Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@ThanosReXXX I don't own an Xbox or a 360; and I'm not even sure what's available on the Xbox One at the moment. I feel like most last gen games have gotten remasters as well.

Wow. Xbl licence access is down again. Can't access my digital games again. It was up 20 min ago, then poof "issues happen sometimes, were aware of the issue and are working to restore it"

What is up with xbl this week? Third outage.

Now playing: knack 2. Blues going to have a field day with this . Not my choice, i was going to play tes:o and see if it still confuses me but no, Microsoft decided I'm playing knack 2 after 2.5 hours of reinstalling and troubleshooting games only to find out it's their end again...

@DarthNocturnal interesting. For me the store is empty, and game launches give that patronizing "stuff happens" type error. Website now lists the outage as well. (It didn't for a while but the console had the outage specific message.)

People complain about nso for $20. "Nintendo online is a joke next to psxb!" ..... Guess who hasnt been down two nights in a row this week? Nso

Edit: it seems like it's back up now. 15 years and xbox has few outages. I buy a One and it goes down daily, the week after hdd support is broken. . Apparently my pc curse isn't just related to pcs. I knew i shouldn't have stolen that Aztec gold as a child...

Re: Backwards Compatibility
Nothing wrong with the Battlefront series as it was under Pandemic. The first has quite a few good maps that never made it to the second, but lacks a sprint option and can feel pretty basic with just conquest as a mode. The second makes quite a lot of improvements - including adding space battles, playable heroes, a proper campaign and fleshing out Galactic Conquest. Even with EA's second attempt, many still hold the Pandemic version as the best game, and I'm with them on that. Although it's probably better to get the second on Steam and get a mod that adds in the maps from the first. Also, despite the little playtime I have with it, Republic Commando is a must with solid gameplay and good story.
I haven't branched out much more than that in terms of OG Xbox games. Just the Star Wars ones.

@DarthNocturnal Same here, I got everything in Nuts & Bolts, that sure takes a long while, except The Lost Challenges which I haven't completed. Man, they are so hard and haven't invested much time on them anyway. It is satisfying to get the trophies in the regular game once you have more building pieces and the game has taught you how to become a better "engineer". It's amazing.

*****

About 360 games (on Xbox One), I have lots but I haven't played many, so these are the few that I have played and that I highly recommend (in alphabetical order):

Assassin's Creed: I enjoyed this game quite much for the visuals and the gameplay.
Fable Anniversary: I really loved this game. The soundtrack, art style, script, interactions, gameplay... The camera and menus take some time to get used to. I learnt later that you don't have to use menus as much, thank heaven, but the D-pad, where recommended actions pop up. One of my favourite 360 games without any doubt.
Rare Replay: a wonderful collection of Spectrum, NES, N64, arcade and 360 games.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed: It plays better on Xbox One and it's one of my favourite racing games ever.
Sonic Generations: It's the best 3D Sonic game that I have played.

There are others that I haven't played on Xbox One yet but on other consoles like Tomb Raider Legend (on GameCube).

@thanosrexxx @grumblevolcano So my week in gaming (returning to the bad luck thread:)
Thursday: Find out my Sniper 3 install is corrupt....needs to be redownloaded. It starts, but crashes after the menu.
Friday: Get OS update on box 1 and the HDDs go crazy.
Saturday: Get OS update on box 2 and the HDDs go crazy
Sunday: Stay up waaay too long troubleshooting potential HDD damage
Monday: Same
Tuesday: Go to play co-op Wildlands with someone, it's not working. Troubleshoot for an hour or more, try to figure out HDD issues as probably related....network test says services are up....eventually discover services are down.... Go play BLOPS3 on PS.

Wednesday: Finally settle down to enjoy something. Go to try out TES:O one more time to see how I really feel about it at all. Go to start it, and it says it's not installed. HDD says it is. It also says it hasn't updated since June 6. The other one has an update from Oct 3. Reboot a few times mess with drives, finally delete it and redownload all 90GB. It fails to download. Over and over. it won't even start. No error, just says it failed. So I set it to put it on the other HDD....ok now it works. Redownload. So I start it up. It tells me Summerset isn't active for my account. Huh? I bought the summerset bundle! That's what it is! It was a preorder in june! I realize summerset is installed on both drives still. I unsintall all the DLC packs from the one drive, and the new drive, and reinstall on the new. Now that works. OK login. "account invalid"..huh? I started playing before! Try again...nope....create an account....it accepts it as a new account. Huh? (20 minutes in browser later) Whatever. Character creation time. Working on the build. 503 disconnected due to idle. Can't reconnect. Network test says it's fine. Exit game and restart "stuff happens, we're down, stfu." Ok...so that's not happening today.

