Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@antdickens FWIW i just got the capatcha thing again...it might be tied to large posts? I grabbed a screenshot this time (too big to post here) if you need it. Thanos was indeed right, it's "cloudflare"

@Dezzy Quite a few, both first and 3rd party. This is the situation with non-Switch this gen, you buy the console and a 2+TB hard drive so you can play a decent number of games without having to redownload.

@YummyHappyPills @Grumblevolcano

Are there at least some of the exclusives that are mostly just on the disc though? So you only need to install rather than download a massive update?

I swear most PS4 games just fit on the disc and have fairly small updates.

@Dezzy "60GB Patch, 100GB install" Welcome to XBox. Like in my text wall to Thanos, that's a big negative of XBox. You better have fiber internet. It needs it. #dealwithit. PS plays a LOT better with shoddy internet. Though still not great. For Halo 5 specifically part of it is the game released as a broken travesty and they basically had to offer the proper game as a patch.

Also do you have 1S or 1X I can't remember? On the X you get the 4K textures...which are indeed ginormous...but that's what you buy the X for. They don't fit on the disc. A number of games fit that 100GB mark. Shadow of War, Halo 5, Forza 7, I think Rise of Tomb Raider is 60+GB total. Fallout 4 pushes 60+,

Most PS4 digital (total size) games seem to be 20-50GB (including Pro patches!) with 2-25GB downloads for discs. Most X1(X) games seem to be 40-110GB with 10-50GB downloads for discs. For the X it's understandable...that's what you paid for is all that high resolution content. But if that's the S, that's sad. What doesn't make sense is not puting that content in the box and making you download it. Wanting 4k shouldn't mean "fiber internet guaranteed."

@Dezzy Yes, sometimes. Imagine this on Xbox One X though Even BIGGER games.

Being blunt when the new systems roll out youre downloading most of the game. Its not going on physical media, not if its an inflation of what we have now. Games well over 100GB, or 70GB not even at 4K.

Switch isn't the only system to mandate downloading the rest of your game after all

I'd assume most of the game is on the disc, but MS and Sony are being very, shall we say opaque about the matter. They tell you how much is on the disc but not what it is, and its not like it matters anyway as it all goes on your hard drive anyway...

I'm on the S, not the X.

So basically with a 500GB hard drive, it's literally impossible to have all of the very short list of Xbone exclusives installed at once. Basically the 2 Gears and 2 Halo games will fill up the hard drive entirely. What madness.

@Dezzy Yeah and that doesn't even take into account the upcoming MCC updates. By the time MCC is fully fixed, you probably won't have room for even that.

@YummyHappyPills I don't see how at least Sony can make the PS5 download such huge patches...they'll have to come up with something physial media wise. Too much of their customer base is in developing countries such as the US where unlimited internet does not exist. Even where speeds are ok, here most of the country is on Comcast which has a 1TB/mo limit, else they charge you out the nose per 10GB. I flew past 1TB in 2 weeks of 1X ownerhsip. Imagine PS5/X2? Microsoft will try to push it, #dealwithit and all that. But they're proposing to be the console version of Steam I guess so if that's their thing I guess it works.

@Dezzy yeah, 500GB is pretty low on the modern consoles. It's like the white WiiU. Even for PS4 that's awful. You'll have to delete things often and download often. Any old external HDD will do though. I run out of space on the PS4 Pro constantly and X1X fits like 8 games. I don't mind big disc install sizes, but when huge downloads accompany it...that sucks. Keep in mind online games like H5 tend to get big patches because they have free content maps, modes, etc added. Even Uncharted 4 on PS had (what at the time) was a HUGE 14GB patch, not because of anything involving single player but because of bundled maps to support the DLC & online. On the S, you hopefully shouldn't see the obscene file sizes he X sees quite as often. Battlefield 1 is only 50-something GB total and that's an X1X enhanced size, so smaller on S.

@Grumblevolcano MCC updates? What MCC updates, I thought that was finalized now. I'm curious! H5 doesn't interest me....all online...meh. I like my story driven MCC!

@DarthNocturnal that's pretty neat, I wish more games would allow you to install bits and pieces at a time. May be to much micromanagement for most people but for someone like me I would love it.

Maybe they got tired of people constantly pulling 1TB a month from their "free" cloud servers just to shuffle around games? I'm pretty sure when the digital distribution model was invented they wanted it to be a 1 way ticket, not to use themselves as everyone's personal cloud file server for petabytes worth of data. Disc production is cheap in contrast.

That sounds cool. When's that coming? I mostly like FPS games for the single player campaigns so I'd probably make use of that.

