It’s why the 90’s up to the early 2000’s will always be the best time for gaming. 90’s especially was a wild west where everyone and their mother wanted in on the console biz and we got everything from mainstream Nintendo and Sega consoles to NEC’s PC Engine/TG 16 to the mighty ( and pricey ) NeoGeo.
It was truly a time where console makers looked to differentiate from each other and developers were at their most creative. So you got all kinds of cool sometimes weird shit, people who weren’t there won’t understand it ( and try to dismiss it as cOnsOLe wArz) along with people who game primarily on PC.
Now it’s grown so big and 99.9% about profit 1% creativity. far less Risk, the indie developers are putting out the most interesting stuff for the most part. The multiplat push is MS and their big tech thinking being forced into gaming. They want to run everything like they do Windows. (To think all the years people wanted them to get more involved with Xbox would turn out to be a monkey’s paw.)
Things change sure. whether it’s “for the better” remains to be seen and I am not seeing it atm.
They will do all of that and more, while the media runs stories on why it’s good for gaming that those are the only players left and we should be glad.
Next gen sounds like it’ll have more differentiation across the three console makers than I remember. It’s basically all 3 in different lanes leveraging their strengths.
Are you guys referring to differentiation in what software is on each platform or differentiation in terms of hardware, platform and user experience? I think we’re heading away from differentiation of games (most third parties are multi plat, now some console makers have some multi plat) but we’re going to be seeing plenty of differentiation elsewhere.
I think wanting games to be split across two or three platforms is a negative for everyone because the games reach a smaller audience, users spend more money on hardware and services, and more boxes with identical function and similar hardware are manufactured effectively wasting resources.
I’m this close to advocating for standardization of console platform / compatibility and allowing games to compete on their own merits and allow hardware companies to compete on their own as well.
If Microsoft really is making all their exclusives, not exclusive I can only hope this means Xbox games won’t have censorship.
Nintendo allows for less censorship, than Sony and if the next Xbox is more PC than console, I would hope Japanese games should come out easier, so more visual novels to getting games like Stellar Blade, where as Sony wants it censored, the Xbox version would not be.
Now for people saying Starfield didn’t sell as well as Microsoft wanted and is why Microsoft is throwing in the towel, it never was going to light the world on fire.
Had it been Elder Scrolls and sold as well as Starfield did, then yes I can see why giving up on game consoles makes sense, but Elder Scrolls is a console seller.
The same thing could have been for Fallout, had a new one come at the same time as the tv show.
If they announce a new-gen only Forza Horizon 6 I’ll be so happy, particularly if we manage to avoid the leaks that preceded the FH5 announcement.
Playground are machines who seem to pump them out every 3 years and yet still massively impress - I’m expecting it to be more next year or even 2026, but if they did manage one this year that’s my holiday season sorted lol
Agreed. If it’s using the new ForzaTech I’d be surprised at a release this year, but I can imagine an announcement this year. It would be great for the VGAs.
I mean… could this be one of the intended effects? Release Xbox games on PlayStation for people to know and appreciate them?
I know most of you won’t agree with this but I think, eventually, after this multiplatform period, Xbox should make exclusive games again. Did you like our game? Ok, if you want to play the sequel get into our ecosystem, Xbox or PC.
Interesting you should bring that up since Phil essentially says as much during the ‘address to the Xbox community’ thing they did when all this surfaced. However I don’t think anyone else really picked that up or even discussed it.
Because it’s much easier to say they’re lying and that you’re just believing PR speech and that Xbox is already full on 3rd party. I’m surprised you haven’t switched completely to PS5 yet, it’s so obvious!
I’m not serious by the way, just to be sure that’s clear. I actually believe the whole point was to attract new customers, similar to how Nintendo used mobile games to get people to know about their games and buy a Nintendo console.
With all the doom and gloom it should be noted nothing is official also i think it will take a huge undertaking to port all their games assuming they haven’t yet. It took Sea of thieves a year. Pentiment was small and Hi-fi Rush was multiplat from the beginning. At most you will see time exclusives may not even show up till 2026 when their nextgen rolls out. Also all the 4 games were unreal engine based. I wonder if it would be easy to port the Forza and Halo games as they both use custom engines and Halo’s slipspace has been known to be difficult to work with .
The way I see they would like to make one PC version for all that will simply adapt to the specs of the box playing it and they would probably hope all platforms become digital stores like Steam.
Hah, I mean it’s weird times for the industry as a whole, I don’t think it’s some kind of 4D strategy, but I DO believe it changes brand perception. Anecdotal but I dismissed Gears as a mountain dew chugging, backwords cap bloodlust game where you chain saw aliens…until I played 5 on PC Gamepass loved it and bought a console because of it.
Interesting to see new life breathed into Sea of Thieves with a close to 90 Metacritic rating.
I want to bring this up because at least games like SoT on PS5 informed you that it needs Xbox account ahead of its launch while this one you are now forced to create one. The reactions are very negative; even Palworld community manager poke fun of it.
Bottom line, if they decide to put games on other platform, at least don’t pull this stunt again.
I wonder if this source had re-reviewed it for Xbox, BEFORE it was even announced for PS5 if they had said the exact same thing. I don’t want to go all Xbox tax, bias etc all the time but it’s increasingly hard to deny.
To be fair its a night and day difference if you compare sea of thieves launch to what it is today. I think that’s the issue with live services games because it can underhwhelm or launch messy, but over time it can become a very good game
