Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@Octane Ah yeah, I did forget about Hulst. That did surprise me as a good move in terms of understanding the needs of game development. In that sense, it's Furukawa that's the odd man out as a bean counter. Reggie doesn't count. He ran a sales office, not game development and hardware planning.

Wow, there's another thread on the Xbox brand, neat.

@NEStalgia Sounds more like Sony will have next to no competition next gen, in that case.

If Sony is doing the traditional home console thing, Microsoft is doing the "games as a service" streaming app thing, and Nintendo is doing the hybrid thing, then there's really no muscling for the same space in the industry. I mean, there'll always be some overlap, but those approaches attract different people for different reasons, I think.

@Ralizah Yeah. PS5 will be the system for Sony exclusives and VR, Switch will be the system for Nintendo exclusives and playing anywhere and Xbox Series X will be the system for if you hate PC gaming but want to play Halo, Gears and Forza (I say those 3 because the other franchises are coming to platforms like Switch).

@Ralizah I don't mean MS is only doing GaaS, obviously where the discussion here is largely about their all new hardware device(s). What I mean is they seem to be focusing on XBox as a total platform rather than a specific hardware disc player device. I.E. It doesn't matter if you're playing on a Windows PC, an XBox console or an iPad via xCloud, you're an XBox customer no matter the method you're interacting with the platform.

Sony's not really operating that differently with their upcoming streaming service that replaces Now. But MS is putting a bit more focus into building out the streaming service (for better or worse), and of course has a PC OS component that Sony doesn't, and can leverage integrating well with it to make up a platform that's bigger than just the "VCR with a big fan" aspect of it. So Sony is focusing on the traditional home console, plus a bit of a secondary focus on streaming. MS is focusing somewhat equally on the traditional home console, streaming and OS integration.

I.E. if you're playing MS Game Studios games on you're PC, you're still in the Microsoft/XBox ecosystem regardless of if you buy the hardware or not. None of these companies make much money selling consoles - and typically they lose money selling consoles. If they could sell you games and services on your toaster, they'd rather do that.

@Grumblevolcano I still find it a little strange, granted, as a multi-platform gamer, when people evaluate the platforms based on exclusives. I don't know if it's Nintendo & Sega that created that weird bubble, or if Sony did it. When you evaluate your total game collection, what percentage of all your games, maaaybe excluding Nintendo since we're all core Nintendo gamers and they're one of the top publishers, are platform exclusive? If we omit Nintendo that's a unique case, and I look at my, what, 320 + games playable on current gen hardware, maybe 25 of them are platform specific?

If you're only going to buy one system yeah you have to buy the one that has the games you want, but it's still a little weird to me when most of the games you're going to play are multiplatform to not look at which platform is actually going to be nicer to play them on. Take exclusives off the table. Ok, VR is a big deal for Sony, but it's also a whole OTHER console you buy for your console. It's the Sega 32x but with games.

But take the exclusives off the table. Forget Uncharted and Forza. You want to play Assassin's Creed, COD, RDR, Just Dance....whatever your thing is. Even assume cross-play for everything. Wouldn't you pick the hardware and software ecosystem that is more suited to your use rather than arguing exclusivity counts?

I have PS4 Pro. I have X1X. Outer Worlds is out. Which platform do I buy it for? The PS4 gives me no reason to favor it over X1X, meanwhile the menus, navigation, and overall interface on X1X gives me reason to prefer it there. Ralizah hates the XBox controlers and loves the DS4....so the choice of which to get is obvious there.

I just think it's kind of broken to evaluate systems purely by "which of the half dozen exclusives for each can I play - oh well that machine has no exclusives so I'll just get this other machine and shoehorn the other 80% of my games onto a platform that maybe suits them or my use less because I want those other half dozen games."

Granted, that's PS4 vs X1X - maybe XSX (XSEX?) vs PS5 will make PS5 look like the better bet. But where most of the games we're going to play are PC games first and foremost, wouldn't the most PC-like platform be ideal?

Or similarly the mentality that says "I'm really a PC gamer and play all these multiplat games on PC so the only value a console has is in playing nothing but exclusive games on it that I can't play on my PC even though I'd prefer to, and therefore a Playstation has 12 games and an XBox has 2 so Playstation wins." You're not really even a console customer at that point, you're just buying a plastic & metal license key with a fan and a power light for access to a couple of games.

@NEStalgia Well the key thing to remember is many people only get 1 console. If you're going to get multiple, that's where deciding where to buy games come in and is where Xbox Series X shines if you like the ecosystem because you can use the Game Pass Ultimate trick to guarantee 3 years for just £1/$1/€1 when you've got 3 years of Gold.