@Dezzy me too. Competitive multi does little for me except for done reason Splatoon. Solo and coop is where it's at!

@DarthNocturnal reach would be great! I want all of odst... That was a great, underappreciated halo. I actually liked it more than the mc games. And no flood!!

@Dezzy It appears that Halo 5's size is due to all files, including the updates (and there were many, almost every month, ever since the original launch. The first day one patch was already 9GB), not being compressed.

If you want to know more about the how and why, then you can get some more info from the discussions on these forums:

The obvious downside is that the hard drive space with games of that size will run out pretty quickly, but the upside (yes, there is one) is that uncompressed data loads faster, so that should also be visible/obvious in the game, translating to next to no loading times, or only every now and then.

When I bought my Xbox One S, I immediately went for the 1GB version, because a friend of mine had already warned me about game download sizes. Quite a few games just install from the disc with only minor patches and/or updates, though, so Halo 5 is a bit of big hitter in that regard, along with a handful of other currently available titles. Most Xbox One games stay around 30 - 50GB max, but as mentioned, there are some exceptions, and it is to be expected that more and more upcoming games will grow in size, so better buy yourself a decently sized external HDD...

You're even kind of lucky in some regards, that you don't have the One X, or else you would also get the 4K textures on top of the already considerable downloads...

@NEStalgia No, no, no my friend. it is MY analogy, and as such only I make up the rules. And places as a metaphor for games makes zero sense to me. The only places the consoles go to, are the homes of the people buying them, and the software, because of people choosing which platform to buy based upon the exclusive content, are OPTIONS that the theoretical cars offer. The metaphor was meant to explain MY way of seeing these things, it wasn't meant to be deconstructed and then reconstructed in another way.

But like I said earlier, I already massively regret having mentioned this metaphor, so let's please REALLY leave it alone and let me have my own well-thought out metaphor, without shoe-horning it into one that makes no sense to me whatsoever...

And the QTE bashing was of course only a joke. Had to make my story good and believable, to have it lead into me appearing to be a hardcore Xbox fan...

I personally kinda agree with you to some extent as to why Microsoft got into gaming, because the OG Xbox was ALL about gaming, and was more or less the result of them already having worked with Sega on the Dreamcast, so I think that the initial motive was still pure, however short of a period that intent may have lasted. The Xbox 360 didn't really start out as a full-blown multi-media box either. The old dashboard featured mostly game-related content and only some music and clips, and only with later consecutive updates came the expanded media functionality and eventually, the whole "smells like Windows 8" thing started to happen, and from that point on, I can fully agree with you.

But we all know what Sony had actually planned with their launch, so if Microsoft hadn't screwed up their launch, then we would now have had TWO multi-media DRM boxes with motion-sensing cameras on the market. Those Asian backstabbers sure made good use of their mortal enemy's screw up...

As for me getting a Switch: don't you worry, it'll eventually find a home next to my TV, but per my "one console a year" rule, I will not buy any new devices until the end of this year. Haven't got the cash for it either, so it isn't an option even if I wanted to.

And because I just HAD to get one, I've already made the only exception to my own rule by pre-ordering the NES Mini, so that, the Wii U and the Xbox One will have to tide me over until then...

Just a reminder of the Xbox One exclusives I know of (I'm admittedly not very familiar with their digital-only games):

• Rare Replay
• Halo: The Master Chief Collection
• Halo Wars 2
• Super Lucky's Tale
• Sunset Overdrive
• ReCore
• Killer Instinct
• Gigantic

Probably will include Crackdown 3 and The Last Night whenever they finally come out, if they're any good.

@CanisWolfred There's more interesting stuff to come besides Crackdown 3 and The Last Night:

• Deep Rock Galactic
• Black Desert Online
• Ashen
• The Darwin Project
• Ori and The Will of the Wisps
• Halo 6
• Gears of War 5
• Fable 4 (still rumored, but reasonably likely)
• The Artful Escape
• Below
• Astroneer

And of course, there's already Sea of Thieves, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and State of Decay 2.

@ThanosReXXX "You're even kind of lucky in some regards, that you don't have the One X, or else you would also get the 4K textures on top of the already considerable downloads... "

No joke, I ate over 500GB in a few days and a few games! Then bought a 2TB external SSHD. Might need more storage to keep downloads local as well, just for backup purposes (fun thing the X1 seems to let you do is install from a disc to play with a digital copy. PS does not allow that, your disc install is unrelated to the download, and you have to delete it and download a digital copy from scratch if you want digital. Nice QoL if you have internet troubles later on (though it's still the worse platform for bad internet overall.)

