Xbox Thread (Like/Hate) - Mainly focusing on the lackluster exclusives, weak points, or strong points of Xbox consoles

[Spaced Outside Cargo]

1 - panned by the public and considered one of the worst games of the series, maybe the worst.
2 - not exclusive
3 - not exclusive
4 - who?
5 - not exclusive
6 - not exclusive


Yeah, we are the ones rewriting history.

Shit
Shit
Boring
Shit
Wow, I can rebuy old games that I can easily pirate
Broken mess

See, every console was shit at launch

Regardless of the outcome, i have to agree with him that the hype was unreal for at least 3 of these.
Forza Horizon was at the top of the world after its sequel and people still had a very hopeful outlook on new releases. Everyone still wanted a new installment of Dead Rising and the concept of MCC was very appealing to people.
The point is that they sold consoles by hype alone. At the time people genuinely believed xbox had quality games and in practice the only one of those that was truly broken was MCC. People were lukewarm about Dead Rising 3 bit Forza did great as evidenced by there being like 7 installments now despite racing games being a dead genre.
True console exclusivity between them and PC didnt really matter at the time because this brand trust kept PC gaming niche.

 

[Übertroon]

Regardless of the outcome, i have to agree with him that the hype was unreal for at least 3 of these.
Forza Horizon was at the top of the world after its sequel and people still had a very hopeful outlook on new releases. Everyone still wanted a new installment of Dead Rising and the concept of MCC was very appealing to people.
The point is that they sold consoles by hype alone. At the time people genuinely believed xbox had quality games and in practice the only one of those that was truly broken was MCC. People were lukewarm about Dead Rising 3 bit Forza did great as evidenced by there being like 7 installments now despite racing games being a dead genre.
True console exclusivity between them and PC didnt really matter at the time because this brand trust kept PC gaming niche.

Here's the problem, to get this line up Xbox had to basically go without any exclusives for the 360 for over a year after Halo 4 released in autumn 2012. Meanwhile 2013 saw PlayStation 3 have several exclusives released like Last of Us, Metal Gear Legacy Collection, and God of War Ascension. The perception was that the momentum for PlayStation was stronger.
The launch title with the most hype as well was Destiny, which while multiplatform, had exclusive content on the PS4.

So you had a stronger momentum for Playstation, they were cheaper, they had better PR, they were the preferred platform for the console title of the year.

The worst Dead Rising title yet was not going to change the tide, Ryse Son of Rome looked nice, but was repetitive to play

 

[Howard Hamlin]

New Xbox flop just dropped, made by the Psychonauts devs. Absolutely ZERO marketing, I'm only now learning this came out. If you didn't watch their last showcase, you're likely only now finding out it exists. It doesn't even look bad, why does Microsoft just put these games out to die? Do they not want to make money, or do they just need an excuse to lay off more developers?

 

[Problematic User Forever]

I literally only found out about this game because Windows gave me an alert when I started my computer this morning.

I was like "What the fuck is keeper?" and had to google it to figure out it was a game and not some bullshit cloud/office application.

 

[Spaced Outside Cargo]

View attachment 8055899
New Xbox flop just dropped, made by the Psychonauts devs. Absolutely ZERO marketing, I'm only now learning this came out. If you didn't watch their last showcase, you're likely only now finding out it exists. It doesn't even look bad, why does Microsoft just put these games out to die? Do they not want to make money, or do they just need an excuse to lay off more developers?

This was in one of the recent game showcase events. Didnt look that interesting tbh. I honestly thought they just included it to pad time.

 

[Viriatus]

View attachment 8055899
New Xbox flop just dropped, made by the Psychonauts devs. Absolutely ZERO marketing, I'm only now learning this came out. If you didn't watch their last showcase, you're likely only now finding out it exists. It doesn't even look bad, why does Microsoft just put these games out to die? Do they not want to make money, or do they just need an excuse to lay off more developers?

Until Phil Spencer and company are fired from Xbox I don't see any hope for the future of the brand.

Microsoft needs to bring back the OG crew that launched the OG Xbox and the 360 ( aka the people that made Xbox a household name ) ;

- The Sega of America guys led by Peter Moore, that jumped ship from Sega when the Dreamcast was discontinued, and went to work with Microsoft to launch the OG Xbox .

- Peter Molyneux and the Lionhead crew

- Laura Fryer

- Martin O'Donnell and the OG Halo crew

- Cliffy B

etc

 

[Samuel Fuller]

View attachment 8055899
New Xbox flop just dropped, made by the Psychonauts devs. Absolutely ZERO marketing, I'm only now learning this came out. If you didn't watch their last showcase, you're likely only now finding out it exists. It doesn't even look bad, why does Microsoft just put these games out to die? Do they not want to make money, or do they just need an excuse to lay off more developers?

