For his mental health, I agree. People have been pretty horrible to him for months. I feel like he snapped. John is a good dude and I think getting off social media rather than engaging with the vitriol would be a smart move. At least a sabbatical from it. Escalating the situation won’t help him but I also feel like people here shouldn’t pile on.
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John flat out said before on Era that he did not like Xbox and thought they were bad for gaming and wished they never entered gaming.
After that kind of direct statement I cannot take anything he says seriously and talking like that just lends to credence he is himself a fanboy warrior.
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He’s allowed an opinion. FFS. I’d rather he honestly expressed his opinion rather than pretend he doesn’t care. The point is he doesn’t seem to overly let his view cloud the professional output.
And that’s absolutely fine.
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I’d like to add that I absolutely agree with John about social media. I don’t even follow much related to gaming yet the little I see on my timeline is all completely and utterly toxic rubbish. It is so disheartening to see decent posts attracting a sewer of replies from fanboys. Its a hobby. A fun hobby. A bit of light hearted banter and whatever is fine. But there are scores and scores of grown ass men posting utter rubbish in the name of defending their favourite brand and attacking the competitor. Its frankly at times completely embarrassing and other times quite frightening that people can spend so much time doing this.
And lets be clear a lot of this behaviour is in part driven by behaviour elsewhere on the internet - its not all just social media. This place is infinitely the best place to discuss games because it is free of this sort of fanboy nonsense. I just find the swathes of thousands all desperate to post a meme about a console too depressing to deal with.
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Having the opinion of out right disliking Xbox and wishing MS had never entered the gaming space is not a valid one for someone involved in producing technical analysis across multiple platforms. You do have to question whatever their work is when that’s the opinion they have. It’s one thing to not be interested in say MS first party output, but to actually dislike it as a product and think MS is bad for gaming is a terrible take and only one that the hardcore Sony fans stick to.
The only reason he has got so affected by all these comments is because he’s a fanboy himself, so the suggestion that he’s paid off by MS will be infuriating to him. Completely forgetting about the biggest game with ray tracing this year for Xbox is I guess proof that he has no real interest in Xbox.
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Sorry I wildly disagree with this. He can and will have whatever opinion he wants to. Just like every other single person in the world. Everything he does seems professional to me.
I don’t particularly want to get into a huge and embroiled debate about this but this is close to as bad as Sony fanboys saying DF is ‘biased’ or whatever. They can be biased so long as their work is objective - which it always seems to be to me.
But beyond that - if he doesn’t like Xbox - then its not like he can change that. He can have that opinion whilst pixel counting or whatever. He’s not publically accountable. He works for Eurogamer and its up to them.
The watch dogs thing is still up in the air as far as I’m concerned. Till we 100% see the game or get an up to date confirmation of the Ray Tracing - I’d wait till it launches to see exactly what is/isn’t there in it. Games do seem to be struggling to launch on xbox with RT - for reasons we do not know…
We do know the reason, the late dev-kits.
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Curious, but when did he state MS should have never entered the industry?
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John has always had really weird fanboy stalkers that harass him over perceived bias but yeah, it seems like there are entire cliques of them these days; just people that are way too invested in toxic energy whatever their given plastic box is. They don’t view DF as a digital resource guide as much as cookie jar filled with ammo and if it doesn’t have exactly what they want to hear then they claim it’s biased.
They certainly get their fair share of Xbox fanboys hounding them but from where I’m sitting it looks like PS fanboys take it to unprecedented levels.
edit: I see people bringing up stuff his said in the past, like take in mind you’re referencing shit he said while heated retaliation and while being harassed literally by the serial stalker I was referencing above… wouldn’t it make more sense to judge him by his body of work than a random one-off comment made whilst being harassed?
Him preferring a native resolution UI, while not a big deal to me, has nothing to do with bias… it’d be pretty damned weird not expect a 4K UI (anyone saying otherwise isn’t being honest, fullstop) and it’s be even weirder if he knew about it and didn’t mention it. Just because fanboys are taking it as ammo doesn’t mean it was said with some kind of malice.
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I’ve never heard him say that. Would like to see the context. Regardless even if that was his opinion, it doesn’t cloud his work. His work at DF has been professional and consistent. Finally, there’s no excuse for people to send inhumane comments towards him when he’s talking about machines. I don’t care how much someone doesn’t like his commentary. There’s no excuse to have more respect for things than people.
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He did say it but that was around 2013, with the horrible Xbox One reveal.
Yeah I was certain I remembered him saying that around the Xbox One launch. To be fair Microsoft was involved with the BS of everything being digital and John is very insistent that he likes owning physical media so it is perfectly understandable he was upset with Microsoft at the time.
However, I don’t get the impression any bias he may or may not have impacts his professional work, as he has been complementary of many Xbox games, as well as the One X and Series X, heck he praised Crackdown 3 of all things lol.
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What are you wanting him to do other than say oops? That’s what ppl do when they make a wholly insignificant mistake. The responsibility isn’t on him to avoid engaging with ppl. It’s on those ppl to be respectful and act in good faith and not be shit bags.
Full transparency…I said pretty negative things about Xbox in 2013. In mid 2017 I did as well. I won’t repeat it all but it was very negative.
Corporations aren’t people. They’re made up of people but like a sports team, only as good as the leadership and players…which takes money. Thinking the team in 2013 was shit isn’t original, bold or controversial. Some consumers expressed frustration with the brand.
Regardless, plastic and consumer loyalty shouldn’t ever come before human decency. Like ever.
2017 was a rough Xbox year, lmao.
That was during Xbox One’s early yrs. He felt the console was underpowered and made bade decisions on tech design and he was particularly sensitive to the used game talking pts going around. He is a hardcore games preservation guru after all.
But sure, lets ignore the past 5 yrs of his super professional and extensive insight because ya quote mined something out of context from the internet.
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He did not say the Xbox One should not have come out he was talking about MS and Xbox as a whole. That’s is a very damming statement from someone whose job it is to cover multiple platforms. Sorry once you go off the deep end like that I do not trust your judgment to cover anything Xbox related.
He literally did not want MS in the gaming industry at all
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Yes, because to him the X1 was built up as the penultimate representation of what MS’s goals were in the space. He is not some anti-MS crusader…
Even if he still believes it, it doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t affect his professional work. I have said previously, he has praised the likes of Gears 4,5, Halo 5 post One X patch, Sea of Thieves, Crackdown 3, the One X and the Series X. He was also genuinely disappointed in Infinite’s showing because he wants it to be a premier showcase of the Series X.
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