Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@BlueOcean True. And I imagine Sony will be pushing their own Game Pass shameless clone revolutionary innovation as well, so MS will be trying to one-up that.

@NEStalgia Yeah and with full third party support and the new studios and games they can't say that Xbox has not games anymore, finally! I'm intrigued by the Microsoft and Sony deal regarding streaming. Microsoft has the infrastructure so what do they win with this deal? Uncharted?

@NEStalgia Well of course not, they are pronouns.

Still, it gets me online (not that I will use it for more than virtua fighter), gets me the free monthly games (yay NHL this month) and no more than I buy for the twins (not very much good on the way for me except fighting games) this allows me to finish multiplats and weed out the ones that I may not want to actually own. On the other hand, part of the reason I don't play the twins much aside from the lack of compelling games is the lack of time to camp in front of a tv (or a tv for that matter). At least I can cancel at any time, but for now I have plenty to play. I'll play it by ear.

Wow Too Human is free? Will snag tonight. I hope I haven't missed out...

@Ryu_Niiyama No, you haven't: the offer is valid until the end of the week.

@BlueOcean That's a good question. IIRC, Sony's Gaikai/Now streaming used Google's infrastructure before. There's only really 3 options for streaming, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. Much as it's always been PS vs XB, it seems pretty clear MS is trying to line things up to maintain the status quo in the industry. With Google using their PS Now knowledge to build Stadia, and the inevitability of Amazon doing the same, it might make sense for MS/Nintendo/Sony to effectively enter illegal price fixing and collusion partnership agreements to ensure the XBox/Playstation/Nintendo ruled marketplace continues to exist as-is against the coming wave of "big data" competitors. I doubt Sony really wants to rely on Microsoft to provide PS services as little more than a private-labeled XBox, but allying with XBox for console platform entrenchment probably seems more appealing than the idea of getting steamrolled by AppleFaceGoogAzon and their unlimited budgets collapsing the gaming model into ad-driven services.

I think "XBox has no games" will continue as a meme. 3rd party has never been a problem for MS, the meme was always about exclusive first party studios. MS is definitely going to have some good 1st party output to a degree, but It's safe to bet Sony still has the much bigger investment in privately held studios and at a minimum will do a better job marketing the image of all their exclusive games. The loudest cries really come from the PC gamers that complain they already have those games on PC, without still letting it click that it's still the Microsoft/XBox ecosystem (I still love how even Win10 Enterprise has XBox, Minecraft, and Game Pass content on the start menu. Even server editions! )

@Ryu_Niiyama LOL, nouns, not pronouns, but I honestly have no idea at all why I wrote "verbs." I need a nap. Or more caffeine. Or both at the same time.

But yeah, GP is really cool when they have most of the games launching on it. I can test them all out....and still get a discount if I buy any of them, so it's like Nintendo vouchers but I pay more for them and I don't get a weird time limit.

@DarthNocturnal Yeah, I do recall that being the case. Still doesn't explain what the occasion/celebration is that now allows us to download it for free. Unless Microsoft getting the game back IS the occasion...

Whatever the reason, it would have never been an issue for me in the first place, seeing as I've already owned the physical version of the game, ever since it first came out.

I basically just downloaded it now, so that I don't have to use my disc on the Xbox One.

@DarthNocturnal That's interesting, I don't recall hearing about that saga at the time. Dyack, Pitchford, Inafune, and Kojima should form a new company. They can release a game 20-30 years from now that's the best ever, and never pay for development. It'll end up releasing as a 8-bit platformer. A buggy one. That's boring.

Not Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Monster Hunter. Full Japanese support is very recent! Remember when you didn't believe me when I said Final Fantasy VII was coming to Xbox. Yes, sorry, I had to remind you.

About first-party games, it's funny because they are not commercially as important on Xbox One and PS4 as the rest of the games except for a few hits as Halo, Forza, Uncharted and The Last of Us that top the charts. Sure, the less popular exclusives are great for us players in spite of commercial performance but we're not going to love them all anyway. I have both consoles and I admit I prefer Microsoft's exclusives so it's kind of funny how some people, not you, think that Sony's offerings are objectively better. The Last of Us? Give me Resident Evil any day. Uncharted? Great script and voice actors, limited gameplay and even limited fun. Even the new Tomb Raider games are much better. Wipeout? Now that's much better if you like racing games like I do but I got Redout recently and it's extremely good too and, without powerful weapons, reminds me a lot of F-Zero.

@DarthNocturnal I know, and I was already familiar with the games long-stretched history and development hell (heck, I've wanted to own it, ever since I read about it in a GameCube magazine), but those reviews mean absolutely nothing to me. I have never had the urge to sell it, after I'd bought and played it, unlike other games, which to me is a sign that the game was more than good enough to hold on to it...

