Eh, most of the youtubers Geoff got are all like the top 10-30 well known and popular gaming youtubers. There’s no crazy they were paid to shit on Xbox, it just shows how much Xbox dropped the ball this generation and just hasn’t been in the minds of most people.
Jacksepticeye has 18 million viewers and is in the top 3 most popular YouTube gaming channels. Him saying he likes the Xbox UI and thinks it’s great as a media device but he doesn’t really game on it has nothing to do with being paid off by Dorito Pope.
I’m obviously not suggesting Geoff is crazy or hateful enough to pay people to be unkind. I said “seemingly” to mean “it appears” or “gave the impression”
Those guys were however definitely paid to appear on a Microsoft sponsored event/stream and appeared to have no idea that they were going to be asked about xbox or it’s games. A minimal amount of prep would be enough to work out that the person who doesn’t like Halo “I’m not going to watch the Halo reveal, I’ll be going to the bathroom at that point” would not be the person to speak to about wether she’s looking forward to Halo. Or the person who doesn’t play games on Xbox probably isn’t worth booking.
And this is an event which, bear in mind, had exclusive reveals from Microsoft and an appearance from a Microsoft executive, if Microsoft didn’t pay for it (and I think it’s likely they did) they at least gave a lot of publicity which converts to views and revenue.
So on a show designed to hype up their new console and software, one Microsoft gave content to, gave an appearance from their staff, and probably paid for, Geoff Keighley books someone who says they don’t like Microsoft’s biggest game and won’t be watching. There were other things said that had me rolling my eyes, but but any other company would be saying “no way are we employing Geoff Keighley again”
True but issue is less with Geoff and more than Xbox and Geoff both wanted eyes so they got all the biggest YouTubers they could have gotten and as it turns out most of the big guys play on PC and PlayStation.
I completely agree with you. Very unprofessional and it almost seems like he did that on purpose. No way in hell he does that for a sony pre show. I like Geoff but man, doing things like this comes off as childish and immature. I would love for him to show/have passion for everything games related regardless of his bias for sony, which is fine, but don’t drool over it. Seeing him talk to insomniac’s designers after the R & C demo with such passion was great, just wish he’d have that same passion for non sony games/developers/products.
I will say this though, he did seem genuinely excited when he revealed the series x, but the cutting of the fans reaction afterwards was a head scratcher.
I don’t dislike the guy, but why does have so much clout in the industry? He’s basically gaming’s version of Ryan Seacrest as far as I’m concerned. His opinion shouldn’t be more valuable than anyone else’s.
If game pass released a ton of low quality software, it wouldn’t perform how MS is wanting. They need to put out a large range of quality, diverse titles to keep game pass successful, including cinematic, single player third person action games. We just haven’t gotten any yet outside of Gears, which we all know doesn’t count because… reasons.
It make sense, I don’t understand the narrative of " gamepass filler games". Like, how is it possible to think made average game quickly would help gamepass ?
Nonsense, you don’t book people who are going to be negative about your product. Having lots of people watching your biggest franchise get trashed by people on the promotional stream is insane.
Headline: even Microsoft’s own stream says halo is crap.
Completely agreed. That pre-show was a travesty and Geoff thinks he was being clever but judging by the majority of commentators he invited, that veil wasn’t even present. I hope Phil reads this segment especially, or Aaron, because until the last month or so I’ve felt that Microsoft has been hitting their messaging and plan out of the park. I was never concerned about any of the cross-gen stuff because I know that most publishers are doing the same, and that you can still scale things a tremendous amount. The Halo delay hurt a little but I have faith in 343, especially now with Staten back, but it’s the last month or so of silence and a reliance on asshats like Geoff to get content out. I don’t even need to see gameplay on the system, though I believe much of the third-party titles like Medium were at Gamescom (correct next if wrong, I’ve been playing catch up), because the specs speak for themselves and I know that some of the XGS teams, and third-parties in general, will take advantage of it. Look at the One X and see how the majority of games did use that power, especially RDR2 and Gears 5. I could be wrong but the whole gameplay whine feels a lot like another goalpost shift or concern of the month (like the May event).
…interesting that accusations of bias get picked up,but no objection to saying he’s an asshat!
For the record, I didn’t say he was biased, I was commenting on how insane it is that Microsoft PR seem to want to partner with someone who is fronting content that is talking down Microsoft’s products. That’s nothing to do with bias, that’s just flat out ridiculous.
I prefer Xbox to Playstation, but if Sony ask me to build their stand at E3/Gamescom, I won’t put a trap door in and hope all their staff fall down it. I’ll do a professional job - Or I won’t take the work. I’m not saying Geoff isn’t professional, but that preview stream was the least professional thing I’ve seen at any conference. I’d be furious if my multimillion dollar investment was being talked down in my own promo material.
