Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@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.

@NEStalgia Okay, I'm back. Well, the plot definitely thickens: after that full shutdown, I booted up the Xbox One a couple hours later, and my settings were still as is (so, instant-on & switch off drives when console switches off). Before I switched it on, the light on the external drive was off.

Now, when shutting down again in a normal fashion, by pushing the big, glowing X button in the middle of the controller, the console powers down first, front logo blinking a couple of times before powering down completely, and then the external drive followed, albeit almost a minute later. Its light started blinking as well, when the console shut down, and finally, it completely died, so for whatever reason, it now works as it should.

The external drive is connected to the second USB port (which is also numbered as '2') on the back, and the settings are as previously mentioned. Console powers down normally, external drive light goes out as well.
And all is good in the world again...

I'm beginning to suspect that I actually WAS on to something concerning that frontal USB port being used for charge and play. And to think that the only reason that I connected the external hard drive to that port is because all the pictures I've seen from it, before I bought it, showed it being connected to the front port.

I honestly don't know if that is really it, but seeing as my problem is hereby solved, I'm not going to question it/my luck again, and I'm just going to leave things as they are, drive connected to port 2 at the back, and still using my favored instant-on console settings...

Same here. I have a Seagate 4TB for one year now connected to my X and never had any issues, no weird noises, failures or anything. Sometimes I use instant-on mode when the console is downloading anything and sometimes I fully shut the console down if it's not downloading anything and I want to refresh the system every now and then. My internet connection is slow so most of the time the X is in stand-by mode for downloads.

@ThanosReXXX It's statistically impossible that NEStalgia has so many issues with his Xbox consoles and the multiple HDDs that he attaches to them.

Back to backwards compatibility I just realised that Silent Hill Homecoming is no longer available as Downpour before it, but HD Collection is available since a few months ago, is it a bad remaster collection like people say?

Panzer Dragon Orta is another original Xbox game that nobody mentioned, have you guys played this one?

@BlueOcean Well, as you may have seen/read, I've also had some weird problems of myself, minor ones maybe, but to this point, still inexplicable to me, because switching USB ports, the "problem" of the drive light staying on, re-occurs. So, whether or not something is "statistically impossible", doesn't mean that something can't occur at all. A decent example is the Red Ring of Death issue in the Xbox 360: I've had it happen to me as well, but contrary to other people that I know of, I appeared to have been the only one, that has had it successfully repaired and has never had it happen again.

Most other people I know, or have met online with the same issue, reported having to basically replace their Xbox 360 and throw the old one away, like the useless brick that it became after having suffered that RRoD problem. So, in that scenario, it was actually ME, who was the statistic anomaly.

All I'm basically saying, is that you should never, and I do mean NEVER, make assumptions, especially not primarily based upon your own opinion, no matter how logical (or unlikely) something might seem to you.
In my line of work (sales & marketing), we learn that assumptions are deadly, as in being able to completely destroy any chance of making a successful deal and/or selling something. Assume nothing, double-check everything, and then make an informed decision, so you can take action, based upon what you actually KNOW or have learned to be (objectively) true...

Anyway, enough of that, moving on to Panzer Dragoon Orta: I actually had to scroll back a couple of pages, to see if I really didn't mention it, and I can tell you, that I was VERY surprised that I forgot to add that to the list, so that's definitely a serious omission on my part.

I say that, because I think that it's no exaggeration to state that Panzer Dragoon Orta is one of THE must-have games of the original Xbox. It really shows off what the system was capable of, even if it was "only" an on-rails shooter, within a fantasy/dragon world setting, so you should most definitely give it a try.

Still own the original disc myself, and I'm glad I do.

I still find it hard to believe that he has so many issues that nobody else has with Xbox One. The red ring of death was a well-known issue for 360 although I don't think than more than 50% of the consoles died so you still were not at odds with the statistics.

Anyway, I just checked and the HDD is connected to port 1 at the rear. The light is dark blue and it turns off when I completely turn off the console and stays on when it's in instant-on. Just so you have an idea what mine does.

I am playing Crash Bandicoot N.sane Trilogy (first game). It's absolutely gorgeous on X! I'm not going to lie, I would like a 60 fps mode for this high-precision platformer but the 30 fps is smooth nevertheless. Just a missed chance in my opinion.