Then after playing a little Knack II to calm down to the point of not being able to bend steel with my mind, I remember JaxonH's warning about the physical Switch Starlink bundle....I check mine....yup....no game in the box. Now I have to ship it back I suppose.

That's an average luck week for me. Some weeks are much worse.

rjejr is positively perky next to me

@BlueOcean Saw your edit, and personally, I also like Grabbed by the Ghoulies. In fact, I still have the original disc. But recommending it, is another thing altogether, because in general, the game does kinda fall into the acquired taste category. But Rare Replay is most definitely still on my to-buy list.

@Octane Oops! My bad. I added you to the list because I remembered coming across you in this thread a couple of times, so I kinda assumed that you did own one or the other. Never mind, then.

@NEStalgia I can honestly say that I have never met or heard of ANYONE in the entire world, with more issues with his Xboxen than you, so you seem to have an ENORMOUS stroke of bad luck or something, because I can't even seem to come close to explaining any of what's going on there, in a logical fashion.

Over here, there were never any online outages either, so that might be a US-only thing(?)

Indeed, I'm slowly beginning to notice the scales tipping in his favor...

Ah, just kidding. Another discussion, some stuff gets heated, it happens. Most of it, I've already forgotten the very next day, so you're forgiven...

You liking Knack, however....

@ThanosReXXX I tried coming up with other last gen games that are worth replaying, and haven't been remastered, but there's not much I can think of. Part of the reason why I dropped out of gaming last gen; at least, I hardly played any new releases. All I remember is a bunch of brown and grey shooters

@ThanosReXXX LOL yeah that's why I tagged grumble, it extends from a conversation in the XC2 thread. I bonded 70-something random blades, and not a single one of them had electric element, a required element for several points in the game. Most other people got them in the beginning of the game. And then after I was finally ready to break something after days, I get 3 in a row. Then one quest near the beginning of the game to get 20 pieces of ivy or something, I hit all the collection points over and over and over for days, then weeks, and never got the pieces I needed Grumble pointed out I have the worst luck in the world....something about that being the equivialent of playing Mario Part, always using Bowser Dice, and getting -3 coins every turn. My Xbox luck just extends that

It's not just the one thing. Yesteday was a compounding of the HDD,s bad luck with a corrupt install in June, then a problem with reinstalling it, then a problem with Bethesda.com accounts, finally the XBL service going down. But it's not just XBox because the missing game in the box was for my Switch copy of Starlink. It's not bad XBox luck. I'm just a magnet for ill omens. That's just the gaming bad luck, excluding real life!

I have terrible luck, but weird bad luck. Basically, I'm the sort that if I were walking down the street while a piano was being hoisted to a third floor window, I would pass under the piano, and it would not fall on me. Because I will instead have been hit in the face by pidgin poop, which would send me flying into the street, causing me to scratch a Ferrari parked there which may or may not cause a lawsuit only to get lucky and find out a bus ran into it in that same spot of the Ferrari moments later, so I'm safe, but then I'd trip over the curb, rip up my knee, while the piano drops feet away. I'd think I'm lucky to have escaped, but find that's the spot I dropped my phone when the bird pooped on me and it has now been crushed. I expect that situation daily.

Oh yeah, I assumed the outages were US specific. And it wasn't full outage in theory, it was game licensing, store (including GwG however), downloads, etc. And somehow it messes up ESO interaction with Bethesda.

Haha, I make no apologies, I've always liked Knack! It was the ONLY worthwhile game at PS4's launch

So I discovered TES:O doesn't let you play with the expansions on more than one account: DRM overriding the "Home XBox" feature. Yuck. Horay for internet things.

HDD Update: So I got the official X1 Seagate drive (in white, to clash with the X just fine.... but it's actually a lot prettier in person than in pictures.

The Good: It's very compact. I'm used to my honking huge fan exhausted cases with little snap on stands, LCD screens showing temperature, and all aluminum exterior. This is a tiny plastic box that reminds me a lot of the X360 build and feel (the OG and Jasper white era, not the latter slims/Elites.)