@Grumblevolcano But even if you're only buying one console. Again, Nintendo aside for the moment because they're a special case in several ways, but just going between MS and PS right now:

When did it become standard to chose your ONE and ONLY gaming system simply to play GoW, LBP, HZD, and Uncharted versus simply to play Forza, Gears, FSO2 Beta. Why not choose your one and only console based on your preferred place to play the other 200 games you may buy?

@NEStalgia I think most of my games are platform exclusive. On PlayStation it's definitely half. Even more on Switch, but that's because I only really buy Nintendo games on Switch.

@Octane You just don't buy very many games then

Switch is kind of an exception. Outer Worlds being on Switch is cool, but you're going to buy it on PS/XB/PC if you have the option unless you really really really want portability on it.

That in itself is an interesting question though. Nintendo being aside -they're unique and you buy their hardware to play their games. Sony's games are popular, but they're not quite the magical publisher Nintendo is. What makes people like yourself buy primarily platform exclusive games? My theory is simply because you can. Because exclusivity seems fitting and helps justify the purchase. I imagine I do that too to some extent.

Someone will say "look at the Metacritic scores!" I've said, probably in this thread a few times, that with Nintendo and Sony I think the critical scores are high in some cases just because of the publisher's reputation. It's something that happens in judged sports - things like figure skating and skateboarding. An athlete that is known to consistently nail the technical elements tends to be less scrutinized by judges, less slow-mo reviews from off-angle cameras, etc. while an athlete that's known to make technical errors will be scrutinized closely. Judges will verify the technical elements in replay most of the time.

The result of this is that in major competitions, one athlete can have a serious technical failure that goes unnoticed, they're are essentially scored on benefit of doubt, while another athlete can have the performance of their lives with the tiniest of miniature errors, and get heavy points deduction while the athlete with the serious failure gets near perfect marks - simply because the judges were looking for problems with the latter, and assuming no problems with the former. That problem persists up through Olympic level.

I think video game critics do much of the same. Sony is known for great narratives and few technical difficulties (albeit a lot of sameness through a lot of their games) and critics just evaluate them through rose tinted glasses. Similarly Nintendo tends to be viewed in the same light "most of what they do is great, so this will be no different.) MS is a lot more experimental, more prone to take chances, more often leading to disasters. Crackdown 3 being a great example. So critics tend to look at a new MS game through very critical lenses, looking for the faults and cracks, rightly marking them down, but wrongly ignoring glaring holes in Sony's "play it safe" lineups. Much of the time I think a Sony game, even if it's fairly middling and average with some big flaws, gets great scores simply because it's a Sony game. It's not that their games aren't good, but I don't see them as being as "amazing" as scores make them look.

I love Insomniac games. R&C is one of the best shooters I've ever played. I'd buy a PS just for R&C. Spiderman is "very good" and is popular because it's Spiderman, so it's popularity is inevitable. But when I compare it to Sunset Overdrive, a much more experimental and "rough" outing, there's a lot more to love about Sunset. It's clear it was part of the mechanical inspiration behind Spiderman, but where Spiderman sucks the life out of it, plays it safe, and derrives almost all of Arkham, Sunset is similarly designed but goes pedal to the metal crazy with fun mechanics and player agency. Meanwhile Spiderman gets top marks, Sunset overdrive gets filtered as an also-ran, and it's made by the same team....

@NEStalgia Yeah, nobody sensible can really believe that PS4 sold more than Xbox One/Wii U/Switch because of Sony's games, especially since there weren't any Sony's games to begin with. Nintendo depends on their own games, Sony said that they were surprised that PS4 was selling so well without games.

This generation we've seen so many games going multiplatform, only a few remain, those made by Sony's studios and those made by Microsoft's studios but for Microsoft is no longer about consoles but about subscriptions, Windows, consoles and streaming, integrating all of them to give the best possible value to players. Let's get real, Sony doesn't make that much money with consoles either but with royalties and subscriptions. Another plus for Microsoft is multiplatform games that run and look better on Microsoft's hardware because most of the games that the majority of people play are third-party games. When most people choose a console, it's not about those few games unless they're buying Nintendo. Next generation is going to be nothing like this one for Sony because Nintendo and Microsoft won't mess it up like they did in 2012-2013, no matter how beautiful Uncharted 5 is.

@BlueOcean Year 1 on PS4 was pretty bleak, wasn't it? I bought it, and used it the first 2 weeks, for Knack and Killzone and basically didn't touch it again for another year. I think 3DS consumed my gaming during most of that time. They weren't too ashamed at the time that most of their booming sales was down to Microsoft's giant launch disaster and the WiiU's struggles.

