Most Nintendo and PlayStation players haven’t even heard of Xbox Game Pass. The casual PC gamer might not know what it is either to be honest, I’m a PC/Xbox ecosystem kinda guy and I’ve had to explain what Game Pass is numerous times to people coming back from college break who wanted to play games but didn’t want to spend a lot. Even so, some people are still cautious about signing up for subscriptions because they’ve forgot to cancel in the past. Subscriptions add up.
I think their engine revamp took them a lot of time, as considering it’s used across their suit of games, it hampered all of them. I definitely expect them to be much more productive during this generation.
As for remaster, considering how old all of their games are, especially new Vegas, I think a remake would be much more suitable, something akin to Mafia 1 remake.
Not anymore tbh more and more people are aware of it. Even in my more casual friend circle. Once a Starfield or Halo Infinite comes in it day one the public will know. Word by mouth is working fantastic with gamepass. Each day more people are aware of it. And if there is one thing people like its to safe money. But a heavy hitter is certainly needed. Starfield and Halo are going to be this.
To put in perspective of Game Pass popularity and being “in the know”, we have to remember they were sitting a bit over 10 million subscribers in July. If it’s expected that they’re at 20 million, that’s not growth to scoff at.
A lot of gamers know about the service, they just need more games to incentivize them to try out the program. Gears, Forza Horizon, Minecraft Dungeons, and Sea of Thieves did big numbers for the program, but Halo will be the one to really push subscribers.
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What about those “millions” 1$ subs 
The fact that Microsoft acquired Zenimax Media still blows my mind when we’re talking about the amount of games coming, and presumably be exclusive to Microsoft’s ecosystem of services/platforms. I’m pretty big into PC gaming If I’m going to be honest. I have a very nice ultrawide display that can perform 200hz, I acquired a PC in 2016 when Microsoft announced all their first party was coming to PC. later on I traded in my One for a One X to play RDR2 + backwards compatibility and now my Series S will arrive next week as a bridge console.
This may not even be much of a concern around here but lets talk about quality of life for Xbox for new people (this includes Xbox AND PC players using Xbox services for the first time).
#1 Fix the Xbox PC client - Downloads still don’t feel as stable as Steam, Origin, Uplay or the Epic Game Store. After Microsoft announced the new consoles are getting SSDs back last year, I decided to invest in a hefty m.2 2tb Samsung Evo 970 pro. I pay for 1tb of data, Xbox always seems to download the slowest out of all the clients and have the most amount of issues during installation. There are reports of corrupt installations eating up storage space unless you completely reformat your storage device. This is not really acceptable. The user interface on the Xbox PC client also feels really off, it still sort of feels like a touch screen app rather than a full on keyboard and mouse supported application. Design the app ui to look closer to something like Steam rather than a mobile phone app. The application can also feel really slow at times to the point where you launch the app and have to give it a minute for every game to show up on the left bar.
#2 Xbox Game Bar - Achievements on Game Bar don’t recognize when I’m playing games sometimes making it hard to go hunting for them. I have to rely on my web browser using TrueAchievement to even track achievements I want to hunt for. Xbox Party Chat for PC still doesn’t feel like its as stable as the Xbox version.
#3 Fix the mobile app - What happened to achievements Microsoft? just completely removed from the app, this needs to be fixed. Why can’t we purchase games from the app anymore either?
Those are my suggestions.
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Don’t forget that Halo Infinite multiplayer will be free to play, I’m curious if the Steam version will offer free to play? If Microsoft has it free to play on PC that’s going to cause a massive amount of people to play on Day 1. If that is the case, how many people are going to sub to Game Pass just to play the campaign?
I could see more people subbing to Game Pass to play stuff like Starfield and all the new Bethesda games to be honest. Why subscribe just to play Halo’s campaign? There are a lot of people who’ve never even played Halo before so what incentive is there to try out the singleplayer when you’re 7 games behind?
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Y A K U Z A
Great post! I had not thought of BGS Austin actually. The thing is, this “insider” doesn’t seem to be just anyone, he has given us correct information on things in the past. Still, doesn’t mean he can’t be wrong about this. He also says he doesn’t know in what way it exists right now. It could be just talk, discussions.
But you make a good point about BGS not wanting to let Fallout decay for too long, for so many years. It’s been a good few years already since their last singleplayer Fallout game. I am very ready for a proper new Fallout game, one that has proper VATS because 76 didn’t have that. The slowmotion is sorely missed in it.
As for inXile, wasn’t their big RPG also said to be steam punk, or is that just a rumor as of now? If true, I don’t see that for a Fallout game.
Yoooooooo!
Desperados 3!!!
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That’s a great lineup.
@Hindle mentioned the idea that Xbox could open a studio for Fallout. Do you see this as possible? I know MS has opened studios for Age of Empires and The Initiative over the past 3 years as well as opened studios like 343i and Coalition in the past.
CDPR, Bioware and Blizzard in particular seem to be losing some great devs that could use a home, and having a chance to work on a massive IP could be worth starting from scratch. Bethesda Maryland, Obsidian and InXile will be busy for the foreseable future and if Starfield is a hit I could easily see a second.
Austin is pretty busy with 76 and may be collaborating with Montreal on a game called Spyteam. Zenimax Online is a possibility as well if they rebrand as they have other teams.
Maybe MS taking what they know to build an RPG studio from scratch could be really cool for them.
We could’ve said the same thing about Gears 5, which was in an even worse scenario where the only previous Gears games on PC are Ultimate and 4. With how well MCC has done on Steam I think there will be plenty of people either buying the full game or jumping into Game Pass.
Not to mention this will be the first major release that should be implementing cloud right away at launch, allowing Android and iOS users to join in on the chaos.
I agree we’ll see decent jumps in subscriptions once we get Starfield, ESVI, and such into game pass, but it’s a lot more than just Bethesda. I’d expect another jump with Hellblade, Avowed, Fable, Forza Horizon, Indiana Jones, and anything Minecraft.
Some wildcards that may or may not move the needle: Flight Sim (console + cloud), Wolfenstein 3, Perfect Dark.
Then if we get a variation of uPlay… damn.
There are also at least two big unannounced MS games for this year apparently.
Playground Games is building an RPG studio from the ground up at the moment and I don’t see them sticking exclusively to Fable Games, but I also don’t see them working on Fallout. I don’t think we really need a new RPG studio dedicated to Fallout, Microsoft have more than enough wRPG studios as is.
The Initiative isn’t a one IP studio either.
No reason to make a single studio for Fallout as was just mentioned here. Also why would BGS wanna give up the IP for somebody else to do the game irrelevant of them being part of xbox studios? Like I get Perfect Dark and Battletoads got done by somebody else but these were fairly dormant IP’s were the main studios probably had no interest in revisiting them.
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If sponger (on era) turns out to be a trust worthy source, Fallout is likely going to be in work by InXile.
I think hes been hinting. Going by things he’s posted in the past…
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InXile has a second project in its infancy, with some relation to events that happened in 2020. This is in addition to the project expected in the 2024 time frame.
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In another post he said big things will happen with InXile, especially with Bethesda acquisition.
I know its probably reading too into it, but i can see it lol.
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I really think InXile wants to leave their mark with their own new IP and all the resources they now have and making Fallout doesnt seem like the way to go.