I think it comes down to a subtle bias where you get excited about A and let your imagination run wild with it but if ya aren’t as interested in B then you might presume its potential is more limited than it actually is. Good example of this might be how Sony fans are getting ahead of themsevles wrt what the SSD in PS5 allows based on R&C. That lead ppl to imagine that world changing moments can happen in an instant but just watching it and understanding what is happening it is clear this is very far from the case there. Yet ppl still talk of it as some game changing demo of the tech. They let their imagination run wild dreaming up scenarios where what they think is happening could be applied to other games and they get hyped.
The most hyped up gameplay reveal on XSX was Halo, which looked mostly current gen assets and had streaming issues and lighting issues (both areas that XSX should have been super strong in). If someone goes into that footage expecting something incredible visually they likely come away not just disappointed but hyper cynical of 343/XGS/XSX/MS as a whole. That isn’t rational, but the in the moment impression that leaves never is. The result is he has rigid assumptions about what Xbox and XGS are doing right now and only sees that as a barometer for judging their direction.
It’s funny since to me (who is surely biased too) I feel the opposite in many ways. I see streaming games from the cloud as the future, ML both in dev and at runtime as the future, ubiquitous experiences across devices as the future, aggressive new game delivery paradigms, opportunities for smaller/medium sized game projects to flourish, etc. All of these areas MS is dominating in whereas Sony is doing almost nothing meaningful at all. If things go as I think they might, Sony is gonna be the one in a really bad position. Right now, MS can just give XGS time and in a couple of yrs they will have shored up their one major weakness. Sony won’t be competitive in these other areas in anywhere close to that timeframe.
In my view, the first to nail down cloud streaming for the masses will dominate the industry for the foreseeable future, since install base is vastly larger and the platform holder can upgrade server hardware to a ‘next gen’ without even telling anyone and do shadow launches on a whim, likely without customers even paying anything for the massive upgrade. Whoever gets to that first will be super tough to beat. I think when MS talks of being a Netflix for gaming this is what they mean. Not just having a huge catalogue but also having it accessible and being able to upgrade the tech behind the scenes without ever needing to restart their userbase from 0.
None of us are in a position to say someone’s opinion is wrong.
Maybe it takes more than a CGI video to get some of us excited. I’m looking forward to Avowed, Fable, SoD3, etc but I can’t say I’m excited for them when we’ve seen nothing of the games.
That’s great if those things excite you but you can’t say Geoff or I aren’t allowed to not be excited over what might as well be flashy title screens.
I disagree on dropping the original score on the sole reason that it would then give studios more of an excuse to release, unfinished GaaS games with the excuse that it’ll get better over time. We should not be seeing games launch in the state that we saw Halo 5, SoT, SoD2, Anthem, NMS, Ghost Recon Breakpoint and so on. There is a very good reason why the term “GaaS” has earned a bad name and now why most companies seem to be pivoting that label as a “games as a platform”. These companies should always be held responsible for the unfinished state their games launched in.
As I said before, there could be legit, non biased reasons for Geoff’s opinions. I doubt someone who coordinated to have Reggie, Spencer, and Layden up on the stage at the same time would care for petty console wars.
Indeed, but we can point out when people are saying untrue things and its not just lack of excitement, he is saying ms are employing a stratagy, but ms’s actions show it not to be the case. I am refering to Keighleys narritive that Playstation is about top tier AAA games and xbox is not.
Its like saying the PS5 is not about improved load times because we have not seen it.
Tim gettys has been saying this too, its just very aggrevating when xbox have announced big AAA games, if they didnt do this I would agree they have a point.
How would they have more of an excuse? When the game launches, it’d get a bad score until fixed. Halo 5 was fine upon release. So was SoT.
Geoff’s entire perspective, as explained by himself, is that he wants MS to compete in console warz. When someone says they want ‘traditional’ console platforms, that is literally what they are saying. They want paid off exclusives, strategic price drops, moves intended to undermine your opponent, etc. That is what Sony does and he applauds that, as do lots of others. He wants more of what he grew up with.
I am guessing it is akin to his lacking interest in Xbox, which then means he has no interest imagining what it could become. He instead focuses on what is there now, but not ‘now’ as in today but now as in the current narrative role of Xbox.
If reviewers are willing to drop the original scores, that would give studios an incentive to release unfinished GaaS games because they know they can improve that score over time. I don’t agree with that. Regardless of how much a game improves over time, a game should be judged on what it offers day one. I also don’t agree that Halo 5 and SoT were fine on release as both were sorely lacking content. Halo 5 was missing content and game modes that were well established in Halo games. SoT was lacking much to do outside of the couple factions at launch. Both were reviewed very fair at launch IMO.