" And places as a metaphor for games makes zero sense to me."
And that summarizes why you aren't interested in most Sony games That's a very different mindset in gaming to me. For me, and I'd argue most of the AAA publishers, is that games are just that, places you go to. I don't "play games" as a toy, I travel and explore new places. The console takes me to these places via the game discs/downloads. Each console can go places the other can't. I fear you've developed the (non-French/Italian which is more like the US/JP in taste) European taste in video games. You should feel bad. Don't you remember the Armchair Traveler sessions in libraries in the pre-internet days? It's like that

RE the OG XBox, the intent was not pure at all. I think there were elements in the development that came from that Sega world, and had pure intent, and the great game library spoke to that. But at a functional level it was anything but pure....arguably the most impure of the bunch until the XBone launch. They actually directly said at one point that the purpose was to get Windows into the living room. But it was deeper than that. MS OWNED game development up through the late 90's....and not in a good way. While OpenGL was a superior API in all ways, plus cross-platform support, MS spent rediculous tons of money to shove DirectX down everyone's throats, successfully, so that it was the defacto game dev API industry-wide, meaning cross platform away from Windows was unlikely. It secured the WIntel monopoly in that industry, and up to that point, games drove hardware sales, which drive Windows sales. The huge success of the PS2 created a crisis for them. Developers were shifting to OpenGL in large numbers. Unwilling to let go of their development monopoly through the API their only solution was to shoehorn DirectX into the console space before they lost the position as the "standard" development API. As such they raced the production on a VERY expensive fast track cycle for a "DirectX box". It was just a working descriptive title that was not intended to be the final name. But the name stuck so well, they ended up shortening it and keeping it: X-BOX. The fast track cost them OBSCENE amounts of money. I mean obscene. On a scale they still haven't actually paid back the losses of the first console via subsequent ones. Each unit was sold at tremendous loss just to build overnight market share.

It's amazing they got it running at all. Remember when they were caught at one of the trade shows running an X-BOX that turned out to be an empty shell with wires running under the table to a dual-Xeon NT4 box?

And THEN after that they somehow lost the last bits of those who cared about games they had and it became a Windows peddling product.

NOW, that may all change now that Spencer has the division to himself and it's no longer under Windows. But it's still MS. Will they push the Cloud mantra of the company as hard as they can through XBox? Probably.

Of course XBox isn't the platform with the power of the cloud

So yeah, nothing about XBox was pure from the start.....it was created, inspired, and designed for corporate politics. Sony and MS are two sides of the same rusty coin

Haha, I missed out on all the Minis....never had them in stock when I paid attention, and then I stopped paying attention. I still have my OG NES though....so that's the better bet

@CanisWolfred Wow that list seems so....meh. Well, ok MCC and HW2 are cool (bought those already.) Though I'm waiting on that rumored summer sale to snag some of the older exclusives. People panned them, but I still want to try them: Recore, Quantum Break, Ryse.

Here's my updated Xbox E3 predictions in order, just my opinions and guesses don't skewer me:

[ ] Forza horizon 4, Asian setting maybe Hong Kong or Tokyo. They debut a halo car on stage as they've done in the past.

[ ] SoT and SoD2 free dlc/updates. Both released to very very mediocre receptions but I don't think they're giving up on them and will improve over time. Want to reward those who did pick them up

[ ] Crackdown 3 delay to February 12th 2019, get the bad news out of the way early. Looks decent but is groan enducing

[ ] Gears 5 or Halo 6 teaser(see next point)

[ ] Halo battle royale or Gears BR. I see them coming out with a spinoff BR of one franchise and announcing a direct sequel to the other.

[ ] This is where the lull happens. Another super consumer friendly service a la game pass/ea access. Maybe combining game pass into live as I've seen rumored

[ ] Sizzle reel of more new beloved BC games from last 2 gens

[ ] New pubg map/mode

[ ] Customizable consoles you can order/design just like the controllers. Can send in your current one to be customized.

[ ] Peripheral hardware announcement. Maybe Some AR headset or emergent tech that will look cool on the stream but won't set the world ablaze

[ ] Updates and release dates for games announced already Ori, Deep Rock etc

[ ] Indie spotlight

[ ] Cuphead Expansion/dlc

[ ] A kid friendly game 3rd party exclusive like a 2d/3d platformer or a Mario/Rabbids level out of nowhere game. 2019 release

[ ] Extended look at 2 or 3 AAA 3rd party game we already know about that they have marketing right to. Splinter Cell, Rage 2, Anthem, Metro etc something that's already been revealed we get more gameplay here though

[ ] Fable Teaser

[ ] Deep dive into Cyberpunk 2077

[ ] Fin

Some notes:

*One of these will be a "beta available now" moments
*I see the conference being solid overall but poorly received by press/fans. Much like xbox one sales. They're good in the grand scheme, but they're going against record setters so it makes them look poor in comparison in the public eye.