But besides all that, I do think it's really strange that it was released for free without even the slightest hint of notification or whatever. Because of that, it landed completely under the radar, and if it weren't for @JoakimZ mentioning it a couple of pages back (thanks for that, by the way), I wouldn't even have known about it, nor would anyone else, probably, unless they rigorously watch Major Nelson's website, or the Xbox Marketplace, for price changes and/or deals on all games. The latter of which is pretty much impossible, since you can't keep tabs on ALL games available on there.

And then there's the thing of it only being available for free for a week. If Microsoft has somehow regained the rights to it, then there's no reason for them to offer it for such a short period only. Case in point: the two previous Crackdown games. Still available for free, to this day. Sure, there were never any license issues/disputes concerning those games, but still. I hope you get my point.

@DarthNocturnal Well, that explains it: I never watched that, so to me, and probably plenty of others, it actually was under the radar. And as a company, Microsoft should have taken into account people not watching that. It should have been in one of their newsletters, or on the dashboard of the Xbox One, for all I care, but as a marketing man myself, I can't say many positive things about how they advertised this.

Or rather: failed to advertise this, especially to loyal and longtime members and fans...

Anyway, did they also not explain or give a reason in that broadcast? They just said "well, here's another free game surprise for y'all", more or less like an afterthought?

It all made me kinda curious now, so I guess I'm simply going to HAVE to watch that specific episode...

@NEStalgia All the rising tides from global warming is going to short circuit all of the robots so back to the way of the Luddites and the Amish, and drowned a couple of billion people, problem solved.

@BlueOcean Well, the Japanese studios, particularly Square-Enix, yeah. MH was Nintendo locked for years, so that's kind of a non-starter too, but yeah, I do see your point. XBox started with decent Japanese support...it fell apart in the late 360 era.

Haha, yeah, well with Square, after we disagreed on that at the time, it all became clear after I learned Sony was a Square-Enix investor on the board and divested....that made it all make sense They did control Square's decision making to a point until then and the moment they were removed from the equation, all those bad decisions were reversed.

Definitely it's true, unlike Nintendo, the exclusives are a tiny fraction of the industry. Somehow PS builds an empire on them though. I don't think any publisher would knock anyone over for Detroit: Become Human sales numbers. I like the unpopular exclusives, and in some ways they are some of the best gems in the industry versus the steady and reliable 3rd party blockbusters. I think the meme of Sony's exclusives being so superior comes from the fact that they're generally higher budget, higher polish than Microsofts that hit all the right review tropes that garner critical acclaim while Microsofts are more "raw", if not "retro" in a way, and fall behind with the critics. Modern gamers care about Metracritic above all after all! "I can't make my own decisions so I'll let statistics and metrics decide for me!" I like both company's exclusives (though Sony could really use to tone down the whole zombie obsession........) but MS's are more replayable/continuously playable I think. Sony's are more memorable as stories.

@rjejr Global warming is now my official best friend.

@NEStalgia So, you'd rather live out the rest of your life on a water-soaked Earth, with small-minded idiots and religious simpletons?
Man, your popularity meter sure is speeding down double-time...

@DarthNocturnal I think it's easier to ask Larry Hryb. He's more easily reachable than Phil Spencer, who probably gets bombarded by Tweets every single day. At least Larry has his own dedicated website and forum for the exact reason of keeping in touch with Xbox gamers directly...

@NEStalgia Burn, baby, burn!

@NEStalgia "you" is a pronoun. So I should have said pronoun and noun. ...Now we are slapfighting grammar. I second it on the nap. Our software vendor broke our website and I'm putting out fires and I am seriously ready for a nap and a rootbeer. I really wish I had taiko practice today. SIGH.

@ThanosReXXX we've already got the water soaked part. And the future is wrenched with overpopulation and automation. Anything that fries the automation AND the population is ok in my book! Plus the simpletons are really better than the holier than thou futurists. Got to pick one or the other, or just exterminate all of them.

You wanted me to do bad things, didn't you? Let's play thermonuclear war! . @rjejr and i have this covered!

@Ryu_Niiyama "you"is a pronoun, but i meant you, not the word "you".... And a specific person is a noun.

Nap time! Hey @morpheel when's siesta?

If your can't hit a drum with a stick, just find the nearest manager or annoying Co worker. It's almost as satisfying.

Nap time is Sunday at 4 pm.

@NEStalgia The weird thing is we've also got year on year longer and hotter droughts, so either one of the two sides is lying to us, or Mother Nature is indeed unfathomable...

I never said anything about futurists, but if my only two choices of kinds of people to live the rest of my days out with, were technophobes and Amish, then I'd probably rather be dead, or live alone on an island. One with a good internet connection and some solid concrete bunkers, mind you.

But my kinds of people are the people persons, and the problem solvers. People that think in possibilities instead of in problems and obstacles, and the people who aren't beholden to any deity (which makes them too narrow-minded in a lot of areas). And tech in and of itself ain't all bad. Forget about all your crazy spinning hardware for a while, and just think about all the good that it has brought us. And let's not forget all the wonderful electronic entertainment.

On a side note: this conversation certainly has taken a really weird, off-topic turn, ever since we dragged @rjejr in here...

P.S.

Nice War Games reference there.