Xbox Series X | S

[Down by Law]

22 minutes ago, layten said:

Come the end of the year I can buy a PS5 and then pay £60 for a copy of Bugsnax to play on it, or a Series X with a Gamepass sub.

 

You could have 50 years of gamepass but if you want to play Demons Souls you are sending money Sonys way which was exactly my point. As long as Sony and Ninty keep putting out games people want to play on their systems then Gamepass is nothing to worry about. See @Pelekophoros post for a good example 

[HarryBizzle]

12 minutes ago, Clipper said:

zombie deer which might give nightmares to the very young in state of decay 3 cgi fest which very early on

The way that woman screamed at the wolf was way worse than the zombie deer. 

[layten]

13 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

 

You could have 50 years of gamepass but if you want to play Demons Souls you are sending money Sonys way which was exactly my point. As long as Sony and Ninty keep putting out games people want to play on their systems then Gamepass is nothing to worry about. See @Pelekophoros post for a good example 

It's funny to see people still playing the Xbox has no games meme given what we have seen from both them and Sony so far.

 

Oh and I played Demon Souls, years ago. I thought people wanted new games? I'll take an Obsidian big budget RPG over anything from the Sony show all day every day. See how this works?

[footle]

11 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

 

You could have 50 years of gamepass but if you want to play Demons Souls you are sending money Sonys way which was exactly my point. As long as Sony and Ninty keep putting out games people want to play on their systems then Gamepass is nothing to worry about. See @Pelekophoros post for a good example 

That’s ok. When Sony actually have that slate of released exclusive games we can buy one then. The problem is “paying lots of money for shite launch games that you’ve finished by the end of the first weekend and then keep replaying to justify your purchase to yourself”. At least the subscription/rental/enhanced backwards compatibility approach avoids that.

[Down by Law]

Nobody is saying MS doesn't have any games. We were discussing how Sony don't need to be afraid of it (gamepass) if their exclusive are still breaking sales records (which they are). 

 

Funny you don't see in Switch threads that Nintendo should be afraid of Gamepass. Whys that? 

[Robo_1]

Do games shuffle in and out of availability with Gamepass? 

[footle]

1 minute ago, Down by Law said:

Nobody is saying MS doesn't have any games. We were discussing how Sony don't need to be afraid of it (gamepass) if their exclusive are still breaking sales records (which they are). 

 

Funny you don't see in Switch threads that Nintendo should be afraid of Gamepass. Whys that? 

Oh, there’s a big difference between “Sony’s value proposition basically rests on their brand and the promise of full price games to come at some point, whereas Microsoft are really pushing something that benefits the consumer on day one” and “Sony should be afraid of gamespass”.

Sony win this generation regardless of what Microsoft do, unless Microsoft successfully whip the table out from under them with XCloud compatibility with every TV or something (and even then...)

[footle]

Just now, Robo_1 said:

Do games shuffle in and out of availability with Gamepass? 

Yes. Microsoft published ones, not so much.

[layten]

6 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Nobody is saying MS doesn't have any games. We were discussing how Sony don't need to be afraid of it (gamepass) if their exclusive are still breaking sales records (which they are). 

Which of their PS5 exclusives are breaking sales records? As we have seen with the past 2 console cycles success in one means fuck all in the next.

6 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Funny you don't see in Switch threads that Nintendo should be afraid of Gamepass. Whys that? 

Because it has Nintendo (the best) games. Plus Nintendo seem to be happy doing their own thing, Sony and Microsoft seem to compete for the same audience. Shooter manz, punchy manz, driver manz, adventure manz.

[Down by Law]

Right, so Sony need to be worried about game pass now, because Spiderman on PS5 isn't going to sell well is it. 

 

You are a fucking moron

[Mystacon]

Just now, Down by Law said:

Right, so Sony need to worried about game pass now, because Spiderman on PS5 isn't going to sell well is it. 

 

You are a fucking moron

Alright mate, calm down.

[layten]

Just now, Down by Law said:

Right, so Sony need to be worried about game pass now, because Spiderman on PS5 isn't going to sell well is it. 

 

You are a fucking moron

Calm down.

 

Who is to say what it will sell. I'm not the one making solid predictions about the future and then getting upset when somebody disagrees.

[footle]

3 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Right, so Sony need to be worried about game pass now, because Spiderman on PS5 isn't going to sell well is it.

I imagine it’ll have a 90% attach rate.

Then after you’ve completed it in twenty hours, then spent another twenty hours searching for packages, then played it again in shiny 30fps mode (because you did play it in 60Hz the first time round, right) you can spend another £60 on, um... Destiny 2’s expansion?

[FiveFootNinja]

While GamePass has cost everyone £1 for several years of content Sony have nothing whatsoever to fear from it.