The game borrows some ideas from Super Mario Bros. (kicking turtles to hit other enemies) and from Donkey Kong Country 2 (some enemies behaviour is exactly the same) but it's at the same time absolutely different to any other platformer that I have ever played, with another feel and flow. Levels are challenging but fortunately short. The music is better than I expected and bosses are hilarious. I'm liking this more than Naughty Dog's interactive films of recent years.

I had my doubts but now I would definitely recommend it. I'm intrigued by that rumoured Crash Team Racing remake...

I played this originally on the 360 and, while the first few levels were great...the backwards compatibility was broken, freezing the game about 3 levels in.

I trust that Microsoft have fixed this problem on the XBO. I would love to play it on full so might give it a go on my S sometime soon.

@Buizel Yes that was fixed on Xbox One. You'll get improved resolution and performance as well. It looks interesting, it's on my radar.

@DarthNocturnal I have never played Spyro but I think that that reignited trilogy is going to be amazing value and I'll get it. Banjo is crying out for a remake like this...

@BlueOcean You can personally find it hard to believe, and even for me, the amount of issues is a bit on the heavy side, but we simply cannot assume that they're not true. At the very least, it's his truth, but seeing as I haven't been able to catch him being a pathological liar, I choose to believe he actually does either have VERY bad luck, or some other strange thing is going on.

Dismissing it altogether because of personal sentiments, is making baseless assumptions, which I refuse to do, because I have no reason not to believe him, based upon everything I've discussed with him in the past and up to now.

Anyway, let's move on, because it isn't really an interesting topic anyways, especially if we're not getting anywhere, no offense.

So, a dark blue light, huh? Guess it's not an officially licensed drive then, I suppose?
Anyway, you can prevent the light from staying on by selecting "When Xbox is off, turn off storage" in the options menu, under startup settings.

In closing, I'll add the original Xbox review and some Xbox One X gameplay from Panzer Dragoon Orta, simply because it's a great game, and more people should know about it...

Two separate posts. One text wall to Ryu, one to everyone else. Spoilering out the first one not for spoilers but for thread continuity. (Edit: Or half spoilering because spoiler tags don't work very well....)
@Ryu_Niiyama
Lore: I think the Desmond trilogy stuck to the lore within reason. Then they floundered around not knowing what to do, and kind of rebooted with Origins. Maybe the thing is a simulator now. I can understand that in a video game as a medium lore can sometimes prevent gameplay direction you want to take. Nintendo gets praised and slammed equally for it's gameplay-first, story just fills in the blanks mentality. To a degree, Ubi has on and off done that. I get your point, but also, I think if you have a video game, you have to place gameplay/world/content first, and if you need to break established story to do so because story is limiting structure, you just have to. Maybe it's a case against franchises to begin with. Again FO76 has BoS before it's established they existed. Poor Pete keeps trying to fend that one off "I'm not the lore guy!'. But it's a connundrum. The lore was established by Black Isle in the 90's. It was designed to set the stage for FO1 in CA. They ended that story. Should the original story's limitations mean BoS must not appear in a new prequel game almost 20 years later when it would add fun to a game just because it violates lore? I hate breaking the story and yet, if games were about story we'd just play TLoU, Life is Strange, and Uncharted and call it a day. You're not wrong, of course...but...nerdy superfans of these long franchises "But in episode 104 that aired on Februrary 3 1965 it confirmed that the control knob for the deflector array is to the right of the helmsman's console, yet you had Ensign Bullseye reach to his right in the 1979 film, this clearly breaks the lore!" is the stuff for Trek convention nerds. To a degree if a game isn't a specific trilogy (Desmond) it needs to have the ability to define the world it lives in as its own world rather than being tethered to the original design ideas. I do agree a character loses identity when you have two separate M/F characters, and yet, I'm not sure giving players the option is something to condemn, either, if thats what the devs wanted to offer. If they offered it for a marketing department checkbox, then it's bad. If they did it because they wanted to, then it's not. If there were no option, I'm quite sure it would be Alex only. Kass is barely a thing in the actual game world unless you choose to play her, she's only a thing in some outside-the-game lore book and, personally I'll never consider "official" books and comics for games to be canon. They're not made by the actual dev team and writers, they're outside projects. They can call them official....but that just means they're licensed and paid their money. That comes back to "why is AC male protags only." Business probably. Caution more specificaly. We know female protags in games don't limit sales given other blockbusters, but Ubi could be afraid to change their winning formula too much. Still, even Alex/Kass as cardboard characters can't be half as cardboard as Aiden Pierce, right? I still giggle that Aiden was the center box art for launch PS4....

