Topic: The everything Xbox thread

You'll love the ability to switch between several games and resuming where you left off last time instantly, it's easily my favorite feature of my Series S.

@JaxonH That's what I use Gamepass as a demo/rental service. If there's a game there I am not to sure about, I try it there first. I was that way with Hades wasn't sure if I liked it tried it on Gamepass. Now when I finally get my OLED Switch I will buy it for the Switch.

@Eel
My brother told me all about it. Said he had a game going in Monster Hunter World from like 3 months prior and forgot about it, decided to play one day and zoom! He was immediately back in.

That's Switch-style convenience there. For real. One of the many reasons I play Switch most, besides the games aligning with my taste and the hybrid freedom to my preferences, is the snappy in and out convenience. Press home to sleep, press to wake and you're back in the game. It's amazing.

That resume suspend feature is definitely getting used.

@Tasuki
Exactly. It's like Netflix for games. It costs the same as 3 full price games a year? Sure, I can swing that. Especially since my brother says they offer deals a lot.

@JaxonH Yeah when a game is about to be removed from Gamepass they usually discount it the last week or so, so there's that too.

To be honest I only bought a few games on my Series X since I got it. Mostly the stuff I have for it I had from previous Xbox generation games, stuff like KotOR, Handsome Collection, Double Dragon Neon etc and everything else is Gamepass games.

I really don’t play much docked, so I use my Xbox for games where I want the full effects. It’s just hard for the Switch to keep up with racing sims. Bethesda did a good job of porting titles and then the Witcher was also excellent, but for the bigger games, Xbox will be my go to. Oh, of course no hockey or Madden on the Switch.

Then, like you, especially for indies, I can demo games, have a bunch of last gen games to play already, so that’s why I needed the Series X

Wow.

Obsidian, Bethesda, Activision-Blizzard… Xbox is back and stronger than ever!

This is nuts. But I’m glad to see it. Sony has had a deathgrip for so long, it’s about time Xbox offered some real competition.

Its crazy tp think that World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Minecraft, Halo, Elder Scrolls, Overwatch, Doom. Diablo, and Forza are all owned by Microsoft. If they start making more moves with Gamepass again this could be huge.

@JaxonH Not sure one company snapping up the rest of the industry is what people mean when they say they wanted more competition from Microsoft. It's laissez-faire capitalism at its absolute worst.

I will say this: Nintendo investing almost entirely in first-party exclusives and deals with other Japanese companies looks more prescient than ever. They're going to be largely safe from the longer-term fallout from these acquisitions.

Sony? Not so much.

@Ralizah
They can't compete if they don't have the portfolio to do so. Their biggest problem was always lacking enough great games. There's only two ways to remedy that- invest in smaller teams and hope one in ten hits it big, or acquire studios. I see no issue with either approach. If a company wants to buy another who is willing to sell, that's free market. Nothing wrong with that. As long as it's not a monopoly to the point they can control prices, it's all fair game.

This is what they needed to do for some time to level the playing field. They just never had the games to compete with PS... until now, that is.

Sony was going all in paying off devs to not release their games on other platforms. As soon as the generation started, they already locked out 2 Bethesda games originally developed as multiplats, hot off the heels of Final Fantasy VII and XVI and Forespoken... from my perspective, they desperately needed to be put in check. The more games that are protected from their meat hooks the better. At least we're guaranteed Gamepass and day and date Steam releases (not year-late Epic Game Store releases).

I'm just glad to finally see Xbox in a position where they have the gaming lineup to truly challenge PS. For years, you ask someone what console they're buying- PS or Xbox, the majority would say PS. I'd like to see that balanced out.

Yeah, there's still enough people doing PS exclusives or timed ones .... I'm sure the relevant bodies will look into things if they think anyone is getting too big a market share or something, too

Microsoft had quite a few studios like Lionhead, Ensemble, Bungie, Press Play, Rare that were closed down, wasted their potential or sold off plus they paid for games like Scalebound but then decided they couldn't be arsed with them anymore so they just canned them. With that in mind I'm all for them buying Activision in hope it kills off Activision.