It's also surprisingly fast, at least for write speeds, keeping up at >300MB/s when copying from the HHD, and not dropping on sustained writes. That's impressive, in fact my Toshiba X300 seems to drop speed more often which is weird since that's a 7200RPM performance drive - loud, hot, and fast. Maybe enclosure/controller issues (finding good enclosures is hard.) I don't know about read speed yet. I'll have to copy something back from it to the HHD or Toshiba at some point and see if it matches. Games like Sea of Thieves really highlight load speed differences so I'll try that out. (Seriously I once started SoT on the two boxes, one with an external 2.5" HDD and the other with my HHD, and the HHD one was done loading like a minute and a half before the other. Other games like DB:Fighter Z show no difference despite slow loads. It's a 5400RPM drive versus the 7200RPM ones so I'm not expecting random access to be particularly speedy.

It runs WAY cooler and quieter than the Toshiba as a result though. (The Firecuda HHD is quiet and cool too, but of course they only go up to 2 or 3 TB.)

Depending on the game load/random access/ copy speed tests, so far I could easily recommend it as a great value. Performance seems great, and price per GB is the best I've seen. Read speed pending.

Also, I don't know about reliability....it's a Seagate....I'm not holding my breath.

The Bad:
(Minor) The only thing different about the X1 version and the normal office version should be the color & XBox logo embossed in the side, as well as that it's formatted out of the box for X1. Oddly it's not formatted, the system still prompted me to format it. Irrelevant in every way but interesting.

The possibly actually bad: I'm not sure it solves my actual problem caused by the OS update. Oddly box #2 was now behaving with the original drives yesterday and the day before while box #1 that did behave one day now doesn't again. On both boxes I set the HDDs to not turn off when the XBox turns off. And in both cases after a while they turn off anyway. And then start turning on and off. In fact the checkbox definitely seems to not do anything at all...which might be the root of the problem. Maybe it's just ignoring the box now and when you shut down it never actually turns them off, letting the enclosures use their own power management and that isn't reliable (like the machine did before they added the checkbox). I hope they have a minor OS fix that fixes this rather than waiting months. When's Patch Tuesday for XBox?

OTOH it's hard to tell what the new one is doing since it's quiet and has only one light rather than a power and activity light separately like the others. It's either leaving it on 24/7, which is still better than hammering the spindle motor 40 times an hour, or the white light never actually turns off since it's an active USB hub. Or it's just doing the same thing the other drives are doing and hammering on and off but leaves the light on. Every time I finally sit down to check it, the system either starts legit downloading RDR2, or some update so just when I think "aha, see it's doing the same thing!" I realize it's actually really downloading something. so far, every time I check it the drive is still spinning.

I might have to end up with another one if it resolves the issue though. Use the other ones for backups, or some future PC or something. Or for the PS4.....which remember my bad luck? It's started randomly beeping like it's trying to eject discs. So in one week the XBox HDDs go crazy, the PS4 now randomly started beeping, and a week and a half ago or so the velcro strap on my headphone cable grabbed onto my clothing and pulled my switch off a chair onto the ground slightly damaging a joycon (it endured amazingly well otherwise)

Hey, look, a piano!

@NEStalgia Ah, so you FINALLY decided to go for officially licensed drives, huh?

Agreed with all the positive points you made, and to be honest, I'm not really Seagate's biggest fan either (moved to Western Digital many years ago already), but so far, the drive is working like a charm. Of course, I've only had it for a month now, so a lot can happen in the months to come...

But other than that, the only bad thing for me personally, and that is making it a bit bigger than it really is, because it's more of an annoyance because it isn't necessary, is that the drive light stays on, even though the console itself is switched off. I have now blocked it from view, so I don't notice the light all the time, when I'm watching TV instead of playing a game. It kind of reminds me of the similarly annoying white "disc in drive" light of the Wii U. Why not choose a more demure color, instead of such a bright light?

As for what the drive is doing/not doing: I've most definitely noticed a difference between the drive being idle/not downloading anything, and the drive reading/writing and/or downloading stuff. The light patterns are decidedly different.

I actually tested that out myself, by pushing a Games with Gold game install from my PC to the console, because I wondered about that myself as well.

@DarthNocturnal Well, I've got the white one, to match the One S, and the light most definitely does NOT switch off, when I shut down the console. It will only switch off, if I pull the cord from the mains adapter, which I never do, because that is hidden behind my TV, so to have to dive behind my TV cabinet every time to switch off the console completely, is a bit too much of a hassle for me.

