Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@DarthNocturnal @BlueOcean oh I see, thanks for the info.

I plan on getting an S this month.

I have Crackdown on disc somewhere from back in the day but no idea where it is. So this is a must now it’s free!

@DarthNocturnal ahh..ooops!

@Grumblevolcano somewhat. Though wiiu also had no real third party to fall back on and had like 2 games and spotlight Indies. X1 has rdr2 and kh3 and a hundred others, and fortunately for them, most xbox buyers buy way more third party than first. Not great compared to Sony (though they have a pretty light year ahead too) but far from wiiu levels of paperweight.

@BlueOcean My concern is more about cancellation, delaying games to improve the final product is important but Crackdown 3 has been delayed so much that I could see it ending up like Scalebound.

@Grumblevolcano You really can't compare Scalebound to Crackdown 3, Scalebound was always in limbo, the engine was a mess and the project was misguided; and certainly not Xbox One with Wii U. The problem with Wii U is that it only had relevant third-party support on launch window and even Nintendo did not support it much either (rushed games, lack of Metroid, etc.) although of course it has gems that I adore and that ironically are the main lineup of Switch.

This year we had a lot of important third-party releases and a few key first-party releases on Xbox and it looks like the future is going to be better, not just because of the new studios but also because of new entries in popular franchises like Halo, Gears, Ori and hopefully Fable. Honestly, I can't hope for more except for Banjo and a confirmed Fable 4. Those are the only two things that I am missing in the horizon.

@BlueOcean I haven't touched the drift pack. And I can't recommend anything specific as it's all down to preference. Just make sure it's an AWD car to keep a level of stability and that it has enough power to be able to stay above 50MPH at almost all times. Good luck.

@BlueOcean 1st party is getting there judging by 2019 releases so far but 2017-2018 have certainly been Wii U era territory on the 1st party XB1 front. The big difference being that Microsoft ends up fine because XB1 gets all the 3rd party support.

@Grumblevolcano yeah, and remember xboxs official strategy was to jettison first party and rely on pushing the best experience for multiplats...aka a one and done pc experience. That didn't work against the sony onslaught, but that was their intentional condition. Wiiu didn't do that intentionally, first party was their intention. They just messed it up.

@NEStalgia But that is subjective, I am not a fan of Sony's exclusives. Wipeout, perhaps. Overall I consider Microsoft's and Nintendo's much better.

@DarkRula I was trying to find your old posts... There are several Subaru WRX, which one do I pick? And how do I make them AWD? By AWD do you mean offroad monsters (I have seen online ghosts using them) and similar vehicles or do you mean a particular kind of car that you like for drifting and that you modified to give power to all wheels?

By the way there is a lot of threads on the Forza forum of people complaining about how difficult the drift challenges are, one guy was trying for five hours one single challenge. :S And no, it's not me, there are at least two of us...

@NEStalgia Nintendo did rely on 3rd parties to reduce the droughts caused by HD development but of course the 3rd parties abandoned Nintendo so they were left with the droughts. They learned from that in the Switch era that last gen ports are a much more reliable way of filling droughts than 3rd party support and then ended up with somewhat decent 3rd party support.

Ha! A few days away (hope you guys caught my explainer in the chit-chat, apologies for not getting back to a couple of you) and we’re about 20 pages further in!

Anyone use two xboxes? I’ve been rocking them for a while but never really noticed/had reason to till now just how seamless the cloud saving is? If anyone’s been on the fence about getting a secondary it really does work well (albeit mileage may vary when you have a save system as dodgy as RDR2!). The caveat naturally is that it sucks when live goes down and you try and swap machines - like Thursday just gone when live went down again, at least in AU.

I’ll leave it there, got lots more to say about RDR, both good and bad (what a bizarre rollercoaster of a game) but i’ll save it till i’ve got more time/more people have played maybe?

Looking forward to the show this weekend, fwiw i’m not sure how many new titles we’ll get now for xbox until the new machine comes out?

All these studios they’ve bought, wouldn’t it make sense to give them a full 3-5 year dev cycle and launch them on a new machine to give it a good clutch of exclusives? Given that the install base of said new machine would predictably be low I guess it would also make sense to release a ‘lesser’ version for X only too?

If I were a betting man that’s definitely how I see them approaching the future (two supported machines at a time, games - at least first party ones - have to work across both), at least until they bring streaming in etc.

@BlueOcean Subjective, maybe. I happen to like both console's exclusives quite a bit, so I'm either covered either way, or screwed because I always need both consoles to feel complete But I think the main issue with MS is that lack of diversity...there's a homogeneous streak to their exclusives where it's mostly shooters and racers. I can count on one hand the games that don't fit into those two camps. The PS exclusives are pretty diverse, even into some experimental stuff (David Cage games, a lot of Japan Studio's stuff) while MS almost never leaves the comfort zone except Scream RIde and arguably SoT....the converse is: Because PS exclusives are pretty diverse, almost no one will like all of them, but almost everyone will like some of them. MS is a more loaded bag. If you happen to like the genres they saturate, you'll like almost all of their games. If you don't, you'll like almost none of them. As a sales hook, Sony has the better gig for trawling customers. Hopefully the studio acquisitions start rectifying that.

