Lysterao

@K1LLEGAL I don't think that they meant Xbox doing the thing was frustrating, but that it's frustrating watching Sony do essentially nothing for backward compatibility, while Xbox are far ahead on the issue and are still doubling down.

@thefourfoldroot1 To be fair, it does at least come with all the (non MTX) DLC for the game since launch. Also, totally understand that you'd wait. It's been four years, what's 7 or 8 more months?

@thefourfoldroot1 I think they left those deliberately, as good or bad, they were ultimately trying to keep it the Oblivion it always was.

That said, I'd personally have loved an option in the character creator to chose between "Legacy scaling" and "Updated Scaling". That would have been the perfect compromise I think. Though, maybe it isn't that simple

@UltimateOtaku91 Love or hate Starfield but it's pretty delusional to lump it in the same camp as Redfall. The later is a game that wasn't a whole lot bigger than Concord, whereas Starfield was the most played single player game of the year by recorded hours. It was undoubtedly a commercial success, just not the evergreen, never ending 80 million copies lifetime success that Skyrim was.

@get2sammyb It's probably less that they hate physical games, and more that their user base hasn't been buying them. Personally speaking, having Gamepass hasn't stopped me buying games as well, but it has gotten me in the habit of going fully digital. I believe the stats show the same for most players.

It'll be curious to see if this move to publishing on PlayStation entices them back to physical releases, especially once they're at the day and date multiplatform stage. Is Doom getting one?

@heavyartillery56 The idea that Todd and the BGS team are salty about FO:NV is basically entirely made up by fans

@PlatinumMikey True, though they had the luxury of doing so due to the domination of the PS2 era. They didn't need to buy studios then, the way they bought psygnosis back during the PS1 gen for example. , they were all but unchallenged until the Xbox 360. 2018 MS didnt have the same option of playing things slowly, deserved or otherwise. Besides, a fair few of Xbox's acquisitions were based off of longer histories, like Bethesda, Playground games, Double Fine or Ninja Theory, just not all as exclusive based as Sony ones.

@PlatinumMikey You say that like Sony don't have an effective console monopoly themselves. Obviously there's the switch, but that's a different segment of the market.

@johnedwin For what it's worth, as a Gamepass player on Xbox I play my games too. But at a time lime this when they've dropped like 4 or 5 titles at the same time in the last 2 months I wanted to play, I find myself playing them in parallel. So my playtime on each is less over a short term period, but in the long term it ends up being just as long.

I'm sure there are a higher percentage of Gamepass players who do give up on games quicker, but it's not an Xbox vs PS thing, it's a buyer vs sub thing. The same will apply to PS Plus for example.

@throwmeaname That's only really an option for those who have both Platforms. Or at least a PS and PC

That's exactly what it means, but we've know that for a few months now anyway

@Flaming_Kaiser It's not so much that Gamepass doesn't make enough money, and more a case of, their hardware sales were declining before they really even started going multiplatform anyway so they had little to lose by doing so, but as the figures show alot more money that they could be making.

@Chimmy1024 A Lost Odyssey Remake/Remaster bringing in the dame sort of vane as the Oblivion Remaster would be incredible. Or even just a sequel to be honest 🤔

@get2sammyb Wprth noting that's physical sales not all sales. Data suggests Xbox players tend to go all digital even when buying and not just for downloading from Gamepass.

Still, it does show just how differently the platforms have skewed

@Anke All 5 million of the Xbox players paid for it. The question is how many bought the game outright.

Chances are it's a few hundred K and then the remaining ~4.5 Million played on Gamepass, but what I'd be genuinely curious to know is how many Gamepass players got the Early access/DLC upgrade as I imagine that will have been alot higher than on PS5.

@lazarus11 Stip with the silly Console war stuff. For starters, actual developers don't care about that, they just like players. Either way, gamepass is still paying for the game, just in a different way, clearly it works for Xbox or they'd have stopped doing it by now.

Ultimately this is more a reminder for PlayStation fans who might think the game would be an Xbox exclusive given that Bethesda and ID Software are now a part of them.

@DarkTron Trust me, those of us with Gamepass are aware CO:33 is coming to Gamepass

From my playtime so far on a Series X Performance mode has felt buttery smooth, while Quality was really pretty bad even if it was a locked 30 it just looks blurry. I'm guessing PS5 is much the same really.