 

The test will come when the price ratchets up and seeing how many people actually stay with it after that. If the appetite for a games service at full price really exists on mass of course they will need to respond. But in the mean time they can quite happily cash the retail price cheques from their extensive list of better exclusive content and use MS as a big social experiment.

 

Don't get me wrong. GamePass is an awesome bit of customer-centric service design and if their desire to become a platform really does become what every gamer really wants then they have played a blinder getting in early and building loyalty for the future, but right now at this time it's still a bit of a punt. We'll see.

[thesnwmn]

Overall I felt it was an okay showing. As everyone has said the value of Game Pass is amazing. The graphics didn’t blow me away for the most part (although a 4K stream might help a little but not much).

 

The real issue for me is that most of the trailers themselves did little but try to sell a setting or an atmosphere. This isn’t just Microsoft’s issue but trailers across the board in the industry. Most of them might as well be for films not games for the fact they show nothing of what the game is about. What do I do? I’m not excited by the story or the fact it’s set in a Iceland. I’m not very impressed by graphics from a scripted set piece at a different angle to gameplay... I simply assume the game won’t look anywhere as nice when played.

 

There’s stuff I think I want to play there but hard to say for sure until I actually see what half the games actually are. Like Everwild. Fuck yeah. Looks amazing. But for all I know it’s a farming simulator.

[HarryBizzle]

19 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Nobody is saying MS doesn't have any games. We were discussing how Sony don't need to be afraid of it (gamepass) if their exclusive are still breaking sales records (which they are). 

They need to be worried about console sales, not game sales, with Game Pass. So measuring its impact by looking at the sales of games against an install base that was mostly established before Game Pass Ultimate even existed is a bit shortsighted.

[Robo_1]

21 minutes ago, footle said:

Yes. Microsoft published ones, not so much.

 

Ah, so it really is the Netflix model then? That's cool and helps to explain why third party publishers are happy to get on board, as they can get those initial sales from their core audience, get the Gamepass money later on and then get the budget sales at an even later date, probably from a good number of people who played the game on Gamepass and then want to own it for keeps.

 

Be curious to see if Sony copy this model. I wonder if cloud rentals would be a viable alternative? Pay £10 - £3 to rent a game for 5 days or something like that?

[Benny]

It's worth watching some of these trailers with a decent pair of headphones on - Everwild in particular.

[AI]

I had a Game Pass trial on PC for £3 for 3 months and there was just too much stuff on there personally and I didn't renew the sub. I downloaded about 800Gb of games at once (kid in a candy store) and didn't play more than a few hours of any of them. The value is unprecedented, but I'm at the age now where spare time is minimal and I cannot have 10 games on the go at once and work through them all like a second job in the evenings, remembering the different control schemes, plot, characters, etc, etc. It may sound crazy to the Game Pass evangelists, but I'd rather buy one/two games at a time and then spend the next few weeks/months getting it/them finished. So for me, the Sony/Nintendo gaming model is my preference. You may retort 'well don't download so many games then you fucking idiot!' and you'd be right. But there's always that niggling doubt that the Tomb Raider game you've put a few hours into on Game Pass might be a bit of a duffer really, but Gears 5 is on there...should I play that instead? Oh, Forza's on there...I wanted to check that out, let's take a look...Oh Halo Infinite is arriving on Friday, so fuck Tomb Raider, Ooh Cuphead! Must try that...and Ori! etc, etc. Plus the fear that the game you started last month is coming off Game Pass soon, so I have to buy it to finish it!?

 

Essentially, it's the Netflix problem where you spend more time scrolling through pages and pages of TV/Movie thumbnails than watching. All the while your bank account is going down £10-15 a month.

 

IT'S TOO FUCKING MUCH!!

[Revival]

26 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

We were discussing how Sony don't need to be afraid of it (gamepass) if their exclusive are still breaking sales records (which they are). 

 

Funny you don't see in Switch threads that Nintendo should be afraid of Gamepass. Whys that? 

 

Sony don't need to be afraid of Game Pass, They need to be afraid that one day their audience recognises the value of a Game Pass service and want it replicated. While people are happy paying £50 a time for exclusives and happy not getting a larger monthly selection of third party and indies or any day one games then like you say nothing will change.

 

Nintendo are in a completely different world entirely and have their own market which PS and Xbox don't crossover much anymore.

 

11 minutes ago, FiveFootNinja said:

While GamePass has cost everyone £1 for several years of content Sony have nothing whatsoever to fear from it.

 

While Game Pass grows and allows Xbox to invest in more studios and grow what they have then it will directly affect the market.

[Jamie John]

Just got round to watching the stream and haven't read the thread since the showing yet.

 

I thought there were lots of good games shown, and it's great that they're all going to be available on Game Pass, but there was nothing there to persuade me to buy an XSX. I'll just play all of these on my PC.

