Backlogging…oh man. End of this year I think I’m gonna check how much I actually finished from the backlog. I don’t count Game Pass games of course, so I’m gonna filter by bought games.
I bet it hasn’t helped that during the summer sales I bought like what ten, twenty…games too.
I feel like it should be mandatory for them to say if they bashed the series S. Microsoft tried battling it out by offering the most value to consumers (they still are, but they were stupid generous late last gen/early this one). And they got chastised for it. Why should, why would, Xbox holdout on price when they get punished by media for the Series S and Game Pass and even Xbox Play Anywhere (day one PC was used as a lot of fuel for "there’s no reason to buy an Xbox)? And Sony and Nintendo got rewarded for pushing for higher prices (Sony pioneered $70 games and Nintendo now $80 games) and charging more for consoles than ever while also lowering production costs.
We don’t know what Xbox would’ve done in an alternate timeline (there’s good reason to say that they’d have raised prices anyway either due to “macroeconomics”, ABK/just getting bigger, or an Ai focused Microsoft breathing down their neck). But I know for sure there’s not been a reason from gamers for the to keep holding on prices while the rest of the market got to raise prices or offer less and was rewarded for it. People spoke with their wallets and Microsoft is listening. Maybe if the Series S had moved gangbuster units and gotten tons of praise and people were more reluctant to buys the more expensive consoles, then the companies would’ve been forced to absorb more of the cost of tarrifs and inflation or to otherwise offer more value.
All of these except the Xbox button on the Ally one have had promos before. I guess it’s just that 1) Xbox wants everyone to understand all the Xbox ecosystem related value in the machine and 2) Xbox finally has an Xbox branded device they can use to show off all of the Xbox ecosystem that exists on PC.
YouTube comments make me think some Xbox “fans” are part of the problem. One thing that really frustrates me with the grifters is the instance that it can’t be an Xbox purely because it doesn’t play the entire library, but like… no handheld has ever done that. My DS couldn’t play Wii games. It couldn’t even use remote play for it nor could it stream Wii games from the cloud nor were there some Wii games it had cross entitlement with nor were there free cloud saves for those games. Same goes for the vita and portable. Heck, the Nintendo and Sony consoles now still don’t have free cloud saves so seamless crossprogression isn’t a thing even for first party games on the same platform. Imagine the PS6 handheld if they don’t remove the cloud saves pay eall; yikes. And ultimately every single game in existence is available on the windows platform (and Xbox Ally) including console games through emulstors, but what people are really complaining about is cross progression and cross entitlement, a thing which just is barely present in the entire industry and Microsoft is pioneering the push for. Again, games I bought on my DS didn’t appear on my Wii. And digital games I bought on my WiiU and 3DS didn’t carry over to my Switch. Nor my PS3 library to my PS4. And those devices weren’t NOT Nintendo and PlayStation consoles respectively. And some takes are just ridiculously dumb and willfully ignorant. And people should really take another look at the price and wonder why the cheapest model is less than $200 more than a switch 2 despite the former being completely locked down and the latter being open windows with múltiple storefronts and free multiplayer and cloud saves and the ability to do any productivity work too. College students are told to buy laptops for note-taking that are less powerful and cost more. Like I really should just ignore it all, but what makes it frustrating is that these are top comments on the official Xbox YouTube channel just putting out a video explaining the features of the Xbox Ally. Like the last one I saw was for remote play. I wanted to scream. It’s not an Xbox handheld because it has the option to use remote play? Ugh. Kid me would have SCREAMED if I could use my Gameboy or DS to remote play with my GameCube or Wii.
It looks like the latest Pokemon title is getting bombarded with lack of voice acting criticism. I would disagree that it wouldn’t need it have they not made cutscenes that are solely designed to have voices. It’s like the developers don’t know why other Nintendo got away with it before they start adding them.
Even so, they didn’t bother to have any sound effect when speaking like text popping up beats or something. Feels really hollow. It doesn’t help with Digimon recently released title showcasing more production on sound department. Either next one needs to change design or start adding voices.