Maybe VRR was doing some heavy lifting? But it feels miles better than something like Cyberpunk did at launch.

@MrPeanutbutterz Please refrain from feeding the trolls 😅 Pointing it out just gives them what they want.

@bluemage1989 Pretty sure you can turn alot of that commentary off.

@UltimateOtaku91 And had its marketing rights.

That said they'll likely have had a little say in it's release date given how much they'll have paid for it to be on Gamepass? But even if they didn't, I'm surprised they didn't space their other releases out a touch more around Expedition 33. Especially trying to play through them all on Gamepass where you add in Avowed and South of Midnight as well (though I suppose on that side of things Indy and FH5 have been out for a bit longer)

I'm not going to complain about more games, but for a publisher that 3 years ago was struggling to get 1 or two major releases out a year, this feels like overcompensation 😅

@PlatinumMikey Unless you can cite a source for those figures I'd be very suspicious of it. Xbox have directly claimed they make good money on Gamepass, and as a public company the financial reports they have to publish appear to back it up, and as a company their size and under their level of scrutiny its extremely unlikely they're cooking those figures.

Now, they're not making enough money from it to be their only revenue stream, but even without PS that isn't the case. DLC, outright sales on PC and Xbox etc... Still exist alongside Gamepass.

They don't NEED to make a profit, but ironically given their market share seems to be set at somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 of Sony's no matter what they seem to do, keeping their games off PS isn't gaining them anything. In the past it would have gained them market share, but that ship has sailed (unless PS collapses, but this quiet period they're in isn't that). As such, they might as well put them out on PS and make even more profit if they're going to have a lower market share anyway.

@batosaims I'd day it's not that the don't care about the Xbox consoles anymore, but have accepted their renewed push towards games publishing came too late to stick to the old model of "closed ecosystem, exclusives driving console sales" model. Losing the PS4 gen so badly when everyone built digital libraries effectively screwed them. If they'd had this level of line up at the Series X launch back in 2020, they might just have been able to claw back that market share, at least in Western markets, but given their only really got the ball rolling later 2022, and are only truely hitting their stride now in 2024?

The Xbox console will remain important to them, but only as 1 pillar among many (PC, Cloud, Mobile, other platforms such as Switch and PS, etc...). It's not that they aren't competing with Sony any more either, it's just they've decided to compete on a different playing field rather than the one they were clearly losing.

@CVCubbington It's one of those games that's smoother to play than to watch. I wouldn't say it's a particularly janky game

@MrPeanutbutterz No idea, but alot of those sort of things were in their infancy back then. Music rights got alot more codified and alot stricter in the early 2000s.

I doubt they were specifically considering disc life, but they may well have had a date in mind for recalling any unsold discs from selves?

@thefourfoldroot1 Oh I'm sure they know. As for the sales Fomo thing, I can't speak for every series, but I know for the Forza games but Xbox usually start making alot of noise about the licences for a Forza game expiring about 6 months in advance of it being delisted. Over which time they tend to put it on increasingly good sale.

@MrPeanutbutterz Hard to say. Could be skimping, but given how common this is industry wide I imagine it's largely a matter of indefinite rights being all but impossible to secure. Actually, I'm not sure you even can.

@MrPeanutbutterz For what it's worth. I don't think that's a MS thing as much as it is an "any company/anyone who doesn't want to get sued into oblivion, if they don't delist content with expired licenses" thing 🤔

But it is a shame all the old ones have been delisted, they're all pretty great

@TheLotteryMan1 Why judge before we've had a proper look at it? Sounds like they have made gameplay improvements as well

@MrPeanutbutterz Persobally I still enjoyed the gameplay. It's simplistic but fun.

There's actually alot more depth to the brawling in terms of counters and combos than most people will ever realise, because stealthily and whacking enemies with weapons tends to be just as effective if not more.

TL:DR, I'd say there's definitely enough gameplay here for you to not write it off yet, you could still enjoy it. Or. Maybe not.

@EfYI I think my issue with boycotting Xbox specifically rather than Microsofts cloud services (Azure) which is the actual product being used by the IAF for their logistics, is that MS would learn the wrong lessons.

By pulling away from their objectively less evil product wing, Xbox, which is mostly artists making games for people to have fun with, MS would think they should be doing less of that, and then feel obliged to double down on Azure to pick up the slack.