@NEStalgia Aw man, so many things I want to say, but I know I shouldn't, because my inner mad titan is already starting to rage and is slowly making its way to the surface. Better to keep it locked away, but it is tough to do, also to keep myself from saying all I want to say.

Still have to get at least some of it off my chest, though, so here goes. And please keep in mind: no offense meant...

So, still couldn't keep yourself from mentioning a bit of the whole metaphor conundrum that we've found ourselves to be in (and which I wanted to drop), huh?

I'm also kind of disappointed/sad that you keep misunderstanding me for some reason. That's something that hasn't happened that much before between the two of us, so I've no idea what's up with that.

And like I said before, I REALLY hate to be corrected/misinterpreted, no joke. It really frustrates me, as an honest, straight in your face kinda guy that always says EXACTLY what he means, and as such, there is NO reading between the lines with me or making up some kind of interpretation of what I'm trying to convey.

So, the whole "And that summarizes why you aren't interested in most Sony games" (if you're serious) couldn't be more wrong. I do own multiple platforms after all, and of course, games ALWAYS (well, at least: the good ones) take you to another world, but that wasn't my point at ALL. But I'll drop the rest here, because no offense, but I'm tired of trying to explain myself, and if you didn't get it the first three times, then you're never gonna get it.

Just imagine being me, for a minute: a guy who, among his colleagues and friends is pretty well-known for having the gift of gab and being able to use good and colorful metaphors to simplify almost anything so that even the least technical person on the planet can understand how certain things work or what the heck I'm talking about when it concerns certain topics.

Apparently, that gift only works in a face to face situation, because I can't for the life of me remember a situation where I had to spend SO much time and text on it, and STILL not being understood correctly. Mind blown, but not at all in a positive way...

I fear you've developed the (non-French/Italian which is more like the US/JP in taste) European taste in video games. You should feel bad. Don't you remember the Armchair Traveler sessions in libraries in the pre-internet days? It's like that

Having a European taste in games isn't bad at all, and I'm most certainly not going to feel bad about it either. I've more than likely seen and experienced a hundredfold of what the average American who didn't move to Europe has seen, and as such, my view of the world is broader, more nuanced and also more understanding towards the people of other countries.

And I've long since been cured of the default American stance of everything back home being bigger, better, faster and whatever other superlative we can come up with...

You also misunderstood my Xbox point. I meant pure in the way that to me as a gamer, it was first and foremost a gaming machine, since the dashboard in the beginning was fairly simple and mostly game-oriented with only minor multimedia influences. Only over the years and generations, it became more and more of a multimedia/Windows 8 box. I personally couldn't care less about any of Microsoft's nefarious plans in the background to push DirectX, Windows or anything like that. This has literally had no bearing on me whatsoever as a gamer. Or to be more clear: in my own, personal experience.

But in all honesty, that is also because I never really cared for the whole multimedia stuff anyways, on ANY console. All the "we need Netflix and YouTube" etc. whining has always frustrated me to no end, as if that is somehow a measure of how good a console is. And apparently, one console is TOO much of a multimedia box, and the other just can't win even if they eventually DO offer some multimedia options...

Gamers are a fickle lot, well at least: "modern" gamers. Not all of them, but most definitely a heck of a lot of them.

Phew... okay, done and dusted. We can now enter the happy happy thoughts area again. Although seeing the upcoming games lists being received with less than an enthusiastic demeanor, doesn't predict much good for what they might still reveal at the upcoming E3 event. But I do like some of the games in both my and CanisWolfred's list, so it may not be much on the exclusive content scale, but still more than enough to keep me happy, and that's really all that any individual gamer should care about.

Don't like it? Buy that other console, or a Switch...

As for the Minis: you're definitely missing out. The emulation may not be 100% perfect, but I haven't noticed much of that. Then again: as you know, I'm not such a nitpicker in that regard. I just REALLY like having a small box with almost 200 games on it that I can easily take with me, without having to carry along a big box of cartridges. Not to mention that some of these games are now only available for the most ridiculous amounts of money, and then there's also a certain number of games that simply aren't available at all anymore.

So, unless you still have the original hardware and games, like you do, it is not really an option for most people with an average income. You could of course always buy one of those Everdrive cartridges for your original console, and put all the games on there, but still, I hope you get the point...

