Intr1n5ic

@__jamiie I see, and that direction is then set in stone and cannot be altered, worsened or improved upon going forward, as Sony did with the PS3 for example. Add that wisdom to the wiki.

Out of curiosity, who had 100% control of the Series S & X development, and who launched them with no games after ending the previous gen with the earned phrase, "Xbox has no games"?

@__jamiie Yes, really. Taken directly from his wiki:

"In July 2007, Mattrick officially joined Microsoft as a senior vice president overseeing the Xbox 360 and PC gaming businesses, with his oversight apparently leading to an increase in video game installations and Xbox LIVE subscriptions."

So he was immediately brought in as vice president and his oversight is credited with increased installations and subscriptions of Microsofts most successful console. Also :

"In October 2010, Mattrick was promoted to president of the Interactive Entertainment Business, overseeing a range of consumer businesses including Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Kinect, Music, and Video, as well as PC and mobile interactive entertainment."

And within 3 years of joining he was promoted to president and oversaw the entirety of their most successful generation.

How competent do you think you have to be to walk in to a company like Microsoft, and within 3 years be president of their entire entertainment divisions?

Of course I'm sure you know better Jamiie. Perhaps you can spend the rest of your evening editing his wiki, maybe change it to something like: all Don did was fumble the launch of the Xbox One. Phil is better but is still failing to emulate the sales of the 360 by tens of millions after two generational attempts.

@__jamiie He oversaw their most successful generation.

@__jamiie You're actually incapable of admitting their failures past his tenure 😂 None of what you mentioned matters, they didn't release enough games.

What Don did well is irrelevant, he was a non entity within the company less than 6 months after launch. That's why I'm only counting from that point. I don't disagree that the launch was a failure, the entire industry knows that. I'm asking you how that wasn't rectified and why he is the only focus of your blame for an entire generation.

@__jamiie For the first 6 months, what is your excuse for what Phil oversaw them do for the 7 and a half years that followed?

@__jamiie The Kinect was removed as a requirement before it launched, and within 6 months the console was made available at the same price point as the PS4 with no camera included. Are you trying to argue that the generation was lost in the first 6 months because of price? If that's the case explain the PS3 to me. Sony made a huge mistake with the pricing at launch and the arrogance they displayed was met with massive amounts of criticism. As a result the 360 got off to a flyer and was a massive hit. How did Sony respond, they pumped out quality games and ended up selling more units than the 360.

I'm not saying Don made no mistakes, I'm saying he's been made the scapegoat for failings that extend way past the launch of the Xbox One. Failings that still exist today and are being papered over with obscene amounts of capital.

@__jamiie Outside of enthusiasts, (who, regardless of how important they think they are, actually represent the extreme minority when it comes to the sales of these products,) nobody was talking about Don Mattrick throughout that generation. Do you think kids were saying to their parents, I don't want an Xbox now mum, Don fumbled the launch?

Games sell systems, and the running joke throughout the whole of that gen was Xbox has no games. Phil oversaw that and failed to get games out the door for 7 and a half years. He even failed on getting games ready for the launch of this gen where nothing came out for the first 12 months. If it wasn't for all their acquisitions, and spending billions on gamepass, their output would still be a shambles.

@__jamiie People love to blame Don Mattrick for the failure of the Xbox One, despite the fact Phil was sitting right there alongside him. Phil also took over 4 months after launch and had an entire generation to right that ship and he failed miserably.

If it comes to fruition, my only concern is them using this as a defense when they next attempt to aquire a huge chunk of the industry.

Other than that I'm not interested. If I cared enough about their catalogue I would have bought an Xbox by now. Game wise it would be great for those who do though.

@Fiendish-Beaver Who said they're going full multiplatform?

People are assuming the majority of their library is coming to other systems, they're also assuming that gamepass is going to be available on PlayStation. I don't believe either of those to be the likely scenario here. I think they're going to cash in on select titles at full retail price.

To answer your question, Xbox isn't going anywhere. If anything, it will probably go all digital with a single box moving forward and the incentive that differentiates will be, sure you can buy certain titles for full price on another system, but they're available here for only x amount a month.

With regard to regulators, this will appear like they care about bringing their biggest ip to other platforms, obviously helping with any argument made against them when attempting to aquire more 3rd party studios in the future. What happens if they are successful with that is completely up to them in the longterm, and going off their history, I don't think a reversion on policy is fiction at all.

As for this - "It needs to be remembered that Sony were the first to raise the prices of consoles, games and subscription services, and that they did that because they were so dominant in the market and knew that they could get away with it."

