Hahaha. Why’s that? Because I liked the Halo Infinite gameplay trailer to watch it that many times or because I have never played Halo before? Or is it both? LOL.
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No, because ya get to experience it all for the first time back to back! 
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Okay. Yeah, I have never played a single Halo game. I have watched the opening 10-15 minutes for each game and im definitely all in. Actually hyped to play them all which considering the first two two games were from the original Xbox, that’s saying something because I can barely play Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 games. Normally, when I move on to the next generation, all previous generations are done.
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Such an eloquent exploration for every point that I usually make when commenting on Xbox’s future and their offerings like GamePass. The diversity and quality of the teams they’ve got under their banner, and partnerships they’re forming, are a breath of fresh air in an often stale, trend-following industry. The points on GamePass’ catalog not being for everyone is such a pertinent point, one that Netflix or Prime doesn’t have applied to them (we all know why), but I know I’m speaking to a fanboy when they mention “GamePass Fodder”; there are tons of AAA titles on GamePass throughout the year, not including XGS titles, and even then the quality of indies is stellar (see SpiritFarer and AfterParty, as two fantastic examples).
If the trolls and fanboys weren’t so pervasive in the online community, it wouldn’t be bothersome. At least, all the constant goalpost moving does make it easier to ignore because you know there’s no good-faith discussion to be had, and anything said after that is without value.
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Oh, the Doritos King endorsed narrative? Yeah, these people are always so predictable.
Awesome post!
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Good post!
I will add that ten years ago, indie games were these 2D games and small 3D games that could not make good graphics but were bringing new ideas. They were curated to came out on xbox through XBLA. And through the years we got so many great indie games with Minecraft, Stay of Decay, etc. It’s another thing that Microsoft was pioneering on console, but never got recognition for. It’s okay.
Today, it’s harder and harder to make the difference between these small indie games and these AAA titles. We have to rely on budget, teams and technologies. “This game have 1000 people working on it, it must be really good. It is what AAA mean…” I get that. I will say that Assassin’s Creed games now, RDR2, Cyberpunk 2077 are the type of games that have huge content and are undeniably AAA. But most of the time, that’s not what those people are talking about. What they are saying is that games that are tailored made, with huge QA team, are the new standard for AAA. And that, I dont get.
Hellblade was made by what 20-30 people (not sure exaclty) ? A Plague Tale trumps many other quality games with a team of 40 people at Asobo. Even their technologies are on par with big studios.
So yeah, why still denigrate those games and make them feel lesser than those huge titles with big marketing campaigns ? The answer is in the question, I know. It’s business as usual ! You have to separate yourself from the crowd and Playstation are masters of this.
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Game Pass is more than just offering a diverse portfolio of games that cater to specific groups. You can do that without GP and Xbox’s games were already pretty diverse before IMO. The magic of GP is in that you pay a subscription and all of the games are “free”. So while people may sign up to play a certain type of game, but there is no barrier to them trying the others. This leads to people finding and liking games they would have never ever bought on their own. It just breaks down so many barriers for game developers. Things like…
- Not having eye popping graphics to draw people attention.
- Being in a genre outside of people’s preference.
- Being a game that people might have bought to try but they just have other games to buy first.
Just think. How many times has there been a game that people praise but you may think “that looks dumb” or “I don’t really like (genre)” or “maybe if it were $10” or “too risky” etc… The reason AAA is so popular is because people don’t want to take risks and likewise developers don’t like to take risks. GP removes a lot of that.
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yep, I forgot to mention this aspect of it. Game Pass does a new, unique thing where it’s not just catering to the audience of that game, but lower as many barriers as possible for newcomers or skeptics to try the game/genre/studio’s output out and in turn has great potential to pull altogether new audiences.
Game Pass created a sort of a “holistic gamer” in the sense that it created a space for gamers who try as many games and genres out, and there’s good probability Xbox wants its audience to become that kind of a consumer who wants to constantly try new things by removing these said barriers to entry. Xcloud and streaming are gonna be a big part in that as well, and I suspect Sony shall be doing these quick streamed demos for people to check out before buying the game only in Xbox’s case, you get access to the entire game and library.
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I love the diversity we see in Xbox but yes, they need some of these type of games and
Hellblade and Plague Tale are the exact games I see as the type of AAA third person prestige games Xbox needs to lean into. Less wide open and more contained games so that development is shorter and we can get more of them. It’s exactly why I want Asobo and Remedy to be the next two studios purchased.
Let Ubisoft CDPR and Rockstar make the big open games and have Xbox studios focus on games 10-20 hours. Maybe 1 or 2 huge 40 hour type game for the generation if a particular XGS really wants that.
I’m playing through Hellblade now and I’m so blown away. I’m also blown away by how much better it is to play the heavy combat sections in high frame rate mode. The fidelity drops too significantly to play the whole game that way but if they can consistently hit 4K 60 next gen it’s going to be a game changer. Ninja Theory was a perfect acquisition.
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I agree for the most part and don’t want every game to be an open world or wide-linear but it doesn’t hurt to have a few of them. Of course, it all depends on the game. Hellblade 2 should be linear like the first game but Fable should be open world like The Witcher III.
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Anything in development now is in development. Like I said, one or two for the generation would be great. If there are more, then that’s fine too. Whatever the studios want to do, I hope they get to do. As long as Phil Spencer is in charge of Xbox, they should all let their creative juices flow.
I personally enjoy smaller games and I also enjoy to play more games. I feel like smaller games have a cycle of 3 years or less, where as big open world games are five or more years. This would get us 2 or 3 games this generation from a particular team instead of 1 or 2.
I love open world games in moderation. Ghost was incredible this year and Cyberpunk is my most anticipated game for the Fall. Fable, I hope is open but not huge. Something the size of Forza Horizon 4 would be perfect.
Agree completely. I like open world games, linear games and wide linear games. I play a lot of games with spanning several genres. For me, it has more to do with the game itself. For example, I think Gears 6 should go back to being more linear than what Gears 5 was. It depends on the game but I agree in regards to letting all the studios do what they want to do.
Yeah, that’s the perk of gamepass, discovering games you would not have played, and it’s invaluable.
What I meant is that there is not one type of AAA game, it’s not a genre either. It just meant “big budget”, “large scope” and even then, you could argue about that. But these type of games are so far in between. We have maybe 10-20 of those every year in a good year. That’s it.
The rest of the year has to be filled with smaller experiences. But smaller doesn’t mean bad or buggy or janky. Not anymore.
And yeah, I think Asobo is a really good fit for MS. But I’m french so I’m biased. 
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I can see xbox gaining a lot of new customers next gen. If families and people who dont know much about gaming get a series S or X with gamepass I think they will be shocked by the high quality and value the hardware and service brings.
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as someone who is on the fence on what system ill be getting next gen. Gamepass is a big reason for me to stay with xbox. My daughter and kid both play a lot of games on there like hello neighbor and to buy all those games they want to play on playstation would be expensive.
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It’s crazy how this post aged so well haha.
Also, this was posted in August 2020 and the latest post was in September?
Absolutely none of us saw what was coming rather soon - The Zenimax acquisition. Like that industry shifting move was completely absent from this entire conversation little more than six months ago, and is now simply inseparable from it. We were talking about Xbox being a WRPG powerhouse BEFORE Zenimax got acquired lmao, we had no idea how much MS wanted that to be the case.
Absolutely wild.
And although Zenimax largely only strengthens the already existing niches Xbox wants to corner, Gamepass continues to be diverse and bringing in more third parties of all sizes, so that’s great to see.
And I’m sure this post will be outdated in a few months to a year’s time as well. 
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Ikr fucking wild
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