You suggested that MS’ first-party games aren’t interesting because of their quality. I provided aggregate scores from OpenCritic to show that most critics considered most of those games to be good (i.e. 80%+ scores).

Okay. Not sure what you want me to tell you? The aggregate scores for those games are good. If you have no interest in good games, that’s more an issue with you and less an issue with MS’ output.

Safer, yes, but sometimes devs want to try something new instead of churning out sequels. Starfield may not have been the home run they hoped for but I’m sure many of the devs appreciated the opportunity to work on a new IP.

I’m hoping they start from scratch for this one. Below Zero was solid enough but it had way too much recycled content from the first game. The appeal of these games is discovery and the sequel was overly familiar.

If we look at the OC scores for MS releases since 2020:

Eh, if you enjoy the Xbox platform, there are presumably Xbox-specific features that you enjoy (e.g. Game Pass, Quick Resume, cross-buy/play, free cloud saves, Smart Delivery, the Xbox controller, the more convenient form factor) that don’t exist on PS5. That alone seems like good reason to stick with Xbox even if it…

There’s a pretty wide variety of genres, settings and styles in this list. If you didn’t find any of them interesting, I’m guessing you have pretty specific tastes.

How often do you actually play games on said laptop? Seems odd that only Starfield would have such issues. I downloaded and launched the GP version without issue.

I agree that losing the Xbox hardware would be unfortunate. However, going multiplatform doesn’t necessarily mean MS is leaving the hardware business. If the hardware is profitable and provides an easy entry point into the ecosystem (namely Game Pass), there’s incentive for MS to continue making hardware.

Sony has more than double the market share of MS and doesn’t really seem to be influenced by MS’ decisions anyway (e.g. Sony still charges for cloud saves and doesn’t launch first-party games on PS+ Extra/Premium day one) so I’m not sure MS leaving the hardware business would really make any difference.

The fact that they see any platform as a “rival” is kind of the whole problem. These are consumer products, not local sports teams (though really, the whole local sports team allegiance thing is pretty silly too).

Not sure IGN qualifies as journalism. It’s basically just a marketing outlet. If you want actual journalism, you’d need to go to sites like Bloomberg, Vice and sometimes even Kotaku.

Key difference is that layoffs have no upside (aside from increasing companies’ quarterly profits). Xbox going multiplatform is good for everyone except stupid fanboys.

Starfield is capped at 30 FPS on Xbox so it’s probably not a good example to justify switching to consoles. TLOU was an awful port at launch so that’s a fair example, though not at all representative of the average port. That port has also been fixed since launch. I played through it recently and it looked and ran…

Correct. Saying “Microsoft Game Pass” is easier than saying “Xbox Game Pass & PC Game Pass.”

That remake list is weird. Why is Dino Crisis not an option..? I’d love to see a Dino Crisis remake ala the RE2 remake.

Nah, there are hardware platforms (Xbox, Playstation, PC, etc) and there are software platforms (Steam, EGS, GOG, etc). XBL and PSN are software platforms too, they just don’t have any competition on their respective hardware.

I’m pretty sure MS’ OS and productivity software divisions have always been more profitable than the Xbox division, even back in 2001. That said, you’re right about MS dipping its toes in various markets (and usually failing, ala the Zune). However, entering the console market was a far more expensive endeavor than…

Sympathetic to Ryan? Say what now? I thought Bioshock’s numerous audio logs made it fairly clear that Ryan was an insecure and hypocritical asshole. For as much as he preached about Rapture being a meritocracy where people would never be held back, he absolutely abused his power to ensure that he stayed on top.

Being into consoles != being upset by games being multiplatform.