It got as much marketing as the game has real gameplay!

 

[Green Kitbash]

Ryse was a solid B tier game. Worth the 7.50 it was a year after launch

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

Having a book called failure to launch on the shelves is pretty fitting

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

https://gizmodo.com/its-official-xbox-has-a-full-blown-identity-crisis-2000674326

It’s Official: Xbox Has a Full-Blown Identity Crisis

It doesn't matter if the next Xbox is a PC. What matters is if it's usable.

The $1,000 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X alone won’t be enough to tide gamers over until the next-gen Xbox arrives. It’s a factor of cost and expectation. Even if the next so-called Xbox is far more of a PC than what gamers are used to, that doesn’t mean it has to feel like a Windows machine. The problem is players don’t understand what’s going on behind the scenes, and it’s time the company became more transparent about what’s in store to help us understand what’s on the line for Xbox’s future.


In an interview with Variety, Xbox President Sarah Bond reconfirmed the company is making a next-gen Xbox. However, for now, it’s still trying to re-contextualize what “Xbox” even means anymore. Bond said Microsoft set the price of the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X based on Asus, “because this is their hardware.” Of course, Asus is one of the major PC original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that is tapped into the computing market, not necessarily consoles. Asus and fellow PC maker Lenovo set their prices of their top-end handheld PCs at $1,000 or more. For instance, Lenovo’s 2023 handheld, the Lenovo Legion Go, cost $700 at launch with AMD’s top-end handheld chip. The sequel, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with a screen and chip upgrade (the same AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme as the ROG Xbox Ally X), costs $1,350.

PC makers have been put through the wringer over President Donald Trump’s rotating, often nonsensical tariffs and resulting international trade war. These companies (Asus is headquartered in Taiwan and Lenovo in China) cannot subsidize their hardware nearly as much as Microsoft can. And still, Microsoft boosted the price of the five-year-old Xbox Series X by $150—up to $650. This year, Microsoft also hiked prices of its Game Pass Ultimate subscription from $20 to $30. Getting access to all of Game Pass’ day-one titles would end up costing players $360 a year.

Xbox is treating the ROG Xbox Ally like a true-blue Xbox, despite the fact that any regular console gamer might get confused when they load up their device and realize OneDrive and Microsoft Teams come pre-installed, and their Xbox-specific games cannot run on the handheld hardware (though some cross-saves between console and PC will work on the ROG Xbox Ally). Bond repeatedly explained that the company sold out of Xbox Ally X devices on the Xbox Store. That may be more indicative of how many Asus and Microsoft decided to manufacture. PC makers do not expect to sell millions upon millions of units, at least judging by sales numbers from analyst firm IDC cited by The Verge.


The new handheld runs on a version of Windows with a unique interface called the “full screen experience.” It allows users to operate the Xbox Ally with a controller and still access the Xbox app and other game launchers like Steam. The UI makes the Xbox Ally one of the best Windows handhelds to date. It’s still far from finished. There are multiple issues putting the device to sleep, including one that drains the battery rapidly after pressing the power button, but Xbox told us it’s working on correcting those flaws.

The bigger issue is how Xbox gamers seem like they don’t understand what the device is. The original Xbox that launched in 2001 was based around PC components and a version of Windows, yet any base user could hardly tell it was a PC in console clothing. The man who’s often credited as the father of the original Xbox, Seamus Blackley, recently wrote on Bluesky, “Is it actually just a branded laptop with joysticks?” referring to the Xbox Ally.


Talking to Variety, Bond repeatedly tried to insinuate that the handheld was an Xbox, but that the ROG Xbox Ally X was an option for the “power players.” The regular $600 Xbox Ally that tries to enforce gaming at 720p instead of the screen’s native 1080p is for a “casual” crowd. The argument falls flat when you consider how a Switch 2 handheld costs $450 and will play many games at the native 1080p resolution.

There are several major games Xbox is promoting at the end of the year. It has titles like Ninja Gaiden 4 to remind us of the original hard-as-nails ninja action title on the original Xbox. There’s also Obsidian’s satirical The Outer Worlds 2 and indie darling Double Fine’s Keeper launching this month. That’s a hearty number of new games, and I wouldn’t dub any of them less worthy of attention just because they’re being buoyed by Xbox.


And still, the larger Xbox audience has been feeling down in the dumps recently. It’s hard to get excited about gaming when everything costs more. These upcoming games weren’t built with the Xbox Ally X in mind, but they are all playable on the handheld so long as you don’t mind lowering graphics settings. If this were a real console release, Xbox would have forced developers to design around the 7-inch Xbox Ally screen and create default settings to make the titles look good despite hardware limitations. Just look at how well Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws run on the Switch 2, all thanks to fine-tuning from the games’ developers.