And if the power was completely cut from the console itself, I wouldn't be able to let it automatically update and so on, which I personally find rather handy.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah it was a last ditch effort to either fix the problem via licensed drives (which is an absurd case but I'd settle for it only because I planned on buying one at some point for archival use of my digital purchases since it's the cheapest 8tb around.) Or, of nothing else, it buys me street cred to put the problem on MS support in a way they can't just point and say "oh it must be your HDD"...no, it's your HDD: You figure it out. ) "Licensed" USB HDDs are kind of silly, but if you do need support...that's the only way to get it.

So far I don't believe it's actually fixed the problem (I didn't expect it to, though, since it was introduced with an OS update, and I'll know for sure later once the RDR stuff is done), but at least I can hit support with it.

I can't fault it for not fixing what seems to be an OS problem but it's definitely worth praising so far for how it seems to perform despite it's modest price!

Interesting (and possibly helpful in my troubleshooting) about the light. If you put your ear to it or touch it can you tell if it's spinning still? IIRC you use power-save and not instant-on, right? So that sounds weird. X1 (or at least X) turns off USB in power-save so the light of a 2.5" shouldn't be on. If you're in instant-on, check in Settings->Power->(power save options, or whatever they call the bottom option) and see if "Turn off storage when XBox One is off" (middle checkbox on the right) is enabled or disabled. It may just be set to leave it on. But despite the 3.5" vs 2.5" model, that could relate to what I'm seeing as well.

On the 3.5" the light pulses when it's read/writing but is solid when it's "on" but not read/writing. Similar to, on my other enclosure, the red light being solid versus flickering. However, when it powers down the drive my other ones turn the red light off. The official drive the white light is still on. I do believe the drive is still spinning, so I don't know if it's supposed to turn off when it actually idles.

I can say that when I used a WD 2.5" external the lights definitely went off.

One other HDD weirdness, remember my ES:O issues yesterday with the bad download from June, I deleted it, copied it to the other drive from my other box over LAN, then the DLC was still there, I deleted that? Then yesterday the main game (with all DLC) was BACK on the first drive! The delete never actually happened but for a while it looked like it did.

@DarthNocturnal Hmm so on the 2.5's the light should go off. Good to know. I'm sure that applies to the 3.5 too then, meaning this one keeps running. I'm curious to see at the end of the day what it does. Still, 24/7 beats on/off non-stop. Motors like running, not starting, long-term.

@Thanosrexxx Ohh so you use auto-updates...that implies instant-on mode. So maybe you do have the same problem I do! Definitely check the "turn storage off when xbox is off" option and see if that makes a difference if it's not set. And/or definitely touch the drive or listen to it and see if it's still vibrating/spinning inside. It might just be permanently on. (At one point X1 drives were always permanently on before they added the option to turn them off. )

Still, like you, I wouldn't want to lose auto-update features.

@DarthNocturnal Oh, that'll do it. I mean even mine turn off fine in energy-saver

@ThanosReXXX update:. Looks like the drive stays running when the light is on. So it's a 24/7 spinner. I'm betting yours is too. It's not supposed to work like that. Im pretty sure that's what they broke in the update, now. The. Turn off storage check box no longer does anything. It never sends the shutdown command in instant on. So the "off" that doesn't stay off must be my enclosures shutting themselves down after long idle but not staying that wsy, while the official licensed Seagate drives never try to shut down.

Here's hoping they push an os update to fix the last one soon.

@NEStalgia I just checked my drive, and it is definitely not spinning, when the console is switched off. There's only a stationary light. I also noticed that selecting the option to switch off storage does nothing, so that leaves us with one of two options: choosing not to use instant-on, which sucks, or just disconnecting the console altogether, when it's not in use, which sucks even more. Yay, Microsoft....

Someone was most definitely not paying attention to useful options, when this update was applied...
I also don't like that my games now don't show anymore if they're on internal or external storage, if I don't use the filter option to be able to tell that.

Another minor annoyance of mine, concerning the external drive, is that for some reason, I can only connect it to the front USB input of the console, even though there are two more USB connections on the back, but these simply don't seem work with the drive, so it is only recognized, if you use the one on the front... (well, at least: on the Xbox One X)

By the way: besides the older green model, and the white one, there is actually also a black model.
Unfortunately, the maximum storage capacity available is only 2TB, so not really all that useful for the download sizes that come with the Xbox One X, not to mention that it's quite pricey as well...