And for me, as a "late" Nintendo adopter, having started with the N64, these Minis are a nice way to recapture these 8 and 16 bit moments, and still have a sense of playing on the "real" hardware. My cousins did have all the older consoles, and I always used to play the games at their house, so it's not like I never got in touch with Nintendo before the N64 at all, but I never did own one of the older consoles myself. So, I thought I'd better not miss out on them, this time around...

Either way, I'll be a very happy camper on June 29th, when my NES Mini arrives. And then it's only about 6 more months until I finally get my Switch...

But of course, those consoles don't belong in this thread, so back to the Xboxen...

Ryse, regardless of critical reception and/or reviews (some of which definitely do make some good points) is still a highly entertaining game in my opinion, and I've enjoyed the heck out of it. I got the Legendary Edition for only 20 euros, which has all of the DLC and some other stuff, so that was a good deal and if you can find that version, I can most definitely recommend getting it.

And I agree on also wanting to play ReCore and Quantum Break, although the latter is a bit of a questionable one, because rumors are doing the rounds that we can't wait too long because of the supposed future removal/unavailability of the interactive/video parts.

I have read that these might possibly not be accessible anymore in the not too distant future, meaning you will lose quite a bit of the additional story material of the game, which was actually meant to pad it out and make it more immersive.

So, the game itself would probably still be playable, but instead of watching bits and pieces of real time video in between, you'd probably only get a fade out to black and then back into the game again, which I think would make the experience considerably disconnected, unless they find some way to patch the videos in with another massive download such as with Halo 5, so you'd have all the videos stored on your console...

What will actually happen, only time will tell, I guess.

P.S.

I'm probably WAY too European, but I've never heard of the Armchair Traveler's Sessions, in any form. I only know armchair critics...

@ThanosReXXX Wow, you may have broken my textwall record!

Metaphor: My point wasn't to correct, my point was that your take is very different from my take, and since PS4 is stomping X1 in sales' I'd wager a lot of people's takes. My analogy applied to how I (and many others) perceive it, which is very different from your perception. From that angle, if someone were to talk into a store, the #1 question would not be "which console's features do I like more" because both are nearly the same, a few sublte difference here and there, some obvious, some burried in menus. But what will stand out is one "goes to other places" (other game worlds) more. We were, at the time, talking about the popularity of the one, and the E3 dilemma for the other, not your personal preference for the other.

By European taste in games I was referencing the sales charts that crop up and the very different tastes overall. Specifically in the UK however. Broken down, US, CA, FR, IT tend to have common tastes, the rest of EU + UK have common tastes, and JP is unique, with some crossover between JP and US, CA, FR, IT. Personally my tastes are probably 65% JP 35% US, CA, FR, IT. The big schism seems to be between large, story driven fictional adventures/RPGs versus quick-play team/sports/racing/real-life oriented play. US specifically has an obsession with modern military games though that I can't get into. Historic ones, sure, modern not really.

Ahh, the user experience being pure gaming. Yeah, that one is true. But I was talking about the actual smoke and mirrors behind the scenes when comparing the start of the two platforms. MS's heart was never really in it for the content.....and the present exclusives issue is the result.

For me XBox is just a cheap convenient PC. And it does that job really well. But the downside (and why it's low in sales next to Blue Team) is it doesn't do much as a console ecosystem like both Nintendo and Sony do. Being a cheap convenient PC is too narrow a niche to make a splash.

Media apps: Agreed! I don't get it. Why do you need Netflix, an app to play a subscription service? I like the YT and YTTV apps on Xbox, Rokus that are designed to do only that (and use a lot less power doing it) aren't exactly expensive. Why does Switch need this?

Minis: Yeah there's a lot of good points to those. I really wanted one, but the supply issues put me off and I never got back into following them. Also with a Switch, 1X, and Pro I'm REALLY short on HDMI ports.... Someday, maybe.

I'm hoping with Ryse and all that they'll have a good sale with $15 or less digitally for some of that old stuff. It's kind of gathering dust in retail bins.....it's not even on Game Pass.....they've got to be keeping it around for promos soon! I actually got Quantum Break and Ori.....on Steam.....when I thought I was going the PC route. So now I have to rebuy them.

Interesting about Quantum Break, I hadn't heard about that! That's a shame

Aww, you missed out on the fun imaginary travel trips at your local library by actually traveling to those places physically.....where's the fun in that? For us peasants, that's the best we can muster

@DarthNocturnal literally had to look that up. Have never even heard of the series that's why I missed it lol. I will take that L, oh well😂

How are you liking the Crew 2 beta BTW?Been playing the beta off and on (when it's worked) today and I'm pretty happy with it so far.