Though I admit for me personally, while I do like both, a lot of the Sony catalog's draw has been the Square catalog. With that jumping ship, I'm down to only about 50% of Sony's catalog appealing to me, versus 95% of MS's. But the ones that do appeal to me are "must haves" for me. Sony has a zombie & horror fetish going on that doesn't interest me in the slightest.

@BrainOfGrimlock Yeah XBox is the only sane digital platform. They do that stuff really well. Nintendos'...well.....we'll talk after Dark Souls supports cloud saves........

@BlueOcean AWD is All Wheel Drive, so yes. Power to all four wheels. The Subaru is already AWD. I can't remember its designation, but the picture should be a dark grey car with the Subaru name on the side of it.
And yeah. At first I was cursing these challenges as well.

@BrainOfGrimlock "Given that the install base of said new machine would predictably be low I guess it would also make sense to release a ‘lesser’ version for X only too?"

That makes sense to me. I think that the first years of the next Xbox console will be transitional.

@NEStalgia"But I think the main issue with MS is that lack of diversity... there's a homogeneous streak to their exclusives where it's mostly shooters and racer"

That is not true but this could become another loop about Sony and I would hate that. Only Forza, Gears and Halo are racers and FPS, all the other exclusive games are not. Forza has two different experiences, the arcadey (Horizon) and the simulator (Motorsport) while Halo feels more like Metroid Prime although it was released before Metroid Prime so we could also say that Metroid Prime feels like Halo. Gears is a cover shooter but more original and fun than any other that I have played and it's also totally different to Halo. Last E3 was a showcase with all kind of genres and this year we had a new 3D platformer, a pirates game and a zombies game (a genre that you hate, I know). Sony has received more Japanese support this generation than Microsoft (Atlus). However, some PS4 games have been released for Xbox One recently (like Nier Automata and Final Fantasy) so that is changing too. Square Enix is one of my favourite Japanese developer, we agree on that one, but also Capcom and fortunately they publish everything on Xbox One. I really don't care about the other Japanese stuff, except Nintendo, obviously.

@DarkRula Finally I got three stars on three different challenges! I am still not good though. One of issues that I have (I just realised this) is that I usually don't go fast enough and if I do I lose control and you don't get any points outside the pavement, so either I go too slow or I drift out. I tried manual transmission and cockpit view as suggested on some forums but unless you are playing in a cabinet (or with wheel and pedals) this doesn't feel right so I am using automatic transmission like you do and an outside view. What speed and gear do you go for in the challenges? So thanks to you and @Thanosrexxx for the help. I will try that bucket list challenge in FH3 that I hate, the drift challenge in a white van in a rainy day.

By the way, I can't decide which one I like the most, Forza Horizon 3 or 4. Some people say that they are similar but for me they are completely different. There are things I prefer about FH4 like the seasons, 60 fps mode and more diverse landscapes but at the same time I really love the Australian setting and the menus of FH3.

This evening (for Europeans) Xbox news! I am not expecting much, though. Remember to watch on Mixer for DLC goodies.

@BlueOcean Great work! You want to be staying above 50MPH at nearly all times, though a helpful little thing I can say to quickly get back up to speed is upgrade the transmission to unlock gear ratio changing and putting it up to 4.5. And no problem. Always happy to help when I can.

It's definitely a bit of bias, but for me it'd be Horizon 4. Driving around a rendition of my home country, being able to create my own routes, and a level of openness that hasn't been present in any of the past games.

And yeah, just over six hours until Inside Xbox. Should be good.

Only problem is that doesn't work as pc has its own exclusives and anbody that has a pc that runs multiplats usually won't think of a console first. However MS has always had a 1st party diversity problem. I'd say the best way for them to stand out is paying for exclusive content on multiplats, but sony does that and its annoying and bad for everyone imo. And all the console exclusive 3rd party games kinda tanked, even the good ones (like Ryse son of rome) As a first party provider, MS has lower genre parity to sony and even less than Nintendo. Nothing wrong with that. They get by just fine with multiplats, it just make them a harder sale for buy everything gamers like myself.

I dunno if I’ll be watching the Xbox conference/show/whatever tonight (is it 9pm UK?) I’d rather be playing some games and keeping track on Twitter of what’s been announced. I’m not expecting much apart from some new controllers with different designs. They seem to love releasing controllers as much as Nintendo loves different coloured joy cons.

I’m sure you’ll be able to find the highlights of the event right here tomorrow

I was going to watch it, but I have other plans tonight.

@FragRed The mixpot is the reason to watch live, free FH4 and SoT DLC.