On the other hand, it is an SSD, so better durability, and no spinning issues...

It's pretty compact too: thinner and smaller than the white and green Game Drives:

@NEStalgia Talk about updates: and before I start, never mind about the "can only connect on the front" thing: it appears that the Xbox One actually does recognize the external drive now, when plugged into one of the USB inputs in the back.

Which, by the way, and that is the bigger news, also took care of my external drive light, which has now shut off completely. I literally have no idea what the hell happened, or what the difference is. My own uneducated guess is that the front USB port is also used as a play and charge, so perhaps the signal differs a little bit from the two inputs on the back, but that probably isn't it.

Also, even though I have re-selected instant-on (also tried energy-saving mode, but to no avail), and also checked the switch off storage option again, I did now select "Full Shutdown" from the settings menu, so maybe that ignores the instant-on settings? Either way, got other stuff to do now, so I'll have to get back to this at a later point in time.

@NEStalgia Ok back from my conference I'll keep my response brief since the thread has moved on.

I get what you are saying about lore to and extent. Or rather I understand why you are suggesting that I let it go however if a game made by the same company and by (many) of the same people (I know about the various teams and departures...within reason I'm not as into the series or free on time as I used to be) can't abide by its own lore in obvious attempts just to concede to marketing. What is the point? Why not just make it Sparta the the game (Ubi has no issues with building new IPs heck wanting to alter PoP is what got us AC in the first place) and leave it at that? Why knit themselves into knots to jam it into a place where it won't go smoothly? It just bothers every aspect of my personality. I'm a scientist and a writer and this mess just makes me want to take a pen to my ear or something (I almost said my eye but I don't hate ANYTHING enough to go blind for it lol).

I really think that I just have to stick with self contained series at this point. I feel like going back through Jade Empire right now. lol. Can't find the deluxe edition of SC VI (and my ps4 is in a box somewhere) so I don't know what to do about that. Buy the basic edition on the one and have that be my only fighting game there... with no stick shudder or root around for the ps4 and perhaps hold off for the deluxe.

Has anybody noticed slowdown in AC:O after the latest update? It is starting to chug.

Oh you will be amused to know that I started putting my database (not done. got like another 400 games to put in there, kill me) into Power BI and I'm making a dashboard with trends in purchasing, completion and brand loyalty for my gaming habits. Cuz why not? (and I'm obscenely bored. lol)

Also not on topic but I got Namie Amuro's last album (I'm late but I have had it on repeat since I got it) and THAT is how you end a career. Popular your entire tenure, no major scandals, constantly evolving, willing to go back and redo songs that youth may have hampered a bit (Been a Namie fan since 03 and while I listened to 181920 till I broke the CD her vocals now...swoon) and she bowed out still young (41) her kid is grown, she is wealthy beyond imagining and still pretty down to earth. That is how you do a music career.

I gotta wait till payday to order Perfume's new CD but I'm loving Future Pop (I feel like they are hinting that they are going to be at Tokyo 2020 though).

@ThanosReXXX ahh, yeah full shutdown is literally that, true power off, not instant on. If i do that, yeah all the stuff turns off, but of course no instant on features. That's interesting though that your drive isn't spinning. Mine definitely was. Also the rear usb thing was weird.

Now for mine:. Box #2 had behaved 2 days in a row now. Box #1 that behaved one day then didn't for two, now after doing the full copy of 5tb to the new drive for 14 hours or so, when it stopped....... It actually turned the drives off.... Including the new official one which does turn the white light off.........

So your light stays in but the drive turns off. But only on the front port. My drives behave the same in all ports but rarely actually are told to turn off in the new os cer.. .. Yesterday it actually did it for all3 drives. First time in 5 days no matter how many full shutdown and restarts i did.

Update: nevermind. #1 is now doing the same old again of spinning the dives up periodically.... Including the official licensed one. Light goes on for 3s then off and the drives spin up. So it is the xb doing it. I'll have to see if that one honors turning off the turn off storage checkbox. If i can leave it 24/7 that still is the less bad option. Gives the drive 2 to 3 years rather than a few months before it wears. I think that move to get rid of the ready to install tab had far to many unintended consequences. Never change mission critical features if they work. Even to enhance them.