Now Azure is a tool like any other, and not itself evil, but if we could make them look at that specifically, and think about what they need to do differently there (not license it out to Militaries doing genocides), then that would be the goal we want to achieve.

@Frmknst I mean, why would it be? It'll be a new collection for Xbox as well, so they'd be crazy not to announce it first at their own show. Why piss off their own core fans?

Though, if Sony also has a Showcase after Xbox's this "Not E3" it could show up their too 🤔

@Mikey856 They're still called Xbox... so yes?

Speaking as someone who's super hyped for this..... please just put us out of our misery! I can't take any more of these rumours 🥲

@Contimaloris I think the shadowdrop would be to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the game. Other than that I can't think of a reason, other than they secretly have an even more stacked line up the second half of the year 🤔 But Fable got delayed into 2026 so not sure how likely that is

@Enuo Pretty much, even though they did an about turn on the connectivity thing. It's a shame really, if peak Xbox had continued as their peak Xbox 360 selves alongside Sony's return to form for the PS4 it'd probably be a more interesting industry at the moment.

@Zeke68 I mean, it was potentially going to be a PlayStation exclusive because Sony was attempting to gobble up exclusivity rights. Like they did for Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop from Bethesda let alone other publishers.

I can't say I like industry consolidation, but Xbox didn't exactly start the practice nor are they the only ones doing it on a large scale, don't hvlave double standards.

Personally the days of exclusive games can't end soon enough the way I see it, they're a stupid concept other than when a game physically can't run on a platform. Can you imagine if DvDs only ran on certain DVD players? People would riot.

@Cornpop76 The right is focused on the welfare of individuals like themselves.

@Residentsteven MS didn't buy Ninja Theory until after the first Hellblade.

@breakneck Didn't Indie come out too late in the year to be in the running for the Game Awards? It was like a week after the cutoff point I believe. Technically I lt CAN go for it this year if so.

@arsmolinarc Isn't Atomic Heart the one developed by Russian Devs?

@Boxmonkey It might not have turned the tide for Xbox, but calling it a disaster is just fanboy coping.

By all metrics it was a successful launch and it was the only SinglePlayrr game in the Top 10 most played games the year it launched.

However, it's unlikely to go on to have the near evergreen Success that Skyrim has that's for sure.

@RoomWithaMoose MS have said in the past that the main reason they haven't done a new Banjo is they just haven't found the right team at the right time to make it. They don't want to force Rare to make it, and Rare seemingly have little interest in it.

Overall it's a good approach, you can't force art. On the other hand, we want a new Banjo!

Also, they are working on a new Perfect Dark, so they haven't entirely forgotten Rare's IP

@get2sammyb Though I suppose, jokes aside, that very difference in studios also make the recent Sony cancellations sting all the more, given they have fewer studios in the first place.

Still. Game wise, the futures looking bright for them both.

@Ultimapunch I feel like Microsft still know it, they've just had very mixed results at actually pulling the fun off post Xbox 360 era.

@Ultimapunch bHonestly I really liked Halo 5 and Infinite. Story in 5 is weak, but the campaign is fun at least, and MP was fantastic.

Infinite in better in both SP and MP, but it's clear the second half of it's campaign was cut, which is a bit of a bummer.

@ButterySmooth30FPS Mire like Semi independently. They're still reporting to Xbox, but largely left to themselves outside of coordinating marketing and release schedules.

@get2sammyb I think it's the DLC included that does it for me. Not here for a game I played at launch, but when Indy came out last year, I wanted the DLC, so got the premium Upgrade. The Slightly Early Access being purely a nice bonus.

I hope they don't do it for new Halo or Gears though. Those are storied fans genuinely don't want spoiled if they can help it by people with EA plastering the endings all over social media.

@Enuo The earlier looks at Avowed's combat looked stiff too, but by launch it was genuinely great. Fingers crossed that it's also just a sign of work not quite being finished yet.

It looks like they just need to increase the dodge range, add a roll maybe, and increase the characters stumble/reactions when hit. That solhould all be doable? The actual attacks and magic looked good.

@GymratAmarillo Other than Sea of Thieves, they've mostly been smaller games so far. It will be interesting to see if Doom or Forza Horizon 5 get proper boxed releases.