍👍

There will be no consequences for them, of course. They can just rake in all the money from all of those PS5 sales of CoD 😅

@Ravix it’s a good move for the consumer and helps reinforce the value-proposition 😉

As a general note I am weirdly ok with Series being the last Xbox. I don’t think I have it in me to buy a next gen system now.

https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-ambassadors-ending

Damn BAM, after all you did for them too!

@colonelkilgore Microsoft on a full run to fire as many shots to the foot as possible 🫣 who knows that might even upgrade to a fully automatic

@colonelkilgore LMAO - it was a good run whilst it lasted and I benefited from it with a free month of GPU every quarter as a result as well as making some great new friends...

@BAMozzy you were a hell of an ambassador dude, you put in the work in a way that puts my own work-ethic to shame… I salute you 🫡

@Yousef- aye, they’ll be buying the full rights to re-release Concord exclusively at this rate 😉

@BAMozzy I guess you won't be being 'rewarded' per word 'anymore' so does this mean you will be 'dialling' down on the 'game pass' mentions in your posts or that they will just be less 'verbose' than they 'traditionally' have been? Either way it's a 'shame' as it sounds like you were 'rewarded' handsomely for your 'efforts'.

@render As I was never rewarded for anything outside of completing the few Activities on the Ambassador website to earn points for rewards - Similar to MS Rewards, that had zero impact on any of my posts on ANY other site/forum. Therefore the closure will have absolutely zero impact outside of the Ambassadors programme website or have any impact on my opinion, length of post or content of them.

My 'traditional' posts and the content will remain as they were not influenced or impacted at all by the Ambassadors programme. They were 'traditional' before I joined and will likely continue. They were NOT associated with, influenced by or 'paid' for by Microsoft in ANY capacity before - I only got 'rewarded' for doing 'activities' (like playing certain games, earning achievements etc). Like MS Rewards, earn enough points per Quarter, you can earn enough for a free month of Game Pass Ultimate.

@BAMozzy ambassador was a great place to connect with people indeed. Sad to see it go.

https://www.purexbox.com/reviews/xbox-series-x/starfield-shat...

https://www.metacritic.com/game/starfield-shattered-space/

Ruh-roh. The expansion for Starfield, the one people thought would be pretty good because that's historically been the case for BGS releases, is currently sitting at a 58 on Metacritic. So, lower than Concord at the moment lmao

It'll probably change once more reviews roll in, but I'm actually a little disappointed. I didn't want to think BGS was just incapable of making good games anymore, but...

This really must be a depressing generation for fans of Western AAA stuff.

@Ralizah good you posted here cuz I slowly stopped browsing PX despite regularly being an Xbox user xD
Couldn’t take all the doomposting
Me and my friend could not stand starfield on release but we’re probably not gonna grave dance either. Not worth the energy. Especially for this.

@Yousef- I'll admit, there's a terrible little person inside of me that eats up despair and doomposting like it's catnip. So following slow-motion trainwrecks like Concord and... everything going on with the Xbox brand, almost... has been a lot of fun.

I was fully planning on playing Starfield when it first dropped, but... I dunno. I still game a lot, but in mid-2023 something inside of me sort of broke and my habits changed. I used to play a lot of newer releases, but with big games, I mostly just... don't have much interest anymore. I was actually eighty hours into Tears of the Kingdom and just... dropped it. Didn't play anything game-wise for half a year or so before slowly picking up the hobby again.

@Ralizah those sudden spikes and drops happen a lot to me as well 😂
Sometimes i just need a step back. Either that, or I can’t get enough of a certain thing.

@Ralizah They could swap games and Concord goes to Xbox and Starfield comes to PS.

I'm imagining Phil Spencer and Herman Hulst meeting in a gloomy alley, and HH (as all the cool kidz call him) passes over a bundle of money in a brown paper bag to Phil.

@Ralizah the comments are pretty funny… with the general consensus being that Pure Xbox reviewers are Sony-Ponies. The psychology of Xbox fans continues to amaze fair play.

@Ralizah Starfield is actually quite good and worth playing, at least in part, but, like all Bethesda games, you get so far and then there's just so much choice and so many open quests and so little overall quality that you just don't bother any more, and it's never really worth powering through for the story either, as that isn't really their strong suit 😅

I feel like I'll go back to it at some point, but i'll ignore half of the quests that I thought would be worth it. It's worth trying for the onbparding phase though, and maybe it will grip you to some extent.

Shattered Space, however... a 5/10 on pure xbox 😬😬😬 eeeeesh

@Ravix What was the exploration like? I hear that is one of the things that people say is missing the most compared to their previous games. Defo my favourite part of their games.

Yep those reviewers on Pure Xbox must be Sony ponies then lol.

@JohnnyShoulder yeah, I guess exploration wasn't the best as everything is so spread out, and to get there it is mostly clicking buttons on the map before landing. In a way it works, as it is supposed to feel desolate, but the best parts are in the settlements. Each planet will have standard copy/paste bases, place of interest etc. But there's a few big settlements on some planets; a western city, a base on Mars, a cyberpunk city on an oil rig, a futuristic space port, stuff like that, and they contain most of the quests.

Finding a location and building your own base is also alright, although it basically turned into a processing plant for all of the materials that were auto-mining from smaller bases. So it did become mining and shipping materials across the galaxy to craft shipping containers to store the materials to craft more shipping containers. But it looked cool in full operation and it takes care of itself 😅

I honeslty can't remember if the exploration in Skyrim was actually any better though? I feel like it was quite "pathy" obviously more densely packed as it is one section of one world, which helps, but having played Skyrim only a few years ago, I don't think it felt like properly open exploration or that intuitive with discovering stuff and there were loads of places where you're gated in, it seemed.

Quest wise Skyrim was very open ended and left nearly everything to player choice, and Starfield is basically the same structure in those terms, however.

@Ravix I do sort of wonder if Bethesda games haven't necessarily gotten worse, but open world games have just improved overall, and BGS never evolved, so their stuff just looks bad now in comparison.

We didn't have stuff like Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, etc. when Fallout 3 and Skyrim were making waves, after all.

@colonelkilgore The Xboxiest of fanboys see Sony fans under their bed at night. It's incredibly funny.

Although Push Square can be pretty bad with fanboy comments under the articles as well.

@JohnnyShoulder It has certainly been... a generation... for Sony and Microsoft. Although at least Sony seems to alternate Ws and Ls.