Topic: The everything Xbox thread

As many of us expected, xCloud, now known as Game Pass Cloud, will be available on Xbox and Windows soon.

https://www-eurogamer-net.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.eurogame...

@Ryu_Niiyama with 4k ubd drives and ssds installs should be a loooot faster! And thrashing discs while playing is soooo 2004.

I'm thinking about getting Xbox gamepass on PC since the only thing I have to lose is a dollar for my first month. Do you need Xbox live to play games from it online? Or is that only on console.

@Lindhardt You don't need Gold to play online on PC so Game Pass for PC is enough for you. Game Pass Ultimate includes Game Pass for PC+Xbox+Cloud+Gold.

@Lindhardt With winter coming and being inside a lot more, I'm now considering it too. Gamepass/cloud is the only thing 'next gen' I'm really looking forward to trying out.
I only wish Microsoft and Nintendo would get friendly enough to have the cloud app appear on the eShop (pipe dream, I know lol).

And you do not need Xbox Live for PC play, only for the Xbox itself.

@BlueOcean @Shadowthrone Ok, thanks.

I'm thinking about catching up on the PlayStation thread now, but I see NEStalgia's been posting there too. Dare I?

@gcunit Ignore him and then go there. That's what I did after seeing his huge text walls

@BlueOcean that’s like, the biggest WiFi router I’ve ever seen!

@App Actually, it would make a cool if a bit impractical table 😁.

It was weird. I clicked the link to the PlayStation thread, but it took me to the PC Gaming thread... or at least I thought it did as I ploughed through page after page of NEStalgia and Ralizah talking PC component prices.

But there, I'm up-to-date now with both threads. Turns out I didn't really miss much - who knew? But I'm definitely on Team Xbox right now. Not that I'm planning on buying either for a while yet.

@gcunit Why do you not like NESstalgia?

So a few teases present:

https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1314234178834034688

So there's a new ad tomorrow and details about the next Xbox event.

@NEStalgia Well I look forward to the speed up. In the interim, I'll be on my switch.

@Lindhardt We're just having fun. He's well known for having huge text walls on a subject. Which isn't wrong, but he does it almost every other comment and it gets annoying fast. I still like him as a user though. I thought he was pretty chill.

@gcunit har har. It's dangerous to go alone, sword sounds, etcetera.

@Ryu_Niiyama switch is nice and fast except that freaking animal crossing load screen.... Best thing I'm looking forward to with series x is the quick resume of multiple games rather than just one. That's The best part of switch and 3ds.... And sort of the 8th gen twins for one game. But goldfish attention span me is vibrating with excitement for that alone. When 3 rpgs at once just isn't enough. Also, you caught the Bethesda buyout by ms by now i presume? Interesting times. I mention it since i know you're a huge tes fan.

@Lindhardt oh, theyre just mocking my text walls, pay them no mind

@Lindhardt NEStalgia must be in my top 5 favourite NL users list. But when a brotha is legit the cause of 50% of why you're 45 pages behind in a thread...

@NEStalgia I love that I've been scarce enough that you are now the resident Text Waller all by your lonesome, cuz we have hijacked some threads in our day.

I mean I saw the bethesda purchase...I figure it can't get any worse at this point right? I mean I'll be in my 40s by the time TES VI comes out (If I am still gaming that is...I think that the 5/X will be my last sony and ms gen...I'm at the point that I've aged out of the focus groups and there aren't enough b listers to keep me playing since AAA games are not made for me. I just don't fit the demographic...) and I'm hoping that ms will make them bug test more. And MS doesn't seem to hate mods so at least that won't change. However while I don't like fallout that much I did play all the new ones (played the old ones too but its been a bit) and 4 was just a buggy janky mess...like more than normal, and I just watch the Wha Happun for 76 every time I need a laugh.

So I don't think being bought by MS will make things worse... I do worry about the state of the franchise overall as each game has gotten simpler and FO4 going full on mass effect dialogue pretty much horrified me. I love bioware for allowing me to have games with same sex romances but I really, really don't like the mass effect dialogue mechanic (I find it annoying that of all the quick changes that EAware made to the series every time someone complained loudly enough that they didn't alter the dialouge...nope make it a waist high shooter, and strip the plotlines but keep the vague dialogue system...sigh) so seeing that in FO4 was kinda where I started looking for the emergency break for Bethesda. At this point it is only the fact that I still really enjoyed all of the modern TES games (morrowind and up) that gives me a little bit of good faith. I did decide not to preorder it this time around though.

I like the idea of quick resume, but since I'm still mostly physical on the one and below I don't think it will benefit me as much. At best I'll juggle a gamepass game and a physical one. Still, it is cool that users are saying around 5 games can be suspended (I'm seeing that it varies but 5 tends to be the magical number).

@Ryu_Niiyama LOL, true, indeed! Funny thing is I try to keep it shorter because it's too time consuming text walling, but it's simply impossible to say anything of value at all with any fewer words than I use....so it usually expands instead of consolidating...

You may be right about "aging out" - I can't tell. I'm not actually sure who the target demos are anymore. I'm not sure they know either. It's not "angsty teens" necessarily, but I'm not actually sure who it is. I think it's less about age groups and more about the fact that they're aiming at a cultural mass market that I disconnected entirely from a long, long time ago. I not in any way part of whatever passes as the American cultural standard anymore, so it makes sense the games that aim for that mass market escape me, I suppose. The "target demo" seems to be people that live on phones with mtx and IAP and like to buy things a lot, plus also like comic books and apocalypse horror? I really have no idea.

I'm not sure what an "AAA" game is anymore. Most of them aren't actual complete games they're just "environments" to make your own game in (with other people.) And Sony's games are more and more interactive movies, and less gameplay experiences (though they still have a few great ones of those.) BUT that's just the advertised hypey stuff. Still plenty of under the radar content, including "AAA grade." Maybe I'll just sink into a nerdy MMO hole and get lost in there.... But yeah my first thought with Bethesda was (I think I said it on the XB thread) that Microsoft didn't acquire Bethesda, Bethesda acquired a QA department.

76 - Beyond it being a mess there's the problem that it's also not Fallout - it's just an apocalyptic survival horror game. I'm a Fallout 1&2 fan. I tolerated 3, liked New Vegas. 4 is a mess. 76 is exp/off-ensive. But I've never liked Bethesda's take on FO. It missed the whole point of the environment and humor. FO 1 & 2 were dark comedies, not survival games. I'm giddy at the idea that Obsidian/inExile (original fallout creators, combined) and Bethesda can do something good with Fallout now that they're all Microsoft together. But I'm also hoping Fallout just hibernates for a while. We've had too much Fallout, not enough TES. TES is still one of my top franchises in gaming, so we'll see how soon we get it. I assume production will accelerate under MS.

FWIW, supposedly according to Pete Hines, basically they found single player was not sustainably profitable anymore, and is what pushed them to GaaS for 76, and Game Pass will let them go back to real single player. I don't buy it, personally, but so they say.

Quick resume still benefits physical, just not as much. You pop in the disc and just start playing rather than waiting for it to load, waiting for the copyright splash screens, waiting for the menu, starting it up, loading the save etc. Just pop in the disc and go where you last left off. And no more "I have to find the save point before I switch games!" I'm impatient. Really impatient. I don't like waiting. At all. I mash A and "START" (I still call it start, not Plus, menu button, Options, Funky Button or whatever the kids call it on new consoles) non-stop every time I load a game. It's like go-faster-stripes. It makes me feel like I'm accelerating the wait even by fractions of a second.....

EDIT: Poor @gcunit . His trouble just doubled.