All of this comes down to hardware. The next-gen Xbox—and PlayStation for that matter—will likely make use of AMD RDNA 5 microarchitecture. Who cares? The big update beyond performance improvements is that it will let more gamers access AMD’s FidelityFX AI upscaling. This takes frames rendered at a lower resolution and uses AI to upscale them while keeping the better performance. The Switch 2 is making use of a relatively old Nvidia SoC, or system on a chip. But because it has access to Nvidia’s AI upscaling tech—namely DLSS—it can run intensive games at a stable frame rate at the handheld’s native resolution.


There are reasons to get excited, but Xbox needs to tell gamers why it matters. Bond said about the Xbox Ally, “What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and to bring gamers another choice, in addition to our next-gen hardware.” The next Xbox console may not be here until 2027. It will be a long, long 2026 if we don’t hear from Xbox in all that time.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

- The Sega of America guys led by Peter Moore, that jumped ship from Sega when the Dreamcast was discontinued, and went to work with Microsoft to launch the OG Xbox .

- Peter Molyneux and the Lionhead crew

- Cliffy B

Ed Fries launched the OG Xbox

Wasn't Molyneux like the original Xbox fuck up?

And Cliffy B has had disaster after disaster as of late.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

The first 100% honest ROG XBOX Ally Review.

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

The first 100% honest ROG XBOX Ally Review.

For people that don't feel like watching, per notebooklm:

The source provides an extremely critical review of the ROG Xbox Ally, arguing that Microsoft's marketing of the device as an "Xbox" console is deceptive, as it functions primarily as a poorly optimized Windows PC. The reviewer strongly advises against purchasing the $600 model, detailing a frustrating user experience marked by complex and disparate update processes across three different software platforms (Windows Update, Armory Crate, and MyASUS) and significant performance issues where it consistently underperforms compared to the cheaper Steam Deck. Furthermore, the review criticizes the presence of unnecessary bloatware like Teams and PowerPoint, the lack of a cohesive software identity due to the blending of Microsoft, Asus, and Windows elements, and the reviewer asserts their independence by noting they purchased the device themselves, contrasting their findings with many sponsored reviews. While praising the device's excellent ergonomics, the video ultimately concludes that the Ally offers a terrible value and is a half-baked product from a company with vast resources.

 

[Twin Addler]

the presence of unnecessary bloatware like Teams and PowerPoint

Jesus christ. Wow. I know it's obvious but whatever suits okayed this really had no idea what the average consumer wants in their bing bing wahoo handheld.

 

[Super Hans v2]

Jesus christ. Wow. I know it's obvious but whatever suits okayed this really had no idea what the average consumer wants in their bing bing wahoo handheld.

If it makes it any better, it's just links to store pages for all that kind of shit, just like a default desktop install. To your point though, it's stupid of them to not strip all that crap out. Anybody in the market for a handheld PC wants everything piss easy like with a Steam Deck.

 

[4090 Chad]

Report: Microsoft CFO Amy Hood has forced Xbox to deliver an insane 30% profit margin

Bloomberg reporters Dina Bass and Jason Schrier just revealed that Microsoft CFO Amy Hood is indeed asking Xbox to meet an "accountability margin" of 30%, which is far, far in excess of reasonable targets for the video game industry, and in particular, the gaming hardware industry.

The changes, according to Bloomberg, coincide with Microsoft CFO Amy Hood taking a greater role in the gaming business at Xbox. The 30% profit demands are far beyond industry averages, which range in the low twenties at best.

So looks like Microsoft is 100% purposefully sacrificing Xbox but giving them some insane financial goals to attempt to hit to squeeze out as much money as possible before they end it all with the justification that Xbox couldn’t hit its desired financial targets.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

So looks like Microsoft is 100% purposefully sacrificing Xbox but giving them some insane financial goals to attempt to hit to squeeze out as much money as possible before they end it all with the justification that Xbox couldn’t hit its desired financial targets.

Sweet, that just leaves Sony and Nintendo, although the latter won't be so easy to kill.

I really don't see how XBOX can pull that off unless they pull a SEGA and get help from the mafia or something.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

Report: Microsoft CFO Amy Hood has forced Xbox to deliver an insane 30% profit margin





So looks like Microsoft is 100% purposefully sacrificing Xbox but giving them some insane financial goals to attempt to hit to squeeze out as much money as possible before they end it all with the justification that Xbox couldn’t hit its desired financial targets.

Xbox will meet windows phone soon.

 

[The Doom Slayer]

Good luck

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

@Hermiöne Granger
Wccftech: From Third Place, Microsoft Is Reportedly Asking Its Game Studios to Push Profits Above the Rest of The Industry (archive)



This is the first time I've seen a "Rumor Assessment" box on Wccfkek. Unsurprisingly, Jason Schreier gets a high score.