I also don’t agree that Geoff means console warz when he talks of traditional console platforms. That could easily stem from him not agreeing with MS’ focus on cross gen support or putting services in front of the actual hardware. Both perspectives I can agree on and have nothing to do with console wars. I’m ok with MS putting a focus on Game Pass, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of properly promoting their next gen systems. I’m also fine with MS supporting cross gen games but they should have at least one next gen focused game to drop Jaws.
MS is certainly doing things their own way but that doesn’t mean that all gamers will agree with it or that it’s even the right thing to do.
I understand his points, but dude is such a fanboy it’s annoying. Xbox is not basic cable. Sony first party games really only became a thing this gen after getting trounced PS3 era. Xbox made similar investments a few years ago and it will pay off in a couple of years.
But their releases would get bad rep and not do well commercially outta the gate due to having a bad score on launch. That is the same deterrent reviews have always had. A game should be judged based on what it offers the day the customer reads it, lol. It’s ONLY purpose is to give guidance to customers about prospective purchases. Anyhow, this might be off topic at this point.
As for Geoff, the only thing Xbox isn’t doing is the traditional console warz approach. They still have tons of next gen exclusive games that push the hardware, have 3rd party exclusives in place where they presumably didn’t need to take them away from PSX artificially, have evolved platform features, etc. They just don’t go out in search of ways to undercut the experience of their competitors like Sony does. Quite the opposite, in fact.
They work with and for Sony on things like online infrastructure, security and cloud hosting for PSN. And even indirectly through DX12U tool sets that also benefit PS5 games. If MS wanted to, they could crush Sony’s console warz tactics into the dirt easily. They could make Minecraft Xbox only. They could slaughter them on pricing just for the hell of it. They could boot them off Azure and kick em back to Amazon where they already ran away from. They could make sure DX12U games did not see benefits at all outside of Xbox/PC platforms. They could drown 3rd parties in way more cash than Sony can and nab tons of exclusives and buy studios out left and right. That isn’t their goal though. Their goal isn’t to kill PlayStation, it is to elevate gaming as a whole and direct that wave towards their unique strengths.
There was no notable cross gen support outside of Halo. I had tried telling ppl that for a long time now. Everyone was entirely misunderstanding what MS said in late 2019. They did not say they were making brand new titles that were cross gen. They said the stuff their studios were already finishing up would be on both. That is actually an important distinction.
What they meant was that the titles that were already being finished up by their dev teams (Psychonauts, Grounded, Battletoads, Halo, Minecraft Dungeons, Wasteland, Gears Tactics) would still come out as already announced on Xbox One. They also play best on XSX and likely all get optimized next gen versions via patches. Everyone thought Booty meant that Forza, Fable, Hellblade, Everwild, etc were all being made for Xbox One and up ported to XSX. That is not the case. All those games and others (Avowed) are next gen only. So will The Initiative’s first game, and Compulsion’s next game, and stuff from the Coalition.
This was clear if you look at the timelines and what studios were working on. There really aren’t many studios in that 2020-2021 time frame at XGS that have new games releasing circa XSX launch except for teams finishing up already-announced Xbox One games (Halo, Grounded, Wasteland, etc). The first next gen only titles likely won’t ship until late summer 2021 at the earliest (likely Forza). That is probably about when R&C and Sony’s next gen only games start showing up too.
This then gets compared to Sony’s ‘all first party teams are next gen only’ stance as if they are totally different approaches, but they aren’t different in this area. Sony’s teams also are not positioned to offer much of anything until later on in 2021. Insomniac’s PS4 DLC up-ported to PS5 and R&C are basically it and R&C probably won’t even show up until summer. That’s the entire point behind them moneyhatting a couple 3rd party titles to fill the gap. Their other studios aren’t going to be ready until late 2021 and mainly 2022, just like MS’s. That is why you had a super long gap where no Sony first party titles got announced for like, a full year or more.
These are in fact the exact same ‘approach’ in the sense of both have already moved all their dev teams over to next gen-only development outside of Halo since it got delayed. What gamers agree on should be premised on what the facts are, instead of what the popular narrative is.
We can’t say anything about their next gen projects or how well they push the hardware because we haven’t seen anything from them. I’m sure you’ll point to hellblade 2 and Forza, but those examples will carry more weight when the first trailer of hellblade isn’t running at 24fps and we see Forza being played at all. Sorry but I don’t agree that console warz is the only thing MS isn’t doing. Properly promoting and showing the strength of their next gen hardware is also another thing they aren’t doing and it’s a valid criticism.
Statements that people in the industry are pushing console wars or are fanboys is not something we should be doing on this forum. We aren’t like those other places and should be better than that.