Topic: The everything Xbox thread

June GWG 😬

In other out of no where news seems they're trying to somewhat resurrect Crackdown 3s dead husk with some updates. Appears to include a free roam/creative mode and a Fortnite style 100 tier vanity unlock system for wrecking zone for those still playing.

@DarthNocturnal Game Pass had limited access on PC, just owing to the fact it could work with those games available as Xbox Play Anywhere games. Opening it out to full support means seeing games not available on Play Anywhere or those that are exclusive to PC.

@redd214 Crackdown 3 is just such a dismal failure.....I can't believe they're putting money into that still.

@NEStalgia I feel like the only reason Microsoft are pumping any money into Crackdown 3 is because it is such a failure and they need to at least make it look like they are attempting to salvage something from the wreck just to please the heads of the company that so much was wasted on it. This is perhaps more so important when you consider Microsoft will likely have little else exclusive for the console generation, to the point that even Forza is taking a year off.

@FragRed I think you're right. It's a shame. It had a lot of potential. And even with all the delays it feels like they never knew what they wanted to do with it from the start. Now it's not even significant enough to be a punchline like FO76.

It needed Metroid prime 4 treatment.

Phil Spencer says 14 1st party games at e3. Reminder their conference is 2 hours long. Great day dominating the newswire for MS. Can't wait to see what they have!

@NEStalgia Unfortunately I feel Crackdown 3 was the creation of something put together by a bunch of suits and not people who know about games. And that’s not exclusive to Crackdown 3, the whole Xbox division still carries that feeling it’s run by suits disguised as gamers. No offence to Phil Spencer but that’s just how it comes across to me.

So what’s likely with announced games?
Gears 5
Ori 2
Battletoads
Halo Infinite
At least 1 AoE game (PC news makes AoE appearance seem likely)

On DLC/updates we could have:
Master Chief Collection (less likely given we got a big chunk of MCC news yesterday though the game is playable at E3)
Cuphead
Sea of Thieves
State of Decay 2
Forza Horizon 4
Crackdown 3 (less likely given today’s announcement)

So we’re probably looking at around 2-3 new reveals.

@FragRed I don't think Phil's xbox is run that way. But remember, crackdown 3 didn't come from Phil's management. It came from the Matrick/Ballmer era. Phil just failed to fix the sink and had to send it out to die. It's a leftover from the infamous XBone Done launch. Along with the cancelled Scalebound.

I do think xbox is run according to corporate platform and cloud imperatives though which can get in the way. Then again, new PacWest Sony has some broken maneuvering now, too...

@Grumblevolcano plus lots of third party first looks. Which i don't mind. Xbox shows have had some of the best 3rd party presentations. And it's always been about the multiplats with pcxbox.

I do think they're going to go big on announcements. 2 hours with all of E3 to themselves while Sonys the Best Place to Play with themselves. It's a rare chance to ham it up.

Hel ok
Can anyone tell me if Xbox 360 still has any online play. I think I mean is there still any servers for the games

@Ninfan Yes there is/there are, especially now that literally hundreds of Xbox 360 titles have been made backwards compatible with the Xbox One. Only games that don't have any kind of online support anymore, are the original Xbox games, even the backward compatible ones.

Why ask? Thinking of getting an Xbox 360? If so, you might as well get an Xbox One, seeing as most, if not all worthwhile Xbox 360 titles are already compatible with and available on that console, and more are added each month.

Xbox Live Gold/Games with Gold is a great opportunity to take advantage of that, by the way.

Will Fable 4 and Halo Infinite be enough for me to buy an Xbox Two on launch day?

We'll see.

Playground confirmed that FH4 Expansion 2 isn’t in the Forza Monthly stream next week so seems very likely to be an E3 reveal.

There's a leak or something going around saying that Horizon's going LEGO with the second expansion. After Hot Wheels, that'd be an interesting idea. And if true, double bombshell by announcing the new proper LEGO game alongside it.

Y'know, I do hope Xbox actually goes somewhere with buying these studios, and that it doesn't go the route of Rare where after mildly disappointing games and one good new IP, they do close to nothing of value for a decade. It's INCREDIBLY easy for me to be bitter about Rare for the 8 billionth time and leave it at that. But I do feel like for much of its run, Xbox hasn't gone far enough to use its own first party games to set itself apart from the competition. Original Xbox actually did feel like an alternative to the other consoles at points, but halfway through the 360 it was just the cheaper PS3 (arguably even early in the 360 era, when they spent as much time stopping Playstation exclusivity as anything else), and then Xbox One was the more expensive PS4.

Original Xbox did actually come across as a mix of like...shooters (and other PC-centric games making big mainstream console appearance, especially western RPGs) with like a darker take on Nintendo-y games on the side (thx Rare?). But I feel like Xbox just became the bro-dude console, outside of the year the Kinect was popular. Or the "normal" console with Ps3 being expensive and Wii being casual, and also the one that made M rated games the norm of big budget gaming. But in hindsight, I feel like people will remember the PS3 as fondly as the 360 and they mostly had the same library, so a lot of its identity is also inherently the PS3's, outside of maybe being less casual or bro-dude-ish.

Ps4 took the "normal console" prize for the next generations and has actual exclusives people will actually buy the console for. And I think my point in this rant is that I hope that Xbox is able to look at what people want, or what they don't realize they want, and bring out some amazing exclusives next gen that set themselves apart from what Sony and Nintendo are doing, other than shooters and car games. It also kinda sucked when Nintendo was over-reliant on platformers a few years ago and I think Sony's kinda overdoing their games being open world or cinematic-y with a mix of 3rd person stealth and action right now, so its not just Microsoft. But Microsoft is the clear loser right now and did so little this gen that it seems like a waste.

They had something during the original Xbox era, and with who they bought and their current odd focus on PC, I kinda hope they can bring that back, or something like it.

Nintendo’s kind of still over-reliant on platformers like look at this year, their games before Fire Emblem are only platformers.

I mean, that's true, but that's also because they haven't released much of note so far this year.

But remember, they put all their games on both platforms. So they HAD to put a Yoshi game and DKCR port and other things on 3DS while putting the actual new and actual interesting games on Wii U. And then turned Chibi Robo into a platformer. And released 5 Mario platformers in the span of 2 years.

It's actually weird going back to the GCN, which had Mario Sunshine and Jungle Beat and NOTHING ELSE PLATFORMING from Nintendo. Nintendo released two platformers on the GCN, one of which was controlled by bongos. This is true.

Nintendo is the platformer console. Xbox is the shooter console. Playstation is the story-driven action/adventure console.
There, I explained everything.