Well since they can’t just go and make their newly acquired properties exclusive to Xbox, I’d say the transaction is mostly beneficial for their Gamepass program.

@jump
MS poorly managed studios in the past, but I feel like they're going to do better moving forward. Watching that documentary they seemed acutely aware of their mishaps, especially with the Fable studio.

Either way, they'll manage them properly.

@Eel
While it certainly wouldn't be immediate (probably take a year for the deal to be official, and another year or two for committed games to release) but I do think their games will be Xbox/PC exclusive, just like Bethesda.

I agree it's all about Gamepass. But unless Sony let's them put Gamepass on PS5, I think they'll leverage these IP to convert ppl into the Xbox ecosystem. Hence the $299 console. All the pieces of the puzzle are lining up. A customer in the ecosystem is more valuable than 10 customers buying their game on another platform, as they can sell them Xbox Live, Gamepass, other titles and make a cut on all other purchases made in their storefront.

@Ralizah I could see Sony acquire studios like Square Enix to be honest. For companies to go down the dodgy route of NFTs suggests desperation and the fallout will probably result in acquisitions. I remember seeing on either Push Square or Pure Xbox that apparently Japan laws would prevent Microsoft from acquiring Japan owned companies so Sony gets Square Enix, Microsoft gets Ubisoft (with Microsoft buying Activision, Ubisoft is likely next for similar reasons), etc.

Nintendo's definitely safe though I could see them acquire some studios like Grezzo and Game Freak with similar purpose as when they acquired Next Level.

How much money does MS have? I felt the Bethesda acquisition was a lot. But this is ridiculous.

@Grumblevolcano It's easy enough to get around those laws when buying Japanese companies, you just need a satellite office in Japan or call it a "merger" instead. The only thing that stopped Microsoft buying Nintendo was Ninty laughing at them rather than laws. The reality is not a lot of Japanese companies are suitable for Microsoft.

@JaxonH Sony and Nintendo took smaller studios and built them up. The problem is that Microsoft has terrible team management skills, which is why they're effectively buying developers and just leaving them alone. They can't create an iconic stable of IP to compete, so they're taking money they made largely outside of the industry and using it to snap up major multiplatform developers to snuff out the competition. I don't know how anyone can look at this and not see the longer-term implications for the industry as a whole. We're very much en route to Microsoft monopolizing the Western side of the industry and snuffing out game ownership altogether in favor of keeping people permanently leashed to a subscription model which they'll absolutely jack up the price of once they're safe to do so.

This is also obviously unfortunate from a Nintendo perspective, since it means this is yet another company that won't be releasing their games on Switch going forward. Ninty doesn't need those AAA ports from Activision, but the library of their next console will be that much poorer as a result of these deals.

This really makes Sony's timed exclusivity strategy look positively benign in comparison.

@Grumblevolcano tbh this is my fear as well. I could see this sparking an acquisition war where Sony snaps up major Japanese developers they have close ties to.

@jump The Xbox base is kind of expecting Daddy Warbucks to buy out the Japanese side of the industry as well, but I really don't see this happening. Not because of mythical protections by the Japanese government, but because of Japanese nationalism in general. Microsoft made a concerted effort to break into that market with the 360 and was roundly rejected. Proudly Japanese companies that aren't in dire shape aren't going to be selling out to Microsoft.

Because Microsoft do everything they can to make their games available, when they make an acquisition, it is actually sorta exciting to me. Like with say Sony or Nintendo, you know it's going to be locked to their console, at least for a while. But I think at this point everyone has a device that can support gamepass in some capacity, whether that be a phone, or a laptop, or a tablet, even if you don't have a gaming PC/Xbox directly. I know that it is a complex issue, competition laws exist for a reason and I guess we'll need to see how this all goes down in the end, but yeah, these Microsoft announcements hit different for me.

I can't really think of any modern case where Microsoft purchased a popular company or franchise and made their games exclusive to their systems. Might be just me not thinking hard enough though.

I'm sure by now they understand that if they want to make money out of their properties, then keeping a good image and "sharing" what fans expect to be shared is the way to go. At least for now.