Whether it’s a problem with the franchise (3 had a whole lot more massive problems than just the ending, by my count) or one chaotic sequel/the reason it underperformed doesn’t really matter at this point. Because these kinds of games (between development and marketing, plus support and services) increasingly cost…

It’s definitely an issue. But, it comes with the territory when the stakes are so high. Gaming in general (indie/PC/mobile/FTP/ETC) is fine. AAA gaming is really what’s in trouble. Like everything else, there’s no middle tier anymore. B games now are digital downloads self published from small teams usually. In some…

Agree on both accounts. Although, it bears acknowledging what Bethesda has been doing this year is quite admirable. Dishonored 2/Prey/Dishonored Death of the Outsider standalone game-expansion/Evil Within 2/Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus. None are necessarily money making/printing franchises that parallel industry…

True. Bigger problem, gaming lacks the secondary revenue streams that film has (and, it has hundreds). We’re still getting the 200 million dollar budget film swings because movies earn money for decades. Rentals, licensing deals with HBO/Netflix/Hulu/cable television, DVD’s, blu-ray, 4K UHD, on top of box office…

Being able to play all the ME games through backwards compatibility on X1, enough of a celebration hook for me. Great times with that series. Try to go back and play 2 again every other year, same as I try to go back and rewatch The Wire/Breaking Bad every few years.

Having prior massive hits (also, remember, the original Mass Effect wasn’t a massive hit, sales wise. It did okay, as new IP historically tend to do. 2 took it to huge success realm) means nothing with how much games cost to make now. One bad/underperforming game today where budgets are 40-100 million dollars can sink…

Yep. If you have an X already, it downloads them automatically.

I normally call it X1X (in the same way I usually called Xbox One “X1") , so I would just say X1X’s for plural.

Waiting on my Scorpio Edition Xbox One X from Amazon as we speak. Anxiously awaiting as it’s out for delivery, in part with this reality in mind. A lot of my friends who preordered ran into this issue where they either didn’t get a delivery date, or their delivery date was later in the week (and or, December in a few…

The single player in Gears 4/Halo 5 was underwhelming. The online multiplayer/co-op stuff was/is great, and there still aren’t third party equivalents for the most part. Comes back to my original point. You’re talking about different kinds of games, and the comp is slanted towards single player narrative driven…

As always, I see ‘Gita Jackson’ in the author header, I click and proudly read immediately. Rinse and repeat. Love your writing style. You tap into purely human components of games and media in a unique way. As far as Pokémon, similarly a child of the 90's who loved it. Ash was always annoying, yet maintained a…

Nice to see another attempt at it (hopefully it takes advantage of PS4 Pro/X1X). The last two versions still played too much like a boxing game (given EA Canada’s lineage with the Fight Night series) for me. Fun, but not quite nailing the experience. EA Sports UFC 3 is going to be an interesting test case for the B…

Witcher 3 is open world. No open world game running at 60 FPS on console (Rise of the Tomb Raider in framerate mode will mostly hit 60), even at 1080p, let alone 4K. Check out Digital Foundry on YouTube. They were the first one’s to get to see X1X and they’ve been testing games on it for months. They put up a bunch of…

Rise of the Tomb Raider (native 4K mode/60 FPS Mode), Hitman (Native 4K mode/60 FPS mode), Witcher 3, F1 2018, Titanfall 2, Shadow of War (Native 4K mode/balanced mode), etc aren’t Microsoft exclusives. Going to be hilarious to see the hot takes and rushes to judgement throughout today now that the embargo is up.…

Bread and Circuses.

Xbox/Windows are the same thing. This concept is what people seem to struggle with. The notion that they need to force you to play on Xbox by locking games behind it is both anti consumer and anti logic. Whether you buy it on Windows or the Xbox store, they get the money either way. You’re actually worth more as a…

In my experience (fairly prolific consumer of reviews, and not just the videos. I try to read them whenever possible and focus on word choice/what’s emphasized) with reviews, wouldn’t say it’s so black and white (just my opinion though). Never have read anything I felt rose to bias. The challenge for Xbox games often…

Your entire premise is based around metacritic. Personally, I don’t put much stock in metacritic. It’s aggregation. Certainly, to the point you’re making, it bears out that PS has put out some high quality exclusives. To which I’d agree. However, inversely, (and in line with my original point) it skews to certain…

What are you defining as quality? Graphics, gameplay, overall presentation, overall experience, etc? That specifically would be the last complaint with any of the big MS exclusives. Gears/Halo/Forza extremely high quality visual experiences (independent of the subjective “do I like or not like”). Quantum Break, not…

Don’t necessarily disagree with any of the criticisms of Gears 4 you mentioned (3 is personally my favorite). Story was its biggest shortcoming for me, not gameplay. But, there isn’t a third third person shooter of that style on either of the other consoles. In terms of Co-Op, speaking more to Horde mode. Would also…