They did do a good job capitalizing on that momentum, Year of Dreams, bringing out some big guns in rapid succession and keeping interest in the system high for years though. Right around the time X1X and Switch came out, though, they seemed to lose all interest in their own platform and had already moved onto PS5 internally. People defend PS4 based on the early ears, but when you look at its trajectory it mimics Wii. A boom followed by abandonment. Sony skipped this E3, and, IMO, was only present in name the previous E3...that was sad to watch. They managed to have a worse E3 showing than Nintendo, and Nintendo had nothing but 5 hours of Smash. My opinion of PS4 was much higher 2 years ago than it is today, and I don't like how they abandoned it, Vita-style in the end of it's run.

First half of the gen MS didn't even seem present, (and were highly offensive early on), but at this point it feels like, as an X1 owner you're not being abandoned just because new hardware is coming out in a year. As a PS4 owner I feel like they already forgot about me a year and a half ago with another year of neglect before they tell me to renew my membership. I did use my PS4 a lot last year too, but mostly for KH from 10 years ago, which wasn't on XB...yet....

I do admit, Square departing Sony's grip really reversed a lot of grip PS had on me.

Agreed that MS is all about subscriptions now. And value - but their focus on value is also only because they're #3. If XBox were the dominant system they'd be less willing to offer value, and Sony would be throwing more good value toward us....so the status quo is working in XB fan's favors at the moment

That's very interesting and one of the reasons I don't pay attention to reviews anymore. Nintendo's and Sony's games are reviewed with rose-tinted glasses while Microsoft's games are scrutinised in every imaginable way.

@NEStalgia Yep, I also played the old Kingdom Hearts games on PS4 because they weren't on Xbox at the moment because we all know that the Xbox controller is better. I played each of the Uncharted games once and yeah, great voice acting and Nate is really likeable but I won't be playing again. I didn't really like The Last of Us or, specifically, its gameplay. Wipeout Omega Collection, another compilation of old games, is my most played PS4 game besides the huge Kingdom Hearts collection. Now old and new Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games are coming to Xbox. Square Enix was the only thing I was missing on Xbox.

I also feel like Sony has abandoned PS4 somehow and Nintendo well, Nintendo did the same with Wii and Wii U.

@BlueOcean @NEStalgia It's about Microsoft using the Games as a Service model a lot more than the others regarding the review situation. I saw IGN re-reviewed MCC when Halo Reach came earlier this month and that kind of concept needs to be more common.

I'd imagine Sea of Thieves for example is in a much better state now than it was when it launched in March 2018.

@Grumblevolcano Then they are giving extra points for narrative elements/single-player content yet not deducting any for mediocre gameplay or performance. Besides, I don't agree with you since Nintendo struggles with narrative elements, Breath of the Wild is a mess. Nah, Nintendo and Sony get extra points for being Nintendo and Sony and Mario and Zelda get extra points for being Mario and Zelda. Moreover, Microsoft not only has "games as service" if you mean online-only games like Sea of Thieves. When the new Xbox studios release the new games we'll see how they are received, hopefully positively if they're good.

@NEStalgia
Say.... You played a lot Ratchet games. 😀
I want to ask about Ratchet PS3 games.
Can i revisit the previous places post-game if i want to explore some hidden locations or want to upgrade my weapons by leveling them up or just want to wandering around and shoot random things ?
I heard Quest for Booty was very Linear (Once you finished the game, you will return to the latest Save position after Credit roll)

@BlueOcean how is it possible to think they've "abandoned" the ps4 lol. Game of the generation caliber God of War was just 18 months ago followed by Spiderman. Death Stranding just came out, Dreams is in February, and one of the most anticipated games of the generation (not by me personally) LOU2 is next spring, Nioh 2, FF7R for a year, and Ghosts in the Summer. Not even including VR and smaller titles, the last 2 to 3 years of the ps4 will have brought a multitude of great games. Admittedly some of those aren't in my personal wheel house but I can appreciate them nonetheless. The assertion that they've someone closed up shop and moved completely onto the 5 is a bit hyperbolic imo.

@redd214 But most of those are third-party, not Sony's, some of them already announced as PC and/or Xbox releases. Yeah, The Last of Us II is the highlight I'd say but it wasn't meant for 2020, it has been delayed forever. Of course it's not like Nintendo that basically killed Wii U years before the Switch released.

@BlueOcean The Last Of US 2 has only been officially delayed once chief. Everything from both sides pretty much comes to PC nowadays in some way so that's a moot point and only one of those I listed is coming to Xbox. Sonys handling of the end of the ps4 Era is night and day to the Wii/U.