 

Halo looked very generic. I mean, it's just Halo. It didn't even look particularly 'next-gen'. How is it different from the other games?

[TehStu]

Glad I waited for the 4k stream. 

 

So, for the third, probably fourth gen on the trot, new games kinda look like high res, high framerate prior gen games. But! As always, there's glimpses of what's to come. And, honestly, some of those looked lovely. Holy shit, Forza Motorsport. 

 

Not that there was any doubt, but day 1

[the_debaser]

Just watched the presentation. It hasn’t sold me on the new console at all, in exactly the same way last months PS5 presentation didn’t either. There’s just nothing interesting in development. 

 

I just don’t get what the point of this next generation is, right now, if the games don’t look or play any differently. 
 

Paper Mario on my Switch looks and sounds as good as any of these games. Probably plays better than any of them too. 

[TehStu]

Also, I've found 4k streaming to, generally, be a bust. But all that stuff looked sharp, even after going through YouTube, so roll on some actual 4k content for my TV. 

[FiveFootNinja]

42 minutes ago, Revival said:

While Game Pass grows and allows Xbox to invest in more studios and grow what they have then it will directly affect the market.

Respectfully I disagree. MS have invested in studios because MS wanted (read: needed) to invest in studios for more content. I don’t believe commercially GamePass has enabled anything, they are just different parts of their wider strategy.

 

What GamePass does give them (even at a loss) is a footprint and help build brand loyalty. That may well lead to a better install base which is the foundation for making it a commercial success and ultimately dent Sony’s advantage. But none that is a quick win and Sony will be watching it closely in case it becomes a threat.

 

One thing I don’t know is how popular GP is with the general/wider gaming community. Obviously on here (rllmuk) we generally are engaged gamers, and pretty much everyone in this thread in particular has a degree of MS bias (despite the odd troll) to rose tint those glasses slightly. However as an example I know someone who is a total Xbox fangirl, streamer and member of the Ubisoft community program, but as an online multiplayer type gamer (of generally cross platform games) she just couldn’t care less about GP and would rather spend loads on ultimate editions of the games she is focusing on there and then (and the associated DLC). I would have thought GP needs pretty high levels of market saturation at full price (like Netflix) and near total adoption across its own consumers to be a big commercial success on its own and change the market models significantly. I may be wrong.

 

Either way, right now as a customer GamePass is bloody amazing so we are all winners. 

[SeanR]

people buy the game after it leaves gamepass?

[Haribokart]

I'm staying at my friends and he wanted to watch this live, going on about how Phil Spencer said it was going the be the best Xbox showing ever or something. Fucking awful. If this is meant to be the most powerful console in the world, why did everything look like an Xbox One/PS4 (not X/Pro) game? Where was the fucking gameplay for most of these titles? That Halo footage was a joke.

 

Tetris Effect Connected however was the absolute highlight, I cannot fucking WAIT to play that 

[CarloOos]

Re: 'This hasn't sold me on a Series X but it was a great advert for Games Pass...' wasn't that pretty much the intention? Games Pass is their platform now, not any specific console. If they were specifically trying to sell the Series X they wouldn't be bending over backwards to offer everything on the PC and Xbox One.

 

Maybe it's not a strategy we all necessarily agree with, but it seems to me the conference did its job if it made Games Pass seem like good value, regardless of whether it made you want a Series X. Personally I'm on the fence about upgrading this year now, although maybe better footage of Infinite with some cross-gen comparisons could sway me.

[Majora]

1 hour ago, FiveFootNinja said:

While GamePass has cost everyone £1 for several years of content Sony have nothing whatsoever to fear from it.

 

 

This argument I sometimes see around Gamepass' pricing is pretty disingenuous. It didn't cost people £1 to get several years of GamePass, people loaded up on the cheapest Gold sub they could find and then paid £1 to convert it to GamePass Ultimate which is quite a big difference.

 

So for me, for example, I probably paid around £90 to load up on three years - still cheaper than the normal price you'd pay of course, but I still had to make that value call that it was worth paying nearly £100 in advance to take advantage of the offer. And probably even more pertinently, I made that decision to do so at a time where that three year window would span a significant chunk of the new console generation, pretty much guaranteeing I would stay invested in the MS ecosystem at a crucial time.

 

When this runs out I would happily pay normal price for GamePass. In its current form it would pay for itself several times over even at full price and has pretty much single-handedly turned my PS4 Pro into a first party exclusive machine. It's not just the best value gaming sub around, I'd argue it's the best value sub of any kind, period, even at normal price.

[TehStu]

5 minutes ago, Haribokart said:

why did everything look like an Xbox One/PS4 (not X/Pro)

I mean, they didn't on the 4k stream. 

 

Edit - yeah, I paid $60 + $60 + I think a 3 month +$1 to get GPU through 2022. It was hardly just $1.