In a way though, I can see "Sparta the game" or more specifically the idea that every AC is totally unique. Like Quantum Leap. It resolves the "every game plays the same" criticism and lets them do the "history is our sandbox" tagline as a design point without conforming to a particular structure.

No one can fault you for another Jade Empire play-through though. Best Bioware RPG ever.

Soul Calibur VI is indeed amazing! It just plays so so so well.... I love my Tekken 7....I love my DoA 5....but wow...SC6....it may....maaaay.....replace Tekken 7 for me. It's just that good. I got digital standard on X1....may or may not get the DLC. $30 is steep for the pass for 4 characters and some armor. I have a feeling Cervantes and Siegfried are the DLC though..... I don't see them there unless I need to unlock them. Truly an incredible fighter. But....no stick? Yeah...I just can't go stick-less on fighters and I'm nowhere near as harcore as you. X1 gets all my fighters since that's where my Atrox lives

Oh...the database......yeah.....did I mention you're CDO? Because...yeah...

Music: Aww, I didn't know Namie was retiring out! She's never been my favorite but when she's good she's good (and when she's not I just kind of tune out.) I'm surprised though I thought she'd go another decade at the very least! She'll be back. I mean what will she do now? "OL" isn't exactly in the card for her at this point I'll look forward to more from Perfume though! That would be awesome if they were at 2020...I've given up on wishing too hard for who they bring to the Games....they pick the weirdest choices. I had a list of "they have to be there" Korean stars for Pyong Chang and who did they give me? EXO and freaking CL. sound of stuff being smashed....[/spoiler]

@ThanosReXXX yeah I don't blame you for not messing with it, I'd do the same. If it's working the way I want I leave it alone and hope it doesn't break!

Still, it's weird that the ports were an issue. AFAIK all 3 ports support play & charge, and similarly when it does shut down properly in instant-on and "work" the front port also turns the HDD light out for me. It could be an X1S vs. X1X difference, but that seems unlikely that the USB ports would behave so differently between models. So something weird is still going on there, but as long as you settled into a place where it works, that's good. On both my X's all 3 ports behave the same with HDDs (either equally good or equally bad, but equal all the same.)

So after tons of experimentation and attempts, box #2 was still behaving for days, however this morning I saw the HDD go on. Not sure if it's acting up again or it was a legit download starting, I'll have to see tonight. Box #1 refuses to behave no matter what I do. (Two identical boxes (except #1 is a "Scorpio Edition") with two identical sets of drives in identical enclosures both behaving differently only after the Oct update.

I tried both my drives in every possible configuration. I tried them with the licensed drive combined (and all 3 behaved the same), I tried "turn off drives" and not "turn off drives", starting up with only the official atached. No effect.

Like you I've noticed that drives don't turn off for several minutes after the X1 turns off. This is a new behavior on both machines (and yours) following the October update. Prior, all drives shut down immediately when the X1 shut off. They're doing something different now, most definitely.

I discovered that the licensed drive does honor the checkbox and will stay on 24/7 if set to. My drives will turn themselves off after idle for a long time. For normal environments my drives are "smarter"...for dealing with this problem, 24/7 is a better choice than spinning up often.

I also discovered, an interesting behavior of the licensed drive that is coincidental but may help. I believe that though it gets a signal every two minutes or so and the light comes on....it does not spin up the physical drive when it does so. So the signal isn't an actual IOP but something that just triggers the electronics on the USB controller. On my enclosures they spin the drive on wake. The official drive may (more verification required as I have to see the light turn on and immediately put my ear to the housing, only caught it twice so far) actually just activate the light and electronics but not spin the motor. Similarly after powering the X1 on, I noticed the drive did NOT spin up even though the light was on for several minutes. I had to go into the "My Games" list with an actual read command before the motor actually clicked on and spun up. Bottom line is the X1 should not be sending signals continuously that could power on a drive, but if it does, the licensed drive may actually sidestep mechanical damage resulting by not actually running the spindle during those operations. It's a bandaid by chance not by design, but it may work. More testing required, but for now it's an unfortunate but useful workaround for a problem that just won't go away.