It should also be remembered that Microsoft were the first to charge us to play online, and then after 1 successful generation tried to release an always online console.

@dark_knightmare2 For starters, Microsoft would be controlling what games get made, but more worryingly, at any point they could revert back to platform exclusivity once they own it all.

@DennisReynolds I think they'll be more concerned about why it's happening. Tapping in to another ecosystem to generate more revenue is the obvious conclusion, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was Microsoft trying to preemptively appease regulators before attempting more acquisitions. Access to previous exclusives might look good on paper, but not if it helps support a future where they end up owning Sega, Capcom, Square Enix, and god knows who else.

If anyone here hasn't played Shadow Tactics then give it a try, it's a great game.

Okay for me, Infinite Wealth and Granblue Fantasy are gonna take me a while to play through anyway. Launching around the same time as FF7 is rough though, I hope it doesn't harm their sales too much.

Congrats to Avalanche. This game was a massive departure from their previous work and they absolutely smashed it. I very much enjoyed my playthrough and I'm not a fan of the franchise at all.

@Sakai My theory sounds far-fetched, but a supposed Sony internal email on the industry being shared on the background of a cancelled Spiderman game sounds plausible? 😂

The only way this is legitimate is if it was written by someone from Insomniac, for the team working on the cancelled Spiderman mmo at Insomniac. It makes absolutely no sense for any higher up at Sony to write this using that template, nor does it make sense for them to share concerns about CoD of all things, with Insomniac.

@Sakai Or, it came from some Xbox moron who took footage from the intro screen of a cancelled game and overlaid text in photoshop.

@Sakai Bluepoint is a fellow Sony studio. Studios sharing artwork, concepts, and development tools between each other makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is outlining concerns about ABK on a Spiderman background 😂

@Sakai I'm well aware it's being being reported by Eurogamer, IGN ect. I'm equally aware that the "leapfrog" slide is text written over the intro background of a cancelled Spiderman game called The Great Web.

I'm genuinely curious what your response to this question is. Why would Sony send a slide to Insomniac, a game developer, talking about concerns over the ABK acquisition, and write it on the intro background of one of Insomniacs cancelled games?

@Sakai "The slide titled "leapfrog" is very interesting, it's basically an internal document with Sonys thought on ATVI."

You're joking, right? You think Sony created a slide to share with one of it's dev studios on the Activision acquisition, and they used an intro screen from a cancelled Spiderman game as a backdrop with Insomniac written in the bottom right corner?

I pray for the day the internet requires an entrance exam.

Also, f**k these losers. Leaking game information is bad enough, but doxxing people is absolutely disgusting.

@kyleforrester87 Yeah I agree. I did that with the 4 as well and I'll likely do the same this time around.

Jokes aside, I'm a sucker for tech. I'll pick this up just to play the best console version of GTA6 at launch.

@kyleforrester87 No that's RRP, which will undoubtedly be way above what it probably should be.

@kyleforrester87 It’s clearly the three letters on the box, Kyle. God, I hate it when unprofessionals weigh in.

Loving the look of this, it's like Hollow Knight on acid.

@riceNpea @ChrisDeku John Lewis and House of Fraser still have the disc version in stock for £389.99 as well, and EE have the Spiderman 2 bundle for £409.99 if you're a customer.

@JustX Oh for sure, if you were specifically after the digital version then the old stock is almost impossible to find from retailers. Right now though you can get the fat disc version with a game for the price of the new slim digital.

Still, 10% off through Very is a great deal. You got yourself a bargain there. 👍

Just give me Akuma already!

I didn't realise the escapists 2 was on there. I'll give that a go over the weekend.

Depending on your region this is strange timing. There are a lot of bargains at the moment on the old model.

When are we going to start listening to what the same names keep trying to tell us. You don't need an Xbox to play their games anymore.

Why would you pick up a cheap Series S when you can play AAA games on a 5" mobile phone screen, or a more expensive tablet, or a newer Samsung TV with potentially horrible latency and input lag on all of these options. You could also just buy a PC for 4 or 5x the price, or build one yourself similar to the price of the S that might catch fire on ultra low settings for everything other than streaming.

There are so many options available now to experience gaming in an inferior way, compared to the age old tradition of grabbing an easy low price solution in one box and plugging it in to your tv.

@Deityjester Are you moving the goalposts because you were wrong? Now you're saying the first console manufacturer? If that's the case, sure, but that's not what you originally stated. Take Two, and more specifically 2k games, were the first to announce they were raising prices for this gen.

