Xbox & Microsoft News/Discussion

[DjchunKfunK]

Bunch of new Game Pass games announced at TGS this morning.

Ni No Kuni Remastered out today
Danganronpa V3 out on Game Pass today.
Dyson Sphere Program coming to PC Game Pass Oct 13.
AC Odyssey coming to Game Pass today.
Fuga Melodies of Steal 2 on Game Pass today.

[DjchunKfunK]

Microsoft joining Sony and most other third party publishers in raising the price of their games to $70 from next year. I expect Game Pass will follow suit at some point.

[Sly Boots]

Microsoft joining Sony and most other third party publishers in raising the price of their games to $70 from next year. I expect Game Pass will follow suit at some point.

Do you mean price of subscription increasing, or the purchase price of game from the GP store?

[DjchunKfunK]

The price of the Game Pass sub.

[Sly Boots]

Dang

[Drarok]

Orrrr… they're deliberately increasing the purchase price to push more people into the subscription model, because recurring revenue is "worth" more…?

[Alan]

“The biggest content drop in Xbox history”

https://www.eurogamer.net/retro-streami ... ce-on-xbox


I’d never heard of this before or I erased it from my brain because it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. It’s going to cost more bandwidth per second to stream than to download the bloody things. Plus the benefits of no saves and lots of input lag. Is there really a machine on the planet that can’t run zool locally?

[Raid]

There's a hardware refresh coming for the current XBox consoles, to really take advantage of that massive XBox exclusive game. Same price, no increase in processing power but with twice the internal storage, no optical drives at all (sorta suggesting Microsoft are going to abandon physical media altogether which feels like a bigger deal than the hardware refresh).

https://www.eurogamer.net/new-xbox-seri ... osoft-leak

It feels like Microsoft have lost this generation so badly that Nintendo's previous-gen hardware is still the better buy. It's all well and good having "the most powerful" or "customer value" on your hardware, but if your exclusive software library is shockingly small then what's the point? A Halo, a few Forzas, Starfield... I genuinely can't name any others (not that I really bother keeping track). It's annoying because Microsoft's intent on publishing all of their exclusives on PC and console at the time is really laudable, and even in a year with few exclusives Gamepass is still a pretty good deal.

[Alan]

Just make it look like a god damn VHS player. CDi is peak console design.

[DjchunKfunK]

I think the idea that Microsoft doesn't have the exclusives compared to Sony is a tired argument as to why they fell behind this generation. Sony's output has been just as paltry at times as Microsoft, this year they have had FFXVI and a few VR titles. Both companies have struggled to get a consistent stream of exclusives out this generation.

As Microsoft have pointed out themselves, they lost the start of this generation because of how poorly they handled the previous one. It was there that people started to build up their digital libraries and get embedded into an ecosystem so when it came to this generation brand loyalty was a lot stronger than it had been in the past. More exclusives out the gate would have helped sell more consoles but I don't think it would have been enough to bridge the gap to Sony.

We shall see if those leaks about future console refreshes turn out to be true, Spencer has already said they are mostly old and outdated plans but you would expect some damage limitation on his part. They could be doing exactly what Sony are doing and offering a digital only console with a drive add-on available separately.

[Mantis]

I don't think Sony have fallen behind this generation with their exclusives at all. They've utterly blown Microsoft away again which is why Microsoft are just trying to buy up already established franchises and studios to try and plug the gap.

Microsoft have released absolutely nothing of note this generation at all.

[Animalmother]

I think this was a Pre-Covid plan of game releases. New Doom game, Dishonored 3 and a Fallout 3 remaster.

[Raid]

"Year Zero" sounds like some sort of remake of the original rather than a new game in the 2016 style. Either way Quakecon was last month, so if there were anything coming out in the period stated we'd probably know about it by now.

Starfield is on there as FY21, so it's so outdated as to probably not be relevant.

[DjchunKfunK]

I don't think Sony have fallen behind this generation with their exclusives at all. They've utterly blown Microsoft away again which is why Microsoft are just trying to buy up already established franchises and studios to try and plug the gap.

Microsoft have released absolutely nothing of note this generation at all.

I didn't say they had fallen behind, my point was about number of exclusives being around the same level rather than perceived quality, as that is very subjective.

In terms of purchasing studios that's kind of what these companies do, a lot of Sony's first party studios were not started by Sony. Insomniac, Bend Studio, Guerrilla Games, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Media Molecule were all bought by Sony, and they still buy developers now with the latest being Bungie. Both companies throw money around trying to gain an advantage, Microsoft ultimately have deeper pockets so they can make the bigger splashes and Sony has focused more on spending money on locking up third party exclusives recently. But if they had the same buying power as Microsoft they would be looking to do similar deals for developers/publishers.

I think you maybe mean nothing you are interested in, because Microsoft have released games of note this generation. Grounded, Psychonauts 2, Starfield, Forza Horizon 4, Hi-Fi Rush, Flight Sim, AoE IV and Pentiment for example. Hell even Halo Infinite was of note, even if they flubbed it's long term viability.

[Alan]

The thing that strikes me as different is that Sony cultivated those studios for a long time to the point that when they were acquired a lot of people went “wait, they didn’t own them already?”. They didn’t feel like they were taking anything away from MS since 99% of those studios releases were only on PS. MS on the other hand just said point the money cannon at the successful thing and build a wall round it! That left people looking forward to a Starfield or a TES that maybe can’t afford a second console up the poopy river so it tastes a whole lot more bitter.

Bungie is the outlier but that still seems like a bloody moronic buy to me anyway since they paid way too much and left them to operate almost completely independently.