Speed: I also did some performance testing. That licensed 8TB is strange. On paper it's a 5400RPM Archival drive. One review cracked it open and found a Barracuda Pro 7200RPM. A bare Pro 7200 costs more than the whole GameHub, so that doesn't make sense. And yet.... I'm getting 300Mb/s writes, par with or greater than my own drive. Read speeds are weird. It behaves almost like an HHD. Yet one of my own two drives is Seagate's own Firecuda 2TB HHD...they only make them up to 3TB, so that's not it. On box #1 I used only the licensed drive. On box #2 I used my 6T X300 (not the 2TB HHD to keep comparisons fair.) I put the controllers next to each to each other and hit A simultaneously.

Test #1: Farcry 5. Home to splash to in-game menu was notably faster on the X300. Game load from menu however was almost equal.

Test #2: Destiny 2 (yeah I bought it on the sale...it was cheap enough ), this had weird results. Home to splash was notably faster on the X300. But then from main menu into loading the character and up to the Navigator was almost to the millisecond the identical. Then from the Navigator loading the actual game, the licensed drive fell behind, loading 7 seconds or so after the X300. Noticeably slower, but not tremendously so.

Test #3 : Sea of Thieves. That game is the worst offender of load times I've ever seen. Only Lego City on WiiU comes close and is still better. The only game I've ever even heard of that may be worse is GTAV. It's horrible, you have time to go play handheld Splatoon 2 while you wait. Good HDD test though. I once did a test with a 2.5" HDD versus my X300 and the load difference was over a minute behind, so it's all HDD bandwidth constraint. In this case results were, again, interesting. For some reason on box #2 the game crashed to desktop the first 3 times I tried running it, so I couldn't compare the menu load time. However the third time from "press A" into character select, the licensed drive again trailed slightly behind. Then during loading the actual game, the splash screen tips cards were changing at exact moments together. Then the X300 pulled ahead, changing one slightly faster than the licensed drive. And then the weirdest thing: The licensed drive actually entered the game 5+ seconds BEFORE the X300. No 5400RPM archival drive should best the X300 on a game that has already demonstrated HDD performance is significant to load times. Yet it runs ice cold and dead silent like a 5400.

So performance is pleasing and unusual. It seems to overall be slightly slower than the X300 but only slightly slower, and at times may be able to outperform. I wonder if Toshiba has a firmware fix for the X300s that I denied it by not using it on PC first. I never checked. All in all it's way better than I expected it to perform. Even where it's slower than mine, it's only slightly so. Granted, I'm impatient I'll take every load second I can get when dying over and over. Initial load is irrelevant. Loading constantly when you keep falling from the same ledge is rage inducing.

On a bright note of the Oct patch I discovered that they finally seem to have tied folders/groups to the account rather than local only. So you now get your correct groups/folders when you log in on another box! That's kind of nice (I spent far too much time bulding that to have to do it again someday.)

@DarthNocturnal Sea of thieves, you said it's best with 3+ players.....do you think it's really playable with 2, or no, not really? I wanted to give it a try with the updates, but I only want a 2p coop game.

@BlueOcean Well all my problems with my setup haven't been hardware problems but software issues. Almost always relating to OS updates and instant-on. Two games were corrupted on download, but that happens on any platform and is far more likely with these monster sized games. I had a Paypal issue with the store originally. XBL's licensing/store server was down 3x over 2 weeks. Not on my end. One thing was a Bethesda issue. And when they first rolled out groups it corrupted my entire groups file and I could no longer edit them...I had to delete all my groups and start again. It's still not quite right, I can't move my RPGs category in the list it just errors and goes right back, so the groups file is partly damaged but it's working now as long as I don't move the top group down. Adding too many games too fast I presume broke something as I was adding faster than the popup notifications were displaying. I probably "trick" the holes in the software easier than most since I do things quickly in large numbers. 5TB of games don't manage themselves...

That said, if your HDD light is staying on, do you have a second light that shows activity or is that the only light? If you touch the drive, is it vibrating indicating it's spinning, or is it idle? And, as thanos asked, do you have the "turn off storage when XBox is off" setting checked in the power options? If you don't have that setting checked and the light is on, the drive is just running 24/7 so that's normal for the setting. If you have the "turn off" feature on and the light is on, but it's not spinning you actually have the weird port issue Thanos has (It's harmless as long as it's not spinning, it's just not the intended behavior.) If you have that setting checked and the light is on and it's spinning, you actually have the "it's not turning the drive off" problem that I have (or a form of it, it turns mine off but keeps turning it back on for brief moments.)