@Deityjester Take Two Interactive were the first to announce price increases for next gen games back in July 2020, they established the new price point for NBA 2K21. Sony and Activision followed suit 2 months later.

@K1LLEGAL I see you chose to completely sidestep everything else I said.

My bad with regard to that email, if he said it 3 years ago then he definitely doesn't have the capacity to apply that kind of healthy industry thinking to any decision making going forward.

What you call "competition", I call an attempt by a megacorporation to buy a controlling majority with their substantial wealth advantage. That's why I find comments talking about longterm healthy futures amusing.

I don't read articles like this and derive enjoyment because of fanboyism, it's because I enjoy watching companies who operate like MS eat s**t.

@K1LLEGAL "It’s kind of mindblowing (and not at the same time) that people will argue from a fanboy standpoint rather than a “I want the video games industry to be healthy long into the future” standpoint."

I can't think of anything more healthy for the longterm future of this industry then what MS have been doing with 3rd party acquisitions for the last few years. I pray, for health reasons of course, that the world's second richest company continues to consolidate and aquire the biggest publishers in the industry.

In case we forget, in the longterm healthy words of Matt Booty, the new President of Content and Game Studios at Xbox - "We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go and spend Sony out of business."

It wouldn't surprise me if he tried to introduce a monthly sub for the online multiplayer in the future, copying the mmo model of games like WoW and FF14.

I would love for them to do something in the Warhammer universe, but DoS3 would be awesome as well.

@IOI So you actually don't know what complacent means?

"Are we really going to justify a “light” year in first-party games with overpriced hardware"

Who was justifying it with hardware? I said dev cycles are a lot longer than they used to be and years like this are going to happen more often going forward, especially following a year of several major releases. That has absolutely nothing to do with complacency.

As for the rest, what the new hardware releases mean for you has nothing to do with the overarching point. Complacent has a specific meaning and what Sony have been doing for the past year doesn't reflect that in any way.

@IOI As Sammy pointed out, this year they have released:

• A new PSVR headset
• A new streaming handheld
• A new pro controller
• A new set of audio equipment to preorder, both buds and a
  headset.
• A massive first party game in Spiderman 2, and an
  excellent dlc for HFW.
• As well as the acquisition of Firewalk Studios, Audeze and iSIZE
• And a huge push in both advertising and manufacturing to bring as
  many consoles to market as possible.

All of this was done whilst also fighting MS in Court to try and prevent them from buying up yet another huge chunk of the industry.

You can argue they have been light on first party games this year, but with how long their games take to make these days this was to be expected at some point, especially after a year of GT7, HFW & GoWR.

If you think all of that is evidence of complacency, I would argue you don't know what that word means.

Something to check out over the weekend I guess. Ty for the reminder, Sammy. 👍

@nessisonett "What else would you have disgruntled fans do?"

Go outside and touch grass. This whole reactionary cancel culture nonsense is complete cancer. If people are disappointed in the direction a game is heading and they no longer want to support it, cool, I completely understand that. But when that becomes trying to rally others in to your way of thinking, encouraging people to follow you and potentially harm the livelihood of individuals who are just trying to do their jobs, then you're just an attention seeking a**hole.

I'm noticing a lot of the names who were calling Sony out for these layoffs yesterday are missing from the comment section of todays article. I hope you decide to grace us with your infinite wisdom again.

@Max_the_German Arguably, the best exclusive they've released this generation goes against the point you're trying to make.

Is it worth reporting on new Activision games going forward? It's unlikely this will come to PlayStation if it does get made.

They hinted at this during a previous Q&A and said the accompanying characters will play a larger role in part 3, so like Red XIII, he'll most likely be playable in the next game after his introduction.

@AndyKazama Dragon's Dogma as well. Game holds up really well and there's a lot of fun to be had in that world for only £3.99.

BG3, I'm addicted. I'm even dreaming about it. I woke up the other day to the sad realisation that not only did the legendary hand crossbow that I gave to Astarion not happen, but one doesn't even exist in the game

3rd party timed exclusives need to end. I'd welcome a much shorter window like this if that's the next best option.

Negativity in the pushsquare comment section, that's refreshing.

I enjoyed it. Release date for Helldivers and FF7. A dlc coming to one of the best Tales games very soon. RE4 Vr in December. Spiderman and FF7 looked incredible, I was not expecting Gold Saucer or Vincent reveals, let alone confirmed chocobo open world variants and vehicles.

People just love to cry here. That was an enjoyable state of play and delivered exactly what we were pretold it was going to be.

I'm a bit burnt out on these type of games but I do like the art style. I'll probably check it out at some point.