Red Mosquito

I'm very glad I upgraded to a Series X, even if I haven't played as much as I had planned.

Bloodstained looks good

Hell of a show. Definitely XBOX's best in probably 10+ years. I'll probably wind up grabbing Fable, Gears of War, Perfect Dark, Doom, Dragon Age and Indiana Jones. Fable looked spectacular. Indiana Jones (the cutscene) felt more like an Indy movie than the recent Indy movies.

Doom looks cool. Finally someone understands their audience.

Finally bought a Series X today. What a behemoth. I got the new 2TB “Galaxy” model with the cool speckled finish.

Congrats. Should give you a lot of fun.

I don’t know how often I would use it, but for some reason I’m interested in the Xbox handheld. I guess it will depend on how much it costs and what sorts of Xbox games can be played natively on it (as opposed to cloud gaming or streaming from my Series X).

Simple Torture wrote:I don’t know how often I would use it, but for some reason I’m interested in the Xbox handheld. I guess it will depend on how much it costs and what sorts of Xbox games can be played natively on it (as opposed to cloud gaming or streaming from my Series X).

No price reveal is worrying...

Monkey_Driven wrote:

Simple Torture wrote:I don’t know how often I would use it, but for some reason I’m interested in the Xbox handheld. I guess it will depend on how much it costs and what sorts of Xbox games can be played natively on it (as opposed to cloud gaming or streaming from my Series X).

No price reveal is worrying...

I’ve never looked into the price of Steam Decks, but it looks like one comparable to the top-tier Xbox Ally goes for like $650? And we’d expect it to have a premium on top of that? Yeah, nevermind.

It’s not out until holiday so lack of price isn’t surprising with how much things are fluctuating right now thanks to Mr. Tariff. I definitely want one just because most of my game library is on through Xbox. Have looked into a Steam Deck but it sounds like using gamepass on their is a bit of a mess.

Game Pass Ultimate going up to 29.99 per month is really pushing the limits of reason. Even $20 felt like a lot but I felt it was justifiable because my kids play it every day, and there are usually like 5-6 Day 1 games per year that I’m interested in. Tacking on another $120 stretches that justification to a breaking point. I’ll stick with it for now and then see.

I'm wondering if they drop it because there's a lot of backlash. I have not bought a game in a long time and game pass is a big reason why. Even this year has been ridiculous with Doom, Expedition 33, South of Midnight, etc, but $360 for a year is wild. I also don't care about the Fortnite crap that's being thrown in.

An average of buying roughly 6 full priced games a year. That's a tall ask for a casual gamer that may be buying other, non Game Pass, games as well.

When the MLB season ends, I’ll probably play only Game Pass games until next May in order to justify spending anything on it.

Simple Torture wrote:Game Pass Ultimate going up to 29.99 per month is really pushing the limits of reason. Even $20 felt like a lot but I felt it was justifiable because my kids play it every day, and there are usually like 5-6 Day 1 games per year that I’m interested in. Tacking on another $120 stretches that justification to a breaking point. I’ll stick with it for now and then see.

Too expensive.

Fable will be the focus of the XBOX Developer Direct scheduled for Jan.22. I really hope they drop at least 1 release date for either Fable, Gears or Halo.

Fable and Forza first half and the other two second half. I’d bet 11/15 for Halo since its the 25th anniversary of Xbox. It’s also a smaller remake so they can sacrifice it before GTA. Gears would be the one that I’d say either September or delayed to 2027 to avoid GTA.

The bad press around the Game Pass price increases must really have hit the subscriber numbers, because XBox is backtracking and only increasing Ultimate to $22.99. From what I can tell, the only difference is that COD will no longer be a Day 1 release, which is, like, who cares. Still pretty pricey but shocked that they walked it back, even a little.

Any subscription going down in price is a win. COD being removed doesn’t impact me too much.

This new CEO is saying the right things and this is a good step. We’ll see what else she changes. Usually when Xbox does something smart, they step on a rake 72 hours later with something dumb.

If something’s going to go wrong, I bet it’ll be a delay for Fable.