If you have "turn off storage" checked, then that technically means none of the 3 of us have drives behaving the way they're supposed to on all ports. (except, for now, my #2 box that's working normally, or at least was for a few days.)

@DarthNocturnal Cool! I might give it one more try. I haven't tried it since before E3 and the bunch of updates released.

The big question is....is it just sort of a free for all PvP kind of environment, or is there sort of a way to do guided/questing story of some sort? I can't tell if it's an MMO, a big sandbox, or a battle arena at first glance

@NEStalgia Well, thanks for the update. And indeed, I've just stopped wondering why what happened and how, and I'll just leave things as they are now, on my Xbox One. As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke...

And I think I can safely leave the rest of the rather extensive testing trials up to you. No one is ever going to catch me with my ear stuck to an external HDD casing...

And those port issues puzzled me, but not enough to do more research, so I'll just settle for the working solution that I appear to have stumbled upon now. I did find out why my external drive wasn't recognized by the ports in the back, though: I first connected it to the front, like in the pictures, and then booted up, downloaded and/or moved all the games I wanted, and after that, I decided that I wanted to connect it to the port in the back, simply because it was more aesthetically pleasing to lose the cable hanging on the front, and besides the look of it, it also hung in front of the disc drive, seeing as I have the Xbox One standing vertically on a stand. (no place under the TV to install it horizontally, so it's sat on the floor, next to my TV cabinet)

But I did the swap to the other port, while the console was still on, thinking I could "hot swap" it, which obviously wasn't the case. After a reboot with the drive connected to the right port before powering up the console, it did instantly recognize the drive. Funnily enough, it resulted in a pop-up of "new drive found and installed", even though it obviously wasn't a new drive, and all the games were already on there. Oh, well...

Like I said, it works as it is supposed to now, so I'm not going to mess with it any further.
As for the light dying more slowly on the external drive: could simply be a matter of the drive safely shutting down, instead of allowing the console to immediately cut the power to it, so far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing, and as long as the light goes out eventually, that's fine by me as well.

X018 is less than 3 weeks away.

@DarthNocturnal I want to find a way to like that game. The art and world is so inviting. So far I haven't been able to get in on a gameplay hook at all. You're on an island. There's stores. There's a boat to go...somewhere...to do.....something....I can't quite get into what to actually do. But I wish I could. It's a neat world.

@ThanosReXXX Haha, well I wouldn't be sticking my ears into HDDs but I'd like to know if it's burning up the motors within a few months or not If we weren't talking about being out hundreds of dollars in hardware and/or terabytes of downloads I surely wouldn't care

"But I did the swap to the other port, while the console was still on, thinking I could "hot swap" it, which obviously wasn't the case. "

Ooooohhhhhhhhh...yeah, yanking the HDD while it's running is the opposite of good. You're lucky it didn't corrupt!

I think the "new drive found" or at least "ready to use" popup always happens when it finds a drive connected that wasn't connected during boot up.

Yeah I wouldn't mess with it either. The shutdown delay, no, my drives (including the official) are the externally powered 3.5" desktop drives (they don't make 2.5" USB powered drives over 4TB.) So it's not cutting power, it's actually sending the shutdown command. Before it would shut down immediately with the box, but if there were queued files it would start them back up again in 5 or 10 seconds and continue. Now it doesn't shut them down for a little while regardless so I presume it's doing "housekeeping" of some sort that it didn't used to before telling the drives to halt.

@Grumblevolcano I don't really know what they actually cover at X018 but that tells me that sale time is coming again

@NEStalgia I think they'll give new details on announcements made at E3 (Halo Infinite, Gears 5, Battletoads, Crackdown 3, Ori 2), add in some DLC announcements like Forza Horizon 4 expansion 1, announce a bunch of PC games for XB1 (Civ VI, Age of Empires 1-4, etc.) and some new brand new content (maybe Scarlett, maybe unannounced games).

@Grumblevolcano AOE1 on console? Wow. I'd hook up a keyboard and mouse for pure nostalgia of my PC heyday for that I sank so many hours into that thing back in the day.... I probably wouldn't play much today though, ironically. Plus, it's a game even the worst of laptops could run today....

@NEStalgia I was thinking the definitive editions of 1-3, it's rather weird how we've heard nothing about AoE2 Definitive Edition, AoE3 Definitive Edition and AoE4 since the initial reveals at Gamescom 2017. AoE1 Definitive Edition is already on PC so they could do a reverse Play Anywhere situation.